Happy St. Patty's Day!!

Ok, I'll admit I'm a little late! But, the thought of anyone expecting a St. Patty's Day post prompted me to tell my husband I needed a little bit of computer time tonight! So 2 days late is better than never!

So about 2 years ago I found this in one of my Family Fun magazines. They're Rainbow Cupcakes, and probably the closest thing we get to celebrating St. Patrick's Day around my house! (You'd think, being McM's that we would at least have some decorative 4 leaf clovers...) But for the last 2 years on St. Patrick's Day we make these deliciously colorful cupcakes, and they are so easy!! All you need:

And, of course, the ingredients to make your cake -- mine required water, vegetable oil and 3 eggs. Once you mix your cake batter, divide it into 6 separate bowls. I love to use "kiddie" spoons in mine because they are easy for my 5 year old to stir with, and in this particular project, they are just the right amount to spoon into the cupcake liners.

I let Delaney do all of the color calculations, we talk about what colors she needs, and then as she mixes how much she thinks we need of each color and what colors she needs to make the orange & purple.Once all of the colors are mixed, I just use the kiddie spoons to scoop one spoonful into each cupcake liner, starting with the bottom of the rainbow and working my way up. I made 18 cupcakes with mine. In the original article, they used a spoon to smooth each color over the previous, but I don't have the patience for that!! Here are mine after colors purple, blue, green and yellow.


And after all 6 color layers:Bake according to the cupcake directions on your cake mix, and voila!Who can resist a cupcake that pretty? You can always top with fluffy buttercream frosting or cool whip for a cloud effect, but I love yellow cake mix so much that we eat them just like this!

Supermom On The Move

Today, I felt like SuperMom. I don't usually have those moments, you know -- where I feel like I could don a cape and fly up into the clouds. My moments usually consist of "Let's-Watch-A-Movie-Because I'm-Tired Mom" or "Please-Give-Me-Five-Minutes-to-Finish-the-Dishes Mom".

Wednesdays and Thursdays stink in our house. My husband and I work opposite schedules, which leaves him home with the girls Wednesday morning, I get home in the afternoon, hand him the car keys and he heads to work, only to get home late. Thursday is more of the same. Usually I don't do a lot on Thursdays because I have to get ready for work after lunch, and Thursday is just our chill out day. Well, we had another GORGEOUS weather day. So, I got everyone ready and headed out to the porch. Our porch is huge. It's also disgusting. I never take the kids out there because it's so dirty. Part of that problem is because our dryer vent blows onto the porch, so any loose lint lives out there. So, any suggestions to that problem are welcome!! Anyway, Delaney wore her swimsuit and Sophie got to sit in the stroller while I cleaned the porch. No deep cleaning, but I put the long "As Seen On TV" pressure washer thing on the hose, used the sprayer side and rinsed all the pollen off the screens, then cleaned all the dirt, grass, daddy long leg spiders, and lint off the porch. I even took everything but the play house and the glass table off the porch and had Delaney help me clean the toys. Once about 1/2 the porch was clean, I let Sophie down to play and she had a good time with a bucket and a shovel. I just can't believe I got the entire porch done and that's one less thing on the to-do list for this weekend. And now we might be able to enjoy a little bit of our weekend off outside as well!

Make sure to check back tomorrow, with St. Patty's Day around the corner, I'll be posting our favorite snack!

It's Girls Night!!

My daughter calls Wednesdays "Girls Night." I always feel bad for my husband, as I would rather it be family night, but since we work opposite shifts on Wednesday, he's at work and it's been officially dubbed Girls Night. I try to utilize Wednesday to go outside with the girls, and today was no different -- absolutely gorgeous Florida weather so we put on our shoes and headed out. Days like today are a perfect example of why I could never actually leave Florida. 85 degrees & sunny. Of course, I might need reminding of this in August...

Lately I've been trying to run a little on Wednesdays, but I am new to running (translate: I've always hated running) and have found I cannot push the double stroller with both girls aboard for a respectable distance. Delaney's constant questions that only stop for an answer, which I can't provide when I can't breathe, have a little to do with the lack of running today also. So instead we headed out to the swingset and played for almost an hour before we had to head in for dinner.

Tinkerbell (as I am requested to call her when she is in costume) loves the slide! We were missing some screws that we just got, so it's only been up for 2 days. I have to add that sometimes I do call her Tinkerbell or Rapunzel, and sometimes I don't. But I look at it this way -- she's 5. When she's 7, or 8 or 10 -- she won't ask me to call her that. When she's 14 and around her friends, she might look the other way when I call her real name. So Rapunzel for a year or 2 doesn't hurt me.

Sophie was too interested in the grass to pay me any attention. And how cute are those chubby little thighs?! More importantly -- why aren't chubby thighs cute as we get older???