Happy Halloween

We had a fabulous night in Calgary for Trick or Treating !  We took the whole family out around 5:30 and just went to our close neighbors.  The girls loved it and had a great time but were more then ready to come home after just a those few houses.

The costumes were cute but the LEGO block was hard to go/up down stairs and he couldn't ring any doorbells so that was not cool or productive for collecting huge amounts of candy.  After a costume change to Optimus Prime Hayden and Faruq took off to do a few more streets and got home around 8:30 with two more large bags.  Sophie shirt just says it all "I'm here for the candy". 

 I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Halloween.  Now onto start Christmas preparations tomorrow !!

Fondant and I are friends....

After my disaster at cake class the other night I had really thought that I would just stick to Buttercream icing and skip fondant all together.  But after a good nights sleep I decided to try one more time and I'm really glad I did.  I learnt a ton from doing the below cake today and I'm sure every time I admit another fondant cake I will learn that much more.  I know it is not perfect but I'm pleased with the outcome and I'm sure the kids will be thrilled to see it tomorrow.

Chow !

This year we have a....

A blue LEGO piece, a Tigger and a tiny little duck...

I had to include this picture because Sophie would not leave Laila alone the whole time she was in her costume.  All she wanted to do was touch her and pull the tail.

Happy Halloween everyone and I hope you all have fun trick or treating tomorrow night with your little ones.

*** Update ****

We actually had a princess joins us for trick or treating this year while Tigger took the night off.  Although when asked refused to show her face we thought she was a very beautiful princess.

A little (too much) Halloween baking...

I tend to have a bit of an issue with over extending myself and this past week was a perfect example.  You see being a mom to me means doing special things for your kids sometimes.  Laila and Sophie are a little young to appreciate it yet but I know Hayden does so I try to do what I can for him.

They had a Halloween party at his school this week so I decided to send sugar cookies.  They are relatively simple but when you are doing 250 it can get a little time consuming.  :} The end result was great and he thought he was the coolest kids bringing them in for the school.

The girls had two Halloween parties on Friday and Hayden one tonight so I made mini cupcakes for each of those outings.  I used a devils food and butter pecan batter then topped them with yummy Butter Cream icing.

With the leftover cake batter I made Faruq two trays of big cupcakes to take into the office but sadly I didn't get a picture of those ones.  I would say they were a success as the trays all came  home empty.  These are super easy and with a little decorative swirl of icing and some sprinkles they can be so pretty.

Then to add even more fun to this week I had my final cake due in my final Wilton's cake course  Thursday night.  But by then I had been up until almost 2 every morning for the last 4 nights.  I do most of my baking when the kids go to bed as it's really hard with one little "wanna be" helper and a 10 month motoring around now.  I spent the better part of last weekend making lovely flowers for the cake. I was beautiful cake planned with roses and carnations on the top and a ruffled border around the bottom.

I made a very yummy double layer Butter Pecan cake with a equally yummy carmel and chocolate filling.  It was iced with a Hersey's chocolate Butter Cream icing. (Very low in calories virtually fat free really !)

Below are a few pictures of the flowers (sorry for the picture quality I took them with my phone's camera).

Anywho got to the class 10 minutes late (great start) and could not stop yawning while I was sitting there.  All we really needed to do was roll out our piece of fondant that we had prepared beforehand then place it over our cake.  Doesn't seem like a hard task but for me that is pretty much where my evening ended.  I rolled out my fondant and when I transferred it the cake it pretty much cracked and crumbled before my eyes.   Any other day I would have just probably started over but I was so tired I just threw the fondant out.  I felt so defeated when this happened and really just wanted to cry.

Well there is nothing I hate more then feeling defeated about something that I know darn well I should be able to do.  So today after a good nights sleep I tried it again although I decided abandoned the original cake to make a Halloween themed one for the kids.  I have to say it is working out much better this time around and when I'm done I will post a few pictures.

So I have spend far more time in the kitchen then I normally enjoy but at the end of the day it was all worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  My next creations will be for a friends "40" birthday in November and my lovely Laila's 3rd birthday at the first of December.

Happy Baking !!

Busy Busy

Honestly I don't know why I do these things to myself.  I have missed blogging for the last week or so but I have multiple things on my plate right now that are just keeping me really busy.

I have cupcakes to make and ice for Halloween parties at school and a play group on Friday.

My Wilton cake decorating class  final cake is due this coming Thursday night so I was busy as time permitted on the weekend getting the flower finished.  Cake is baked and just needs to have the crumb coated added.

Hayden still needs his costume finished for his school party on Friday but hopefully that won't take too long to do....It is only a piece of LEGO.

Sad news our beloved "Boo" suffered some major head damage this past weekend at the hands of our lovely Laila.  It seems she was trying to get a piece of candy that was inside and she dropped his head on the granite counter.  It cracked in half but daddy was able to perform surgery and it seems to be holding up nicely.

Come Monday life should return to it's normal fast pace and I will be able to blog a little bit more often.

So long for now !

Mama's Weekly Wrap-Up (October 22nd)

Seems like I should be writing this wrap-up on Sunday's as I never seem to get to it on Friday's.

1. We had a great week with Faruq being off.  It went way to quickly but we did manage to get a few things done around the house.
2. Our Christmas lights got installed but I'm sure we looked like the freaks on the block for two nights because the guys didn't unplug them after testing them when they were done.  I really do want Christmas but not before Halloween.
3. While at Costco the other day Laila fell madly in love with a princess costume and was not prepared to leave it at the store.  We have owned it for 5 days and about the only time she takes it off is to bath and sleep.  We have all taken to calling her "Princess Laila".  
4. I have all my cupcakes made for this coming week's Halloween parties.  Now just to ice them on Thursday night.
5. I have my final cake class this week and spent the weekend making fondant carnations and roses for the it.  While I'm excited for what I have learnt I'm ready for a little break from cake making.
6. Had a great night out with my girlfriends on the weekend .  It nice to just relax and have a lovely meal with some yummy wine.
7. My belief that I'm a creature of habit was confirmed this week.   One of our lampshades in our bedroom broke (because it was almost 16 years old).  Well I went to a few different stores and looked at some really nice and different shades but ended up at Wal-mart.  I picked exactly the same shade but just in a different color.  I'm pretty sure I would have gotten the old color but they didn't have it.
8. Saturday night Faruq was replacing our C02 detector but didn't realize it was hard wired into our security system so when he disconnected the wire it set the alarm off.   No big deal or so we thought.  Typically when our alarms goes off the monitoring station calls us well we didn't receive a call but people on our "call out" list were called.  So sweet since it was almost midnight and to add more insult it wasn't even our current list.  The monitoring station did finally call us and we told them what had happened. But the final treat was that the Fire department showed up shortly after that as well.  Once they had a quick look they were on their way but we are waiting to see if we get a bill for this call.
9. Struggling a bit with Hayden and homework.  He is a smart kid but he can be so frustrating at times.  He gets what he needs to done but doesn't do much over that which I'm sure is pretty normal for most 2nd graders but still bugs the heck out of me.
10. Sophie is crawling up a storm.  She is still getting adjusted to her new walker and honestly I think she just wants to do the walking thing on her own.  She is pulling herself up a lot now so it is just a matter of time.  She still has no teeth but it hasn't slowed her down in the least with regards to eating.  
11. We need to finish Hayden's Halloween costume at some point this week.  Thank god there is no sewing just taping and spray painting.

Wordless Wednesday - October 20th

Mama's Weekly Wrap-Up (October 16th)

A little with last weeks wrap-up...

1. Made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and misread the instructions.  Thought I need a can of pumpkin but only need a 1 cup so ended up tripling the recipe.  But they were still yummy in the end.
2. My laptop started to smoke on Wednesday and it could have been very interesting if I had not been home to unplug it.  The laptop appears fine but it required a new power supply.
3. Scored a few great finds on Kijiji for the girls....A Little Tikes playhouse for $60 and a baby walker (the legal ones) for Sophie for $10.
4. We are loving Netflix and for only $7.99 per month think it's a pretty good deal.  We can now run it through our big TV downstairs with help from our Wii game.
5. Shaw is coming this week to change our cable out mainly because Bell sucks at retaining current customers and would offer us no good deals on upgrading our PVR's so we chose to leave and go to Shaw.  They are more then willing to give us one free HDPVR and a sweet deal on a second one. I will miss the "timeshifting" option at Bell but the new PVR's can tape two shows while you watch a third.
6. We made Cake Pops on the Sunday...learned a lot from the process and when we try them again I know what to do differently.
7. We also made candied Almonds which I have to say were extremely yummy and done in the slow cooker.  (I will post the recipe later)
8. The people are coming to put up our Christmas lights next week....I'm excited as Christmas is one of my favorite holidays.
9. I bought Laila a Tag System for Christmas (from Santa shhhhh)...She has just recently taken a liking to books so we hope she will enjoy this.  Costco had a rockin deal on a system and 10 books.
10. We booked a surprise trip to LA/San Diego for Hayden in February.  Just he and Faruq are going because we didn't want to take the girls and I have no one to watch them for me to go.  Bummer but I'm sure they will have a great time.
11. Faruq is on vacation this coming week...he has a huge "to-do" list so it's not really a break for him but I will finally get some things done.

I think that's it from last week !!

We wiggled and giggled...

After keeping the surprise for months we finally told the kids on Friday afternoon that we were heading to the Wiggles Concert.  Hayden seemed somewhat excited but I think he honestly would have been happy to just stay at school (my baby is growing up ).  Laila seemed indifferent to the whole idea and I'm not sure she really knew what was happening.'


We go there about 20 minutes before the show started just time enough to spend $100 bucks on glow balls, hats and programs.  We had awesome seats on the floor so the kids got a great view of the stage.  I was a little worried about the noise but I give them credit because the sound was turned down to a manageable level for all ages.  


When the show finally started Laila was slightly overwhelmed by it all but quickly started to rock out to some of her favorite songs.  It was really cute to see her enjoying it and then I knew the money we spend was well worth it.  


It seemed like a smaller show then the one we previously seen a few years ago and the wiggles seemed slightly older then before but I guess we have all gotten older and grayer.  Murray wasn't there but I have to say they replaced him with a very cute younger red Wiggle...yum yum !  It was different not having Greg there but Sam was good.

Surprise surprise the one who rocked out to the whole concert was none other then Sophie.  We have officially renamed her the "5th Wiggle".  I guess they even had t-shirts that said that  but sadly I didn't see them.  All in all it was a great afternoon spent with the family.  

Here's a few pictures more pictures from the concert...

 Bye Wiggles until the next time you come through Calgary !!

We are set to.....

Wiggle this afternoon !  Will post pictures tonight !

I couldn't resist posting the above picture...this was Hayden the first time he went to see the Wiggles !  So little and cute.

Chugga chugga big red car !!!

Corn Maze

This past weekend Faruq and I took the kids out to a Corn Maze located just outside of Calgary.  It was a beautiful day and we wonderful time just being together.

We played at the playground.

Sophie caught a ride with daddy.

We met the resident kitty cat and Laila wanted to take her home.  

Fed the animals !

We had some fun at the duck races !

Hayden tried to rope some cattle !

We enter the corn maze and had a blast racing to find the exit !

Then painted ourselves some little pumpkins !

Hayden took a turn at shooting corn out of the air canon and came really close to hitting the target but man did it make a lot of noise.

Someone was just tuckered out from the mornings activities and just need a nap.  

We ended our time at the Corn Maze on this super cool bouncing pillow.  

All in all it was a great day and we would highly recommend it to anyone in the Calgary area !

I will leave you with the above picture and will share the story behind it tomorrow.  We honestly couldn't believe it when we discovered what had happened.