We have found that making our own pizza at home is more economical, more healthy and at least as tasty, if not more so, than ordering out. The boys are die-hard cheese pizza eaters, but have recently started to flirt with adventure by eating pepperoni on their pizza.
For Christmas, I baked up some holiday treats for friends. Here are some Chocolate Mint Marvels from the cookbook, Treasures from the Bend, Rich in History and Flavor. These are so easy and yummy. The cookies are made of butter, brown sugar and chocolate chips all melted together to form a gooey, scrumptious mess and bound together with some flour and other dry ingredients. When the cookies come out of the oven, you stick an Andes mint on top and, when it melts, spread it around with a knife and let it cool. Delish!
On Saturday, December 5th, we celebrated our friend Cameron’s 9th birthday with a swim party. The party had a Pokemon theme and this awesome cake to go along with it. The cake was made by my new favorite baker, Sugar Sweet Cakes. Yum.
Jacob celebrated his 6th birthday at Houston Swim Club with friends and classmates. The theme of his party was Wolverine. I chose this photo as my photo of the day because of the drama surrounding the cake.
Normally, I order our cakes from a local bakery that makes unbelievably amazing cakes and charges unbelievably amazing high prices to match.*
The bakery normally needs at least 1 week notice to create a custom cake. When we ordered Jacob’s birthday invitations, he and I discussed what kind of cake he wanted. The invitations had this image on them. We agreed that it would be cool to have a cake that matched the invitation and looked like Wolverine had clawed through the cake.
Well, our schedule got crazy busy and the Sunday night before the party, I realized I had not ordered the cake. BIG OOPS! Then I realized that my usual bakery was not open on Monday. I did not think I could wait until Tuesday to order the cake, so I started digging around on the Internet for a local bakery that could do a custom cake.
T0 my delight, I found Kaci at Sugar Sweet Cakes, who quoted me a reasonable price on the cake and said it was no problem to do it by the following Saturday. She was wonderful to work with, making sure she and I had the same vision for the cake. It came out looking awesome. Even more importantly, it tasted incredibly delicious! It was a chocolate double-layer cake with strawberry filling. Wolverine’s claws have clawed through the “Happy Birthday Jacob” message (per our request). These claws look menacing, but are actually made of sugar!
Because I forgot to take a photo on Friday the 13th (there’s a real lost opportunity!), I’ve included a second photo of Jacob in the pool at his party.
Hey Jacob, who's turning 6?
*As a side note, I know a lot of people think this is ridiculous and prefer to make their own cakes. When Peter’s 1st birthday rolled around, however, I realized that I would be doing well just to plan and execute a party and did not want to stress out over the cake. I am not much of a baker, and we are blessed enough to be able to afford to outsource the birthday cake baking to an expert and pay accordingly. I realize fully that the cake is probably more important to me than it is to the kids. I’m ok with that.
Jacob’s birthday party was on November 14th, but I did all the grocery shopping ahead of time. Do you think we have enough to drink?
Ever since he learned about gourds at school, Peter has been wanting to cook one. I came across a butternut squash recipe and figured that was good enough. It was my first time to cook butternut squash. Here is Peter taking in the wonder of the whole squash. I thought the recipe turned out delicious, but the kids didn’t care for it. It did kind of have the texture of baby food, and I was sorry I hadn’t had this recipe when they were infants!
The school fundraiser always features a silent auction. The kindergarten class always makes a piece of pottery with the children’s fingerprints on it. When Peter was in kindergarten, it was an oval vegetable serving dish with the childrens’ thumbprints painted to look like butterflies. This year, Jacob’s class used their fingerprints to decorate a popcorn bowl.
Don’t ever try bidding against me in a silent auction. I’m a woman on a mission, and I WILL WIN! I was the winning bidder for the Class of 2009 kindergarten popcorn bowl. Isn’t it cute?
The boys tried Twinkies today for the first time. One of them snapped this picture before chowing down. I was actually surprised to learn that they had never tried one before. I’ve never given them one, but I guess I figured they would have encountered these creme-filled sponge cakes somewhere at school or at a party. So when they asked to try them, I couldn’t say no. They’re kids. Kids should have Twinkies now and then.
Interestingly, they didn’t like them! That kind of made me laugh because I didn’t like them as a kid either (still don’t). I remember thinking that I should like them. They seem like something kids would like. The cake was fine, but that creme filling never tantalized my taste buds.
At our Junior League meeting on Tuesday, we celebrated the publication of the new cookbook. The chef at the country club was kind enough to prepare our dinner using recipes from the cookbook. This is the Pear and Romaine Salad with Citrus Mustard Dressing. It was phenomenally good!
As detailed over at Wookiee Cooks, we had a disastrous time with our Star Wars breakfast recipe this weekend. Here was the final result. Not too appetizing!
Shayne's Project 365 
