Willow's Lunch(es)

Been quiet around here! 

I see I still have my lovely loyal readers and have gained a few new friends since my last post :D *Waves*

I am touched by the concern I have received in email and wanted to just come on here and say that there's nothing to worry about. I haven't fallen off the earth, I've just been busy - creatively at least, with my new adventures in cake land! 

I'm trying hard to better my decorating skills and having a great time doing it. It's just, kinda, taking all I've got right now. 

I'll be back eventually ... when time allows! 

I'll leave you with these two photos I had on my computer of Willow's lunches.

And a link to my cake blog!

Kelly's Cakes 

Easter Cake

Hi all, hope everyone had a great Easter!

My daughter still hasn't done her easter egg hunt and I'm hoping she forgets because, thanks to all the easter baskets she received, she has candy coming out of her ear holes! Mom might just have to help her out a bit I think ;) You do what ya gotta do!

We spent Easter with Stephen's family and had a nice, while interesting to say the least, day. But I won't bore you with all the details!

I am going through a real cake phase right now. Just making, not eating ... fortunately! And I've been coming across some really awesome blogs and web sites that have inspired me so much.  This year, I decided to make an Easter bunny cake and, for the first time, worked with gum paste. It was so much fun! 

It was a white chocolate pound cake made from a doctored mix with white chocolate frosting and filling with raspberry filling also. The little bunnies and flowers were made from the gum paste. My father - in - law ate some and said what he usually says, 'did YOU make this? You sure you didn't BUY it?' So funny.

The first cake I made I used my new ultimate cake leveler with which turned out to be not so ultimate but flimsy and wonky and ruined the cake. I was mad but then decided to use the cake to make cake pops before making another. See below!

Red ones.

White and blue ones

(hey! New idea for July 4th!)

A weird pale green and white ones.

And colorful ones made by Willow! She got to do these all by herself while I got busy dipping and decorating the others.

Scrumptious Trifle Loaf

Well, incase you haven't noticed, I've not been making many many bentos lately. None pretty much. I've just been so busy. There's something about having a one year old toddling about on newly walking feet that doesn't allow you much time! That, and I've been busy with other activities whenever there is any time. I do plan on getting back on the ball soon though! I just can't bare all the plain sandwiches! No, just kiddin'.

Here's a recipe for a dessert I 'threw' together recently that went over really well with the family so I wanted to share it here with you guys! Please excuse the poor quality of pics though - the lighting wasn't so great.

It's real simple. 

Buy or make a pound cake and slice into 1-inch thick slices (you only need about 6 slices in total so the pound cake doesn't have to be real big and you'll probably have some leftover)

Whip up some pudding (I loooove white choc flavor with this) with some heavy whipping cream until soft peaks.

Mix sliced fresh strawberries with fresh raspberries (or blueberries etc) and mix with some raspberry sauce. Make your own or do like me and buy a can of the pie filling.

Now to assemble.

Lay three slices of the pound cake on the bottom of a glass loaf dish and spread with half the fruit mixture.

Spoon over half of the pudding mixture.

Again layer three slices of pound cake plus fruit mixture. 

Then add 1/2-1 cup of cool whip to the remaining pudding mixture and spread on top.

To make it pretty you could pipe something with chocolate on top or decorate with some fruit.

It is so absolutely delicious. I have never seen a dessert disappear so fast.

Muffin Tin Monday

This is Willow's first Muffin Tin Monday in a while. I made it a sort of Spring theme. Actually she made it herself, except for the bunny features on the egg. It took a total of five minutes, if that.

Top left to right: carrots, ranch dip, cucumber butterflies.

Bottom left to right: bunny egg, butterfly-shaped turkey sandwich, bunny marshmallows.

Of course she left the carrots, along with some of the cucumber.

Since my last posting, I have turned 31 27. I'm getting up there! I had such a lovely birthday. On Saturday my husband was home rather than working which was like a present in itself to me! As was watching my daughter get to spend a lot of fun time with him. Including making a cake for me! I thought this was really special because no one has ever made me a cake before. I took some pics while they were doing it (and did my best not to interfere!) ...

Here she is adding the ingredients. Check out this shot of the egg ... cool!

Next goes milk.

Martha Stewart in the making

After daddy threw a glob of frosting at her!

The cake was a golden butter cake by Pillsbury with our added sprinkles. It was actually quite possibly the best boxed cake mix I've had!

A pic of my proud little princess with the cake. Unfortunately this was the best shot I got of it. It had a sprinkle-filled butterfly shape on top and decorated with lots of little white pearl sprinkles and hearts around the outside. The inside was very pretty and colorful.

Willow's Lunch

Just a simple cheese teddy bear lunch today, on a round turkey sandwich. With some halved grapes, baby carrots and cucumber. She actually ate it all, including the carrots. 

Ryder has, what I think is, his 25th cold of this year. I'm exaggerating of course but it sure feels like it. He is constantly a wet, sloppy mess. His nose running and his mouth drooling everywhere he goes. I hope once it gets warmer he will get over these colds and be less cranky. Then again, it could be due to a shot he had last week at the doctors. 

Despite that though, we did have a good morning. He slept most of it but when he was awake, he was pretty cheerful. Here's a pic of him waking up after his nap and his big sis playing peekaboo with him in his crib. He loves it when she comes into his room (or our room!)

Smudgy mirrors make great backgrounds! 

Willow has been so looking forward to go to the duck pond when the warmer weather comes so she was very excited today when I told her we were going to go. I was hoping there'd be ducks so she wouldn't be disappointed. 

On the way there, we stopped at Macdonald's driveway which had a huge line of cars infront of us. So I told Willow to make some faces and took pics while we waited.

Here's her 'normal' face.

Here's her 'silly' face.

Here's her 'mad' face, which I said wasn't mad-looking enough.

So here's her 'even-madder' face lol.

Here's her 'sleepy' face.

And here's her laughing-at-Mommy's-silly-faces face :)

The things you do!

We were both very happy to see the geese in the pond as we drove up to it. There were so many in fact. All over the grassy area where she could be near them and feed them.

And they were quite friendly as you can see.

Well, except for this one! He was bossing all the others around.

She had a nice time running around 

and getting grass stains on her pants lol.

I got Ryder out of his stroller for a bit and he waddled around with the geese.

And played with Willow.

But he really wasn't feeling up to it so we didn't stay as long as I would have liked. 

When it was time to go there was lots of whining. 'I'm going to miss the geesies!' ... 'I'm hungry!' .... 'Mommy, I NEED a cuddle!' ... 'I want to go somewhere else!' Oh man. I couldn't get her into the car quick enough. And then she cried in her car seat all the way home. As did Ryder. But then they both took a two hour nap and I got a nice break. Phew.

Getting into the Spring spirit

Willow and I had fun painting today. One of the things we did was finger painting pretty Spring trees. I took a few pics.

Look at those chubby little fingers :)

Here's Willow's pretty blossom tree.

If your children enjoy finger painting, you might want to check out Jill's blog. She makes the cutest pictures from just finger prints with her two children and always takes such pretty photos. I am so inspired by her! Also, take a look at the book I just purchased from Amazon. It's got lots of good ideas.

Willow's Lunch

Bento lunches on a Sunday :)

Today was bring a lunch to church day to eat there between services. I made two identical bunny lunches. One for Willow and one for her friend Ava. Although neither of them were really much interested in eating. They just wanted to run around a play.

They both contain a turkey sandwich with yellow and white American cheese features plus a little more turkey on the ears, some candy eyes and a little piece of carrot for the nose. 

On the right side is a hard-boiled bunny egg which I sliced in half, carrots (a bunny's favorite snack!), some red grapes on a heart pick and little fruit gels.