#190 - Frozen Peanut Butter Chocolate Banana

Pedro (not to be confused with my husband Pepe), my sister's husband, bought this today in Pennsylvania. It was delicious!

ps...i've had family in town and i can't find the cord to transfer my pictures, thus, the lack of my blog presence lately. This lovely photo was taken on my sister's camera.

#189 - Buzzy

I hate when Baby O has to get his shots. I think the Buzzy is a great new invention, that helps to take away the sting of shots.

I wonder if I could make one for cheaper? All I would need is a gel ice pack or popsicle and my phone on vibrate :)

#188 - National Vanilla Ice Cream Day

National Vanilla Ice Cream Day is today!

Here's my favorite (aka easy) homemade vanilla ice cream recipe:

Vanilla Ice Cream

• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup white sugar
• 6 cups milk

DIRECTIONS
Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, vanilla, salt and sugar in freezer canister of ice cream maker, and stir well. Add enough milk to bring mixture to the fill line on canister. Freeze according to manufacturer's directions.

Of course you could half this recipe.

#187 - Summer Strawberries

We have a small strawberry patch and last year all the deer ate them. So, Pepe built a little cage for them.

Baby O will just pick them and stuff them in his mouth, stem and all.

#186 - Daredevil Baby

Baby O got this really cool bike from his Oma and Opa. He loves it, but his new favorite trick is standing on the seat. Ahhh...I think I have a daredevil baby on my hands (like I didn't already see the signs.)

#185 -Mini Birthday Cupcakes

I wanted to blog about these mini colorful cupcakes, since they were one of my favorite things at Baby O's birthday.

I was inspired by Omnomicon's rainbow cake, my cousin Michelle's tiny party, and my sister Kar.

Step 1 - make a cake mix (I used a white and yellow cake mix because I wanted to make lots). I also used butter instead of oil, I think it tastes better. Divide into four parts. Add lots of food coloring (see pic above). Wait, this is like 3 steps all in step 1. Oh, I did red, blue, green and yellow.

Step 2 - Stir in food coloring. Add more coloring if you want bolder colors. Pour into zipper bags and cut a small tip off one of the corners, so that the batter can be easily added to the mini cupcake wrappers. This is a lot less messy than trying to pour the batter for tiny cupcakes. Wait, that's also 3 steps.

Step 3 - Squeeze 1, 2, 3 or all 4 colors into each cupcake wrapper. (Above, I tried writing out letters, but after they baked, it just looked like a psychedelic mess.) For the final product, the solid or 1 color cupcakes looked the best, but for biting into the cupcakes the 4 colors looked best.

Here's what the 1-3 color cupcakes looked like (above).

Here's what the psychedelic cupcakes looked like (above).

Step 4 - I made a butter cream frosting (dyed one blue and left the other one white - it was a boy birthday party). However, the mini cupcakes where too stunning to cover them with frosting before Baby O blew out his candle, so I let the kids put on their own frosting. This was actually a good idea. Because the kids could add no, little or lots of frosting. Each kid got to customize their mini cupcakes.

They were bite size, so you could eat one (if you were trying to watch what you eat/don't like lots of sweets) or eat 4+ (like most of the kids). I think I'll always do mini cupcakes for birthday parties now.

Total 96 mini cupcakes were devoured by the end of the party! Maybe next time I'll use 3 cake mixes.

#184 - Decorating O's room

I got this poster from work and absolutely love it. Baby O's room still needs to be decorated, so hopefully this will get me started.

#183 - Remember this?

Baby O sportin the Beard Head

Not sure if you remember when I posted about the Beard Head, but Kar (my sister) bought one and it's actually really clever.

#182 - Roller Babies

These babies are too cute! I think Baby O would fit right in with them. I like the little kid at :48 seconds and the moves of the babies at :22 and :51...gosh, I like them all.

via here

#181 - Baby O's Colorful Birthday Party

This post is way overdue, Baby O is almost 2 (just kidding).

From his invite, you can see we had lots going on (for a 1 year old), but there were lots of kids, so it worked out great. It was actually pretty simple.

Dinner (ie: hotdogs (Nathan's) over the campfire, watermelon, grapes, chips (Sunchips), fruit juice and water.)


We had sprinklers and water fights. (I think I will always do this for O's birthday because it is so entertaining and practically free.)

We had a homemade (by my lovely sister Kar) pinata full of candy. Stay tuned for a how to.

We had a tire swing that Pepe made from an old tire left in our house. You'll have to guess how he got the rope all the way up in the swing. Maybe Pepe will do a guest "how to" on this?

And lastly, we had colorful mini cupcakes (96 total,) which all got eaten!

I got lots of my ideas from other bloggers, so stay tuned in the coming days to see where I got my ideas from.

#180 - Funny!

Match.com-Jon Gosselin - watch more funny videos

#179 - Did you know this?

Don't you hate when the aluminum foil, plastic wrap, etc. fall out of the box when you try to rip off a piece? Well, at the end of the boxes, they have a little tab you can push to lock the roll in place. Did you know that? Can't believe I just found this out?!

I heard this on NPR (yes, I know I'm getting old) a couple of weeks ago.

#178 - Newman's Own Sesame Ginger Dressing

I love anything Newman's Own. I think Sesame Ginger is my favorite (low-fat) dressing. It also makes a great marinade.

#177 - Birthday Invite

Here's Baby O's birthday invite. I should have sent these out sooner, but I sent them out less than 24 hours before his party. Oh well.

I made this invite in photobucket, but I really only added the text. My sister in law, Rachael, did the rest.