CSC's Top 20

So, I found this idea on Pinterest and thought I'd do it since I thought it was super cute....

Starting at age 3, every year on their birthday you ask the same questions and see how their answers change over the years! Add a pic and make a book out of it.

1) What is your favorite color?   Red

2) What is your favorite toy? Ducky

3) What is your favorite fruit?  Orange

4) What is your favorite TV show?  Puss in Boots

5) What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  Peanut Butter & Jelly

6) What is your favorite outfit? "My Dad is Awesome" t-shirt

7) What is your favorite game? Simba's Game: I chase the fly and catch the fly with my hand

8) What is your favorite snack? Crackers

9) What is your favorite animal?  Kitty Softpaws

10) What is your favorite song?  ABC song

11) What is your favorite book?  Belly Button Book

12) Who is your best friend?  Lexi

13) What is your favorite cereal?  Special treat cereral

14) What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Play baseball

15) What is your favorite drink?  Water

16) What is your favorite holiday?  Halloween

17) What do you like to take to bed with you at night?  Bunny

18) What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?  Pancakes

19) What do you want for dinner on your birthday?  Cake

20) What do you want to be when you grow up? A princess like mommy 

Princess CSC turns 3!

Holy crap!  When the hell did my kid turn 3?!!?  I guess that whole "I still need to lose the baby weight" excuse really can't fly anymore.  Be that as it may, there ain't no party like a Wonder Pets party 'cus a Wonder Pets party don't stop, yo!  Once again, Princess Catherine wanted a Wonder Pets themed party, but this time she requested The Little Gym with her friends from school, so off to Pintrest I went to find everything Linny, Tuck, and Ming Ming.

Since last year I coped out and just had a cake shop put the Wonder Pets on a cake and did little in the way of decorations, I decided it was time to up the ante and do what I could to make this party awesome - at the very least have the other moms be impressed. I started off with super cute invites from Pink Pineapple Prints. I was so excited and they came out perfect.  Now on to the decorations and the most important thing - the cake, in this case, cupcakes.

I had seen several ideas on Pinterest and NickJr for ideas and I decided to try my hand at cake decorating. Now the BFF is the cake boss.  I swear, she has made every kind of friggin' cake for her kid that looks like it was done professionally, she just needs to open a bakery!  So I was hoping the cupcakes would pass her approval.  Since The Little Gym was taking care of the decorations, and they were using Wonder Pets primary colors, that cut my battle in half, and I could focus on making cute party favors and the infamous Wonder Pets cupcakes.

I was pretty pleased with my finished products...

The cupcake display

Ming Ming

For Ming Ming, I used a lot of yellow food coloring to make the yellow frosting out of the vanilla. Her pilot's hat is simply chocolate frosting, as it, and I made her goggles with just dots of black decorating frosting.  For her eyes, I used a toothpick to just take a bit of the black decorators frosting and placed it on the face.  For the beak, it's pink decorator icing with black decorator icing for the nostrils.

Tuck

For Tuck, I had to find a picture of him head-on.  I used green food coloring to make the frosting, blue and black decorators icing for the eyes, green decorators icing for the detailing on the face, black and pink decorators icing for the mouth.

Linny

For Linny, I used chocolate icing, as is, and lightened some of it with white decorators icing to make the center part of her face.  I used black decorators icing for the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.  I put a little dab of pink decorators frosting in the mouth as an accent.

The Wonder Pets logo

For the logo, I used the same frosting I had for Ming Ming.  I used a piping tool to make the circle on the outside.  For the "W", I used red decorator icing that I spread out with toothpick to fill in the outline of the letter.  Oddly enough, this design took me the longest to do.

It was not too hard actually.  I simply got plain vanilla and chocolate icing from, of all places, The Dollar Tree.  The cupcakes were a simple vanilla cake.  I already had some piping icing, but ended up getting some more.  I used food coloring to get the icing the colors I wanted.  For Linny, I just added white icing to the chocolate until I got the lighter brown.  Prior to actually decorating the cupcakes I "mapped" them out by looking up the character pics online, using a glass to trace a circle,  and then making simple drawings to make on each cupcake.  Overall, I think they came out really well!  And the cake boss gave her approval.

And CSC had a blast with her little friends....

Desperate times call for desperate measures....sort of

Spring is in the air.  Birds are chirping.  Flowers are blooming.  My car is coated in a yellowish-green film every morning.  The days are longer.  The school year is almost over, and you know what that means...Summer 2012 is on the horizon and with it the dreaded bathing suit season. (insert horror movie music here) I've been attempting WW since last summer.  Some weeks I'm really good and log my points and watch what I eat, blah blah blah.  And then there are others where the ice cream finds it way back into my freezer and ordering pizza or stopping by Chick-fil-A is just so much easier than cooking dinner for CSC and myself.  But the repercussion is no steady weight loss for a while, and the summer is approaching fast.  I'm tired of looking at photos from the summer months and thinking "Holy shit!  Put the damn fork down you hippo bitch!"

I've been thinking for a while that all I really want/need is a good kick start so that I can see and feel some results and be motivated rather than feel defeated.  Not that I don't like WW; on the contrary, I love it and think it's an amazing program, but let's be honest here, I'm not following it at all.  A friend of mine recommended a weight loss clinic place that gives you a shot (ouch) and some appetite suppressant pills (hello anorexia) and you lose a shit ton of weight in like no time.  I thought about it, especially since she's had really good results, but it's not in a convenient location, and I'm not too thrilled about the idea of getting a shot on a regular basis.

Just when I was starting to do my annual count down to Delaware Mansion Fourth of July Extravaganza and attempt to convince myself there was plenty of time to lose the weight and fit into size 6-8 clothes by then, I spoke to a friend a few weeks ago about her weight loss I kept seeing her post about on Facebook.  She told me she stared this program, Body by Vi, that used meal replacement shakes.  She gave me the website and I checked it out.  One of the things that she mentioned that kept me listening was the fact that she saved money on groceries since she was buying less food.  Her husband is often away in the evenings, so she finds herself in the same position I do - it's dinner time and you are cooking for yourself and a finicky toddler and cooking a meal is a butt pain.  

I was still feeling a little skeptical until she showed me her before and after pics after only a month using the shakes.  Holy difference, Batman!  It was insane!  That night I went online and ordered the Shape Kit.  It's the 90 Day Challenge and that's perfect timing for the summer.  I figure, even if I only go down 1 size, it'll still be worth it because seeing the results will be motivating.  The shakes and information came today, and I can't wait to go through them.  I know I need to do a before pic and take some measurements and whatnot, so I'll do that in the next day or so and get that tracking started.  Wish me luck!