My daughter, the super model

Admittedly my daughter did take a modeling course last summer but it was not really what you think of as modeling. It was a great experience where they learned manners, learned about nutrition, about how to take care of their bodies and some tips on fashion. It was extremely age appropriate and in no way taught my daughter to pose for every picture like this:or this (and don't worry she was not let out of the house in this outfit)Because they are not my children, in several of the photos I cropped out other kids. They are all standing next to one another in a normal fashion and smiling sweetly for the camera and then there is a dead space and then my kid in her super model pose. Where does she get this?

Need some gifts? Look no further...

I love jewelry, always have. I got that from my mom. Some of the rings she has could blind you and they are fabulous. When I started having kids my jewelry wearing got put on a back burner until my mother-in-law bought me this awesome bracelet - it was basically a modern day charm bracelet.

I love my bracelet and for awhile I was getting great additions to it each holiday from my in-laws and my husband. It was fantastic because my kids couldn't destroy it but it entertained the heck out of them when we were at a restaurant. When they got restless, I would pull up my sleeve and we would talk about the different charms and where they came from and what they each meant. After awhile I stopped getting new charms and my sad bracelet sits waiting for someone to add to it.

Well check this out! This awesome website, Coppins Gifts, has bracelets similar to the one I have called DaVinci Beads but they are way more affordable! No more waiting for someone to buy the charms for you - you can definitely afford to score these on your own whenever you feel like it. The charms are adorable and there are millions to choose from.

This site has other great things you should peruse as well. I'm loving the My Pillow Pets. We have some road trips in our summer plans (God, help me) and those would be perfect for the kiddos!

Coppins Gifts is definitely a must check site for now on whenever I need to purchase a gift.

My worlds are colliding and it is fantastic

So, I admit it. I watch The Hills - and The City too - don't you judge me. I know you watch stupid TV too. Yours might be a different special kind of dumb, but dumb nonetheless.

If you live under a rock and don't know what The Hills is, it is a ridiculously over the top show about a bunch of obnoxious rich LA twenty somethings. Does Heidi Montag and 438 plastic sugeries in one day ring a bell?

Although I think Heidi looked prettier before and that her face (well her top lip really) resembles a platapus a bit now, I'm not judging her plastic surgeries. Hell, if I had the money and the cajones, I would have oodles of body parts lifted, tucked, sucked out, plumped up and placed back where they originally started. Probably wouldn't do it all in one day though...


But I digress. I love the Hills and don't care what you think about that. I get enough grief from my husband.

As you might know, my whiteboy husband directs rap videos which in itself is really funny. Anywho, while watching the Hills this past week they featured Tech N9NE, one of the rappers who is a client of my husband's!

That was fantastic for a lot of reasons but the main one is that my husband is no longer allowed to give me crap about watching the deliciously terrible show. His client's music was on there and in some way that probably involves lots of algebra or something, that relates directly back to him, right?

In the score of life, wife: 12,465 husband: 6

Worst mom ever

We were robbed!!!

Oh wait, no we weren't, I'm just the worst mom ever and have not been to the grocery store in like 10 days. Notice we are not low on alcohol though - priorities people!

Since butter and yogurt for dinner won't fly two nights in a row I guess I will go to the grocery store today.

Mommy's Little Helper

This morning the kiddos and I went to the park to burn off some energy. By the time we got home it was time for lunch.

E looked at me and said, "Mom, you work so hard. You should take a rest and let me make lunch." Absolutely, I cheered!

We decided on ants on a log as the main course.

So after I

got out the peanut butter
got out the raisins
got out the knife
got out the cutting board
got out the lunch plates
got out the celery
cleaned the stalks
cut the ends off of stalks
figured out what to serve with the rest of lunch
gathered those items
plated it all
made drinks
set the table

E got to work and assembled the ants on a log


















Then I cleaned Peanut Butter off

the counter
3 knives and 1 spoon
the peanut butter jar
the cutting board
the bottom of the dishwasher
the stool she stood on
her shoe
her elbow
all 10 of her fingers and the 2 palms
her brother's hair
the celery bag
the raisin container
my knee (how did she get it there?)

and cleared the table

Aaahhhh, so relaxing. Isn't she so helpful?

Happy Birthday to my Blog!

It has been a year since I did my very first blog post. Happy Birthday bloggy blog!!! (To be 100% accurate my blog's birthday was 5 days ago but I'm not organized enough to get it exactly on the right day).

For my kids I usually make a cake based on their latest love - like these (kids cakes) but what kind of present do I give my blog?

1) More attention?
2) Better writing?
3) Less inane ramblings?
4) A clean out of the 1,422 blogs I started but never finished?
5) More readers so it feels loved?
6) A stronger grasp of punctuation?

I'm thinking all of the above wrapped up with a pretty bow is the least I can do for it considering what all it has done for me in the past year.

A$$ Cake

Growing up my mom made the BEST cake. It is called Harvey Wallbanger Cake and it is fantastic. We call it "Harvey" for short. I absolutely love it.

Fast forward numerous years and my mom made it a few times when my in-laws were around. They too became Harvey Wallbanger Cake addicts - seriously it is like crack. So I got the recipe from my mother and made it for my father-in-law's birthday one year. It was horrible, I mean truly disgusting. I'm not a great cook, believe me, but I can follow a simple recipe. This one did not work out. It tasted like ass and thus became known as "Ass Cake".

We were all very perplexed and decided my mother had done what Marie Barone did on Everybody Loves Raymond when she left out one specific ingredient for a recipe she gave her daughter-in-law in order to remain the only person who could make her recipe delicious. Didn't seem like my mom's MO but what else could it be - it couldn't be my fine culinary skills, could it? Oh yeah wait, it could, I suck at cooking.

I tried to make Ass Cake on several occasions over the next few years - and successfully I might add - but I was not so successful in making a delicious Harvey. My mother in law even used my recipe and tried it a few times and she is a great cook - but alas - Ass Cake.

If you want to try it - and really who wouldn't want try something called Ass Cake??? - here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
• 1 (3.5 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 5 fluid ounces Galliano liqueur
• 2 fluid ounces vodka
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 10 inch tube pan.
2. Combine cake mix and pudding mix in a large bowl. Blend in eggs, vegetable oil, 4 ounces Galliano, 1 ounce vodka, and 4 ounces orange juice. Mix batter until smooth and thick and pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove and place on cooling rack. Spoon glaze over cake while it is still warm.
4. To Make Glaze: Combine the remaining 1 ounce Galliano, 1 ounce vodka, and 1ounce orange juice with the powdered sugar and blend until smooth. Spoon over warm cake.

If you want to try making a Harvey - use the above recipe only add 4 eggs. Yeppers, we weren't putting eggs in the recipe each time we tried to make it - wow DUMB.

I didn't realize that until this past Thanksgiving. I was at my in-law's house and my father-in-law had requested Ass Cake. Sweet man, he had faith that one day I could do it right. Okay truth be told I actually think he was thoroughly entertained by the fact that it kept coming out so horribly. So I decided to give it one last shot. I sat down with the recipe and started to gather the items.

"Um, Valerie?" I asked

"Yes, darling?" My mother-in-law said.

"Do all cakes need eggs?" I questioned.

"Well, yes I think so. I have never run across a recipe that didn't need them." She answered.

"This recipe has no eggs in it! There is our problem." I shouted

Wow, impressive! We had both make the cake probably 4 times or so and how we never noticed that it didn't call for eggs I will never know. I had written the recipe down wrong!!!

It is sort of like the time I bought some boots, wore them for about a year, and then noticed that one boot was a size 6 and one boot was a size 8 - and strangely I wear a size 7. But that is a whole other story.

So I went online grabbed a Harvey Wallbanger recipe (why I didn't look into the magical world wide web for the recipe years ago to check my recipe I'll never know) which calls for 4 eggs and made a delicious cake! Ass cake no more!

Sometimes I'm a special kind of moron.

Potty training is not such a saga anymore!

A friend of mine has been talking about how she is going to start potty training her son who is about a month younger than Z man. I was in awe of her because in my head we were not even remotely close to potty training Z. Outwardly I was her greatest cheerleader and asked her to let me know how it goes - inside feeling DEEP envy. Visions of the potty training boot camp I was going to have to conjure up for Z in August right before pre-school floated into my head.

If you have read my blog in the past you know how not successful we have been in the potty training arena with this kid. Things ranging from him wearing the toilet seat on his head, thinking the pee pee comes out of his finger, his sister trying to train him and other sagas have not given me much hope.

But on Sunday Z was taking a bath and told me he wanted to get out and get a diaper. I saw this as a great sign that he knew the signs his body was telling him. I took him out of the tub and told him to just sit on the potty while I looked for a diaper. I faked looking for a diaper and said I couldn't find one so maybe he should just try the big boy potty - and he did it!

You would have thought he just graduated from Harvard by the big deal I made out of it. I was truly that excited but really more shocked than anything. So far so good, he has gone several times since them and I think we are on the road to potty trainedeness. You could never have convinced me that this road would be traveled down before he even turned 3! We have a long ways to go until he is fully trained, but I'm thrilled.

Is it weird that I am kind of sad about this because it confirms my little guy is growing up?

I'm Stealing It #11

When I was in 6th grade there was a statewide competition for kids to develop an ad about seatbelts. This must have been about the time it became a law to wear one. It is so crazy to me that people ever got in a car without putting on their seatbelt. I feel naked without one - which leads me to the awesome ad that I developed back then:

"You're never fully dressed without your seatbelt." - Can you tell I was Annie obsessed at that period of my life?

Sadly, I didn't win even though that was fantastic ad copy - just ask my mom, she thought I should have won too!

So with seatbelts in mind, I had to share this. I just saw this seatbelt ad on Facebook and it honestly made me cry. No doubt that I'm a huge sap and cry over everything since I had kids - but I stole this from my friend Pren's Facebook page and wanted to post it here:

click here

Ask and you shall receive

This weekend we went to Smoke 'n Fire BBQ store as a family. Usually we try to avoid taking both kiddos to places that have large expensive items - but didn't have a choice on this one.

We walked in and for some reason Z decided he needed crackers and began announcing this in an above appropriate voice level. The thing about this kid is that when he gets something in his head he does not let it go. About every 15 seconds he announced to the store "I want kwackers, kwackers where are you? I can't find you."

I explained to him that just calling out for something does not make it appear and that as soon as we got home I would be glad to give him crackers. I then was able to tune him out (as I do it about 287 times per day) and continue shopping.

About three minutes later a very nice man who works at the store came up to me with a package of crackers. He said he had heard the call and thought he should do something about it. I was pretty sure that we should have been booted out of the store for our disturbance but instead they couldn't have been more friendly.

My daughter's response? "Well, I guess you can just call out for things and make them appear."

Boy this is not a good thing for them to believe.