Ta-da!!!

Get it? We were still under construction yesterday… toldja to read carefully :)

Our train table has become a somewhat temporary jobsite.  I made this reasonably easy to store away when not in use.

The gravel yard: coffee grounds and sawdust

Construction work is serious business.

And no, the blue painters tape is not an accent piece…our train table actually has very small holes all the way around the outside for add on toys that we don’t have.  I’m a little bit crazy, but not plain stupid.  I covered up all those already dust filled holes.

We’re planning to go and collect some small rocks to add to our site, we just haven’t gotten to it yet.

I can’t take credit for this awesome idea though, you can read more about it here.  I borrowed the general idea, and then kind of went a different direction toward the end.  This guy made more of a rock quarry.  My patience with the project was wavering by the time it came to painting, so I gooped sand, brown paint and glue together and smeared it everywhere!  It definitely achieved the textured, yet not too messy appeal I was going for.  I do recommend his cutting technique for the styrofoam.  You know, unless an indoor snowstorm just appeals to you.  In that case, stabbing a bean bag chair will render approximately the same result.

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Project X, as it has been nicknamed is nearly complete.  So these will probably be your final hints.  I curious to see if anyone can figure it out while it is still under construction.

Guess this sort of blows the iceberg theory out of the water ;)

Yes, we did this on purpose.

Final hint: Read carefully.

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I cleaned up a small mess before taking this picture.

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Who’s up for a good mystery?  Any guesses what in the world we are up to this week?

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This past week, our backyard turned into grand central.  Several of the neighborhood kids, who seemingly are free to roam the neighborhood, took up residence on our deck.  We are glad to have the company, but our neat and tidy sandbox turned to chaos.  And it quickly became apparent that the biggest (and most expensive) hit, the moon sand, was being dispersed through the cracks in the deck at an alarming rate.

The sandbox

The whole area around the table with the moon sand box looks like this:

After a little research online, I stopped by Walmart last night and for the grand total of $1.75 for two boxes of cornstarch, I made my own moon sand.  It is a bit messier than the real stuff I think, but for a small fraction of the price.  You combine water, cornstarch and play sand.  The only difference is this sand does dry out.  You have to add a little water each time.

The darker models are moon sand, the lighter is my homemade sand

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This year, we did a photo scavenger hunt instead of a basket full of candy filled eggs and dollar store stuff.  I went around the house and outside taking pictures of recognizable places.  The stove, the clothes hamper, a toybox, the bumper sticker on my car, a ball in the yard…  I printed all of these pictures out as a contact sheet (the one that fits about 35 photos).  After cutting them up, I put one egg with a picture in a small bucket that had a few other eggs and some easter grass.  The place in the picture was where Caleb should look for the next egg…and so on.  He ran all over the house, then out in the yard.  It took an hour to complete our “hunt!”  He seemed to really enjoy himself, and it was reasonably simple, although it took me longer to place all the eggs than I thought it would.

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I know it has taken forever…part of me has been very busy…and part of me just hates the cake so much that I don’t want to post pictures of it.  I was so disappointed that the fondant didn’t work out.  But anyway…here they are:

I asked Caleb if he was having a Thomas party and what he was doing wearing a Thomas shirt if he was having a Herbie party.

My Love Bug

The Herbie cookies, wow that mammoth one in the top row jumps out doesn’t it?

And the ‘girlfriend’ cookies…

I think I spent longer on these than I did the cake if you subtract the failed fondant time.

There were 9 sets of white/milk chocolate couples

The cake fresh out of the oven

My Love Bug fridge…top shelf: candies, middle shelf: cookies, bottom shelf: cake.

The crappy result of all that hard work.  I still want to do it again and use the fondant…just not anytime in the immediate future.

Oh yeah, the lollipops, I kinda forgot about these.

Hubby reminded me…these are Reeses…filled with a peanut butter mixture

The reason the party wasn’t at our house.  My sweet husband actually cleaned all that up.

The food table

The birthday boy

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…It wasn’t pretty.

There was foul language.  Spelled outloud.  My kid won’t know the words, but he’ll be spelling them.  Or saying one particular word beginning with S and ending with T in German, because somehow that makes it not a bad word.

There were hours of frustration.  Six to be exact. (That’s just the failing icing, not the entire cake.)

In the end, the fondant won.  I threw in the towel.  I was trying to make marshmallow fondant in five colors.  Red, blue, white, gray, and black.  Red and black were the death of me.  I had no gloves to wear, and if you’ve used Wilton Food Coloring Gels before, you can imagine how my hands must look.

I can feel every tendon and muscle connected to my fingers or my right hand.  My fingers and fingernails are rainbow colored.  And when I bent my finger, my knuckle split open (you have to knead it forever).  That was when I gave up on the fondant and decided to stick with buttercream.  I am my own worst critic.  I hate the way the cake looks.  Believe it or not, I feel like I disappointed him.  I know that sounds crazy.  But he had ideas about the cake, and I just knew I could do it.  And then it didn’t work.  So yeah.  That sucked.

Pictures are coming.  I promise.

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The bottom left picture is not part of the other two pictures, but something different, and edible.

To the party-goers: Please see that you eat as little sugar as possible this week, as we have your week’s supply covered at the party! haha

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Oh yeah, he’s gonna love em.

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