Cupcakes!

Rachael and her friend Sofie have a party planning business.  They bake cupcakes, plan parties and basically make sure you have as little work as possible to do for your child's party.  They have put on several parties now and have been quite successful!  I am very hands off on their business.  I do proofread communication, help them plan and I do advertise their services to my friends.. but that's it. So if you every want some energetic girlies to plan your party, Rachael and Sofie are the ones!  Here's their website: smilesandcupcakes.com

Anyway.. this is only partially about their business.  Rachael has been practicing her cupcake skills and we've been baking so many cupcakes this summer that I am actually getting a little tired of cupcakes. And we have started having to give out extras to neighbors because we just can't eat them all!

These are chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting.  They were omgomgomg so good.  nomnomnom

We made rainbow cupcakes together for her birthday.  This is the batter for the rainbow cupcakes.

We layer the batter into the cupcake tins.  I skipped liners so we could see the layers.  One, they didn't rise very well (I haven't researched why yet) and two, the colors were too pale for me.  But still, they look pretty good for a first time!

Then.. see this dog?  He doesn't look guilty does he?  No.  Because he's not feeling guilty.  He's feeling satisfied and full of cupcakes.  Because he ate them when I walked Cleo.  

So I made another batch on the fly.  I upped the amount of food color in each layer and they turned out much brighter!  They also rose a bit more evenly, though they were still a dense cupcake.  Very moist and vanilla-y, though!  Yum!

I piped these, though Rachael can pipe frosting, too.  I'm just faster and we were in a rush to leave for the polo match.  

Vanilla rainbow cupcakes with a marshmallow fluff buttercream.  omg, the buttercream was to die for.  

Rachael is baking cupcakes for a parenting meeting this week.  We're hoping the meeting will help promote the girls' business!

Rachael's birthday!

Rachael's 11th birthday was on Saturday.  So we spent the day celebrating.  We had a movie morning with her good friend, Morgaine, in Reston Town Center.  We met Maureen and we all went to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Rachael's choice).  We almost had the whole theater to ourselves!  Then we meandered town center and went shopping and Maureen bought Rachael a beautiful bracelet.    

Late that afternoon, we went to see Twilight Polo.  That was tons of fun!  We've never been before.  You can bring blankets, picnic, wine, etc.  We sat out there and enjoyed the polo match and then there was a DJ so we ended up dancing the night away!  All in all, a great day.  We came home absolutely exhausted!

Rachael's big present from us was tickets to Analuna (we seem to be developing an expensive birthday theme of tickets to something).  But we also gave her a bunch of cupcake stuff and she was thrilled!

Here's the polo match!  It was really neat.

Then we, no joke, forgot the candles.  This is totally something that we would do, isn't it?  Totally like the time we brought Trevor's ice cream cake to the beach with us, packed in dry ice.  It was so hard when we went to cut it that it broke the knife!  We have lots of crazy birthday stories.  

Anyway.. a toothpick makes a great candle when you're in a pinch.  ;)

See?  Beautiful girlie, toothpick candle.  

Happy birthday, Rachaelie!

Enjoying a rainbow cupcake.  

Zen enjoying his rainbow cupcake (well, at least the icing!)

Rachael pretending to be a mannequin in RTC.  

Morgaine the mannequin!  

Happy 11th Birthday Rachael!

New York trip in a day

Last week we took a very impromptu, whirlwind trip to New York.  Ray had a business trip there and flew up and asked us if we wanted to go, too.  So we drove up after we dropped him off at the airport and then crashed his tiny, one double bed hotel room.  Seriously.  It was TINY.  It ended up that Ariel slept on the tiny sofa, Ray slept on the hardwood floor on the sofa's cushions and Rachael, Trevor and I slept in the tiny bed.  BUT.. it was still a great trip.  The hotel offered free snacks and beer/wine when we got there so we enjoyed that before meandering Times Square and Midtown Comics that evening.  Then Ray and I met some of his coworkers at a bar on the corner that, no joke, had Goose Island Bourbon County Stout on DRAFT.  There is seriously nothing better.

The next day we went to Central Park and, while we had plans to do other things too, when you are in NY with three kids, you tend to take longer to do everything.  So we ran out of time.  After a day walking around Central Park (and getting a bit lost in Central Park) we were exhausted.  We met up with Ray, walked around a bit more and then, with out a hotel room to check back into, we decided it was time to head home.  I wanted to hit the Museum of Modern Art really badly but, alas, we ran out of time.  We'll have to go back.

Meandering New York that evening

A rock in Central Park

A Carousel in Central Park.  I made Rachael go on with Ariel.  She felt she was too old.  heh

Cute brother and sister.

A fountain in Central Park.  Rachael has her tablet to take pictures.

Then we ended up spending most of the day at this amusement park in Wollham Rink.  Ariel was in heaven.  Rachael also had fun.  Trevor and I were exhausted and we sat on a bench and watched the girls have fun.  Trevor was technically too big for the park anyway. 

Another rock.  There were lots of photo ops on rocks in Central Park.  I did not post all the pictures I took of the kids on rocks.  heh

New York

Ariel sad that the amusement park is not open yet.

Listening to musicians in the park.

Giant bubbles!!!  I wouldn't let the kids get to close to many of the performers because then I felt compelled to give them money.  I think we spent a lot of money on street performers that day.  lol

In a dark tunnel... 

The Alice in Wonderland statue!

BALTO!  I was excited!

Some other statue!

Ariel on the swings at Wollman Rink.

Right outside Central Park waiting for Ray.

New York!

Trevor makes a remix

Well, Trevor makes something.  He has created his own music on Ableton.  He has also done mashups and just DJ'd where he blends the music together as it changes.  He calls them all different things and me, being a totally uncool mom, never gets it exactly right, what he is doing.  So here is Trevor doing something on his DJ gear.   I won't be sharing any music he creates here because he's too self conscious and sees too many mistakes in it.  He found numerous mistakes in this video.  I only hear the one hiccup he does, though.  ;)

I love Cleo barking and squeaking her toy in the background.  LOL

Avicii!!

Our spot on the lawn before anyone was on.  There's like no one there yet.. We had lawn seats.

As time wore on, I realized our great spot was going to get REALLY packed on the lawn.  

Lots of people.. 

Avicii!  By the time Avicii came on, we ended up having to move.  I was scared Trevor would be trampled with the surging crowd.  And Trevor also asked to move somewhere less crowded.  We ended up moving twice... once to a less crowded area that was still too packed for Trevor and then finally to the edge of the crowd.  Avicii on the big screen.

There was all fire and lights and a big screen.  Very cool and all in all, a great show!  I have video, if I can get it to upload.  I have such a problem with video and this blog.  But we had a great time and Trevor loved seeing Avicii and, of course I did, too!

Trevor has a birthday

Trevor turned 13 recently.  So we celebrated.  I am not a big "organize a huge party and celebrate madly and gregariously" type of person.  My children (except Ariel) are not, either.  They'd rather have a low key birthday where we do something fun.  This is good because they have a few good friends and most of them are gone over the summer.  SO... this year was no different.  We kept it low key and Trevor had a fantastic day to him.  He said at the end of the day "Thanks, guys, for making this the best birthday ever." Which he says every year.. and every year it's just a cute.

The girls gave him Pop Its and cute cards..

And they made him this adorable book about how great it is being 13 and a DJ.

Ice cream Snickers cake I made.  It was tasty. 

Then we had a movie marathon night with Iron Man.  We only made it through the first two movies.  Trevor also went to see Transformers and then out to lunch with Ray and Juan.  

His big present from us was two tickets to go see Avicii.  Yes.  He had to go with his mom because I was not about to drop my newly 13 year old off at a big concert by himself with another friend.  ;)  He was still thrilled.

All in all, he had a great day!

Oh, things really have been happening...

I am just terrible at not only taking photos of important things, but also of sitting down and updating anything.  But really, we have been doing things this summer!  For instance:

Ariel bridged and became a Junior Girl Scout!

We painted pretty nails... 

Ariel painted a mustache on her face and then we went shopping...

We got coffee at Starbucks... 

Trevor channelled his inner homeless and slept on a park bench.. ;)

Rachael practiced baking cupcakes for her business.  I think these are chocolate cupcakes with a coconut buttercream.  She rolled fondant "cherries" and sprinkled them and they look a little like sundaes.

These were lemon cupcakes with blueberry filling and strawberry cream cheese frosting.  They were not her best and she agreed they came out too dry.  We currently made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream and THEY ARE NOMNOMNOM yummy.  I don't have a picture of those.