Face It.

Love this messy little face. 

Totally Glam...

Savannah and I live pretty glamorous lives.  Especially on days like today - when we can just drive around doing super fun, super posh stuff.  

 Savannah slept in until 8:30 this morning!  I know, crazy.  So we got a late start.  We had plans to go out to play with some friends at their house (kinda in the country..wide open space to run and run),  but before we did that we got the car washed.   It's a little freaky when soap is covering all the windows.  I almost alway lock the doors when we're in there.   I mean, talk about the perfect place to murder someone.

After our play date (no photos, sorry) we went to the  flower store to pick up our monthly FREE flower bouquet.  Savannah loves the one day a month we go to the flower store.  They always have new gifty type stuff for her to look at.

And after the flower store, we always go to the near by pet store.  She likes to play with the puppies and look at the fist the most.  This is actually a really fun FREE thing to do with kids.

Last stop on our GLAMOURS day was for two happy meals at McDonalds.  I mean, we had to finish all off on a high class note.  Right?

Taming the Wild

I put the "soft" edges on this pictures to contrast the wildness within Savannah that I'm about to talk about.   I have been realizing that Savannah is not only "active", but also a wild child.  She doesn't walk anywhere - she runs, skips, hops, drags, or crawls most of the time.  She is hands on - to EVERYTHING.  She talks, constantly, about everything.  And for the most part  - it's really awesome and really fun.   However, it has come time in some instances to TAME THE WILD.  Here's what we're doing:

1. Spanks.  We believe that to spare the rod is to spoil the child.  Early on we taught Savannah what it means to Obey and what happens when you do no Obey.  If she does not obey she gets spanked on her bear bottom with a wooden spoon.  Sounds harsh to some people, but it only takes a few spanks a week (most weeks) to keep her in line with what we want her to do, and usually what's best for her.

2. Whinning in her room only.  If she is genuinely sad about something that we've enforced and feels the need to cry it out, she can go to her room and sit in a chair and cry about it. But we don't put up with crying fits out in the open to attract everyone's attention.

3. New Grocery store game. I got this one from our friend Ranel.  When I take Savannah to the store I have her obey certain actions depending on the aisle.  Some times she has to ride in the cart the whole aisle, sometimes she has to just walk and keep one hand on the cart, sometimes she can just walk freely, sometimes I have her hold my hand.  By changing it up every aisle it keeps her from getting bored and causing pandaemonium and it also keeps me in control.  SOMETIMES she gets a reward at the end of the visit (candy or a cereal she wants).  But not every time.

So that's how we're rollin right now.  She's one special kid!

Coconut Rum Cupcakes

I saw on this muffin blog one day about making a little photo studio for the food you take pictures of with white paper, and tin foil  This picture of animal crackers was my test shot of my studio. :)

So I made these awesome coconut rum cupcakes last night with Jasey.  They are super light and fluffy and really "grown up".   First we blended everything together in my Ninja - I'm going to blog all about the Ninja as soon as I figure out some more things I can do with it.  Just know, it's awesome.

I thought this was interesting too - before we frosted/glazed the cupcakes, we put this syrup on them.  It kind of hardened before we put on the glaze and coconut.

My photo studio didn't work out so great since it was dark when we we got done with the cakes, and my kitchen is well lit with florescent bulbs, but you get the idea -

Coconut Rum Cake (Doctored Cake Mix Version)

For cake:

1 white or yellow cake mix (not prepared)

1 stick butter, cut into 8 pieces

Coconut milk to replace the water, reserve excess for icing (1 can should be enough)

3 eggs

2 cups sweetened or unsweetened, shredded coconut, divided (1 cup for the cake, 1 cup for topping)

For syrup:

¼ cup dark rum

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup water

For glaze:

2 tbsp. butter

About 2 cups powdered sugar

Reserved coconut milk

Place 1 cup of the coconut in a food processor. Process until finely chopped. Add the cake mix. Pulse. Cut the butter into 8 pieces. Add to the cake mix. Pulse until it looks like cornmeal. Add the coconut milk and eggs. Process until smooth and thick. Bake as directed. (I used one ten inch pan.) Let the cake cool on a wire rack.

As the cake is cooling, bring the sugar, rum, and water to a boil.. Let cool slightly. Place the cake on a serving platter and poke holes with a wooden skewer or fork in the top of the cake. Brush or drizzle the rum syrup over the cake and let it sit for about 15-30 minutes.

Prepare the glaze by whisking together the butter, powdered sugar, and coconut milk until it's runny enough to drizzle.

Toast the remaining 1 cup of coconut in a 350 degree oven until golden brown.

Drizzle the glaze over the cake and sprinkle with toasted coconut. Serve.

Here's to Friends, Fridays and Electric heated blankets. 

and she's in...

I knew it would happen sooner or later.  And I'm hoping she wasn't the first........
Yesterday I had a few things going on at church, which meant that Savannah had to put in extra hours playing in her class at church and also just entertaining herself in the church foyer while I met with someone.  She spends a lot of time at Cornerstone church and I'm always looking for ways to make it fun for her so she doesn't hate going out there.  So I let her bring her Tricycle in.  She had a blast following me around on it while I walked all over the building.  I was starting to wish I could just have her ride behind me when I go to the grocery store.  It would be awesome.

So anyway, what happened?  We have this baptistry/water feature thing at our church.  It's like an above ground little wishing well type thing with a bridge over it.  All the kiddos love playing on it.  A couple other kids were running around on it with her and yea, she fell in.  I didn't see it but another kid acted it out for me.  I guess she tripped.  Pant and shoes were wet, but she was fine.  I just knew it would happen one of these days - for those of you with kids at Cornerstone, you know what I'm talking about!  At least no one was really around.  Maybe this will prevent her from doing it on a Sunday when the whole church is watching.... probably not.

Carpet Stain, you're no match for......

When Savannah and I were making our smoothies this morning, she was really excited about putting tons of blueberries in the Ninja (more on the Ninja later).  So when she came running into me from the living room saying "uh oh, my smoothie spilled" I freaked a little inside. This is what I came into:

So, I calmed down, ran into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl of hot water, my oxi clean spray bottle, and my ShamWows.  Although I've always been a strong supporter of these things, I've never actually had the chance to test them on the "hard to tackle" stains they promise to help with.  I sprayed the oxi on the stain, then it looked like this:

Is that better or worse?  I dont know.  I wasn't super optimistic at this point.  So I rolled the ShamWow on the stain and patted and rolled it again.  And....

Say What???  One spray of the Oxi and one pass of the Sham and WOW!  Stain almost all gone!  So I did it one more time and ....

Yeah, it actually worked.  NBD (No Big Deal).   So, long blog post short - that As Seen on TV stuff - not (always) so bad.  Stain 0 , Wendy 1.