Bea's Big Girl Bed

Well, I guess it's time. Time for our little girl to go from baby bed to big girl bed. Sigh.

Eric's been busy in the woodshop (i.e. his half of the garage), building this cute, simple, modern twin bed for Bea. He used birch plywood for the mattress platform & side rails, and solid cherry for the top storage unit. It's built so that you can slide the mattress platform along a groove and position it left, right or centered in the room. Her bedroom is so tiny, we have it all the way to the left so that there's still space to play and read books on the floor. The best part though, is the added storage. (Perfect for housing diapers, blankets and 218 stuffed animals.) He used some special hinges that keep the lids open until you push them closed, and they won't slam down on tiny fingers. When she gets big enough to sleep without the rails, Eric designed it so they can be switched to become a headboard or footboard, or neither.

As you can tell, Bea's had no problem adjusting to her new bed. We've already had an inaugural pillow fight – with stuffed animals, of course.

Bee My Valentine?

I've decided that everything is cuter in miniature form - especially cupcakes. I baked 50 of these tiny bumblebee cupcakes for Gus' Valentine's Day party at school, and I just love how they turned out.

The wings are almond bark hearts that I piped onto parchment paper. The eyes, nose and bee stinger are white & milk chocolate chips. And the dark stripes are made by dipping the cupcakes in crushed Oreos.

Beelicious!

A Punxsutawney Phil Party.

Last Sunday night, I decided that it would be fun for Bea to take some Groundhog Day treats to daycare on Monday to share with her little buddies. So I found this cute idea for (what seemed to be) simple groundhog cupcakes. Four hours later, after the Super Bowl was over, I finally finished the little edible rodents. Maybe next year I'll just make "shadow" brownies instead. Sounds a hell of a lot easier.

This Snickers Candy Bar groundhog is peeking his Tootsie Roll nose out of a snowy, frosting-covered hole in the ground - and getting chocolate cake crumbs everywhere.

And folks, Punxsutawney Phil tells us there's six more weeks of winter. I guess that's OK, 'cause I'm gonna need that time to work off these cupcake calories before swimsuit season.