A toast, to the Weishaar twins!

My twin sisters, Karen & Sharon, celebrated their 43rd birthday this weekend. Karen lives a couple of hours away in Chanute, Kansas, but Sharon lives here in Wichita, so I surprised her with a giant margarita cake - complete with a sugar "salted-rim" and a sugar cookie lime. 

We have plans to extend the birthday celebration in to October when all three of my sisters will come to town for the Sugarland concert. Yeah for sisters and fun weekends!

Left to right Weishaar sisters: Karen, Kay, Sandra & Sharon

Colorful Cookies

I needed a quick, easy dessert to bake & bring to a BBQ this weekend. My never-fail Kansas Sugar Cookie recipe came to the rescue - quite colorfully, I might add. Loved how they looked on my newly painted, 5-tier serving dish too. 

Bea's favorite: BLUE.

Here's the recipe if you're interested.

KANSAS SUGAR COOKIES
1 cup sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup oil
2 eggs
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
4 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp. vanilla
1 tsp. almond extract
(lemon, raspberry, etc.)

Cream sugars with butter. Beat in eggs and oil. Combine dry ingredients. Gradually add to wet mixture. Stir in flavoring. Split dough into parts for food coloring. Mix each color separately. 

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for at least 2 hours. Line baking pans with parchment paper. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on parchment paper. Press the dough balls flat using the bottom of a drinking glass, dipping the glass in sugar each time before pressing. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes.

Pecha Kucha

Guzuntight! 

Wait.... what?

I participated in my first Pecha Kucha today at an AIGA luncheon in Old Town. Pecha Kucha is a presentation methodology in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each - allowing the speaker 6 minutes and 40 seconds to present their topic. There were five of us who spoke and about 50 people attending the luncheon.

Today's topic: How do you spend your free time when you're not at the office?

My presentation: Edible Art (of course)

I was terribly nervous. Mostly because public speaking is my worst fear - right up there with showing up at a party naked and death. But it went better than I expected & faster than I had rehearsed.

And when it was all over, I had treats to share (of course.)

Since the group was mostly designers and creatives, I decided to make X-acto knife cookies. I made them out of chocolate candy melts, Tootsie Rolls and Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafers. Delicous. I should know, I ate about 14 of them that had cracked or broken during the assembly process.

First Day. Fourth Grade.

Gus started school last week. He is one of 26 kids in Ms. McNeil's class at Gammon Elementary. Twenty six? Gracious, that seems like a lot for one teacher to tackle. I wish her all the patience in the world.

When he got home from school on Thursday, I asked Gus who was in his class and he said "Mom, we've got two Cheyennes and three Trans!!!" (Two girls named Cheyenne and three kids with the last name Tran.) Should make for an interesting year, I'm sure.

Summer's End Snowcone Cupcakes

I saw the idea for these over at celebrations.com and knew I needed to try making them. 

So cute. So simple. So sweet, for an end-of-summer treat.

Doritos, now in birthday flavor.

My Dorito-loving nephew had a birthday last week, so I made him this little bag of "chips" - twenty, triangle-folded, birthday-flavored Dorito dollar bills. And it mailed just fine. (Always like to see what I can get away with at the post office.)

Squirrel

Eric is painting our house.

The color: Squirrel.

Why did I pick squirrel? Because it was almost an exact match to the color we already have on our house. (Which we still like.) Plus, I just wanted to make Eric ask for "Ten gallons of squirrel, please" at Home Depot.

Double Digit Dude

Gus celebrated his 10th birthday this weekend with a Laser Quest party. Normally, I'm not a big fan of parties like Chuck E. Cheese, Laser Quest, etc., but Gus really wanted to do it. (What 10-year-old boy doesn't love shooting things?) Plus, he's only going to be this age once, right?

Gus' favorite "desserts" for the last year have been Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies and S'mores. So I built a giant dessert centerpiece that could serve as his birthday cake, as well as take-home treats for all the kids after the party. Stacked from bottom to top: Cosmic Brownies, S'mores Snack Cakes, sport bottles filled with water, Bubble Blaster gumball guns, a giant #10 candle and a cardboard cutout of Gus in his Nerf gear.

All the boys had a great time, and Gus was the happiest 10-year-old on the planet yesterday. But then again, he's the happiest 10-year-old on the planet almost every day! He's our double-digit-happy-go-lucky Gus, that's for sure.

 

Bea's bark is worse than her bite.

Bea lost her first tooth. By accident. She took a tumble down the stairs last week and cracked one of her lower cuspids - right down the middle! The dentist had to pull it. Unfortunately, it's a tooth that you normally lose when you're ten or eleven years old. Not four. Oh well. She'll just have a little extra space in her silly smile. 

Dessert Sushi

We celebrated a birthday at work today and I brought these sugary sushi snacks. Amy, the birthday girl, is a fan of good sushi so I figured she'd get a kick out of these. 


The best part was, I didn't have to bake anything. I bought all the ingredients in the candy & cookie aisles at the grocery store. I purchased a box of individually-wrapped Rice Krispie Treats, then rolled them and shaped them to make the "rice" of the sushi bites.

Here's a little diagram of the ingredients I used:

A sunny, funny birthday treat.

Our Gus turns double digits this weekend. The big 1-0. Two hands. Ten full fingers, my friends. Where did the years go?

For this year's summer camp birthday treats, I made a giant cutout of Gus in his swim shirt & goggles, and put it inside a pool tube covered with 125 sticks of Laffy Taffy. A Tube-o-Taffy for all to enjoy. Portable, edible and most importantly, non-meltable. (Especially with this crazy heatwave lately.)

Gus was all smiles as we brought it into the YMCA this morning and all the kids gathered around to see.

Have a sunny, funny 10th birthday, my little man!

(Click here and here and here to see some of the treats we've taken in previous years.)

Sweet, sweet lovin'.

The Wedding Chicks featured the dessert table I created for Rachel & Mark Chrisman's wedding on their website today!

Saweeeeeet. Gotta love kuddos from people that do nothing but give kuddos to great wedding ideas.

Also, the photos from Lemon Lime Photography are divine. Simply delicious, fellas. Thanks for makin' me look so good. 

Happy Birthday Martha!

Today is Martha Stewart's 70th Birthday. Wow. Seventy. That's freakin' amazing. She looks fantastic and can still rock a pastry bag like nobody's business. Martha's one of my top 3 people that I'd like to meet someday - right up there with Bette Midler and Harry Connick Jr.

If I ever get the chance to meet Martha, I'd like to share with her the Cell-Warming Party I hosted at work on the day she went to jail in 2004. I made some posters of Martha in various prison garb and baked prison-striped cupcakes for everyone at SHS, with a file hidden inside one of them. The lucky person that got the cupcake with the file won a fabulous prize - a bottle of decoupagé paste, a cookie cutter and a hot glue gun. It was a hoot. (Something tells me Martha might not see the humor in it.)

Did I ever mention that I applied to be on the Martha Stewart Apprentice show? I had a call-back interview in Kansas City, but didn't make it any further. Probably for the best. The show only lasted one season, and the "apprentices" that I saw weren't very Martha-like. Less artsy-craftsy, more bossy-bitchy.

Anywhooooo.... Seventy birthdays, Martha: It's a good thing!