Miss Mary Mack...Mack...Mack

Oh gosh, a long weekend, warm weather, family and friends. Remembering those that make all of this possible for us.  It was a fun time around here and I hope your holiday weekend was great as well. We had a cookout, ate lots of hot dogs and potato salad, chased ants away, drank some beer, good stuff. We laughed and told silly stories. The usual, special though, because this was the first official cookout of the season.

Really the highlight of the day was the double dutch jumping! Yes, jumping rope! When is the last time you jumped double dutch? I think the last time I did was when my kids were young and we were teaching them how to do it. Yeah, a few years ago! Let me say that this is kind of hard on the knees (and hips and feet) as you get a little older. Not the same as when you are 12 years old. The people you see in this video are ranging in age from 24 to 50. There are sisters and daughters and nieces and even my husband (Ravens shirt). This was several hours and many beers in to the day so be impressed.


As you know, the women in this family are very crafty (I'm talking about the hot glue gun here!). Just give us a project and stay out of the way. One of the daughters or nieces decided we should all make our own Crunk Cups. Just some sort of cup that reflects our individuality that we would use to drink beer from. Bling, lots of bling! Here is a picture, you be the judge. Don't be harsh, I know our talent is hard to take in.

Do we know how to party or what? I know, you want to go outside and jump rope now don't you? Do you remember the Miss Mary Mack jumping rhyme...all dressed in black, black, black?

Many thanks and a bow to my Brother-In-Law, John for this fabulous video. I'm thinking we should send it to Cannes.

WW-Drink Responsibly

Karaoke party at my house. Please - don't drink and sing. 

Do you want to end up on youtube?

Halloween Fun

One of my daughters held a halloween party on Saturday night at her house which was tons of fun. Good food, good drinks and great costumes! Here is a picture of her and her friend in costume. My daughter is dressed as a greek goddess and her friend is a mythological minataur who wooed her away from her family. She and I made the costumes last week. We sewed and made a giant mess with paper mache! I walked away from the stove while the paper mache was coming to a boil! Oy Vay!! It took me an hour and a half to clean my stove. Anyway we had a great time doing it!

Halloween Quest

In my family we take halloween seriously. It's the least stressful and most funfilled holiday! It's all about the costume and there have been some great ones. I wish I had all of my halloween pictures digitized...I'll have to work on that. Do you work at a place that allows you or even encourages you to dress in costume for halloween? What fun! The office that my daughter works in actually does a costume contest and gives out prizes!

Several years ago we had a huge costume party and let me tell you it was a blast! We had fog machines and cobwebs. We did wine spritzers in a punch bowl with floating eyeball candles. We had some prizes for best costumes. My sil, who is 6'4" and 200 lbs., dressed as a hooker, pink wig, mini skirt and fishnets. What a sight!

The picture above is my grandaughter wearing the costume I made for her. She loved feeling the soft fur and kept laughing the whole time she wore it. We have entered the "Jack's Quest" contest over at halloween adventures and we really would love it if you would just visit the website and cast a vote for this cute Little Stinker. You can go to the website and enter yourself. It's just good fun.

Let me know if you enter and I'll go take a look at your fav halloween adventure!

Watermelon Buggy

A couple of weeks ago we were invited to a cookout, it is summer you know. Well, I wanted to take something, a dish, but something a little fun or interesting. I saw this idea in a magazine at the checkout counter. Well I thought it was just too cute and so I snagged the magazine and a watermelon.

I put it together the morning of the cookout, really easy and it didn't take very long. I think it was worth a little effort, don't you?

Besides the very obvious watermelon, grapes, strawberries and cherries I also used a lime, sliced, for the wheels, mouth and eyebrows. I used a marshmallow, cut in half and slices of grapes for the eyes. Oh and quartered strawberries for the side mirrors. Stuck everything on with toohpicks and voila!

Besides cutting and hollowing the watermelon, I used a halloween pumpkin tool that I bought last year to scrape away the outer skin of the watermelon. It was all pretty quick and easy and it was a hit at the party.

If it took me more than 45 minutes to put this together I would be surprised.

Happy Sunday

Yesterday we went to the wedding of longtime friend of our family, one of our daughter's best friends. She and my daughter decided they really needed to wear falsh eyelashes. I guess they were going for that sultry look, or they were bored the other day and went shopping. The only time I have ever attempted falsh eyelashes was for halloween one year, great party, eyelashes not so great.






These they didn't go for...



Eeeeeekkkkk!






Oh yes, this is what they were going for....

However...

It's a Mario Party!

This weekend was my grand-daughter's (aka buggy) 5th birthday! Did she want ponies or princesses or even Dora the Explorer??? No. She wanted Super Mario and all the man eating plants and killer mushrooms that come along with him.

Of course I myself am a closet Mario fan. I remember buying my kids the original Nintendo system when it came only to find myself alone ... in the dark .... at 1am ... obsessed with making past Bowser and onto that flag pole!

So I couldn't resist ... Jen and I stole an idea from a google image search and decided to make Mario cupcakes!

I was afraid they might be really difficult but they ended up being much easier (and more fun) than I ever expected. We used regular icing for the light blue (since it tastes so good mmmm) and fondant for the actual characters. It was all done free-hand except for the stars; we did use a cookie cutter for those. We also discovered a super-cool icing marker for the classic mario-character eyes!

Buggy loved 'em! I think everyone else did too .... what do you think?

Plus Poppy dressed up like Mario himself!