Things that are making us happy these days:

Snow on Tuesday that is replaced by 70's and sun on Thursday - FINALLY!

Disney Soundtracks (Little Mermaid, Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) to sing along to in the car - AKA "Pwincess songs!"

The way The Cupcake says "Beauty" as in Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast - "Pooty!"

Dog-free backyard (RIP Normy, but dang is spring less smelly this year!)

Cheap IKEA closet organizers

"New" (to us - thank you JBF sales) summer clothes for TC

Capri jeans

Scoring like-new Clarks sandals for $6 from the Goodwill

Donate a chunk of hair to locks of love - Bucketlist #51

I've been in a hair funk for quite some time. Post TC I pretty much wore a standard-issue mom ponytail for two years, all about function with zero style or styling requirements. I had bangs for a while, which gave me the illusion that I had some sort of actual hair style, but eventually I realized I wasn't really keeping up with those either (my hair grows fast and I wasn't making it out for solo haircuts very often, even if they were fast and cheap, and NO WAY was I doing it myself. I have no skills for haircutting). As TC has grown and I've been able to steal a few moments away I'd started to sort of style my hair for some special occasions - I'd flat iron out the weird ripples that developed during my pregnancy, curl the ends under, it would look okay:

Christmas 2012

But I soon realized that even when my hair started out looking presentable, it would mat and knot under it's own friction and by the end of the day I'd have a huge rat's nest at the base of my neck. It was embarassing, I'm sure it looked awful, and it sucked to try and comb (rip) out. I don't know how people with long hair do it, if they just have thinner hair than I do, or brush it every hour, or use some magic product, but I couldn't take it. I was sick of the ponytail, and couldn't hack keeping it down, so I did some measurements and determined it was time to tackle bucketlist #51 - donate to locks of love.

Donations need to be a minimum of 10", so I divided my hair into 4 ponytails and put binders around 11" up, meaning the first cut was about 12" off.

My  hair is so thick, I think I get credit for 2 or 3 donations for this :) It was like an actual pony's tail when I wrapped it all up.

I didn't take any photos at the salon, I purposefully left my camera at home because the pressures of this mega cut were enough without feeling like I had to be in photos right away. The strange ladies next to me appeared to take several photos though, and couldn't stop asking me about what was going on (shouldn't going to the salon be relaxing? Who does that to other people?!?!) and basically narrating the whole experience (you're  not helping!)

I don't have any great "after" photos yet, but I definitely feel a foot lighter. The new cut makes more sense with the new texture of my hair (I got wavy during pregnancy, so it was really weird to have 4" of waves then straight for 16". Awkward), it's low fuss and dries quickly, or I can curl/iron it up for a different look. It looks WAY lighter in color with all the bulk gone too, neither good nor bad, but interesting.

I doubt I'll ever have hair this long again, so I'm glad I could make it count - the hair will help sick little girls feel better about their appearance with custom fit hairpieces, definitely a worthy cause.

Toys for Other Tots

I've (hopefully) started a couple of holiday traditions for our family: the annual ornament, setting up the tree, and donating a toy each year to charity. The latter is still in it's formative stages - in theory we would all go together as a family and pick something out that was meaningful, but time was against us this year so in the final days before collections ended I grabbed something on my own during a rare solo shopping trip. I still tried to make it meaningful by picking a doll that reminded me of The Cupcake:

 

It was barely in our house for 24 hours before I remembered to grab it on my way to a meeting at a school that was collecting for toys for tots, but it was just enough time for TC to see her. And go completely nuclear when she was not allowed to "had it! had it!"

Guess we have some work to do on the "Christmas Spirit", eh?

The doll made it to the charity, the kid eventually recovered from her blubbery puddle on the floor, and has since started to play with her own dolls (which are more age appropriate and have less hair to destroy).

Cupcakes for The Cupcake - 2nd Birthday

 

The Cupcake turned two in January, and we celebrated with a small gathering at a local ice cream shop. It was a smashing success - though TC wouldn't be tied down in her high chair or pose for any non-blurry photos (2 year olds, sheesh), because she was much too busy mingling.

I chose a very small location (max occupancy 12) and just a few projects to keep the party personal but manageable. Elmo HAD to be the theme, as TC is nuts over him, and I didn't mind the bright fun color scheme the little monster brings. One of the projects I decided to do early on was Elmo cupcakes:

 

They turned out great, and were so easy! Chocolate mini cupcakes were baked from a mix. Red frosting was made from 2 cans of white store brand frosting and a whole bottle of Wilton no-taste red. Yeah, that's a lot, and will probably stain clothes, but I didn't want pink Elmos so I kept adding more and more, and in the end it turned out GREAT (this would totally stain clothes I'm guessing, and will make mouths red - but it's a b-day party, and a toddler - we knew stains would happen).

 

 

Here's the process - I used a mix to make mini cupcakes in foil liners. Then I piped stars as a base (or "fur" for my little monsters), added candy eyes by Wilton that are available at a lot of grocery and Target stores now, an orange jelly bean nose, and a chocolate piped smile. I didn't try to hard to make anything perfect (monsters are messy) and I cranked them out really quickly.

Blog Bug

I have a few posts written, and several I'm waiting to write, but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload any more photos (the horrors!) and I can't figure out why. When I look at my data limits it appears as if I'm well inside the free boundaries, but I'm not technical enough to sort it out after about a week of trying, so forgive this added delay...