Summer Cut

So Captain finally got his wish and Harvey got his first summer buzz cut.



Don't worry Harvey survived just fine


He actually kinda likes it now, there is less sweat and he likes running his hands through it.


Anyone else getting a summer hair cut?

Daring Baker: Chocolate Pavlovas

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.



This challenge was delicious. Yes, I had execution problems and it wound up to be not the prettiest dish ever, but it was still a win in taste.

So What happened:

This dish is basically a chocolate meringue cookie with a chocolate mouse filling and a drizzling of a cheese cream over the top.

I tried to turn it into one big Jelly roll type dessert. Unfortunately When cooking the meringue the edges became crispy before the center was fully cooked so i was unable to roll it properly. AND it fell apart when touched. So i decided to turn it into a trifle, then realized i didn't have a trifle bowl, so it became just a layered yummy dessert.

The recipe can be found here. The only changes I made were to add a bag of herbal raspberry tea to the meringue and omitted any of the alcohol.

Again, I can't emphasize enough how this for the most part was a fairly simple thing to make and was SUPER yummy.

Castle Park

I'm just going to apologize right now for the number of photos in this post. A few weeks ago Anna and I took our kiddos out to this amazing park here. It is a private memorial park in town that has a giant castle maze and incredible statues throughout the whole thing.



Harvey was completely unimpressed at the get go.



There was this giant dragon, the other kiddos loved it.



Harvey could care less.



Take a good look at that face. No interest whatsoever.



So we had a juice break and then entered the castle.



Here is where Harvey started paying attention. See it's not so bad.



Things to climb on,



and poke at,



and reach for.



See?! Almost a smile while running around.



And then we found a puddle on the back of a dragon and there was pure joy.



Unfortunately for Harvey this was about 2.5 minutes before we needed to leave.



So recap, 1.5 hours of unimpressed, .45 hours of interest, 2.5 seconds of pure joy. And then he passed out.

How is your summer going?

Exciting Cakes and Things

A few weeks ago I made this cake.

It was super fun to do, and I definitely will be doing this again.

Some advice when you are making the cake, the faster you work the more crisp your layers, or stripes, will be. Captain kept calling me outside to look at stuff while I was making this so the black and white blurred together in spots.

The cake in actuality is kinda dry and bland. I think I'll try adding some more flavor, or just using this technique with a different recipe next time.

OH if you want a SUPER YUMMY cake recipe, go over to smitten kitchen and try her root beer float cupcakes. I made these and they are by far the best cupcake I've made in a while. I did add a dram of root beer flavoring to the recipe but other than that it was exact. I don't have any pictures because we ate them too fast. I just made them and ate them with ice cream. Next time i'll jsut make a cake and slice it rather than doing cupcakes.



Harvey wants to know what cakes YOU ALL have made recently.

Back Yard Swim Fest

A couple weeks ago while i was looking for a birthday present I came across some kiddie pools at Walmart. They were pretty neat, but none of them had a slide and a sprinkler and all were over $30 which was way out of my budget. So I went to Toys-R-Us just to see what they had. Low and behold they had a pool with a slide and a sprinkler for $20. Great! i though and I proceeded to check out. To my very great astonishment the pool rang up for... you ready... $6. Yep. That's all. I think I should have gotten 2. So we now have a kiddie pool that lives in our garage when not in use. Harvey loves it.

See it has a sprinkler?! This part Harvey could live without. He doesn't like being sprayed very much.



It has a slide. Harvey loves the slide unless he actually falls into the water. The slide is kinda tricky though, the steps are really too steep for Harvey's lil leggins.





Harvey also likes that it is inflatable because he can temporally deflate it and it will bounce right back.
Captain likes the pool too. He likes to toss Harvey up and down the slide.


Lemme tell you Harvey did NOT want to come out of the pool. We were only able to get him out once he was blue and shivering from the cold water.

Island Preview

I saw some feet sticking out of the kitchen island in progress and I had to investigate.

"Hey Harvey, whatcha doing?"
"I'm measuring mom."
"What are you measuring babe?"

"Everything."
"Whatever for?"
"Cause measuring is fun! Sheesh everyone knows that. "




Guess what Harvey's new favorite toy is.