July 4th

Here are some photos from July 4th weekend. I am too lazy to post anymore than this right now, but I know what a treat it is for you all to view the family moments I capture on my iPhone, and I would never dream of depriving you of this joy. What did you do for the fourth?

The "Ilyssa" plate

While my sister was in town we decided to go and paint ceramics. She is the one who re-introduced me to painting ceramics as an adult. I happen to think that the ceramics place we have here, Hands On Ceramics, is way better than the one she goes to on Long Island... It cost less, plus it’s bigger, friendlier and has a more relaxing feel to it.

Since my sister was in town, I decided to paint her plate this week. She painted an awesome tray to look like the Giants' football field. The sides of the tray had an incline so she painted those to be the stands. It looks super awesome. I'm not so sure my plate looks a whole lot like mys sister. But hey, I tried!

P.S. I am pretty sure I am ruining some sort of surprise by telling you about the football platter and then posting pics on here. So, um, SURPRISE MIKE!

I'd like to know, if you could do any art project, what would it be? 

Above: Ilyssa Painting

Below: The Giant's Football Stadium Plate

A St. Louis Adventure!

This past weekend was my first time exploring St. Louis. My sister came for a visit and her flight arrived in St. Louis late Friday night. We decided instead of driving all the way there and then turning around and driving all the way back and spending 4 hours in the car, that it would be fun to cash in Andy’s hotel rewards points and stay over for the weekend. We planned to fit a lot in just two days.

We left Columbia around 9:00, but first headed over to our friend Monica’s house for the 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee cast Party. We could only stay about 15 minutes and then we hit the road.

This was Lilly’s first time staying in a hotel. She has trouble sleeping when she has to share the room. No let me rephrase, she refuses to fall asleep if others around her are still awake. So we decided the best thing to do would be to let her stay up an hour and half past her bed time and that we would ALL go to bed at 10PM. This way it would be dark and quiet so she could fall asleep. That was the plan.

By the time we got to the airport and got Ilyssa, it was already 11:30 and Lilly was fast asleep in her car seat. She was WIDE AWAKE when we got to the hotel at 12:00 AM. We got to our room and made it in about 3 feet before we noticed only one queen bed and a couch that didn’t open up. Andy went to complain to the front desk. When Andy told him there was only one bed, the man was like “WHAT!? Where could it have gone!?” He came to our room and proceeded to show us the door to the second bedroom. “Sir, you got the suite. It has two rooms.” Oops. That was embarrassing. After apologizing several times for making the guy come all the way to our room to help us find a giant queen sized bed we thought was missing, we set up Lilly’s pack and play and let her run around and get tired again.  

At about 1AM we were all ready for bed. We turned out the light and did our best to ignore Lilly’s whining, which thankfully lasted no more than two minutes before she fell asleep. Andy and I did a silent high five over this toddler bedtime victory, rolled over and promptly fell asleep.

Lilly didn’t wake up until 9:30 the next morning! We got our fabulous continental breakfast which included eggs, sausage, waffles, and yogurt among other things and headed out to the zoo! It was only 10:30 AM and was already HOT. The St. Louis Zoo is special to us because it is where Andy and I got married! After seeing, penguins, a cheetah, a bear, a tiger, pelicans, flamingoes, gorillas and  discovering Lilly is absolutely terrified of anything that is not human, we decided to get some lunch and head back to the hotel for naptime.

First we went to pick up the cake my sister ordered from the bakery that made our wedding cake. It was the same flavors as our wedding and cake tasted delicious!

After nap we headed to pride fest where we heard some great music, had some great drinks, and got like 12 bags of free potato chips! We let Lilly run around the park a little. She found these two guys sitting under a tree, ran over to them, and without hesitation just plopped down in the one guys lap. Luckily he found it just a funny and adorable as we did.

Next it was dinner time. We went to a place called Cheese-Ology where all they have is mac-n-cheese! They have tons of different flavors and everything we got was DELICIOUS! Lilly loved her dinner too and ate with a fork all by herself. She also colored. Directly on the table. So we had to wipe that off...  Thank God for Crayola washable crayons! Cheese-Ology was crowded, so we didn’t stay too long after we finished our meals.

The week before I searched the internet for something we could do on Saturday night that was kid friendly and would be open late so we could stick to our 10PM bed time without having a kid running around a hotel room for two hours first. I found the City Museum which was exactly what I was looking for! It is this amazing hands on museum with all kinds of things the whole family can enjoy and it is open until 1AM on Friday’s and Saturdays! There was a lot there that Lilly couldn’t do, but she had a blast playing in the toddler section, coloring on the giant blackboard wall with chalk, building with sponge blocks (and knocking said buildings over), and just seeing all the new and interesting things and watching the “big kids” play. As an adult, the City Museum was super fun! I might even like to try it without Lilly sometime.

We got back to the hotel at a good time and we all went to bed around 10:30. I had some trouble sleeping though. A storm came through and there were some really loud crashes of thunder. The loudest booming at 2:56 AM when I heard the hum of electricity die out and the hotel lost power. The storm settled down and I assumed the power would probably be back by the time we got up and I fell asleep. I woke up first, around 8:30 AM, and there was still no power. I went down to the front desk to check on the situation. They had no clue when the power would be back. There was no breakfast this morning, and the front desk attendant handed me a flashlight so I could use it to see in the bathroom. She assured me that the water was heated with gas so we could still shower.

The hot water was non existent. I braved the icy shower with a flashlight just barely providing enough light for me to determine which was the shampoo and which the conditioner. No sooner did I get dressed, but the power came back. Had I waited just 20 minutes I could have taken at least a warm shower!

We packed up the car and decided to skip the pride parade because of the heat (we didn’t want to sit in one place in the sun in that heat) and headed straight (no pun intended) to Six Flags!

Six Flags was fun. We did a couple of rides and purchased the $15 cup that gets you free refills for the day (which proved to be a very good purchase!). We decided pretty early on to walk back to the car, change into swim suits and hit up Hurricane Harbor. We spent most of the time playing in the giant kid’s area. It was so much fun! They had water pouring and spraying out of everywhere! Lilly had a blast! It felt soooo good to cool off! We spent about 3 hours there. By the time we finished it was 4PM and we headed back into six flags for a couple more rides and few last fill ups of that blasted $15 cup (we filled it up 12 times, so totally worth it). 

Lilly slept very well that night. All in in all it was great mini-vacation! Now here are some photos I took with my phone. I'll hopefully add some better ones, as both Andy and Ilyssa were snapping away with nice cameras all weekend.

Above and Below: Lilly watching the penguins from a safe distance so they wouldn't eat her alive.Or so she thought. 

Above: The Weener Mobile out and about in STL

Below: Tower Grove Park where Pridefest was held.

Above: Ilyssa and Andy at Cheese-Ology

Below: Our delicious Mac-N-Cheese meals!

 Below: Lilly enjoying the giant black board at the City Museum

"Uno-Brow"

My mom has always told me that there is never a dull moment when I’m around.

So yesterday I went to get my eyebrows waxed. I go about every other month to have that done. This time my sister is in town so she decided to come along and get hers done too…

I went first. Actually I almost didn’t go. I said “I think I’ll just cancel” and my sister offered to pay for me so I agreed to go.

I climbed up on that table first, which is kind of difficult when the table is so high up and my legs are so darn short. I lied down and relaxed. Tanya* (*names have been changed to protect those involved. Tanya is the first name I thought of just now for some reason…) asked me what I’d like to do to my eyebrows. “Just clean them up a bit. I don’t want to take too much off.”  I said. Famous last words…

She worked on my right eyebrow first. She finished that up in about 3 or 4 minutes. Tanya moved on to my left eyebrow and plucked a little. She then applied the wax, put on that little cloth strip and ripped if off. I was looking right up at her face and her eyes suddenly got really wide. She covered her mouth with her hands and let out a little gasp!

“What? What’s wrong? Did you take too much off?” I said innocently, not really worrying. I figured she had just made them a little thinner than I had wanted.

“OH MY GOD, I’m so SORRY!”

“What? What Happened?”

“I um, I took off your entire eyebrow. I’m so sorry!” Tanya turned around and moved behind the table by my head where I couldn’t see her.

“What? Really?” I looked over at my sister whose eyes were also very wide…

This is when Tanya got the mirror. She took a deep breath before she turned it around to show me what she had done and I could see her face was red and her eyes shining with tears. She turned the mirror around and OMIGOD she really did take off my whole eyebrow! I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard and Tanya burst into tears. I had to assure her I was not laughing at her, but just the whole situation and the fact that I looked pretty darn ridiculous. I kept telling her not to worry, it’s not a big deal because I have bangs. She said that it WAS a big deal. In her 8 years as an esthetician she said this had never happened to her. Judging by her reaction I’d say she was telling the truth. My sister and I were laughing so hard. Tanya drew my eyebrow back on for me. I tried not to laugh too much while she did that, but that task proved virtually impossible. She also gave me this little bottle of stuff for free called Revitabrow. It cost over $100 and is supposed to regenerate eyebrow growth or something. Tanya asked my sister “Do you still want to get your eyebrows done?” My sister blurted out “No thank you!”. I again, through my laughter, reassured her its ok, and not to worry.

We left the building quickly and bust out the door. As soon as the door closed behind us we burst out laughing even harder than before. I laughed so hard on the way home there were tears streaming down my face and I could barely see the road in front of me. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.

Ilyssa said she couldn’t believe how well I handled that. She said she would have cried, as did everyone else I’ve told this story to. Some said they wouldn’t have been as nice. Sure I only have one eyebrow now, but this was a very unlikely situation. I will not tell you the name of the place that did it. They are very good at what they do and I would never want to take away any potential business from them because of one little mistake. And yes, I will go back there. It might be a while though since I’ll have to grow my left eyebrow back first.

Almost 24 hours later and I’m still laughing.

And that is how I lost my left eyebrow (Or as Andy likes to call it, my “Uno-Brow”) and became a horribly disfigured freak.  


It is "Uno-Brow" (pronounced Uno like the game or the Italian number one), meaning "one-brow" not Uni-brow which sounds more like two eyebrows have "united" to create one big brow. "Uno-Brow". Lets get it added to the dictionary!

Below: Chalk Drawing At Tasti D Lite

I. Have. No. PATIENCE.

I am so excited for this weekend I can’t take this day any more. I. Just. Can’t. TAKE IT.

My sister is flying in and will be visiting for the week and we will be spending this first weekend in St. Louis. We have a lot planned. The zoo, eating a wedding cake, STL Pride Fest, A surprise dinner, surprise after dinner entertainment (the surprises are for Lilly and Andy), then Pride parade on Sunday, looking at the STL Arch from a park, followed by an afternoon/evening at Six Flags St. Louis! It’s going to be so much fun and we are going to be exhausted come Sunday night.

The weather is INCREDIBLE today. Let’s hope it lasts through the weekend.

This day is just dragging… and it’s only halfway over. And I’m hungry. Spend my lunch writing a blog post, or eat? Hmmm… How about both? Time for the second part. I’ll post pics of the glorious weekend after it ends. 

Below: This is my "I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS DAY TO END" face

Number 25: Make Pop Rocks Cupcakes

Pop rocks cupcakes are something I’ve wanted to try for a while. I love pop rocks! But I knew that I had to do some research in order to make them work…

I do not know what makes pop rocks tick. I mean, I don’t know what makes them explode in your mouth. Do they explode in heat, on impact or is it moisture? Through my intensive and extensive research I learned it is the moisture that makes pop rocks pop. Of course cupcake batter happens to be very moist, so I can’t just dump a bunch of pop rocks packets into the bowl and call it a day.

Through my research I discovered that if you coat the pop rocks in fat, it preserves the pop until you put those little suckers in you mouth. 

Fat? Ew! Like lard? No. Like butter or peanut butter or one of several interesting combinations I stumbled upon on the interwebs. 

Through my research I also learned a few other interesting things. For instance, pop rocks are gluten free, they are not Kosher, and they were first patented in 1956.


I decided that the cupcakes should also be rainbow, another thing I've always wanted to try and something that looked fairly easy to accomplish. All you do is mix the cupcake batter as directed and then separate into bowls. You add different color food coloring to each bowl and then pour each color into the cake pan (or cupcake pan) one at a time. You can even swirl them together if you want. The batter is thick enough that they don't all run together. 


For the Pop Rocks part, Andy went out and bought me 39 packets of Pop Rocks. I decided to use a recipe I found for the Pop Rocks filling using cashew butter. Since I'd never heard of cashew butter before and the store didn't seem to have it, I ended up with regular peanut butter.


Turns out, the peanut butter worked! I brought the cupcakes over to the Columbia Entertainment Company Theatre before one of their performances of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and allowed the cast and crew to be my unsuspecting taste testers. I had to warn them of the peanut butter in case of any allergies (turns out there was someone allergic to peanuts).


As far as I know they really liked them! They may  have just been nice because I was standing right there. Who knows? The tasters did admit to having an explosion in their mouths upon reaching the creamy center, so the Poping Pop Rocks part was successful! I did what I set out to do and my scientific research was not in vain.  I also brought them Oreo Pops that looked like bumble bees. I got that idea from Bakerella. Bakerella's turned out much nicer than mine, but c'mon, she is Bakerella! 


I did not taste one of my Pop Rocks cakes. I think I'm a little scared. I promise I will today as soon as I get home. Now here are some photos!

Above: 39 packets of Pop Rocks!

Below: Making the cupcakes rainbow...

Above: Rainbow cupcake before peanut butter and chocolate Pop Rocks Filling is added

Below: Rainbow Pop Rocks Cupcakes all iced, garnished and ready to go!

Above: Bee Oreo Pops

Below: Oreo Balls with the left over stuff from Bee pops

Below: Dirt and Worm cups I made yesterday for Father's Day (Just wanted to add this in there. Be impressed.)

So if you're interested in seeing the amazing play The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, please click HERE for more info. This week (June 23rd through 26th) are their last performances and you don't want to miss out! The cast is FABULOUS and so talented and the show is HILARIOUS! Check it out!

Number 24: Tie Dye Some Stuff

Tie dye was on my list because it just looked like something neat I could do. Yup tie dye is neat. Actually, no, tie dye is very messy. It is three days later and my hands are still purple. Despite all the messiness, tie dye was really fun. Andy tie dyed with me which made it even more fun. We had to wait for the baby to go down for her nap because permanent dye and a toddler probably wouldn’t be the best idea and I didn’t want to try it and find out.

We began mid-morning on Saturday. The weather had cooled down from the previous week’s unbearable heat. It was quiet and calm outside and it made tie dying soooo relaxing!

So in case you are keeping track: Tie Dying= Relaxing. Yoga=I want to kill someone.

We mixed up about 8 colors. I had bought a couple of things to tie dye and we also ransacked our dresser drawers and closet looking for anything white we could add a little (I mean a lot) of color to. We don’t own a lot of white. We prefer black or dark colors. They are slimming. Tie dye is not slimming, but oh so fun!

Andy did an amazing job of tying up the shirts so it would create these really cool patterns. I just wrapped the heck out of my shirts hoping for the best…

The only thing that was a little frustrating for two people with ADHD who need instant gratification, is that you have to keep the shirts wrapped up for 6-8 hours before you can see the results. So Andy and I both went to try and fit in a nap before the baby woke up to pass some time. Then luckily, since my parents were visiting, we went out to lunch and did some shopping. By the time we got home we could see how our shirts turned out!

I learned a valuable lesson: Wear gloves when looking at the shirts you tie dyed 6 to 8 hours earlier. Or you hands will be purple FOR DAYS. Also, you can’t just open up the shirts and leave them to dry. You next have to rinse out all the extra die and wash them 1-3 times separately in the washing machine. OY, I didn’t realize this was such a complicated process. Good thing it was fun!

I would tie dye again. I definitely would. I would have lots of extra gloves on hand though. Hahaha… gloves on-hand…. Ok, sorry.

Above: Clothing prepared for Tie Dying

Below: Tie Dye Materials

Above: And now we play the waiting game...

Below: Shirt #1 Unwrapped...

Above: Shirt #2

Below: Shirt #3 (I am very proud of this one!)

Above: Andy's amazing Como Derby Dames shirt! He did an awesome job!

Below: The tub after we rinsed the shirts. This is why you might not want to try this at home... It is all cleaned up now though, incase you were wondering.

Below: My purple dyed hands...

Above & Below: The little one sporting her new tie dyed top!