fall cupcakes and sprinklers

This was our last week before the girls start school, so we've stayed pretty busy. Kiersten has been begging to make cupcakes, and on wednesday, she cleaned her room, and talked Kara into helping clean the playroom too. So I went through a cookbook with them to pick out a flavor. They ended up choosing a yellow cake, which was good for me, because it was a simple recipe.

They took turns putting in ingredients and turning on/adjusting the speed on the mixer. They both still complained that the other was getting to do more or better ingredients.

Evie really wanted to be involved, so I let her down from the highchair to participate. She didn't get too many jobs, but she still felt like a big kid helping out. the other 2 were going crazy over who got to put in the eggs, so Evie ended up getting to do that part. She almost smacked away the measuring cup I'd put them in for her, because she was clapping so wildly for herself.

They looked through my hello cupcake book, and chose to do pumpkins. there was a template for the faces, but being a little lazy that day, I just melted down some colored chocolate and free handed the faces. They are on that wax paper to Kara's right. I didn't have any yellow, so I used a neon green to look like they were glowing, then I outlined them all in black. In retrospect, they would have probably looked a lot better had I just used the templates, and it probably wouldn't have taken much longer, but owell, too late now.

We made a vanilla buttercream, and colored it orange. Then I piped that onto the cupcakes with a star tip to make it look stripey. Then Kara's job was to put the faces on. I kept reminding her to keep the stripes vertical, but she did several of them horizontally, and they didn't look too bad.

I happened to have some chocolate covered sunflower seeds, so i decided we'd use those for stems. That was Kiersten's job. she kept saying she wanted to make them girl pumpkins, and asking if she could put bows on their stems. I told her no several times, but she ended up doing it anyway on most of them, and they actually looked kind of cute, I have to admit. Both of the girls only wanted to eat the boy pumpkins, though. Maybe they were trying to keep the girl ones around longer or something. Some of them got named, but I can't remember the names. See what I mean about the faces turning out a little sloppy? That's what I get, I suppose for being lazy.

I made enough faces to decorate 15 cupcakes. Even though I cut the recipe in half, we got 32 mini cupcakes out of it. So I sent a bunch of them to work with Ben to share. They are certainly not perfect, but good enough to make the girls happy. Kara also had a few issues with the spacing of the faces, but I guess it doesn't matter.

They were very proud of their creations. It was torture for them to have to wait until after dinner to eat any.

Since only 15 got to become pumpkins, we made some chocolate frosting for the rest. I also let them use the sunflower seeds to decorate the chocolate ones. They turned out very...interesting... and artistic...

Today was super hot, so after we got back from grocery shopping, I got out this sprinkler beach ball for the girls. Kara picked this out weeks ago, and this was the first time they've gotten to play with it. We've just been so busy for the past month.

She kept trying to run and jump over it, but she'd just end up hitting the top and bouncing back.

Kiersten complained a lot about getting wet. I don't think she had much fun. The only reason she kept getting back in the water, was to prove Kara wasn't having more fun than she was. She took a nap when we went inside, so I'm sure she was just tired and grumpy.

Ben went grocery shopping the other day at sam's club, and came home with this cute little picnic table. It's perfect for the girls, and they are always asking to eat in the backyard. When we had people over on monday for burgers, Kara took her plate out here, and sat by herself to eat.