The Day I Tried To Make a Cake

So I haven’t been around too much these days and I have some really good reasons as to why I’ve been M.I.A.  One reason is that I’ve just been unusually busy doing the photography thing lately.  Another reason is that it’s cold and I’m kind of lazy.  But, my best excuse is that I’ve been working on masterpieces like THIS!

Let me explain…

Sunday was Jace’s 2nd birthday.  Since I was busy with photo shoots and a wedding show all week, we decided to celebrate with pizza and cake on Saturday night.  I realized that I would not have time to do everything myself, so I bought all the food, drinks, and presents…things I would normally try to make.  But I decided that I could totally make the cake myself – heaven forbid we buy a cake at the store.  Griff and I had big plans to decorate it with chocolate cookie crumbs and gummi worms; it was going to be awesome.  My job was just to make the cake and get it ready for decorating.

The cake came out of the oven looking good – cooked perfectly in the middle (I struggle with the whole baking thing, so I thought I was pretty freaking fantastic at this point).  I even let it cool off for awhile before I decided to slap the icing on (amazing restraint on my part).  That’s when it all started to go downhill.

That b*tch of a cake started to tear, slide and crumble.  I swear at one point I heard it laughing.  I spend the next 15 minutes or so trying to patch that sh*t up, and it just got worse and worse.  I honestly don’t know what happened, I mean, people do this every day, so I couldn’t figure out what went so horribly wrong.

After hearing the cursing and crying, Griff wandered into the kitchen.  The look on his face went from shock, to confusion, back to shock.  At one point, I seriously thought he was going to cry.

Do you like his new Lloyd Christmas haircut? Ugh.

But then, his wheels started turning, and he said, “Can I eat it?”

Because he has sugar running through his veins just like his Mama, of course I said yes.  And we dug in.

And then Ken walked in.  And we saw the same look of shock and confusion on his face.  And then he did what any good Daddy would do…

Best day of Griffin’s life.  Poor Jace was sleeping and missed it all.

So that’s the story behind the photo of Ken you may have seen on Facebook the other day.  From now on I’ll splurge on the $8.00 cake from Sobeys and not kid myself into thinking I can do it myself.  Leave it to the pros, right Christine?!

So what about the new cake?  Did Jace like it?  You can be the judge…

It ended up looking just like my cake in the end 🙂

Happy Birthday Jace!

And The Winner Is….

We had over 100 entries in our pendant giveaway – yay!  Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate.  A winner was chosen at random this morning by the computer….

If it’s you, email me at info@lyndsaydoyle.ca for all the ordering details.  Make sure to send me a nice photo for your pendant; not one like this:

Happy Tuesday!

The TestosterZone is 1 Year Old, And You Can WIN SOMETHING!!!

In September 2011, I launched The Testoster-Zone as a way of keeping our long-distance families up to date on what we were up to on a daily basis.  It was a means of communication and a way for me to share photos of the kids and the funny things they were doing.

Since then, we’ve grown into so much more!  We have some loyal readers who just make this whole blogging thing so much fun.  I’ve reviewed books and products, b*tched about parenting and bragged about my babies.  I’ve said goodbye to loved ones lost and hello to amazing new friends and new little lives.  It’s my life.

I like to blog about the ups and downs of parenting, about things I love and have had opportunities to network with other small businesses, authors, photographers and most importantly, other Mommies.  If you’re new here, you might want to head on over to the main page and check out our archives in the pull down menu on the sidebar.  There are certainly a few gems in there.  I was going through them the other day and am amazed – shocked – at how much my kids have grown and how much I’ve grown.

This blog was also created as a way for me to remember.  It’s my journal and my photo album all wrapped into one, and I wanted to thank you all for listening to my ramblings and looking at my photos.

SO…..

As a celebration of our one-year anniversary, I want to give one of my readers a little gift.  I’ve been making these photo pendants lately.  They are SO cute and would make a super sweet gift for someone this Holiday season.

The contest starts today and runs until next Tuesday.  All you have to do is this:

1.  Follow this blog (home page, top right corner).  And yes, I will check to see if you did!

2.  Follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter link below.  Easy peasy.

The winner will be chosen at random by the Rafflecopter.  If you are the winner, you can use any photo you like, email it to me, and I will put the pendant together for you.  The winner will receive their pendant in the mail, wrapped up pretty, ready to give to whoever you choose.  Or keep it for yourself (that’s what I would do :))

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So thank you for visiting us here at the TestosterZone over the past year.  We certainly appreciate all the love you’ve shown us, and the opportunity to share our life with you.

Lyndsay, Ken, Griffin and Jace (and Rex and Keji too!)

We Had An Army Party!

Well, it’s been another busy week around here.  We’re all adjusting to our new schedule (very well I might add) and despite my best efforts to keep him at age four, my big boy turned five this week.  I have a five-year old.  He goes to school and everything.  Yikes.  I think I aged five years myself this week 🙂

So because I couldn’t keep him from turning five, we decided to celebrate with a party this weekend.  Everyone deserves a party on their birthday, don’t you think?  Awhile back, Griff told me that he wanted an army party this year, and I was SO excited.  After a bit of searching online, we decided on a “boot camp” styled party, so my goal was to turn our backyard into a “basic training” obstacle course – fun, right?

Yes, it was fun.  And it was easy and it didn’t cost much.  We used supplies we already had, printables we found online, and a cake we made ourselves.  The goal was to focus on the fun and not so much the details.  I enlisted (pun intended) the help of anyone I could to help with the prep work, including the birthday boy himself.  Here he is decorating his own cake:

My Mother, MIL and I did the cookie crumb road, the blue sugar water and the green sugar grass.  Mom made the cake.  Griffin did everything else himself.

And the final product:

Yup, that’s the best pic I could get of him…with some sort of chip in his mouth.  Typical Griff 🙂

For the party, I created these invitations:

It was important to specify the type of party we were having and to let everyone know to dress appropriately, since we knew they would be crawling on the ground and maybe getting a little wet or dirty.

When the “troops” arrived at our house, they saw this sign in the driveway, leading them into the backyard:

They then arrived at the check in table, where they were issued a camo bandana and told where to wait until the rest of the troops arrived.

(Printables are from the blog Seven Thirty Three, an awesome blog with lots of party ideas and other creative projects).

This is what the backyard looked like.  We set up a tent to provide some shade in case it got too hot, or in case of a bit of rain.  Hurricane Leslie was on her way at the time, so we weren’t sure what to expect.  We had no real back-up plan if it poured, so we lucked out!

Griffin helped set everything up.  He loved being a part of the whole party planning process this year and took a lot of pride in making sure his friends would like his party.  In the above photo, he wanted to make sure each of his friends would have a bottle of water and a juice box.  He even made a “trade-in” area with other types of juice boxes in case someone didn’t like the kind he gave them.  He’s a teacher in the making; of that I’m sure.

Our obstacle course had ten “stations.”  The kids were told they had to complete each obstacle in order to earn their dog tags.

Our “stations” were:

1.  Jump through a ladder (an old bunk bed ladder) and across a balance beam (a 2×4 on blocks)

2. Crawling through the trenches (crawling under a saw horse).  I used caution tape everywhere I could – see above pics.  It looks authentic and super cool.

3.  Jumping jacks.  Every soldier must be in top condition.

4.  Grenade toss.  Homemade bean bags tossed into a bucket.

5. Retrieve a wounded soldier.  We buried green plastic army men in a bucket filled with play sand.  Troops had to find one and deliver him to the hospital

6. Deliver wounded soldier to the hospital.  The “hospital” was our playset.  Troops had to climb the ladder, toss their soldier in a bucket then slide down the slide.

7. Jump through hoops.  A couple of hula hoops on the ground that the troops had to jump through.

8.  Shoot the bad guys.  The most popular station by far 🙂  We set up three plastic army men on a plastic saw horse, covered it in caution tape and gave the troops little water pistols to shoot them off.  In hindsight, I would have bought enough water guns for all the kids to have their own.  The boys loved it and played with the water guns long after they were done with the course.

9. Receive your dog tags.  I bought blank aluminum dog tags from Etsy (about $7USD + shipping for 20 tags).  I already had a stamp set and made one with each of the troops’ name on it.

10. CHOW!  We had pizza, chips, cheesies, water, juice and cake.

(Water bottles printables are from Seven Thirty Three, and yes, I realise they say US Army…it’s the best I could come up with!  And they look great, so I used them)

An army party is a great choice for boys.  They did the obstacle course over and over and over, and hopefully went home tired and happy.  I made goody bags for our troops which included plastic army men, marble “grenades” and assorted camo-coloured candy.  I used plastic camo bags from the dollar store and tied them up with caution tape.

Army party = happy soldiers

Hope you had a great weekend too.  And if you live in NS, I hope you’re staying dry today 😦

 

 

Photo Shoot or Wrestling Match??

It was Ken’s mother’s birthday this past weekend, so we decided to have a quick photo shoot in the studio last week with Ken, his brother and the boys, so we could send along some new pics to her.

Surprisingly (yeah right, I know…), things were more silly than serious, but we got some great pics of all the boys together, which is a rare occurrence (getting together, not getting great pics of them, they’re all pretty cute)

Here’s a few pics from our session (straight out of camera, unedited – don’t judge):

We can’t get him out of camo clothes these days…possibly warming up for his “army” birthday party coming up soon?

We couldn’t keep Jace out of this crate…

…and Griff loved this pose.  You probably saw one kind of like it here.

After that, well, everyone stated to go down hill.  It wasn’t long before our photo shoot turned into a wrestling match.  I don’t get it.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to work with other people’s children.  My own perplex me.  This is me, not knowing what to do with them.  Ken had hijacked my camera, Jace was head-butting me and laughing hysterically, and Griff and Dwayne were off play-fighting and talking about army stuff.

A peek into my world 🙂

Happy Birthday Adele, hope you liked your photos!!