Molly wanted a Hamburger Cake for her birthday. We trolled around the Internet and looked at lots of photos and ideas. This is what we came up with. It might look like something difficult but let me be the first to tell you-I am not much of a baker and if I can put this together anyone can! I don’t have any photos of the cake in progress.

I bought 2 cake mixes-1 yellow and one chocolate. I made the chocolate in a 8×8 brownie pan-square patty like Wendy’s burgers!

I made 2— 8 inch rounds out of the yellow cake but filled one with more of the batter (bottom bun smaller-top bun larger.)

After they cooled I trimmed the patty to make it nice and flat as well as trimming the bottom bun. Then I took the extra chocolate cake and added it to the top of the top yellow cake bun to make it more dome like. Make sense?

I bought 3 cans of frosting 1 chocolate and 2 white

We took some frosting out  and divided it into 3 bowls for condiments and added food coloring –red for ketchup, green for lettuce and yellow for mustard. You don’t need much. After you reach the desired color put each into a plastic bag and squeeze down to one bottom corner. set aside.

Take more white frosting into a bowl and add color to look like American cheese—use this to frost graham crackers to look like cheese slices on the burger.

Take the other can of white frosting and make it bun colored-we added a bit of the chocolate frosting for some color plus some food coloring.

Now to put it together

bottom bun cake first with burger patty (chocolate cake) next. Frost the chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting-making the edges look burgery!

 To that we put the graham crackers already frosted on the edges of the burger cake-hanging over a bit. We didn’t go all the way into the middle of the burger with these I wanted it to stay stable and thought this might make it tippy and too sweet. We did use more of the cheese frosting between the graham crackers and on the edges to look like melting cheese.

Then top with top bun. Use the bun frosting to glue the dome shape together. Try to smooth the frosting out as much as possible. Now get your condiment frosting’s and cut a tiny bit off the corner (a little larger for lettuce) and pipe lettuce around the bottom edge and squeeze squiggly ketchup and mustard on the cheese frosting.

We added a few slivered almonds on the top for seseme seeds.

This really wasn’t too hard. And it was surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be way too sweet-but it wasn’t. It was a little hard to cut but no one seemed to mind!

We  have been very busy around here!! We read Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven and used her recipe to make a little sun of our own! I love, love, love her books. The illustrations are beautiful.

We made tin can lanterns

We made fire starters by dipping pine cones into melted bees wax

And we made these beautiful bees wax lanterns to hold a small tea light, by repeatedly dipping a water balloon in melted bees wax.

And then there has been the baking…………….

And the eating of course!

We are almost ready but still have a few last minute things to prepare and gather. Looking forward to the next week full of celebrations with friends and family from both near and far. We’re almost there!! Almost………

Peppermint and/or Pine scented Playdough

In a pot mix together

1 cup flour

1/2 cup of salt

2 t cream of tarter

add

1 cup water with many drops of red or green food coloring

2 T oil

several drops peppermint essential oil to the red batch and pine essential oil to the green batch

cook on medium heat until a ball forms and pulls away from the sides of the pot.

Put this into a plastic tubby with a few holiday cookie cutters attatched and this makes a great gift for a little person.

Most would call this an advent calendar. And most would start on Dec 1. But I am a little late this year and if Ginger wouldn’t have found her thrift store Christmas sweater in the laundry basket, which was intended for one of the days surprises…..I most certainly would have made this the 20 days until Christmas garland or even  the 10 days. You get the idea—there is still time to make this!!!

I found the idea for this at Maya*Made. Her’s is much more neat, I am guessing she didn’t have little elves helping her! Also I am borrowing her idea for time tickets! Love it! I am planning to give several of these “dates” to my kids as Christmas presents also.

You will need a paper tube for each day. If you are using paper towel tubes you can cut them in half.

Cut 4 slits around the bottom of each tube and fold them up and tape them shut to form a bottom on each tube.

Next have your helper cut a decorative edge around the top.

Then number them and use a hole punch to punch 2 holes on either side of the tubes (so the number is in the middle).

I made a mistake and only punched one hole and they didn’t hang as nicely.

I used a hot glue gun to decorate these with pieces of silver rope garland, beads, jingle bells, and flat glass star pieces.

My next mistake was that at this point I stuffed them with shredded paper-I suggest waiting until after you string them if you plan to use any “fluff” in them!

Then I strung a long piece of yarn through the holes (be sure to put them in numerical order) and secured them to our mantel.

I tried to keep the cost down and bought a few things from the thrift store-a Christmas sweater and T-shirt, PJ pants, a game to share. I also bought some candy and gum.  And of course, the time tickets!

Now, I decided to wait until each night after the kids are in bed to stuff these tubes or else they may all get opened in one day!!! If the surprise doesn’t fit I will either wrap it or leave clues to where it may be found. It was reassuring to me to see so many days left until the actual holiday. I haven’t even started my shopping!!!

After dinner we made  quick batch of Pumpkin Pie Playdough. This is not only a super easy recipe but it turns out great every time. Not too sticky and not too dry! And smells great too. The color and spice combo could be switched up as needed. Store in a plastic bag or covered container.

Mix together in  pan:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 teaspoons cream of tarter

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Then add:

1 Tablespoon oil

1 cup water with 6 drops red food coloring and 15 drops of yellow food coloring added

cook on medium heat, stirring constantly until playdough forms into a ball and pulls away from the sides.

Dump out on to table and let cool a bit before playing with it.

Yes-this is the same recipe we made last year!

Purple is this weeks Unplugged Theme. I love the color purple! Now–but not always! Back when my cousin, Tracy, and I were young we used to hate purple because Donnie Osmond’s socks were purple. Hmmm, funny how such a thing could turn me off to the color purple. Well, no more.

First, I raided every junk drawer, work bench  and recycling bin to find small but interesting objects. I found lids, broken jewelry, pen and marker caps, marbles, key chains, clothes pins, sea shells, pinecones, washers and broken parts. I filled a tubby with these treasures and fired up the hot glue gun. I had each of the girls pick something out of the recycling to use as their mounting board for there treasures. Ginger picked a plastic tray and Molly an egg carton.

Molly was able to use the hot glue herself but Ginger needed some help.

After they glued everything down, out came the purple paint.

Ginger was very selective of what she actually painted.

Molly covered hers. I really like trying to figure out what each of the tiny treasures are when they are covered in paint!

Where have I been? Nowhere special, just sucked into the wonderful world of Spring cleaning! I don’t much like to clean so I do a massive clean up, top to bottom a couple of times a year and then just clean the middle of the room the rest of the time.

Last weekend I ran my first 5K. I have NEVER been a runner, even when I was young and in sports I hated running. So it is amazing to me that I was able to run that far. I did a couch to 5K training schedule and it worked. So, what I am saying is that, if I can run anyone can run! Just do it!

And the week before, I, along with my other Mother Artist friends put on the kids art show, KidzArtz. It was a huge success!

These are a couple of photos of the art making area where kids wrapped and weaved and decorated teepee structures with various materials. It was loads of fun to unwrap rolls of TP and balls of yarn. I would love to make one of these in the back yard this summer!

And this week is also Birthday week/Mother’s Day week. Both Jake and Ginger have Birthdays this week.

So I have been a little busy and blog neglectful. Sorry -when my house is clean and my garden planted I’ll be back!

Oh, and I have no new recipe to post. But if you do-leave a link in the comments to your raw recipe post!