Henry's birthday party

I wanted to give Henry a special second birthday party so we went with a train theme. He's obsessed with them!
We got a Thomas helium balloon, train napkins and decorations, and I made him a train cake and a train tablescape. It turned out really well.

Here's how the cake turned out. I think it's great. I made and frosted it the night before the party. Here's how I made it.

I started with three pound cakes and cut the tops off to make them flat.

I cut one in half to make the coal car and the log car. 

I took one cake and cut about a third off to sit on top for the caboose.

I took the remaining cake and cut a third off again and stacked it for the engine. I used three shortcakes and the extra pieces of cake to make it look right.

I kept the decorations as simple as possible because I am not that great at cake decorating! I used an ice cream cone and marshmallows for the smoke stack, crushed oreos for the tender, some fancy rolled cookies for the logs. And of course oreos and mini-oreos for the wheels.

Daddy helped make the train tracks on the table and we had the other food in boxes arranged on the track, including train-shaped sandwiches. The kiddo loved it.

Happy birthday Henry!

Our first maple syrup harvest!

We've been wanting to tap our silver maple tree ever since we moved in, but never managed to do it until this year! Mike tapped the tree on Feb 28 and a week later we had a bucketful of sap. We had a couple more bucketfuls but they fell off the tree, darn it.

Mike boiled it down and we got about enough syrup for a couple pancakes! Can't wait to use it up.

 

Beautiful elixir!

Backyard Sugarin' is the bible of maple sugaring:

Backyard Sugarin': A Complete How-To Guide, Third Edition

Bringing it back

Woah, where did 2009 go? Has it been almost two years since I posted? A lot has changed. Changed jobs, planted a garden, had a baby!

As Project Vicki gets ready to celebrate 6 years as a blog, I thought it was time to bring it back.

first strawberry!

We have wild strawberries growing in several places in our yard. This was the first one to ripen. Mike and I split it after we took the picture. It was maybe one inch tall. There won't be enough of them to really do anything, but we're excited nonetheless!

Holy Macaroni!

Project Vicki is 4 years old this month. I put my first post up in April 2004. Project Vicki started out on paper as a collection of my goals, my strengths, weaknesses, and just me figuring out who I was/am. I even wrote my own mission statement like Stephen Covey advises.

I put it online so I could update it regularly. Four years later I still don't update as much as I'd like, but it helps me think about my goals, and what I want.

A lot has changed in four years!

First post
Second post made one hour later!

Man in snow

We got socked with over a foot of snow plus the snow drifts. Here's my honey, knee-high in the snow investigating little critter tracks. When I say "critter," I really mean a frightening, smelly, stripy, stinky skunk. I'm afraid to leave the house in the morning in the dark.