Cadbury Mini Egg Blondies

I came across this recipe last week on the recipe blog, Six Sisters' Stuff and knew I HAD to try it! Cadbury minis are one of my favorite Easter candies and even though we already had enough sweets in the house, I thought, what the heck, lets add more! They turned out delicious...but I'll warn you-SUPER SWEET. My husband thought they were too sweet, but me and the kids devoured them. I think I'm going to buy some vanilla icecream today to go with the leftovers...might tone down the sweetness. Enjoy! I know Easter has just passed..but I'm sure you have lots of leftover candy to make this with..or snag a bag of Cadbury minis at your nearby grocery store. I bet they might even be on sale now!! This recipe is easy, FUN, and yum!

Recipe link HERE

April Foolage

I married a prankster. So April Fool's is never dull at our house. This year we made our kids think our car had been stolen...we are so mean:) Hey, I've heard of meaner. Parents telling their kids they are going to Disneyland and then April Fooling them, now thats mean! :)

So I asked my ten year old to get something out of the car for me..she comes in and says, "Um, the cars not there."(Hubs had secretly parked it out of sight) And then you can imagine the rest. The funniest lines I heard were, "This isn't good...this isn't good..." repeated by my 8 year old over and over. And then my five year old asking about the mean people who take cars and where do they come from and where do they go. Oh, and then one of them saying in excitement, "Does this mean we get to buy a new car?!!!" Um, no. Thats when we broke it to them that this was all a big joke. Suckas.


And then my husband got me good. We had bought our little dude a little Davy Crockett hat from the Alamo this year. Well the hubs decided to stick it in a kitchen cabinet that he knew I would be opening to make dinner..made my heart leap out of my chest thinking we had a furry critter in there! I tried the rest of the day to get him back, but to no avail. One of my failed attempts included rubberbanding the sprayer at our kitchen sink so that it would spray him when he turned on the water. Well, guess what...I forgot about it and ended up spraying myself. Fail. Epic fail.





Anyways, hope you all enjoyed your April Fools! Did you do anything fun? Did you fool anyone? See Tip Junkie's 37 Best April Fools Pranks for some awesome ideas for next year(or heck, why wait, you can trick anybody anytime!) Love this mock TV dinner idea(below)! Now, thats creative. Instead of mean. Like we are. :)

Candy cake!

I have a daughter completely obsessed with candy. Seriously. Nuts about candy. Its crazy. She will choose a piece of candy over a cookie, brownie or even an icecream cone! I don't get it! I am a lover of baking and baked goods and candy just doesn't do it for me. To each her own... :)

So, for her 5th birthday last week I decided to make her a candy cake. I originally saw this on a good friend of mine's family blog and then google searched images for other pictures and ideas. It was one of the EASIEST cakes ever and so fun! The kids eyes got soooo big when they saw it and the other moms at the party couldn't believe I made it. The secret is-its the easiest cake to make in the world, but sure looks fabulous and fancy!


Heres what you do: Buy a Duncan Hines(out of the boxed cakes these are the moistest-I have a sister that decorates cakes and she swears these are the best!) Devil's Food cake mix box. Bake two 9 inch rounds. Level them with a cake leveler. Stack them, making sure to ice(with Classic Chocolate frosting-my favorite anyways:) in between cakes and on the top and sides. Line Kit Kats around the entire circumference of the cake. I believe it took me about 8 packs. Then pour M&Ms on top(I used one medium bag). I also went to Michael's and bought a cute pack of rainbow colored ribbon to tie around the Kit Kats that really popped!




There are really so many possibilities for this cake! Hope you enjoy making it. It will be the hit of your next party. I promise! Here is my finished product...it screams candy heaven...

Extra fun: If you are doing a candy themed party, I had the idea of buying those big swirly lollipops as party favors and attached little notes that said, "Thanks for making my birthday so SWEET! Love, Cali" And dangit, I didn't take a picture of those. They looked so cute in the little glass jar I had on the table. Oh well, you can imagine it:)

Break: OVER

So, all four of you out there may have noticed I've been MIA for the past threeish months:) Well, we found out in December that we are expecting baby #5! Exciting stuff! But dang, the first 16 weeks were ROUGH. The roughest I've ever experienced. Constant nausea. Zero energy. And at the same time we put our house on the market and my husband started a class at work where he was gone a couple of nights a week. Good times!!! :) I also had carpal tunnel syndrome flare up-it was so bad I could barely type and my hands throbbed daily. So, anyways, those are all of the excuses I have for taking a break from this blog. I needed it. And I'm so grateful I feel so much better now. Second trimester is always a beautiful thing:)

I'm very excited to be back and I have a lot of ideas and motivation to make this blog what I want it to become!! So check back soon!!! Our family just hit a fun spot in Oklahoma and I can't wait to share my review of it with you.

I hate cancer

Pausing the "fun" factor on my blog for a minute...I'm thinking about my Aunt Jeanie today....she was one of the most AMAZING people on the planet. I love her dearly and think of her almost daily it seems. She had a huge impact on my life. She passed away just a few months ago after a horrible and painful battle with bone cancer. It was very very traumatic. This month she would have celebrated another birthday...on December 23rd. I hate that she isn't here to celebrate :( I also just found out that my dear sweet grandmother has colon cancer. It seems like cancer is just everywhere and its truly a scary thing. I don't think any of us haven't been affected by this horrible disease. I'm grateful for the foundations out there that continue cancer research so that hopefully, someday, we'll finally have a cure. Because, well, I hate cancer. I really do.














This post is sponsored by American Cancer Society.

FUNky Friday

Buy those packaged pre-made sugar cookies with the hard-as-a-rock icing. Choose some with black icing. Feed them to your kids. Let your kids go crazy painting their lips black with the edges of the cookies. Get out your camera..and have fun(you will also have fun trying to scrub out the dye over the next few days.....)

Warning: this next image might disturb you.... :)

Leaf Hunt

My younger two kiddos, the pup, and I decided to go on a walk the other morning(the weather was uh-mazing!) to go on a serious leaf hunt. I pulled out a gallon ziplock bag and wrote on it with a sharpie, "Cali's Leaf Bag" which she proudly toted along with her. I left the little guy in his pjs and the dog came along because I was feeling nice that day :) I told my 4 year old daughter to see how many different kinds of leaves she could find, how many different colors, shapes and sizes. She had a blast! While this isn't some "wow" "amazing" new idea, its just something so fun, yet something I had kinda forgotten about. Sometimes the most fun things we can do with our kids are simple things like this. Take some time to go on a walk, soak in nature & explore! We don't have to spend money to spend time with our kiddos. When we were done, we went home and categorized them and talked about the colors and which ones were our favorites. And then we did good old-fashioned leaf rubs with crayons. It was so fun to see her eyes light up when she saw the print of the leaf showing through the paper when she colored it! I could tell she didn't remember that we did this last year(and honestly last year she was only three and didn't seem to care yet:) Here are pictures from our fun fall morning...