She's liking them apples

You know the saying, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree?"  Living proof that Wavey's silliness is from her father's side...

...while her sense of fashion is from mine, as she refused to leave the house for the Daddy-Daughter Sweetheart Dance without her shiny red boots.  

I argued, "They're not exactly fancy like your dress," and she retorted, "Oh, they're fancy alright."  


Touche.

Chocolate dipped oreos cookies

Sometimes, semi-homemade is just as good as slaving in the kitchen:

Super delicious, minimal effort:  Oreos cookies, melted white chocolate chips and sprinkles.  

And, excuse me, but if you're not automatically choosing "Double Stuf" Oreos, we are not friends.

An obvious headline (in this house, at least)

If you're lucky, this news clipping may not apply to you.  However, it greatly applies in the Good Gravy household.  

Break-in or renovation? You decide.

I may or may not have been been responsible for this:

I admit to nothing.  Ignore the crumbs on my face.

Excuse me while I clog my arteries

It's no secret I love bacon and these online finds have me drooling:

{via SkilletStreetFood}

{via Fred Flare}

{via Torani}

{via ThinkGeek}

And, beer + bacon + maple donut = hello, my darlings:

{via Rouge}

Get your craft on: DIY crayons

I've read many articles about making your own crayons from broken ones using cookie molds, so I thought Wavey would find it a fun holiday project for kid-gifts. 

So here's the rub: We didn't have enough organically-derived broken crayons, so we broke a apart a box of new ones...and what an UNHOLY MESS it was to peel the wrappers off of them. 

Did you know generic crayons affix their wrappers with the same glue probably used to hold rocket ships together in space?  Yep, now you know, and I have the wax under my nails to prove it.

We melted the crayons in the oven at 275-degrees for about 15 minutes and let them cool completely before popping them out of the mold.  Success!

Gingerbread house FAIL

My sister is in town and we thought, "Let's buy one of those pre-fabbed gingerbread houses to decorate.  How difficult can that be?" 

I think you can guess where this is going...

It didn't help that Emily and I carry the gene of impatience as we didn't bother reading any instructions. 

Between the two of us, Emily and I carry college and post-graduate degrees...clearly none of which were in engineering.  Or good judgement. 

The walls wouldn't stick, the roof collapsed, and icing was EVERYWHERE.  The kids basically gave up on us, threw a few candy pieces our way and took off.

Even the gingerbread men look zombie-ish and disgusted by our work.  

Hello, holidays!

World's greatest understatement

I'm rapidly realizing that I'm trending toward an obsession with cured meats these days, but when I ran across this in my local paper, I couldn't agree more with its sentiments:

Delicious bum

I am a child because I found this sign at a restaurant funny:

And yes, I ordered it, too.

Holiday cocktail party invitation

Can you believe we're pretty close to Christmas already?  I cannot.  But, my clients certainly are on the ball with plans for holiday cheer:

I designed this holiday cocktail party invitation using icicle blue, silver bell and cranberry inks on textured cardstock and matted it to a shimmering silver cardstock.  Very holiday glam.

(Personal information has been modified to protect privacy)

Christmas "cheese"

I've had some decent luck with several props I've been tyring out this year for kids' holiday photos, but I can't quite win with the frame...espec in the "ages 3 and under" group.  The evidence:

Popcorn cupcake wrappers

I love popcorn and I love cupcakes.  So this popcorn cupcake wrapper project I designed for a local bakery was a delicious fit. 

The bakery is going to fuse marshmallows and airbrush yellow frosting for the buttered popcorn effect for an upcoming movie-themed birthday party and will use the wrappers I designed above to tuck the "popcorn" cupcakes inside.  Clever! 

While the party for this bakery hasn't yet occurred, here's a photo I found via Project Nursery to show you the full effect:

Got an idea for a custom cupcake wrapper you'd be interested in having for an upcoming event?  Email me!  :)

Hello, cute microwave.

It is with great regret that I just recently purchased a regular, plain and functional microwave before coming across this Hello Kitty branded one:

It definitely wouldn't match my desire to make my home look more like grown-ups live here.  But then again, all hopes for that flew out of the window once the giant styrofoam doughboy joined the decor.

Family photo: FAIL

Taking photos of other people's children for holiday photo cards is easy for me.  Photos of my own kids?  Not so much:

Though, this sadly is quite the realistic snapshot of our day-to-day.

The doughboy has landed

Don't adjust your screen.  What you're seeing is indeed my new best friend: A 54-inch styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy.  And he's mine, all mine.

The grocery store down the street wouldn't sell me theirs, so I found this limited-edition guy online.  Yeah, quite a bit of dough was shelled out (pun totally intended) but it's such a cool item that I'm thrilled to now own it.

 Don't we make a beautiful couple?

Didn't taste like candy

While on vacation, I went to a candy shop and couldn't believe to find candy cigarettes still in production.  Of course, if you look carefully, there's no mention of "cigarettes." Riiight.

Which brings me to this confession: I smoked my very first cigarette last month.  First [and last] in my 34 years, and soley because I just wanted to see what it was like. 

The curiousity (along with my lung from hacking to death) is certifiably out of my system.