We are having a really good time around here!  We have had my niece for several days-she doesn't live very far away, but we don't get to see her too much due to school, activities and conflicting schedules.  But we have her (!), and we are having fun.  We got their portrait made today, and we have been swimming a few times.  Niece had never gone off the diving board before, so we convinced her to do that yesterday.  I was so proud of her!  We celebrated my husband's bday before that, and have really been enjoying doing family things.  Summer is slipping away; as much as I *HATE* the actual season of summer, I so love my kids being home.  I think we only have 3 weeks left.  My oldest has already gone 1 week into her summer instrument program--it's coming!

I wanted to talk about a not-so-awesome baking incident that the small one and I had.  She loves all things cotton-candy.  Obviously, cotton candy itself, but also gum, candy, icecream....all cotton candy flavored.  So I saw this package of cotton candy cupcakes and I had to buy it for her!

So we started putting together the mix-it was a very bright pink color!  Nearly pepto-bismulish.  But it smelled and tasted fine, maybe a little chemical-ish.  Then, I apparently made a big screw up; I poured the batter into six cupcakes, not eight.  Not only did the cupcakes overflow, but they got reeeally big, then plopped! (The recipe only had an egg white, probably because it didn't want the bright pink color to be messed up, but I can't help bu think that was part of the problem).  My first thought was to toss those suckers out!  But my daughter was super excited and didn't want me to. :(  So I scraped as much as I could off, and tried to get the hard and very gross textured (spongey!) cupcakes out.  We then mixed together the frosting, which again, was a very putrid pink.  I only used about 1/4 of the flavored mix, and it still smelled really icky-I tried it and nearly gagged.  So did my daughter.  We tossed the frosting out and revereted to the fake stuff in can!  Trying to frost these things was beyond impossible, so I blobbed some on (again, trying to make the small one happy), and allowed her to dust them with the pink sprinkles.  The result?  UGLY!  And the taste?  INEDIBLE IMO.  I took one bite and sailed mine into the trash. 

Want one?  Yeah, me neither.