More signs of an Evil Genius

For those of you who do not know, my daughter is an evil genius. No, she really is. We call her the Evil Genius. My friends call her the Evil Genius. People who aren't even really my friends but know her for some reason call her the Evil Genius. If you are still not convinced, refer to my original Evil Genius post. Recently a few more personality characteristics have come to light only showing how much evilish geniusing is really going on.

• Apparently at nursery, her favorite game to play is "hide behind the play kitchen and wait patiently for another child to come up to it and then push it over on them and laugh really hard." This game is only made worse by the fact that she is quite literally the size of a large peanut and can easily fool other children because they can't even see her behind the large toy.
  

• She loves to hide things from her loved ones. Once she hid a very small key to a music box I had given my mother and after we searched the entire house for it and said "Where's the key Vivie?" she immediately laughed, ran away and then magically appeared back in the kitchen again with they key in hand 30 seconds later. We still have zero clue as to where she stashed the key for an hour.

• This child is freakishly good at hide and seek. Particularly the hiding part. She finds places in this house I never knew someone could hide she can hold still and be silent while hiding like no normal two year old should be able to. I am convinced she is training herself now for all the times she will need to go on the lamb doing all of her evil genius deeds.
  

• I am currently in a conundrum as to what to do this Friday night. You see, I'm SUPPOSED to go out with all of my girlfriends to this great Italian restaurant down the street, but I'm terrified of showing my face there because two nights ago we were at the very same restaurant and Vivie (knowing full well I was wearing my wedge sandals and could not chase her like a gazelle) RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE KITCHEN and of course LAUGHED REALLY LOUD and of course WOULDN'T COME OUT. They told me if she did it again they'd put her to work, but I'm pretty sure they meant if she did it again, we'd be asked to leave. Hence you see my problem. Evil geniuses love to put people in uncomfortable situations.

• Finally, this evening while saying her goodnight prayers, she mentioned her big sister. Now this may seem non evil geniusy and very sweet but NOT IF YOU ARE PRAYING THAT YOUR BIG SISTER GETS IN BIG TROUBLE. Yes, you read that right. In the middle of prayer (in between asking for world domination and secret lairs of course) my darling sweet two year old asked "please bless Sydney get big trouble."
  

Seriously people, we have a problem.

A letter of apology

Dear Coconut,

I'm sorry for all of the horrible things I've said about you over the years. When I said I didn't like you, I was young and naive and didn't understand your complexities and sophistication. I have seen the error of my ways. I have renounced my childish ways and vow to never slander your good name from here on out. I now see that I can no longer deny you attention in my kitchen, especially because you are such dear friends with my long time love, dark chocolate. Can you ever forgive me, coconut? Is here hope for us, yet?

DARK CHOCOLATE CHIP COCONUT CUPCAKES

This Dark Chocolate cupcake batter OR the following:

1 box of dark chocolate fudge cake mix (and ingredients to make it)
1 cup mini chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla
2 TBS cocoa

Either make the batter I have linked or mix the cake mix, ingredients listed on the box, chocolate chips, vanilla and cocoa. Mix for 2 minutes. Line muffin cups with cupcake liners. Fill liners 2/3 full and bake at 350 for 20-22 minutes. Cool completely.

1 cup butter
4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups shredded sweetened coconut


In a small saucepan, heat coconut milk to a simmer and stir constantly. Reduce coconut milk by half. Set aside and let cool. With your whipping attachment, whip butter. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time, alternating with cooled coconut milk. When combined, whip for 3-4 minutes on high. If frosting is too soft to pipe, add powdered sugar 1/4 cup at at time until right consistency is reached. If too stiff, add 1 TBS milk until reached.

Pipe onto cupcakes and take handfuls of coconut and press into still wet, soft frosting. Allow a few minutes for frosting to set, serve, and take back everything you ever said about coconut.

Suck it, Simon Cowell!

Have you see this yet? Have you?! Watch it now, and watch the whole thing. It's 7 minutes long, so get cozy, but seriously, you will NOT be expecting THIS! I can't put it up here, so just click on the link and follow to YouTube.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY



The singer's name is Susan Boyle and her story is something amazing as well. Here's also an article about her, read the bottom as to why she hasn't been able to follow her dream of singing until now, it will melt your heart. Congratulations, Susan for never giving up on a dream. You are inspiring! I'll buy your album the day it comes out.

Time to Stock Up

For the last month, these little babies have been my reason for living....




Yes, I'm talking about the Orange Creme Cadbury Egg. Not just the regular Cadbury Egg, the Orange Creme ones. They are the awesome creamy milk chocolate of the traditional egg, but the inside is not the fondant from before. Instead it's a sweet and tangy orange flavored filling that I'm pretty sure must be made out of crack cocaine because they are probably the most addicting candy I've come across yet (and let's face it, I know my chocolate.)

Needless to say I'm a little distressed by the fact that Easter is now over and I won't see them again for another 11 months. So, if you see any on candy closeout, you better tell me. And you better give them all to me, too, because I don't like to share.

Career choices.

Today Sydney informed me of this:


"I've decided that when I grow up, I want to be a mom. And.... if I can't be a mom, then I want to be a movie star."


Nice.

The winner is....

..not me.

That's okay. I'm thrilled to say the the winner is my new blogging friend Snooky Doodle!

She made a fantastic cupcake and I voted for it a few times, so I'm so glad she won!



Now, I'm sure a few of you who have voted for me in the past and are always supportive of my Iron Cupcake entries are probably a bit confused. I know most of you followed it pretty closely this time and I had the largest surge of support ever this round! For most of the voting period, the cupcake with the most votes seemed to be jumping between me and another competitor. Now, as of the beginning of 2009, there is a new way they pick the winner and I was unaware of this because I did not compete in January and February. From now on out, for every vote you receive, your name gets put into a number pool and at the end of the week, they pick a number using a random integer generator. That number picked is the person who wins the prize pack.
So, the more votes you have, the better chance you have of winning the prize pack, but there's no guarantee.

Now, of course there's good and bad things about this new voting rules, but overall I think it's good. I'm happy. As some of you know, I wasn't thrilled with the way it was before because unless you were a heavy hitter in the blogosphere, you had no chance whatsoever. I think this is a good way to do it. The other great thing is that you can vote for up to 3 cupcakes and the more entries you have the better your chances! Perfect, because I'm already working on several ideas for this month.

Finally, I just want to say thank you to everyone who went to vote, got their friends to vote, made their husbands vote, made their husbands to tell their friends to vote, went to work and bribed and threatened votes out of coworkers, peddled votes on facebook.... it could go on and on. You guys are awesome!

Once again, congrats to Snooky Doodle and her Almond Lemon Anise Seed Cupcake!!

Thanks so much and if you have any special requests for this month's theme of Soda Pop, let them be heard!

Carwash

So, this morning I left my husband in charge of the girls while I went to do a portrait shoot. I was gone for an hour and a half. When I came back, this is what greeted me outside on our corner lot on a very high traffic Saturday morning...



Yes, that's my two year old daughter (in nothing but her diaper) helping wash the car. Not a stitch of clothes in sight. Two feet away was her Daddy, completely aware that his daughter was now the official redneck mascot of the block. Here's the conversation that immediately occured:

"REALLY?!"

"What?"

"You couldn't put any clothes on her?"

"Why?"

"Did you really just ask me why?"

"What's the big deal?"

"Have you looked at your daughter?"

"Yeah? She's fine."

"Whatever, I'll do it myself... VIVIE! Come put clothes on!"

{Vivie} "NO! I washing!"

"Fine."

What's a mom to do except just get out the camera and let her finish?

That's good Viv, a little to the left.

Move on to Mom's car now.. Oh, you're going to use the brush? Okay, good job!

Yes, your a very big girl, are you ready for some clothes now? Yes, I see you have a big brush, that's awesome! Can we go put some clothes on? How about a dress?

Good Viv, don't forget the back. Yes, move closer to the end of the driveway where more people can see you, that would be great. Oh, don't mind that car, it was just our HOA president. Wave hello to the nice man who's probably calling Child Services right now! Okay are you done? Are you ready for some clothes? Fine, I'll just go get a dress, and bring it out here....