Holy Over-Caffeination Batman!

Every once in a while I have a large cup of full test coffee. And EVERY TIME I regret it. It's not so much the overwhelming need to get up, run around and do jumping jacks and pushups. It's not the talking non-stop - so much that my flapping lips send papers flying where ever I go. It's not even the mad swirl of thoughts and ideas in my head, like bats on a windy night. What I most find disturbing is that time actually slows down at these times and everyone around me moves in slow motion. Come on slackers! Get moving! Out of my way! I've got things to do!!

Quack!

A Very Large Bowl - Big Enough to Bathe In

Remember this post about our chocolate fountain? Our sweet, tasty, delicious, fountain of the gods? Well, after only about four uses, it went belly up. The darn thing just stopped spouting chocolate. Oh, it hummed and it whirred and sounded impressive, but the twirler that sucks the chocolate to the top and rains it down into the warmed bowl just stopped twirling, like a ballerina caught in a time freeze. It was like something out of Black Swan or the Avengers or something. Everyone got silent and just stared at the non-fountaining fountain, expecting the luscious brown liquid to commence it's downward drizzle, but it was over. It was done. The fountain was dead.

So I removed the fountain part and we all just dug in with our hands. Well, we used it to dip things in instead. You know, things like crackers and fruit, krispie treats, our fingers, our tongues.

Then after the party I took it apart, said a few kinds words, licked off a few stray smears of chocolate and tossed 'er in the trash! So long fountain!

I guess now we'll just have to stick to dipping in a bowl of melted chocolate. A very very large bowl big enough to bathe in sounds about right.



Quack!

Raining Down Like Sand

  So, the theme of the most-recent birthday party in the Ginormous Duck household was pizza. Yep, that's right. Just pizza. So, no surprise here, we had pizza as the main meal. It was delicious.

And for cake, I made two cookie cakes decorated to look like pizza. And while they looked pretty good, they didn't taste so good. I could tell, for one, because just about every 10-year-old boy at the party took one bite and left the rest. And I could also tell because I myself have taste buds and when I took a bite I felt the cookie suck every last drop of moisture from my tongue before it rained down my throat like sand. But did that stop me from eating the entire slice of cookie-cake? Of course not! I optimistically expected every next bite to be moist, tasty and delicious. Alas, it didn't happen.

I was very disappointed! I've made this recipe before and it was delicious. But at least they look yummy:

Quack!

Show Some Ankle Baby!

It's that time of year again. The time of year to show some ankle. Spring is here, things are warming up and it's time to bring out the capris. And by that, I mean the ducklings have all outgrown their fall/winter clothes and have six inches of leg sticking out the bottom of their pants.

It's a tough time of year - the time between when the pants are definitely, without question, too short, but I'm reluctant to buy a whole new set of pants when shorts weather is right around the corner.

Quack!

Purple Mountains Majesty

Snickers and Doodlebug have been watching the crayon saga with interest. They don't always like my art, but they always watch it develop with interest. And now I'm using something they can relate to - crayons! And seeing how much I was getting into the whole thing, Snickers got me an awesome birthday gift! He got me one of those amazing, uber-cool boxes of crayons with 64! crayons and a built in pencil sharpener! Whoa!! I always wanted one of those! That will keep me busy! The cornflower, the cadet blue, the blue-violet, the purple mountains majesty, the orange-yellow! So exciting!



Here's my second go at the crayons:

I also got a very cool set of charcoal, pencils and pastels from a friend for my birthday - all in an awesome tin. (Everything is automatically cooler in a tin for some reason). I'm still planning on what to tackle first with those. Oh, so much to do . . .

Quack!

It Is Possible! It Is!

So I was at the library the other day browsing around the arts and crafts shelves and I found a book on drawing with crayons. I checked it out and while looking through it at home I showed a few of the pictures within to Sweet Pea. She proceeded to inform me that drawing pictures like the ones in the book with crayons was impossible. There was just no way to do that with crayons.

It went like this:

Me: Cool! Look at that. Pretty awesome crayon drawings, huh?

Sweet Pea: What?!? That can't be crayon! You can't do that with crayons!

Me: What? What do you mean? It's right there! Of course you can do that with crayons. *I* could do that with crayons.

Sweet Pea: No you couldn't. It's not possible!

So of course I took that as a challenge. I got out my box of 24 crayons and some paper and set to work. And, ha! I proved my point. It is possible to do art with crayons! Not too bad for my first try:

Quack!

Drums on a Checkered Floor

Sometimes an image just pops into your head and it has to get itself down on paper. You know, like a turtle fight, or a squirrel under a flower. And sometimes it's drums at the end of a black and white checkered hall.

This one has been in there for months and now finally got itself out onto paper:

A combination of water color, acrylics and ink. I think I like it.

Quack!

Shoe Painting - Like Finger Painting, But Different

So, what uber-important thing has been consuming my time lately? Well, shoe-painting of course.

And, not shoe-painting  as in using my shoes to create a painting - although that does sound somewhat intriguing - but rather, painting on shoes with brushes and paint. You know - I've done it before with Sharpies, but this time I got out my acrylic paints and brushes.

Sweet Pea is a girl much like myself with many varied interests. Yet, unlike me, she likes to have a pair of shoes to go along with each of those interests.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE shoes! But I don't necessarily wear shoes to match my interests - or fandoms, as Sweet Pea calls them. I prefer, for the most part, a more understated shoe. Although there are exceptions.

Anyway, she is a fan of one of the best movies of all times - Spirited Away and of the movie Totoro. Hence, these shoes:

She is also a fan of Doctor Who:

And then there are the shoes not pictured here - the minions from the Despicable Me movies and the Adventure Time shoes. And there has been a request for Bravest Warriors / Catbug shoes.


What fun!!


Quack!

Fever Flakes and Other Yummy Things

So, Doodlebug had to do a book report. And not just any book report, but a cereal box book report.And what on earth does that mean, do you ask? Does that mean he's writing a book report on what he read on the back of the Fruit Loops box?

Nope.

It means he has to decorate a cereal box with information from his book. The ingredients are characters and settings from the book. The name of the cereal and the prize should reflect the name or theme of the book. It sounds like a clever fun project, doesn't it? The only problem is that his book is Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's about the yellow fever.

How do you create a cereal based on that? I mean, a cereal that isn't gross? Fever Flakes? With a thermometer for a prize maybe? I won't gross you out with all the ideas we tossed out but we ended up with 'Bring Out Your Bread'. The cereal was toast shaped, the prize was a miniature coffee house and the picture on the front of the box was a boy eating some awesome 'Bring Out Your Bread' cereal from a wheel barrow.

Quack!