I did it

Here are my Christmas cake pops. They were a hit at the party. I ran out of time for photos before we left so I just snapped a couple quick shots.
I made them bigger than bakerella, but they still turned out cute.

Do not attempt unless you are ready for a tedious afternoon!

good luck to me

I'm getting ready to attempt these. I'll let you know how they go

Christmas cake pops

it's been a while

I've been pretty busy lately. Here is a brief recap.
In October I walked 60 miles in 3 Days for Breast Cancer research. I raised over $2300 and my team raised over $12000 total.

We re-created all the posters around camp. :)

After the walk, we spent a quiet Halloween with friends watching Twilight. Shortly thereafter I became completely obsessed with the books and read all 4 in 7 days. That was pretty much all I did that week. I went to work and then read all night.

In November we got another new car. Keith is now driving a Honda Insight. He drives about 30 miles each way to and from work so we thought a hybrid was in order. He loves it.

We got the car on Wednesday and then cleaned the house for my dad and Keith's whole family. We had a fried turkey, prepared in an infrared fryer without any oil and a prime rib. I have never made prime rib before but it turned out well. We had 12 people over on Thursday. It was a great holiday.

Now it's back to work tomorrow for a few weeks until Christmas. Hopefully I won't wait so long to post again.

cupcake genius

I got my new Debbie Mayer Cupcake Genius in the mail yesterday and I couldn't wait to use it. I decided to make chocolate raspberry cupcakes. They were delicious! Here are a few photos of the process.
Finished cupcakes with holes in them, well not really holes, more like wells.
Raspberry filling in the wells.
And the finished product, with chocolate raspberry frosting.

Two days, 3 autographs, 0 cupcakes, and 1 broken ankle

This weekend I went to Washington DC with Melissa for the National Book Festival. Despite rain and inappropriate footwear, a good time was had by all. Friday night Melissa and I met the first of our crazy cab drivers. He told us how Dan Brown was going to be there and about the low prices of books in the book sales tent. We could not shut our big mouths once we got to the hotel and we talked, in the dark because we swore we were going to sleep, until about 2 am. The alarm went off at 8 and we immediately knew that we should have gone to sleep earlier. So we got up, got dressed, grabbed our Luna bars and headed out. We arrived at the book festival 2 hours early and realized we had forgotten our umbrellas. So I got in line and Melissa went to get them. I quickly met a new friend and we chatted until David Shannon and John Scieszka.
Now we were both beside ourselves to meet Mo Willems but his line was growing longer by the minute as we waited in the first line. Luckily our new friend's husband was sitting in his chair in the front of Mo's line, so we pretended to be their daughters and hopped right in the front of the line! So our dreams came true and we met the one and only............


After we met Mo and got our books signed we were pretty hungry so we set out, the blind leading the blind, to find lunch. Neither of us being shy, we decided to ask a lady who seemed local where to eat. She pointed us to Elephant and Castle and we had a delicious lunch. We then headed back to hear the authors speak.

We heard from Megan McDonald, author of the Judy Moody series

We also found out exactly how crazy Stephen Kellogg is. Please notice that his tie is backwards and upside down, his pants are wrinkled and dirty, and his hair has cowlicks. We were sitting in the second row and trying very hard not to laugh.
We saw the author and illustrator of the Spiderwick Chronicles. They were hilarious and made me want to read the books.

The moment we had waited for, and shamefully run over some children for, had arrived. We got to Mr. Mo Willems himself read from his books. It was incredible.

Firefox just crashed and deleted the rest of my post so more to come tomorrow..............

Breast Friends

Check out this awesome shirt I designed for my Breast Cancer 3 Day team!

Mrs. Boddie goes to Washington

I am very excited to announce that next weekend I am going to Washington DC. I have never been there and I can't wait! I am going to the National Mall to see some of my favorite children's authors. Mo Willems and David Shannon are 2 that I am really excited about. There are some grown up authors there too, but since I have spent most of my adult life reading children's book out loud I don't know many of the adult authors. My carry-on bag is probably going to weigh 100 pounds once I put in all the books I want to get signed.
I am going with Melissa. Melissa and I went to high school together, and aside from sharing the dance floor at my ten year reunion, we haven't seen each other since. We have connected through blogs and our mutual love of baking and all things cupcake. She has already staked out the coolest cupcake bar for us to visit. It's going to be a great trip.

Microwave cakes?

So my Hungry Girl cookbook has a recipe for chocolate cakes, made in the microwave, that only have 130 calories. I was very skeptical because you just combine cake mix and lite, fat free vanilla yogurt and then cook in the microwave. They are topped with fat free Cool Whip mixed with lite Hershey's syrup. They are delicious! We have eaten them for dessert for the last two nights.

Game Day food

There are a lot of good college games on today. My school, Michigan, is kicking butt right now and the Georgia Dawgs are about to at 7:30. I cannot believe that I actually watch and enjoy college football now. Living in the South really gets to a person after a while. For today's game I made some sliders with a Pampered Chef recipe. They were really good, and totally cute!

Really?

I went out to walk tonight. I only did about 2 miles, but is so boring by myself. Yesterday I made some cupcakes from my Hungry Girl cookbook. When I returned from walking there were 3, yes 3, cupcake wrappers in the trash can. So while I'm walking to try and burn off calories my husband eats 3 cupcakes. Really, Keith?! At least they are low calorie cupcakes, but still 3 is a little much. (I'm really glad he never reads this blog)

recent annoyances

I haven't blogged in a while, but here are some rants I've been saving up.

Last weekend I decided to meet a few fellow 3 Day walkers to train. We decided to walk 14 miles at a park nearby. We were about 11 miles in when it looked like rain was moving in. In about 3 minutes it went from a little cloudy to a light sprinkle to a typhoon-like downpour. We took a short cut, through the woods, and made it back to the car 1.6 miles later. We were drenched from head to toe. Luckily I had some plastic table cloths in the car from my bake sale the day before so we put them over the seats to protect them. It was raining so hard on the way home I couldn't see the road! The funniest part was that as we were driving, my friend and I wondered why neither of our husbands had called to check on us......

Recently a case of swine flu has been reported at my school and several others in the county. So naturally everyone is swine flu crazy. The slightest cough gets attention now. So today all of the cafeteria workers are wearing masks. Then someone told me that the front office staff was also wearing them. Now if it is really that much of a threat, why don't teachers have masks?

The biggest rant is about a shopping experience. I want a new bedroom set desperately. My frugal husband has been saying we can't get it until ours breaks. This furniture is so old and ugly, but luckily it is solid wood so it WILL NOT break! Finally after months of wishing the bed started to squeak a little. Keith fixed it. But then it started again. It eventually got so bad that each time either of us moved at all it was like an orchestra playing. So I went online and found a set I really like. I went to the actual store to see if they had what I had seen online so I could check it out. I told them that I wanted a king size bed with storage under it. I want the extra storage because I am so tired of things not being put away. Anyway, I digress, so I am asking the man to help me find it and he asks me to pull it up online. I found the set but it didn't have the storage under it. This other man came over and was behind me, looking over my shoulder, and says "unless you want kids' furniture, adult beds don't have storage under them". I was PISSED. I replied "I'm not stupid, there are sets with storage under them" and then I pointed out one online. I came home and realized that the bed and the storage were actually sold separately. Of course I emailed the store and told them how rude the salesman was and that if they didn't need business I'm sure another store did.

I think that is all of my rage for now. :)

contest

I entered this cake that I made in a contest. I probably won't win because there are some amazing cakes in the contest but I thought it would be fun to enter.

The contest can be seen at http://www.cookiemag.com/food/party/2009/08/cake-contest

Cake Balls for everyone!

I found these on my new favorite blog, Bakerella. She calls them cake bites but I think cake balls suits my style better. They are fabulous!

Devil's food cake inside

I made a few to support my favorite cause....

And a few with chocolate sprinkles..................
And since it is a crime to waste chocolate, I used the left over chocolate to cover some cherries.

You need this

I need to book a few more Pampered Chef cooking shows or catalog shows. The new Fall catalogs are out and there are some fabulous new products. Here are two of my favorite new items. The snowman platter and the beaded cake server.


You could earn these for half price or even Free by hosting a show!

Back to School

School is back in session. This year I changed from Kindergarten to 4th grade. It has been quite a switch. I expected the kids to be much more mature and independent than kindergarteners, I was wrong. I constantly have to repeat directions and I have had to ask more than one person to remove a foreign object from their mouth. I am adjusting and hopefully by next week I'll be settled in.

Some of the funniest moments so far have been:

• in the cafeteria two boys tapped their milks on the table, did a "cheers", and then chugged it. Making me wonder, "where have they seen flip cups?"
• a boy said, "damn" while reading his social studies book
• a boy asks every day to go to the clinic, "it's an emergency"
• after I wrote my name on the board, a boy wrote his teacher was Ms. Buttry
• a boy wore bright lime green shorts yesterday, this same boy regularly sings Britney Spears songs

I am very nervous about my class passing all of their state tests this year. They don't seem to have much of a clue about the world. Today when I asked what they knew about the water cycle a boy said, "don't kill all the animals or there won't be any animals left.......in the ocean". Not quite, my friend.

I am teaching in a trailer at the end of the trailer park. Here are a few pictures of my new home.



The "trailer park" is located across the bus lane from the main school and contains about 40 trailers. It is a loooong walk to any where, including the bathroom and the cafeteria. I should be pretty skinny by the end of the year.

The Dr. is in...........

Keith finished his degree and graduated on Saturday. He is now officially Dr. Keith Boddie, DPT. He won't go by Dr. Boddie at work because it is confusing for patients but I think we'll make restaurant reservations that way for a while! I'm so proud of him and we are both so happy to have 2 incomes. It has been a long road but we have made it to the end.

Extreme Makeover Bedroom Edition

So yesterday we decided to paint the ceiling in our bedroom with a paint sprayer that my dad gave us. He gave us everything except the instruction manual. First we carried out all of our furniture, covered all the windows in paper, and covered the carpet with drop cloths. So then we put it all together and turned it on and paint spilled out all over the floor. We turned it off and cleaned it up, made some adjustments and tried again. This time paint sprayed out the back of the gun instead of the front. Finally, about an hour later we got it working and it only took about 5 minutes to spray the whole ceiling. The actual spraying took far less time than the set up and search for the online manual.

Now we had a sort of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" situation going. Since we had sprayed the ceiling and gotten paint on the wall, we decided we needed to paint the walls. We used the sprayer to put on the primer. So now it's time to clean the sprayer. Again, we have no manual, and we can't take the laptop outside to look at the one online, so it's a guessing game. We did not hook it up right and paint/water sprayed all over me. My face and body were covered in white spots. I wish I had taken pictures but all I could do was stand in the driveway and laugh. Together, Keith and I finally figured it out and got it cleaned out.

Now since the walls are primed, we have to paint them. I go to Lowe's and get a sample of blue and a sample of green. We don't like either. Back to Lowe's for another sample of green, which we liked. So today we painted the walls with rollers because we were not about to tackle that sprayer again.

Overall it turned out well. A little painting adventure is always fun and a good reminder of why it's important to choose the colors you like and never, ever paint over them.



Maybe I should have moved the TV wire before taking the picture :)

Tee off for Tatas

So this weekend I hosted a miniature golf tournament to raise money for my Breast Cancer 3 Day walk. I had the tournament at the miniature golf course where Lindsey, Keith's sister, works. I raised $475, not bad for a day's work.

These are the chocolate covered Oreos I made for the event.










Strawberry cupcakes with pink buttercream frosting and breast cancer ribbon sprinkles.
Pink ribbon cookies. The hot pink ones have fondant and pearl dust, the light pink are royal icing. I must admit that I made about 10 times as many as I needed and spent waaaay too much time doing it. I love baking though so any excuse is a good one.


These are my army of rubber ducks that I bought to sell. Keith and Paul were good sports and worked the "duck game". Kids picked ducks from the pond and won a prize.








It takes a lot of helpers to pull of a fundraiser. My husband, Keith and his sister helped. My best friend Candace and her husband were there as well as Keith's mom and my mom. We had a good time and raised a lot of money.

Rain-cation

We just got back from vacation. It rained almost every day so I named it raincation. We still had fun but we didn't get to spend as much time at the beach as I would have liked. We did, however, get to read several old magazines that other guests had left in the house. I read some US weekly magazines from 2008, it's funny to read about how in love celebrities are one year later knowing that the relationships didn't work.


Keith and my dad ate oysters non-stop while we were there. Apalachacola is known for its oysters so they ordered them at restaurants and then hatched a plan to get some to take home. They went to the dock where the oyster boats were and asked one of the fishermen if they could buy some oysters from them. Well the oyster-men aren't allowed to sell them so they directed us across the bay to a little shack. Once inside the shack we found that we could buy 60 pounds of oysters for $25. So being that we now had 60 pounds of oysters someone had to cook them. I hate oysters. I think they stink and look disgusting, but I had the pleasure of steaming oysters every lunch and dinner for 3 days. If I never steam another oyster, I will be happy.


The sun finally came out on Thursday. I made sure to put my SPF 55 on my face and my 45 everywhere else. I even re-applied around 11. Apparently I missed a good sized area on my chest and, since Keith had already gone back to the house, my back didn't get any the second time around. So even though it rained most of the time I still came home with a sun burn.

All in all a great vacation. Keith goes back to school for 3 weeks starting Tuesday and I have 3 more weeks before I go back to school.

Running is for Kenyans

I completed a 10K today. I did not run all of it, but I finished. It is a tradition in Atlanta and Keith signed up but I didn't. Our neighbor got a number but couldn't run so he gave it to me and my running career was launched. I have to say that running sucks. It's just not fun. I ran the first 2 miles fine but then I was just bored with running. I walked a little and ran a little to finish the race. I saw some fun people dressed in July 4th gear and some other interesting costumes as well. I finished the race in 1 hour 22 minutes, not terrible. I might run another race sometime but probably not anytime soon.

First Blog

So I just thought I would start this blog. Being a teacher, I have a lot of time on my hands in the summer. I usually watch 4-6 hours of CSI or Law and Order per day, but today they seem to be playing episodes I've already seen. I made some mini chocolate cupcakes with homemade strawberry frosting and some 55 calorie cookies today. We celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary yesterday. Not much else is going on. I'll make another blog later.