Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Back to Square One.

I stepped on the scale this morning. Damn near fainted.

Since around the first of the year I have been on a diet. No, not so much a diet as a lifestyle change. I was doing pretty well. I had lost 15 or so pounds. I was happy with that, but of course wanted to go further.

The whole family got sick about a month ago. They all got better, I did not. I finally went to the doctor and was put on an array of meds, including a cortical
steroid. Do we all know the side effects of those? Weight gain (among others). I knew this going in. Ok, I thought, must be extra diligent. It's only a week, what could happen??

You can gain every single pound you've lost BACK, is what can happen.
Right. Sooooo, I'm in a pissy mood today.
Now that I've gotten that off of my chest I can move on.
**FAIR WARNING** Picture quality is super crappy. I used my camera phone for all of these pictures. Sorry.
Do your kids constantly beg for cupcakes? Mine do. I'm not sure why. I don't make cupcakes all that often. Not a HUGE fan of cupcakes myself. Don't get me wrong, LOVE making them, I just doing really love them enough to waste the calories eating them (see, lifestyle change! The old me would never have said that!!).

Anyway, last week I was just in the mood to bake and the kids wanted to help. How, exactly, can two 4 yr olds and a 2 yr old help with cupcakes without making a huge mess???
Enter my smartest investment EVER. No, really, EVER.

I have used these things more than any other kitchen item (that's totally not accurate, but I use them a lot).

You can make the fanciest pancakes using those bad boys: names, numbers, simple designs, shapes, you name it! Takes a bit of the mess out of it too. No stray drops or splatters. I also use these when we're making pizza. I actually bought a bunch for the girls' last birthday party. I didn't think giving a spoon and a huge bowl of pizza sauce to 3 and 4 yr olds sounded like a good idea, but I wanted them to be able to make their own pizzas. Voila! Little bottle comes in handy again!

I also use these a lot when plating. Yes, I plate dishes. Not every day, mind you, but I get this weird little thrill from making things look ultra fancy. A little swirl of chocolate here, a twirl of pesto there. Ya dig?

So yes, back to cupcakes. The kids sort of have a color assigned to each of them. Twin A is red/pink, Twin B is blue and Pickles is green. Naturally, they all wanted the cupcakes to be their color. I divided the batter into three bowls, tinted them in their respective colors, and then I filled the bottles with it.

I assigned each kid two rows of the muffin pan to work with. Using their bottles, they squirted a bit in each tin then we turned the pan and they repeated the process until all of the muffins had each color in them. They were wildly impressed with this but I was not done.

I was not about to make three different colors of buttercream and frost some one color some another. So what I did was I took a pastry bag and painted one red stripe, one green stripe, and one blue stripe on the inside with a gel food coloring, filled the bag with plain white buttercream and went to town. The results were quite fun!


**Special note** I did not even eat these so this is NOT why I gained the weight back!!!! Ha!

9 comments:

The Farmers Wife said...

Your creativity almost pained me! Good Grief woman, that much thought may have put me 6 feet under. Total awesomeness! You will get back on track. Does it count for anything that I completely love you? We need to figure out somewhere we want to meet up and go "camping" in early summer. I hear tennessee is nice. We could bust out all the creative ideas and have a summer camp kinda deal. Smoochies!

StepherB said...

I feel for you! What a bummer to have to go on something to help you get better just to put weight that you worked to get off...back on! Cupcakes are too cute! I am doing a cupcake decorating and egg decorating party on saturday with my family! I will post pics! Kids LOVE decorating cupcakes!

Sweet Tea said...

YOU.ARE.A.ROCK.STAR!!
What a GREAT idea.

I hear ya on the weight "thang" - it's just not fair that we all have to DEPRIVE ourself, then we can inhale a sweet smell and gain 15 lbs. What's with that?!

The Tan of A said...

that is the coolest thing. if i find a time machine can i come live at your house as a kid? i was well-behaved and smart! (okay, the first part is pretty much a lie, but i was smart as a little whip!).

and on the weight gain: I'm in the same boat, and I wish I could say that a steroid is the root cause of it. I got sick the 4th day of the year pretty much and then got SUPER depressed. So I'd lay and eat and sleep and lay and eat and say after every bit of chocolate or slice of pizza "I'll run this off in the morning." And then morning would come and guess what? I'd wake and sit up and think "Wait. You mean I have to run outside? Where there are PEOPLE?" I'd go back to sleep. So yeah, I was lookin HOT at the end of last year and that's all gone. Square one, indeed. (And I still don't like facing people. But what do you do?)

Also: I'd probably have eaten 4 of those cupcakes, so yay for your willpower! Hearts. :)

jesse said...

Oh no!!!! How frustrating!! I hope that it's something like birth control pills though, where you'd gain water weight so once you do something strenuous you can sweat it all out... sigh, or is that too much to hope for? When will they make sure meds don't affect our weights!!!!!!

Kudos to you for staying away from those cupcakes, they look awesome!

irene said...

i just discovered your crafty blog and i love it! thanks for all the cute ideas!!

Jess said...

I can't believe I missed this post!! I LOVE this idea!!
You are so AWESOME!!!!!

RootsAndWingsCo said...

That sucks! Since we're on the topic, why is it easier for men to lose weight? Or why can does it take months to build up to running 10 miles a day, but then back off (not stop) for a week and you are knocked back down!? This is all so unfair to me. In my world, this is backwords! Good luck feeling better and getting that weight back off!
Rebecca@RootsAndWingsCo

KG said...

Love that idea! I don't have children but I love baking and pancakes so I'm super pumped to try these bottles out. Best random blog find ever!

And no worries on the diet thing. I've been on one getting ready for my wedding and if you eat one too many anything you gain a ton of water weight. I gained 6 pounds after the big bachelorette party weekend, yet somehow afterward I dropped it really quick. So no worries, and keep the ideas coming!