Let's Get This Party Started

June is one crazy month in this household, let me tell you. There's just too much going on. For starters, Peanut Head and I celebrate our anniversary in June (it was 18 loooooong years on Monday), there's Father's Day, Zoe Bug's birthday, the Scrapbook Expo in my town, and I do my big summer crop.

As if all that wasn't enough, I'm also celebrating my blogiversary on Monday, the same day as Zoe's birthday. Yep, June 22nd my Zoe Bug will be 8 and my blog will be a whole year old. Wow! So, in case you were wondering, that's why my blog header this month is so festive.

I want to do some fun things to celebrate my blog's birthday, but first things first, we have to celebrate Zoe Bug's birthday. Then after that I might have a fun give-away or two, so stick around.

Tomorrow we're going to have Zoe's party for her friends. That's her invitation you see up above. We always do a backyard water/pool/squirt gun bonanza and this year is no different. Heh. Yeah. Except that we've been experiencing torrential downpours daily for the past two weeks. When I made the invitation I was in complete denial when I wrote "The weather IS going to be nice."

But still, I'm convinced that it will be nice in spite of the dog dish floating in our backyard. Besides, the weather man says it will be nice, for just this one day as I've ordered. Never mind that the weather man is frequently wrong, we're going to have a water party of one sort or another tomorrow. And as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go and find my life jacket.

I made these little brownie pops to give out as party favors, and let me just say this, NEVER AGAIN. Oh, the pain and suffering I went through for these ridiculous little things. It's so not worth it. Just in case you ever consider making some of these yourself, let me save you a little time and money, okay?

Don't buy this. It's a stooooooooopid silicone brownie pop mold and it's dumber than dumb. First of all, do you really want to pay $8.99 for this? No. And yes, I did use a 50% off coupon but still. Let me just tell you why you should never buy one of these.

First of all, you can only bake eight brownie pops at a time. Then you have to let them cool before you can get them out of the pan. Then they won't come out of the pan anyway. Then you'll try again because you'll be convinced that you did something wrong because maybe you're sometimes a bonehead. And it still won't work and you will have wasted two hours in the process. Then you will dump the rest of the batter into a pan and bake them the way Betty Crocker intended in the first place. And why?

Actually, Betty Crocker is one smart cookie and her way is best. You don't need no stinkin' special pan. After wasting two hours of my life that I can never get back, I learned something. You can cut the brownies like a normal person and then roll them into perfect little balls and then put the cute little lollipop sticks in them. Duh.

After that epiphany, I stuck the brownie pops into the freezer before I dipped them. I left them in there for a couple hours so they were firm and cold. 

Then I melted some of those nasty waxy candy thingies to dip them in. Actually, I think they're really called Wilton Candy Melts, but do you really care? Man, I sound bitter.

That's Zoe Bug's hand there, helping me. We went through a truckload of sprinkles which was another disaster in itself. After dipping the brownie pops into the melted wax, we sprinkled the sprinkles on the pops. Rolling them in the sprinkles didn't work because it left unsightly clumps of wax in the sprinkles. Also, we had to be very careful to not get too much candy wax on the pops or the whole shebang would just slide off like a California mudslide. It would have been funny if I hadn't been freaking out.

But they're done and that ordeal is over. Thankfully.

I found another fun idea, complete with tutorial, for these cute little water bottle tag drink mix holders on Blue Eyed Blessings. They're actually supposed to be for Crystal Light packets, but I didn't think the kids would appreciate those very much, so I crammed some Kool-Aid packets in them instead.

Plus, since it's Zoe's Bug's birthday, I had to put a lady bug on them.

So tomorrow is the birthday party, and Saturday is my big summer crop. But for once I'm not behaving like a complete lunatic, and I'm making my June crop a "No Frills" crop. That means I'm only cooking dinner and when I'm ready to do it I'm going to stand up from my own scrapbooking spot and say "Ladies, get yo' rear-ends upstairs, we're cookin' us some dinner." Yee haw!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and give myself an attitude adjustment.