Happy Halloween!

So what dumb person waits until the morning of Halloween to go get her son a costume. Yeah... that's me. I didn't think he was going to want a costume, I just figured he'd wear his pirate hat and be done with it. Well, last night Abigail asked Zander what he wanted to be for Halloween and he said "I'm going to be King Austin!" (Austin is one of the Backyardigans). Oh no. I can't tell you how many times he repeated that. This is not good, I'm thinking to myself, because Austin is a character costume, and those always sell out first, and I really didn't want to spend all day today hunting down an overpriced piece of felt.

I resigned myself to a trip to Wal-Mart. I needed to pick up diapers and treats anyway, so we headed to the costumes. Of course, there were no Backyardigans. There were Incredibles costume- I asked him if he wanted to be Jack-Jack... "NO! I'm King Austin." This was not looking good. Then I randomly saw a ninja costume, and just kinda joked, "well, how about a ninja?" I got "Yeah!!! Cause Ninja's like to steal pie!" Woo-Hoo for me. It was still overpriced, but now he can dress up with his sister and go trick-or-treating tonight. We'll see how long that lasts.

Last Friday when I took Abigail shopping, we stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond because I needed a new candy thermometer. As we were walking around, she stopped dead in her tracks and just stared at a display. My heart sank when I saw what it was. It was none other than a Betty Crocker Bake-N-Fill. She has been after me for this cake pan, and here it was within her grasp. Oy. She always wants to help Mommy, and she really, really wants an Easy Bake oven. I keep telling her that she can use Mommy's real oven and baking pans anytime she wants- she doesn't need the Easy bake oven. So that Bake-N-Fill made it's way into her arms and to the checkout. I quickly scanned the box to see what we needed to make her a cake, and assessed that all we needed was cake and filling. Since this was going to be her project, she chose a chocolate cake mix and some Oreo pudding. Well, once we got home I learned that to make the big filled cake, you need at least two boxes of cake mix, so we settled on the smaller dome cake. Here's Abigail using the hand mixer to mix up her cake.

And here's her finished cake, half eaten so you can see the filling.

Overall, she did have fun with it, and although her cake is all "not-from-scratch" products, she was very proud of it and we all enjoyed it. I personally may have some fun playing with some homemade cakes in this pan. It will be interesting to see if they bake up the same as a cake-mix cake. Abigail really was thrilled that she made this cake. The only thing she didn't do was put it in the oven and take it out of the oven. Everything else she did herself. And that is definitely one benefit of making a cake from a box- it's easy enough that the smallest hands can make a successful cake.

I'll be back later after school sometime with a picture of my two trick-or-treaters together. :-)