Odds & Ends, Mostly Odds

So the summer is half over (sniff, sniff, sob, sob) and it's been a good one so far. The days have been sufficiently busy, with a little bit (not enough) down time here and there. Here are a few things that are going on:

• We finally got a desk ordered for Julia's room. I don't know which 6 year old begs and begs for a desk but mine did. We promised her she'd get one before second grade and it looks like the promise will not be broken. She'll need a chair, but that can be procured easily I'm hoping. The arrival of the desk will necessitate some rearranging in her room but more importantly, once it's here, I can start the project I've been dying to do for her room. I want to make a homemade version of a combination of Pottery Barn Kids' and Pottery Barn Teen's bulletin board systems. I recently found out that you can buy Dry Erase paint to make any surface a dry-erase board. How cool is that?! This was the last bit I couldn't figure out for this project and now I have. I can NOT wait to get started. It will be a big project (by my scale anyway) and I'll be amazed if I can pull it off and manage not to get divorced in the process. I can't wait to start shopping for fabric!

• If you like baking or baked goods or ice cream or eating or supporting a good cause, read this post from my sister's blog. She and her friends are organizing a local bake sale and could use contributions of either baked goods to sell or other items for a raffle. Feel free to spread the word to all your L.A. area friends. Or better yet, organize a bake sale in your own neighborhood.
  

• On Friday Ray took my big kids to the office with him. One of the people who work there is a nice lady by the name of Erica. Well, never having heard that name before, Ethan assumed it was America. And walked around all day calling her....."Miss America!"

• A while back I mentioned Julia's birthday cake and how I might post a picture if it turned out OK. Well it turned out OK, but not much better than OK. I was in the grocery store and found a packet of edible flowers in with the fresh herbs. I picked them up hoping to spruce up her birthday cake and here is the result. The assortment of flowers wasn't the greatest and by the time I got around to using them, they weren't so fresh. They would've probably looked much better on white frosting, but we're a chocolate family. I think next year I will strive to do better than a cake mix cake and store-bought frosting. I can do better than this, much better. However, the novelty of the flowers on the cake went a long way. No one was brave enough to actually eat one, however.