Five for Friday and an Everything Cake

Exercise: 30 minute easy circuit workout

1. Fridays over in these parts have become baking days. Last week I was craving chocolate like mad and so I whipped up some chocolate frosting and decided I might as well bake a cake to go with it. It's annoying when that time of the month coincides with a race but at least there's chocolate to make everything better ;)

Cake Gremlin agrees

2. My friend Natalie made some incredible carrot-zucchini cupcakes with vanilla rum frosting for dessert last night. Soooo tasty. 

These little babies inspired me to make a cake with some bananas that needed to be used. And then I added in some other produce that had to be gone today including a zucchini, a very ripe peach and the end of a bag of shredded carrots. Basically a banana carrot cake with boozy cream cheese icing. But there's also some whole wheat flour, almond flour and the kitchen sink. 

YUM! Moist and delicious!!! Thanks Nat! BTW Nat also makes her version of a ratatouille that she calls Natatouille, ha. I'll try to wrestle this super tasty recipe from her.

3. I've been thinking about training a lot lately. I had planned to run the Pasadena full marathon in May but I just don't think it's possible. I'd need to build up my mileage so much in the next few weeks I just don't think it would be any fun. And if it's not fun I don't want to waste my precious time. My plan now is to gradually up my mileage, do more trail running and reevaluate where I am in July to see if doing the Bulldog 50k is in the cards. There's always the 25k and I have years ahead of me for long races.

4. I just sent out the invitations for Little Man's 2nd birthday party. 2 years old!!! Whoa! Music Man really wanted an easy party. We had agreed upon the theme being 'Birthday Party'. Remember when the party was the theme and you just had friends over with cake and balloons? I don't. Ha. But I appreciate the simplicity of it. But then when we were looking the the Evite designs we found a Lego brick theme one and both Music Man and I immediately decided we had to do Lego/ building brick theme. It's a natural choice since it's one of Little Man's favorite activities. 

I still want to keep it simple but here ius what I have so far:

Cake: Building Blocks Cake

Activity: We have a trampoline, water table, sand box and slide/climber thing but I was also thinking of putting out a huge blanket with a big box of Mega Bloks we have so the kids can play there too. 2 year olds can't really do directed activities yet

Snacks: lego sandwiches- pbj, and jelly & cream cheese for kids

            small regular sandwiches for adults

            mango, strawberry, melon kabobs

            chips, veggies, dip, guac, hummus

            I don't want to do a bunch of candy but maybe some m&m's or lego fruit snacks

            and maybe some lego pops for fun- maybe I could do it healthier with fruit?

Decor and favors: lego plates and cups from party city or there's also these which could be cool

            I also like the lego wristbands and crayons for favors

Balloons: dot balloons

I'll let you know what we choose. So fun!!!

5. Saw Hunger Games and thought it was pretty fun. It was definitely aimed for a younger crowd but was still entertaining. I do have to say I found the book to have more depth and more suspense. There were some really cheesy moments in the movie that weren't depicted that way in the book. But it gets a thumbs up from me.