Expo a Go-Go

COOKIES AND CREAM: While countless Americans were sitting in morning rush hour traffic, we were slathering sugar on cupcakes with our own deadline to meet. This evening there was an "Expo" at the kids' school and they declared yesterday around 2-ish that they wanted to go. Super!

The Expo is bring food, make a display out of a project you've been working on and watch some presentations/performances. Sounds simple enough, and it is, if you're willing to buy a bag of Doritos and store bought brownies as a snack, but we had other ideas.

Annabelle really wanted to make some "Hello, Cupcake!" inspired flower cupcakes. She wanted two different kinds - some sunflowereque ones with Oreo centers and some more daisy like ones with Nilla Wafers in the middle. OK ...
Annabelle was in charge of putting the cookies in the middle of the cupcakes/flowers.
CJ and Annabelle both helped mix the coloring into the frosting.

And CJ had his first go-round with filling a pastry/icing bag. He also did some piping. He was nervous at first, telling me he was afraid of making a mistake. I told him the nice thing about mistakes involving frosting is that he could eat them. He felt better. :)
And here are the white ones Bee requested. ...

ON DISPLAY: We also had to put together displays for each of the kids. Fortunately, we didn't have to make projects - they both had more than a couple of options.

Annabelle decided to share her (now petrified) Sesame Peeps. We had to get the Peeps out of storage and check them out. She had to make a new Sesame Peeps sign for her streetlight. She pained a bit over cutting it out.

And she had to a little touch up gluing. She attached the newspaper story announcing her big contest win to a presentation board and Boom! - instant display. CJ's took a little more work. He wanted to display his Lolly book. That meant mounting 11 photos, making a title, adding page numbers and an explanation. He really enjoyed the power of the paper cutter! CJ was very proud of his display. At the event, he rounded up and welcomed people to his station to share his story. :) You can barely see CJ in this pic (the khaki colored legs next to Annabelle). He's pointing out the finer points of his project to three young ladies. :)