Note: this post is not Pinterest-worthy

Lily and I made baklava today.  It may not be authentic, it may not be pretty, but it worked for us.

Last weekend when we went trick-or-treating at Waverly Place, Taziki's was giving out samples of baklava.  Madeleine was having none of it, but Lily tried it and liked it.  She asked if we could buy some at the store.  Of course I didn't see anything at our local HT.

So this weekend I had a coupon for puff pastry and thought we'd try it.  Well, first of all "puff pastry" isn't the same thing as phyllo.  So a phyllo recipe isn't going to work the same.  Then I would have had to remembered to thaw phyllo 24 hours ahead of time.  Which I hadn't.  So I visited puffpastry.com and luckily they had a baklava recipe.  And the dough had to be thawed only 40 minutes ahead of time.  Winner!

So Lily and I set to work shelling pistachios.  I think I have shells and errant nuts throughout my kitchen.



It gave us some good time to chat.


Then we got all our ingredients together.  By then the dough had thawed enough to roll out.

She loved chopping the nuts with the food processor.

Lily paints on the egg wash.

We combined the nuts, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a sauce pan.

Baked pastry.

The tough part was splitting the pastry in half to fill with the nut mixture.  The outside was crisp and wanted to flake off.  Sometimes it was hard to pull apart.

The honey/sugar glaze has been applied.

Lily with her final product.

So this happened today

After only about an hour

You go to school to learn, not for a fashion show

Thanks for letting me get that out.  It's been stuck in my head since I signed the girls up to participate a couple of weeks ago in a small, informal fashion show.  Sponsored by a local baby boutique called Green Pea Baby, I saw their call for models on Facebook and thought it might be fun.  I don't usually shop there since we're on the upper end of their sizes, and I don't know many folks with wee ones anymore.

The clothes fit great.  If we needed anything more this season, and they carried anything higher than a 7, I would have bought something.



I was surprised at how confident Lily seemed.  They really enjoyed themselves.



After it was their turn, they hung out in the tent some and talked to the adult models.  I managed to snap a few more pictures in there.



But *this* is my hands-down favorite.

Fall Goings On

October is always a busy month - first with the birthday and then the Halloween-related activities.

Instead of going to our old standby pumpkin farm that we've been going to for years, we went to Green Acres in Cary.  It's more about the corn maze and less about the pumpkins.  But what I was really there for was the horse rides.  It was only $10 a rider for a fairly decent ride around their trail, so Lily, Maddie and I all went for a ride.

Here's Lily's horse.  She "named" her Midnight.  I have no idea what her name really was.



Then on Sunday we hit up the North Carolina State Fair.  It was CRAZY crowded, but I wanted to make sure Lily got to see her photograph hung up for display.  She only got a participation ribbon, but I still think it's a great picture.


I spent the same amount on ride tickets that I usually do, but since I bought them online before the fair, I had a lot more tickets this year.  Combined with the long lines, the girls tired of rides before we could use all the tickets.

So Eric took the last slide with the girls.

Today you are EIGHT!

I know we parents say it every year, but THIS year you are both so grown up.  When I help you get dressed, I can't sit on the floor anymore.  You're too tall.  You have distinct ideas about how you want to dress.  The picture above is the ONLY time you will dress alike this year.  You get frustrated with me when I forget to "sign and return" the things marked "sign and return" by your teacher.  You have had BOYS call the house and ask for you.

We had some new things this year - you really liked our Myrtle Beach trip in April.  You had your first grown up concert, even if it was Barry Manilow.  You went to summer camp at the Y instead of a day care setting.  You have adjusted to a lot of changes at school this year remarkably well.

Things you love right now:

• Gymnastics
• Rubber band bracelets
• Any kind of art
• The "cups song" from Pitch Perfect

Favorite foods:

• Tacos
• Burgers (but not fries?)
• Ice cream
• Buttered noodles

Looking forward to fun times this year,

Your mom

Mommy's a slacker

Did the summer just fly by for anyone else?  It did for us.  The girls finished up camp the end of July, spend a week with grandparents and a couple weeks at home before school was right up again.

For their week at home with me, we called it Camp Mommy.  Each girl picked a day's worth of activities, and I tried to throw in some stuff around town we never got a chance to do because it's more crowded on the weekends.

In no particular order, some of the highlights:

The new Nature Research Center downtown:



Defy Gravity trampoline park:


FIVE hours at the beach out at Jordan Lake:



A day of play at Three Bears Acres:



Professional mani-pedis



We were all ready for school to start.

There was this time at Dance Camp...

The girls spent this week at the Y's dance camp, which is part of their summer sports camp.  So I spent the week driving them out to way west Cary every day.  They were off Thursday for the holiday but back at camp Friday.  It was great because they had an end-of-week performance, and I was able to attend since I was off work.




They did know some of the girls at camp from their elementary school, which was nice.  The group did eight dances for us.





And here's a video.  I had a few camera issues, so I pasted the clips together.



Then today we attended the Children's Matinee of the Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company at the American Dance Festival in Durham. The girls really enjoyed the performance and were just dying to get home and try some of the stunts in the backyard.

Luckily they had some activities in the lobby so they forgot all about swinging from ropes by the time we made it home.