The week-end is already over and it’s only Thursday. I’m calling it because between now and Sunday evening, it’s go, go, go until we can face-plant among the pillows only to wake up on Monday and start fresh.  The kids are heading into end of year mode.  May marks one month until the end of this school year.  The first week-end in May kicks off the slide down that slope with Spirit Week, Field Day and Magic Dragon Day. Spirit Week involves the kids dressing up each day from a pre-approved theme.  Monday and Tuesday were Blue and White Day (school colors), Wednesday was Tie-Day day, and Thursday was Crazy Hat day.  Sadly, we have no “crazy” hats, but the girls looked, to quote M, “Stylish, sophisticated and continental,” in two of my church hats.  Friday is field day where each grade participates in relays, running races, and other fun games.  They wear their Magic Dragon Day shirts — the dragon being the school mascot, the shirt color pre-determined by the eldest family member attending the school (Go, Blue!) — and run around, getting hot, sweaty and grass stained.  It’s an early release day as well and I’m confident that this year, I’ll remember to get them at 1pm instead of the regular dismissal time like I did the last two years (oops!).

Magic Dragon Day is on Saturday and it promises to be a rolicking event.  Every year, the school hosts a carnival like event for the entire school.  There are booths with games of chance, tug-of-war contests in each grade, dunking booths, Spirit Wear sales, book sales, a cake walk and the highly anticipated kidnergarten May Pole Dance.  While this is our third MDD, this is our first May Pole Dance and cake walk experience.  The kindgergarten kiddos have been practicing since before Easter to kick off MDD with their dance.  The girls and boys wear their Sunday best and dance around the blacktop, lacing grosgrain ribbons up and down the length of a flower topped pole.  Once the dance is over, Magic Dragon Day can officially begin.

C is in kindergarten this year and has been protesting having to do the May Pole dance because she “doesn’t want to hlod hands with a boy!!”  Keep up that attitude, kiddo!  As we’ve gotten closer, though, she’s started to get more excited.  She’s picked out her dress, she’s decided what color flowers she’d like in the wreath that will sit atop her head.  She is ready to peel out of the dress with her friends and into her MDD shirt in order to paritcipate in her first ever tug-of-war.  I suppose it’s no surprise that her enthusiasm has been escalating. While neither she nor M have ever done a May Pole before, they’re third year MDD vets and ready to eat and play their way through the day.

In addition to the May Pole prep, kindergarten parents are also tasked with preparing two cakes (or 48 cupcakes or some combination of cake and cupcake) for the MDD cake walk.  Cake walk? What’s that, you ask.  The Cake Walk is one of the most fun and successful booths at MDD.  Similar to musical chairs, participants move along a serpentine path on the blacktop.  The path is sectioned off into numbers which correspond to numbered cakes set up in the auditorium.  When the music stops, the emcee draws a number from the pile and whomever is standing on that number, wins the corresponding cake.  The cakes are indeed prizes to be had!  The cakes are either homemade or store bought, and decorated within an inch of their lives.  The more decorations, the better!  In years past, cakes have been decorated as sand castles, treasure chests, dragons, Legos, Polly Pocket Beach parties and Star Wars themed cake toppers.

Earlier in the year, when talking with another kindergarten mom, we resolved to buy our cakes instead of fool around with the homemade foolishness.  At the time, the mandate was, homemade only — not necessarily from scratch, but definitely homemade.  I was all about “breaking the law” because I didn’t know what the heck kind of cake I could scrape together or whether or not I was really up to the challenge of finding something that could hold its own against other Pinterest-worthy cakes that were sure to come down the pike.  I went back and forth the Hubs about it, who clearly fell on the side of “Just buy the cake!” and my mom who was more of “Oh, c’mon, you can make it.”  Truthfully, I was doing a cost benefit analysis as to what was more cost effective: buying a pre-decorated cake or buying the uspplies and doing it myself.  In the end, I think it was a wash.  I found a recipe that looked hard, but was more time consuming than anything else.  Ultimately, my biggest challenge was making sure my cupcake cups were equally filled.  Well, that and trying to keep the girls from eating the decorations before I could put them on the cake.

Between the cake and the prep for the May Pole dance, which included hot gluing silk flowers to a ribbon encased wreath, it’s been straight up Crafty Town up in here. The recipe for the cupcakes follows the photos of my finished product. I baked the cakes and cupcakes a few days ahead of time so that I could focus solely on frosting and decorating.

Teddy-At-The-Beach Cupcakes.

Teddy’s lounging.

Here’s my layer cake. Same premise as the cupcakes, but I got a little fancier with jelly bean rocks in the sand and icing trim around the edges.

Here, fishy, fishy!

Enjoy and Happy Friday, y’all!

Teddy-At-The-Beach Cupcakes

recipe courtesy of Betty Crocker, found here.

Directions