Happy mother’s day. It’s sunny here and it looks like it will be a gorgeous day. We’ve got lots of moms here to celebrate with: Mark’s mom, who is visiting from Olympia, and my parents, who are here in NY, will be driving over to come visit us at the Flea and then have a family dinner. One of the side benefits of doing the Flea is the flowers that I’ve been buying for our table and then bringing home. I love having fresh flowers as part of the display and while I normally have done quite well spending under 7 bucks for yellow snap dragons, daffodils and freesias, I splurged yesterday on my favorite flower, peonies. Even though I love having flowers in the house, I never buy them because our cat likes to eat them, and well…it’s not a necessity in our strict budget, so it is a nice change to have flowers in the house.

Mark splurged a bit this week as well and bought 2 bottles of wine, which is was something that we cut out of our budget altogether when Mark became unemployed (and I know this sounds pathetic, but we had a one bottle a month rule even before then). And the girls just gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure at a local spa, another thing that I never do. We’re living large this week!

I guess everyone is trying to catch up on sleep this morning. Mark’s mom is in town. The ladies are catching up on zzzzzz.

We’re starting to come out of the daily candy haze (although packing for the Flea tomorrow begins as soon as Mark gets back from the kitchen). We’ve gotten about 16 hours of sleep total for the past 4 days, but we managed to get into bed last night at midnight so I feel surprisingly refreshed this morning, as opposed to zombie-like the last 2 days. Through it all, The girls have been good sports about all the wackiness, but in true kid fashion, Mia really wants to help. It used to be that all the work would begin as soon as the kids went to bed. After they were tucked in, the apartment would turn into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but all would be swept clean before they got up in the morning. Now work for the biz is running into daylight hours and it’s been frustrating for Mia to not be able to contribute. As you know, a 4 year old “helping” is not really helping at all so I try my best to find little tasks for her. I was printing labels the other day and she surprised me by sitting next to me so patiently, feeding the paper into the printer, watching it print and handing the labels over to me. She was ecstatic to be able to help. Claudine helps out by swiffering the floor, which we have to do often. Since we are packaging the goods here, I am super anal about keeping everything clean. She just discovered the swiffer and is having a ball with it. It so reminds me of Mia at that age. They definitely have different personalities and different faces though they do resemble each other quite a bit, but every once in a while, when I put a hand-me-down outfit on her and she’s doing a particular activity, I glance over at Claudine and think of Mia. And did you check out her haircut? No more mullet! Now she’s really part of the gang - just like everyone else in this family, a whole lifetime of mom-made haircuts in her future.

And for those who have asked…we have a new coffee maker. A shiny, black, digital display $30 special from Costco. Hooray!

We’ve been eating some mighty strange dinners this week since we are got slammed with orders, but we had this fairly healthy dinner 2 nights ago. I never was a fan of quinoa, but I’m liking it now and, more importantly, Mia really likes it. Claudine at least has moved on to eating salads for dinner the last 2 nights instead of applesauce or Polly-O string cheese, which is really strange for her, but I’m not about to complain. She did have a few pieces of pork so her self-declared vegetarianism seems to have lifted for that night. Our late night packaging marathon has run into this morning so we are all a bit dazed (and no, we still don’t have a coffee maker!). Have to admit, I am getting FAST at wrapping those brownies…

Wacky day. Overwhelming but good. A big thank you to Oh Joy!, one of my favorite blogs, for the mention today (2 press mentions in one day, wheeee!). Our shop is empty now (and someone just bought the remaining 5 marshmallows). Trying to get to sleep “early” tonight because tomorrow is going to be packing madness deep into the night for all of today’s orders shipping out on Friday (Red Hook post office, not so great. Clinton Hill is next), but of course I am here, watching Top Chef. I am estimating that I will have to individually wrap over 150 brownies in one sitting and I am convinced that I will get arthritis from this.

In the middle of all this biz madness are the girls. They are keeping each other company and I am grateful for that. There’s lots of laughter and giggles and shrieks and chases and while it’s all very cute, the apartment feels like a zoo, not to mention the clutter that just doesn’t seem to go away. Although we haven’t thought seriously about getting our own kitchen/work space yet, it would be worth it just to get our house back. At any given time there are cookies everywhere in large containers which prompts Claudine to walk around like a zombie repeating “cookieee? cookieee? cookieee?” with her little pointer finger extended.

It appears that we might have a viable business on our hands, so I think I will stop my daily Craigslist search for a job for Mark. At least for now.

Thanks to Daily Candy for our fantastic write up today (and to those who have already placed orders!). We’re excited and overwhelmed and tired and happy. We’re going on 4 hours sleep from last night’s Mother’s Day gift box packaging extravaganza and now Mark has the fun fun task of figuring out how to carry and ship the mountain of boxes to the post office (he’ll be traveling to another neighborhood to avoid our local pokey post office branches). Of course, as is always the case when you really need to sleep in, the kids woke up early at 6am. That’s the difference between staying up late at night as a parent vs an all nighter cram session as a student - you have a ticking alarm clock that awaits you on the other side. We are also riding out the morning without caffeine. A week ago the pot to our coffee maker broke. A replacement pot arrived from Amazon yesterday, but this morning, when we really needed it, the whole damn thing stopped working. It’s probably some sort of sign.

I’m always looking for a better price on ingredients I am cooking with. When I lived in Portland, Oregon, I used to drive all around town to four or five different stores just to get the right products for the right prices. I’d go to the produce market, the Japanese market, the seafood store, the health food store, and even all the way out to Beaverton to the Korean and Indian stores. All this just for home cooking. So you can imagine how happy I am now to have found my favorite rose preserves at Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue at 65 percent of what I had previously been paying at a spice store in Manhattan. Since I’ve been using the preserves for my rose and black pepper thumbprint cookies, I’ve been using up quite a bit to bake for our Mother’s day gift boxes. I have always loved rose preserves, which is basically just rose petals cooked into a jelly. The flavor and texture of this particular brand, Mymoune, is just right for the cookies - I only have to chop the petals a bit to make it a little neater. These may just become a regular item now that I have found a cheaper source.

Along with my usual kitchen production this week I had a special request. Mia’s friend Roan had his fourth birthday party over the weekend and I was asked to make the cake. It’s been a while since I have made a cake of this size, meant to serve up to 100 people. In restaurants I used to make cakes twice the size for all sorts of parties, but in a home kitchen it’s certainly a different story. The main issue is refrigerator space, which is always short in my house, and trying to fit in a half-sheet cake was quite a challenge. The actual cooking, filling and frosting is more manageable, even with two kids tugging at my legs begging for a taste of buttercream.

The cake itself is one of my absolute favorites. I suppose that if I ever open a bakery of some kind that this would have to be my signature. The best part is the filling, a dulce de leche cream, with a dulce de leche swirl for good measure. I first made it for Mia’s third birthday and have made it on many occasions since then. It works well with any combination of cake and frosting, and in this case a rich yellow butter cake with a bittersweet chocolate buttercream made up the layers. All the kids and grownups loved it, and even self-proclaimed cake critics (who isn’t?) claimed it was the best they have had. Such positive feedback makes me want to make more birthday cakes, maybe just a bit smaller next time. Also, be sure to notice Mia lurking in the picture above to “help” blow out the candles, and then take a candle to lick off the frosting.