Weffer's Birthday & Breezy's Prom Mask

This is Weffers and her pirate ship pinata Risti got her for her birthday. She LOVES it, and will not be beating it to death with a stick. She also got a HUGE balloon. She is a big fan of The Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Dee got her a beautiful wind chime. Mr Wonderful and I just gave her cash. We do not have the time or effort to do creative gift giving.....well, not all the time. We have been known to give a good gift (her lap top last year). This would not be the year.

Years ago, our children decided they much preferred "cookie cakes" to regular birthday cakes. Every birthday finds us making them each a cookie cake. I have no clue how many cookie cakes we have made through the years, but it would be a lot. We also make them for every special occasion. I tried making homemade cookie dough for these, but much prefer just to use a tube of Nestle's cookie dough. I bake them for just 9 minutes or so and let them cool, then we decorate them. Most of the time, I used store bought frosting, too. If I do make homemade frosting, I always add almond extract. When I do that, Risti volunteers to decorate them, as she LOVES that frosting. It is hard to get together as a family, so we celebrate each birthday or occasion at our weekly Sunday family dinner. Hence, the ease of making the cookies, as after 3 hours in church plus extra meetings, I don't have a lot of time to do the 'homemade' thing. One thing I thought of as I looked at the last piece of cookie cake this am, it was "Weffer's" name. The kids do not eat the piece of cookie cake with the birthday person's name on it. Even the grandkids know to save the piece with the name on it for an extra treat for the birthday person.

Also, Dee took us to BJ's Brewery once for their pazooki, a cookie desert that she just loved. Basically, it started out a small cookie cake, served warm, topped with ice cream and a little drizzle of fudge topping. I think it was around $5 or more. I told Dee I was certain I could do those pazooki's. I went to "Big Pan" and bought a bunch of little 6-inch round pans. Once in awhile I make that size cookie, top it with French vanilla ice cream and drizzle fudge topping on it and serve it warm. Voila! Mom O' Nine's pazooki! The only trick is NOT to over bake the cookie dough.

Weffers and her cookie cake. When she turns 20 next year, Mr Wonderful and I will be down to one teenager! She would be the little imp pictured below.
This is Breezy and her special mask that Dee aka middle child, brought her from London. She LOVES it!
This is the HUGE mask Breezy made for a decoration for the upcoming prom this Friday and Saturday. She hand drew several prototypes and finally settled on this one. The fabric she covered her mask with is sparkly and elegant looking. It didn't show up very well on my picture. I put the London mask in the picture so you can see how large Breezy's mask actually is.