Getting Ready for the Third Grade

We have reached that weird part of summer where I am not ready for Camden to be gone all day, every day again, but at the same time, we are all in need of getting back to our school-year routine. So, I guess it really is time for back-to-school. I think we are all ready ~ we will be going to "Meet Your Teacher" night tomorrow at Camden's new school. Camden wanted to make "survival kits" like we did last year, so we tackled that last week. All of the items, including the box, can be found at your local dollar store, and I just made a tag to tie to the top. Camden has two teachers this year (one teaches the a.m. portion, and one in the afternoon) so we just doubled up.

This past Friday, I had a special dinner for the boys to celebrate back to school, which has sort of turned into a tradition around here. I always make a special treat, and really wanted to make some cake pops, but wasn't really looking forward to it. This was due to the fact that I've made cake balls before (same thing, only without the stick) and they were a messy, messy disaster. I guess I just wasn't making them properly, because these cute little apples were easy to make and came out so cute! I followed the instructions found here, and the only thing I did differently was to stick the cake pops in the freezer for about 15 minutes, after I'd attached the sticks and before I'd dipped them in the candy melts. The boys loved them. Warning: using a regular cake mix will produce a TON of these things. Going forward, I think I will use one of the mixes you can find at the dollar store for 12 cupcakes. I now can totally understand why people have blogs dedicated solely to cake pop-making...they are addictive!