Treat Time in Tribeca
 |
| NYC spray painted heart on a pedestrian bridge walkway. |
Valentine Day doings begins days ahead of time. On Monday afternoon, I started baking the 24 cupcakes for my sons school's annual Valentine's day bake sale.
 |
I was frosting until 11:30pm, then in the am put them all in my 3-tiered cupcake carrier for the walk to school. |
Even before that though, a week ago, our son Max took it upon himself to design valentine's day cards for all of his classmates (plus a dozen more for his grandparents, cousins and pals outside of school.)
Max had learnt how to do design work online, and took a photo of an R2d2 Star Wars mini-fig holding a blank sign. Then on this cool website picnik.com, he created custom cards for all with stickers, text, textures and effects. I sat next to him while he designed some of them, and I can't tell you how much fun he was having. Every time he discovered a new texture (like all-over bricks) or effect (heat-map) he called, "look at this." When Max was done, I uploaded them to a print site that had a discount deal, and 5 days later we had an orange envelope filled with cards at pennies each. Max really wanted to attach a treat, "coz that's what the kids are doing," so I bought some tinfoil covered milk chocolate hearts
and he and his dad taped them to the cards. Here are some of the cards Max designed.
I was really proud of him for all the hard work he put into these.
 |
Each card started with the R2d2 figure, but then different effects
like pixelating or doodling was added. |
My sweet friend Diana had given me a beautiful op-art patterned French Bull tray to display
baked goods on. I embellished it a bit with cut pink paper hearts to go with the
bright pink candy hearts I used as decoration.
 |
My candy heart embellished cupcakes. The pink was a little more salmon hued
than the bubble gum I'd envisioned but the buttercream flavored frosting tasted yummy anyway. |
The sale area was festively decorated by the lovely ladies in charge of the bake sale, Melissa and Stacie. And the tray, dishes and pans of baked goods came pouring in from moms and dads who had been baking up a storm the night before.
Other outstanding treats at the sale included these delectables.
 |
| Wow! A Valentine's Ginger Bread house to use as a centerpiece. |
 |
| Gluten-free goodies. |
 |
| Prettier pink cupcakes. I bought the one with the big chocolate kiss smack dabbed on the top! |
 |
Gone is the day that kids with allergies were excluded or had
to be satisfied with a less-than-cute treat. |
 |
The boys made a beeline for anything that looked like a brownie, the chocolate covered ones
were gone in 5 minutes, dollar bills were flying at us. The girls went for cupcakes,
the pinker, the girlier, the more embellished, the better. |
 |
The ladies with the big hearts helping to raise money for the school, chair persons
of the bake sale committees, Stacie (left) and Mellissa (right). |
--Monica Forrestall
