My kids were not fooled by the snow cream. They like it, kind of. But melted snow is melted snow.

The Baby Nickel is a little different than the rest of them. He loves snow in its pure unsweetened form. In fact, he goes around eating up the clumps of snow that get tracked into the house. He scarfs them directly off the floor and wolfs them down, just like a dog (not that dogs eat snow off floors). (Though since the snow-clumps are dirty they might not qualify as “pure”. Maybe he just likes the taste of wet rubber?) If I clean some of the snow up before he gets to it, he gets mad at me.

Like I said, snow cream doesn’t quite cut it. If anything, it got me craving for real ice cream. So when The Baby Nickel’s birthday came around and I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said, rapid fire, “Arainbowcakewithlollipopsontop,” I used my maternal powers to help him see the light.

“How about we do something different, mmm? Like, say, an ice cream cake? It would have peanut butter cups and caramel sauce and whipped cream. We could put sprinkles on top, or even some lollipops, if those are really important to you. How about it, kiddo?”

“Okay! Yeah! An ice cream cake!”

I love it when they’re three-almost-four, so easily sway-able. (And by the way, I’m not manipulative; I’m charismatic.)

When I was a kid, we got to choose the kind of cake we wanted, but then we weren’t allowed to see the end result till it was time to eat it. Mom did all sorts of creative decorative things (think watermelons and mailboxes with a can of coke stuck inside and barns and chickens); it was one of our presents. In my house, the kids (or, eh-hem, the mother) choose the flavor of cake and then help to make it. Getting to work in the kitchen with me is part of the present. (Wow. That made me sound terrible, like the type of mother who makes her kids eat popsicles in the bathtub. I would never be so picky; I just kick them out of the house entirely when sticky, drippy food is involved.)

So The Baby Nickel worked really hard to make his cake. It involved a lot of unwrapping.

And a bit of stacking and chopping.

And then there was some layering. We call it real-life geometry.

And then I drizzled the caramel, a la Jackson Pollock.

And then we did the layering part again. Practice makes perfect, you know.

It was a struggle to keep the other kids out of the kitchen. They kept trying to sneak in and snitch tastes, and every time The Baby Nickel licked something (and he licked a lot of things), there was a great outcry from the other children.

I heard all about how awful it was for him to be tasting and touching—He’ll make us all SICK! It’s DISGUSTING! It’s GROSS! It’s an ABOMINATION!—but I just smiled and chalked it up as a real-life science lesson titled Germs And How They Might Spread. (They didn’t actually say the abomination part.)

Did you have any idea that ice cream cakes were so educational?

They’re also good, but that’s just a bonus.

Not that we’re keeping track of points around here.

Ice Cream Cake
I think I got this recipe from my friend Wendy, but I’m not sure. It’s all over the web—one of the most basic and uninvolved cakes possible. And perhaps one of the best excuses to load up on junk food, especially when you’re smack-dab in the middle of a spending freeze.

This is not my typical dessert—the only homemade thing is the whipped cream—but it could become as homemade as you like. You could layer plain chocolate wafers (or make your own) with homemade ice cream of any flavor, drizzle it with your own fruit or chocolate or caramel sauce, and make your own candy (try this or this) to sprinkle over top. The options are endless.

24 ice cream sandwiches, unwrapped (duh)
2 cups heavy whipping cream, whipped and sweetened
1 12-ounce jar caramel sauce (I used about 8 ounces), warmed
1 big bag peanut butter cups, roughly chopped

Put a layer of ice cream sandwiches in the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan. You may have to cut some of the sandwiches in order to fill all the nooks and crannies. Spread half of the whipped cream on top. Drizzle on half of the caramel sauce. Sprinkle half of the peanut butter cups over top.

Repeat the process: the rest of the sandwiches, whipped cream, caramel sauce (use flair!), and peanut butter cups. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and freeze for a couple hours before serving.

Yield: way more than enough.

About one year ago: Potatoes with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette

What with all this snow we’ve been having, my kids have decided to take advantage of the situation and go live in it.

They used the same materials and methods that Mr. Handsome and I employed when we built our adobe house in Nicaragua: a mold, a packable material (like mud or snow), and the block-building techniques they learned as toddlers, and that’s it. It’s much easier to build a house than people realize, but don’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t want to put Mr. Handsome out of work.

This house is rather sturdy, with thick walls studded with peep holes to let light in and provide a small scouting range. It’s insulated in there, too. I know because they never answer me when I call them from the Big House.

I really like the turrets. My kids have style and flair. I am so proud of them.

Miss Beccaboo looks like she’s stepped straight out of our Material World book, posing by her little home. She looks so hearty and durable and a bit squinty, like people who live in snowy climates always seem to end up looking. She’s a natural.

See, here’s a true-blue family from Uzbekistan.

Note the snow and the thick, heavy coats.

And here’s my daughter. That she’s from Virginia, you would never guess.

In order to make a roof, they stole some wood from the barn.

They stole a bunch of blankets and old rugs to cover up the door and to carpet the floor.

They sit out there and have a blast.

I think Miss Beccaboo might be slowly freezing.

Oops. There she goes. She passed out.

In Uzbekistan they huddle under green blankets, too. Maybe draping themselves with green helps them to dream warm, summery dreams.

Even I have gotten into the frigid spirit of things and have taken to harvesting snow as a major source of food for our daily diet.

It’s really quite practical. I just open the kitchen door,

swipe a bowl of white stuff from the great outdoors,

drizzle it with a mixture of cream, vanilla, and sugar,

stir it up,

and dish it out.

We call it Snow Cream. It does not fool anyone, but it’s still fun.

About one year ago: Lemon Tart

I took two years of art class in high school. My instructor was grumpy man with a dry sense of humor who drilled us on technique like there was no tomorrow. The first year of art class we learned perspective. There was one perspective…

And then there was another…

And then there was yet another…

And when he tired of teaching perspective, he started in on the shading.

There were still lifes, too, with multi-sided glass bottles. He was mean.

Because I didn’t take art until I was a junior, that meant that I was a senior when I took Art II. (Look at me! I can do math!) I was bummed about that (once I caught on to how the math added up) because I discovered I loved art class, and I wished I could’ve taken all four years. Alas, oil, sculpture, and water colors were not to be my lot in life. (Maybe this is why I am forever mixing oil and water and turning the end result into sweet sculptures?)

But I wasn’t the only slow learner—there was another senior by the name of Brian who was in my same situation, and because we were high-and-mighty seniors with inflexible schedules, we ended up taking the class during Mr. Art Teacher’s free period. As a result, it was more of an independent study, but Mr. Art Teacher never let us forget that we were cutting in on his free period, and he made us suffer for it, too. To teach us the proportions of the human body, he had us sketch each other over and over and over again. I drew Brian bending over, Brian reaching up, Brian doing leg lifts, Brian doing back bends, Brian sitting with his legs crossed, Brian doing a split, Brian swimming, Brian running, Brian spazzing out.

We also learned the proportions of the head, and then we utilized different techniques—pencil point, stippling, cross-hatching—to draw faces.

Pencil point was fun, but very tedious. Do you recognize these eyes?

That’s right, it’s Atticus Finch.

Otherwise known as Gregory Peck.

When my brother was in art class, a few years after me, he drew a picture of the two of us and then gave it to me for a Christmas present.

I was—and am—thrilled. I never give away my art because I do so little of it and because it takes so incredibly long to complete a picture. It now hangs above my sofa, right under a picture of another little boy.

Can you guess who this little boy is?

Yep, it’s Mr. Handsome, back before he had earned the Mister prefix. It appears he always had the handsome part down.

I drew the picture while we were dating. The Grand Matriarch gave me the original to work from and kept my secret for the many months that I worked on it. It was to be a Christmas present, but I didn’t get it done in time, so it turned into a Valentine Day’s gift. But by that time, I had decided that I wanted to break up with him (not because of the drawing). So I hitched a ride with a friend up to his home place in New York over Valentine’s Day weekend, gave him the picture, and then told him our relationship was over. I cried all the way back to Virginia.

Oh, you want to know why I was breaking up with him? Well see, I didn’t think he listened to me very well. He never asked me questions; he didn’t pry into my personal life like all my girlfriends did. He was rather aloof and cool, and I didn’t feel nurtured enough.

But he called me the next day and reported he had already read a good chunk of two different books (recommended by his older sister, bless her heart) about communication and how men and women relate. He asked me questions. He was attentive. I agreed, relieved to the tips of my grief-stricken toes, to give the relationship another shot. Six months later we tied the knot. (And then we fought for an entire year, but that’s too tedious to delve into right now. I’m supposed to be talking about art.)

I started a few other pencil point drawings after that, or maybe it was before—I don’t remember.

You can see the gridding process a little more clearly in the unfinished pictures.

We learned about pastels in the last quarter of my senior year in high school, and then we used pastels to draw a face. (Mr. Art Teacher really knew how to drive home a point.) I chose to draw a picture of an old woman that I found in an old National Geographic magazine. After working on her for nine weeks, I grew rather fond of her and started referring to her as My Granny.

My parents had the picture matted for Christmas, and my father built the frame. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

I’m particularly fond of her fly-away hair and her crinkly laughing eyes. She’s watched over our home for so long that she’s practically a member of the family. In fact, when no one else is around, she talks to me. Sometimes I hold her stick so that she can flex her fingers, but though she pleads most pathetically, I refuse to give her a turn with the hairbrush.

I never draw anymore. I’m not actually an artist. I’m not compelled to pick up paper and pencil and record my world through pictures, and the pictures I did draw didn’t come welling up out of me—all my art was copycat work. Which I don’t think discredits it as art; it’s just not inspired art.

In any case, inspired or not, I plan to teach my kids the techniques that I learned in high school. I saved all my notes from class, so I’m equipped and ready. And, if and when my kids go to high school, I will insist—no ifs, ands, or buts—that they take art every single year.

And I hope their art teacher is good and mean, too.

About one year ago: A bedroom birth. My baby is FOUR years old. I am such an old woman.