>It was a pantry raid that could have made even the host of Suddenly Frugal proud. Weather had something to do with it, too. It was bitter cold; the kind of day when the thermometer appears broken because it can’t handle double digit degrees below zero. Schools were closed, and we were housebound for the second day in a row.

Amigo thought this was great because it was his birthday and he got a bonus opportunity to sleep in due to the unexpected day off from school. I really, really didn’t want to go out of the house, though, with the weather so cold even icicles weren’t forming. Unfortunately, the vaporizer wasn’t working and we needed a birthday cake, so an errand run was in the works. Our favorite bakery is half a block from Walgreen’s, so it would have been a quick one if I had to go.

Instead, I utilized the fourth R: repair. I cleaned the vaporizer, added a pinch of baking soda, and it worked again. Yippee! One errand eliminated.

Next, I dug through the pantry and found a yellow cake mix. Yes! I could bake his birthday cake without ever leaving the house. Wait a minute…frosting…I had a full can of white frosting and a chocolate package only about a third full. Yellow cake really works better with chocolate, not white, so (you guessed it) I mixed a little white with the chocolate to make a light chocolate frosting to top the yellow cake. I made a small amount of powdered sugar frosting with a few dark chocolate kisses melted in it, and asked La Petite to drizzle it artistically on top. We add a few candles and basic cake decorations (from the cupboard), and Amigo’s birthday cake looked good enough to serve to the Grandmas and Grandpas.

We still left the house to take the family out for a birthday dinner combined with a bye-bye back to school dinner for La Petite. Somehow, leaving by choice wasn’t quite as freezing as the errands might have been.

Seventeen: wow. Where did the years go?