peculiar pancakes plus pumpkin procreation

i've said it before and i'll say it again: i'm shamless about trying rack up as many "mom is hilarious" points as i can while the kids are young and still labor under the mistaken notion that i'm actually funny. one of my favorite things to do in this pursuit is to make, as they call them, "silly pancakes". 

now, my mom used to make smiley face pancakes for us when we were little, and i have lots of memories of her standing over the pan with a spoon trying to drip fat swaths of batter into the curve of a mouth or giant eyes. so that's where i started a few years back, and i've been slowly perfecting my technique since then. first of all, i am a firm believer that it's important to have the right tools. behold my weapon of choice: the leftover infant medicine dropper. 

second of all, don't rush. a beautiful work of pancake art requires precision, yes, but patience as well. the design needs time to darken before the rest of the batter is applied or your face will be faint and wan. and there is nothing funny about a wan pancake.unless it's just the way those two words sound together. wan pancake. wan PANcake. WANPAN cake! okay, i'm done.

this morning i also got the opportunity to facilitate some botanical sex. get your mind out of the gutters, pervs, i mean of course that i was out bright and early this morning using a paintbrush to pollinate my pumpkins. we're having a real honeybee crisis as you might know, so i was just, ahem, giving my cucurbits a helping hand. the flowers were huge and wide open this morning, but this is what they looked like a few hours later:

i guess all that baby-making action tuckered them out.

i was tempted to photoshop in a few cigarettes, but thought that might be crude.