Happy New Year! 2011

We had some great finger foods at our New Year’s get together tonight! Cheesy Olive bread, baby hamburgers, pigs in a blanket and cupcakes. This time the cupcakes came out of a box (feeling guilty), but I couldn’t afford another debacle like last time…not when I actually needed the cupcakes. The icing was homemade, a butter cream frosting, but the consistency wasn’t right to make the swirls at the top like I wanted to. I will figure out the cupcake swirl! I must! I will not stop making cupcakes until I have the icing swirl down perfectly! If it's the last thing I do...

Grrr!

Ok, so I was baking cupcakes and as you can tell from the picture, they did not turn out. It is the same yellow cake recipe that fell apart before in my ‘cake crash’ post. This was the last straw; I will no longer use that yellow cake recipe as long as I live. Anyway, the cupcake was just a medium for practicing my frosting techniques and that went a tiny bit better than the actual baking of the cupcakes, but when your canvas has holes in it, something is left lacking the final work of art. Thus the end product was not what I had hoped for. I searched and found another actual cupcake recipe (instead of a cake recipe) and I will try again tomorrow. Ba hum bug!

thrift shop score

Today we went out to lunch with our family that came in from out of town. Also, turns out my sister-in-law is quite the thrift shopper so I had her take me and show me the ropes. I scored two pairs of pants and a nice dress shirt for $21.00. Pretty impressive! Overall, an awesome day.

Lemon Cake with Rasperry Mousse

This was today's creation! So happy with my new electric mixer! :)

Merry Christmas!

waste not, want not

After the cake fiasco, I still had to use the beautiful pink icing I made. I didn’t want it to go to waste. EJ had the same idea and started dipping his finger in it and eating it. I went the more traditional route and made some sugar cookies instead.

Cake Crash

I made cake from scratch today! No box, from SCRATCH! I was so excited…but alas, it was not meant to be, the cakes stuck to the top of the pan leaving a mess that could not be iced. By the way, cake from scratch is so much yummier than cake from the box.

My New Favorite Poem:Babies Don't Keep

Cleaning and Scrubbing can wait 'til tomorrow.
For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs...dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.
-unknown

This poem made me cry just thinking about how E has grown up so fast over the last year and a half. When he was little and wouldn't let me put him down even for one second, I was just so frustrated and now all I want to do is cuddle him and he is frustrated with me. (sigh)

candy tree

mmmm...Candy that grows on trees! My dreams have come true!

Silly Baby

I believe that happiness is a choice, an endeavor. I try to find little things that make me smile everyday. Today, it was EJ walking around with a towel on his head running into things. I was laughing so hard while I was trying to get some pictures…he walked into walls and just kept going.