Cupcake Fun!

This post is totally gonna go against everything I have been sharing for the past month about eating healthy but before you get all worked up, let me explain. :)

You all know I love cupcakes.  I love eating them (of course) but I also love decorating them! One of the things on the girls' summer bucket list was to have a cupcake decorating party so two weeks ago Friday, that's what we did.  I invited several of my MOPS friends over with their kiddos so that we could have a fun decorating party and I think it's safe to say it was a hit.  I provided the sprinkles and frosting, and everyone brought their own cupcakes to decorate.

I bought the ready whip frosting in a carton to make it easy.  It's a yummy whipped cream type frosting called Pastry Pride and it worked out great with the exception of me not buying enough! Ooops! My goal was for everyone to bring a dozen or so cupcakes and decorate them with their kids but once everyone got there, I realized that I wasn't gonna have enough for everyone to do that. I was super bummed but it all ended up working out because a couple of the girls just had their kiddos decorate a cupcake or two and then let them snack on it right then and there.

Here was my friend Virginia's daughter, Leah, helping herself to a cupcake!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day!

It was fun seeing how everyone decided to decorate their cupcakes....

Since I wanted to make sure our guests got to decorate as many cupcakes as possible, I told my girls that they could decorate after naptime, once I could get to the store to get more frosting. It ended up working out great and they had a fun time decorating their cupcakes before dinner time. Alyssa is practically a pro with the piping bag! ;)

She loved decorating just like mommy does!

Here was Audrey all proud of one of her masterpieces...

And in case you're wondering where Alivia was during decorating time, she was there but mostly got into trouble so she was playing with her toys and watching T.V. instead.  She kinda got kicked out of the kitchen after dumping half of a container of sanding sugar on the floor! 

Here were the girls' works of art! All unique and special!

I even got to have some fun decorating some cupcakes too and believe it or not, I made it through that entire day without eating a single one!  I sent these cupcakes to church with my mom that night and she said they enjoyed them!

Since this party went so well, I'm gonna try and schedule another one sometime in the next couple of weeks here for the other friends who wanted to come to the first one but couldn't make it.  I'd better get on scheduling it soon, since school is just around the corner!

Thanks to Virginia, Kirstin, Kellie, Keri, Jody and Elesa for coming out and hanging out with us! It was fun!

Construction Party Fun!

Over the weekend, we got to attend our neighbor's little boy Aidan's 4th birthday party.  It was a fun construction themed party held at their church and the girls had a really fun time!

My neighbor, Rachel asked me a few weeks ago if I could make some cupcakes for the party and I told her of course I would!  When I asked Rachel what she had in mind for decorating the cupcakes, she mentioned wanting to do some "worm in the dirt" type cupcakes.  I had fun on Friday night making the cupcakes and decided to decorate them in a couple of different ways...one way for the kids and another for the adults.  I thought they turned out pretty cute!

For the adult cupcakes I did piped on chocolate whipped cream frosting with crushed oreo topping and gummy worms...

For the kids...tons of "dirt" with little construction candies that Rachel bought...

The kids had fun doing an obstacle course game they had set up and when they finally sat down for a break, I was able to snap a few pics.  I thought this was a funny one of Aidan, scrunching up his nose!

It was a fun party and I think that Rachel and her Hubby did a great job putting the whole thing together! The girls had a lot of fun and came home with a bunch of candy and treats! :)

A sweet kinda day and some winners!

It's gonna be a busy baking day for me, so I thought I'd post just a quick one to share some super yummy cupcakes I made last week and then get going for my day!  Today I'll be making a cake for a family birthday party and then I have a cupcake order from a friend for a first birthday tomorrow morning, which I'm pretty excited about!  I also have some winners to announce from all the giveaways from this week as well so here we go!!!

My friend Julie sent me the link to these super yummy cupcakes several months ago but I hadn't had the chance to make them until last week.  They are called "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" cupcakes and you can find out everything there is to know about how to make them HERE.  Basically, for this cupcake, you're baking some chocolate chip cookie dough in the middle of the cupcake!  Yum!  Here's what they look like before you bake them...

 I cheated and used some Betty Crocker packaged cookie dough mix that I like and it still turned out really good.  If you want a cupcake that's totally rich and sinfully delicious, then this is your cupcake!

Now...onto giveaway winners!

The winner of the cupcake liners and gel pastes is:  Andrew & Lisa Lansink
The winner of the crocheted heart fridgies is:  Caroline @ The Croley Gang
The winner of the $5 Starbucks giftcard is:  Sarah @ Gives and Takes
The winner of the Progresso prize pack is:  Rosanova Family (comment #16)

If you're a winner, please message me (see Contact me link at top of my page if you don't have my email address) with your address asap and I'll get your goodies out to you!  You'll have 24 hrs to claim your prize and if I don't hear back from you, I'll select another winner! Thanks so much to everyone who entered in and have a great weekend!!!

P.S.  To all the new followers that came to enter into the soup giveaway this week, I hope you'll stick around and come back and visit me again! :)

Just blog!

Well, Christmas has come and gone and I'm finally sitting here catching my breath!  December was such a busy month and between my birthday and getting ready for Christmas, I wasn't able to blog like I usually do.  The dust has finally settled though so I'm hoping to get back to my usual self!

Tonight I was sitting here with my Hubby and was telling him how behind I feel with everything and that I just didn't know where to start here on the blog.  He said the simplest thing to me and he was totally right.  He said..."Just blog." I think what I'll do is just play catch up over the next few posts and just share what all's been going on over the last month or so here in our world!

We had a great Christmas and surprisingly enough I hardly took any pictures!  I was too busy going from house to house making the rounds to see all of both sides of our family and I didn't have much time to bust out my camera.  We didn't even get the chance to take even one family photo but oh well.  Some holidays are just like that!

Having three kiddos this Christmas made for a challenging and busy holiday!  I spent all day the day before Christmas Eve baking and when it was all said and done, I didn't feel like I made much of anything. I finally got to realizing that I tend to be overly ambitious and I need to just relax and be okay with whatever doesn't get done.  Why I make things so hard on myself, I do not know!

Here are a few of the pics I took of the Christmas treats I made....

Yummy treats we gave as gifts to the family

Mini pumpkin loaves I made and then wrapped all pretty!

And Christmas cupcakes, of course!

It was definitely a baking sort of holiday. Yum,yum!

Weekend Stuff

My weekend was nice and super busy as usual!  On Friday, I got out to get my haircut as planned while my mom watched all three girls!  All went well and I was so happy to hear that Livvie didn't fuss even once while I was gone.  She normally will cry with anyone but me or my Hubby, so knowing she did so well was a big relief!

On Friday night, I multitasked my heart away, baking cupcakes for my nephew's baby shower and coloring my hair while they baked!  I cannot believe how gray I'm getting and I think the reality is that it's only going to get worse from here! :(  Seriously, I'm finding that I have to dye my hair at least every 4 weeks to get rid of these unwanted pests!

On Saturday, I set to work on frosting and decorating the three boxes worth of cupcakes I made on Friday night.  I decided to make white, yellow and carrot cake, so I whipped up a batch of both cream cheese and buttercream frostings.  I decided to decorate the cupcakes with peanut M&M's since the theme of the shower was "King of the Jungle" and the M&M's matched really well.  I was so excited when I got to the shower and saw that the cupcakes matched the big cake they ordered perfectly!

                                                                             The cake...

The cupcakes...

The shower was really nice (although it rained off and on) and they had an amazing turn out.  Our nephew and his fiancee were so blessed and received a ton of gifts! 

Also...I'm really excited that I get to share a few more reviews and giveaways soon.  I've been working with some other fun review programs where I can be a "tester" of sorts, and I'm really excited about them.

Speaking of which...last week I was sent two packages of Stacy's pita chips to try out.

It was my first time trying out their chips and they were pretty yummy.  They were super crunchy and go perfectly with dips!  If you are a fan of Stacy's chips, you might be interested in knowing that starting today until November 17th, you can go HERE enter to win their Holiday Sweepstakes by sharing a favorite holiday Stacy's snack idea!  One lucky winner will win a one-year supply of Stacy's coupons and an awesome prize basket valued at $750!

Disclosure:  I was sent two bags of Stacy's pita chips to review through MomSelect.  All opinions about the product are my own. :)

All over the board

I've been in sort of a funk over the last couple days and I'm just not sure why.  I've been tired and unmotivated and just down for some reason.  I'm hoping that I'll snap out of it soon because I have lots to do and this coming weekend is going to be a busy one for our family. 

Last night I made it out to a girls night out with my MOPS group.  I decided I would make some cupcakes to share with the girls and decided to go with a fun girl color!

I love, love the decorating part of cupcake making and some days I just wish that I could find a hobby that wasn't so fattening!  It's just so hard to make cupcakes without eating them!  I've been gaining the weight back that I worked hard to lose over the summer and I really need to get back on track soon!

Cream cheese goodness

Today I wanted to finally get to posting the recipe I found for some delicious cream cheese frosting like I mentioned making the other day.  Since I've been obsessed with all things cupcakes lately, last week, I decided to go to TLC's website to check out some videos from the gals from DC Cupcakes.  I rarely get to watch the show when it's on TV, so I thought it would be cool to watch the videos they have on TLC's site.  I was so excited when I watched one of their videos and found that they shared one of the actual recipes they use at their bakery, Georgetown Cupcake.  So cool!  I tried it out the day of our little cupcake party and let me just tell you...it was AWESOME!  It was creamy and delicious and piped on so beautifully...

The girls got to have fun decorating that day, but these were my pride and joy! :)

I tried a different technique this time for the piping and I think it turned out well.  Instead of doing the swirl starting on the outside like I did in my vlog a while back, I started in the middle, squeezed a bunch on, and then made a quick swirl at the top.  I think I'll probably be using this technique from now on!  Anyhow, here's the recipe I just wrote down after watching the video.

Easy Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1/2 c (one stick) unsalted butter

6 oz cream cheese

*4 c sifted confectioner's sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

~Cream butter and cream cheese together on medium-high speed for about a minute until light and smooth.

~ Beat in confectioner's sugar one cup add a time.

~When all the sugar is added in, beat in vanilla.

~Whip together an additional one to two minutes until frosting becomes light and fluffy.

*Please note that when I first wrote this post I accidentally said 6 c sifted powdered sugar.  It was actually supposed to be 4 cups.  So sorry for the typo!

And that's it!  Seriously, it's that simple and it's so, so good!  If you want to go and watch the video yourself, you can go HERE to check it out! 

I also want to mention really quick that in the video, they say you'll need 1/2 a stick of butter, not a 1/2 cup of butter like I mentioned above.  If you bake a lot you'll see that what they showed to be 1/2 stick of butter really looked a lot like a stick of butter which is the equivalent to 1/2 cup of butter.  Also, they mentioned that you need six ounces of cream cheese.  I just used one 8 ounce block like you'd find at your grocery store and it turned out just fine to me.  You'll have to watch the video and decide for yourself what works for you!

How I Ice Cupcakes {A Vlog}!

It's official.  I am completely obsessed with cupcake making!  It's all I want to do in my spare time (like I have lots of that) and it's just been so much fun!  Over the past five days I've made about eight dozen cupcakes!  Can you believe it?

I keep finding myself wanting to make more just to practice decorating them and let me just say, it has not been good for the waistline.  At all.  I had been doing so good with eating well and then  a couple of weeks ago, I completely fell off the wagon.  I've slowly been gaining weight again but thankfully not all of it's come back.  Oh cupcakes...you are my downfall!

While at Walmart today I decided to pick up a few boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix.  It's my favorite brand of cake mix and I decided to stock up since it was only $0.98 a box!

This afternoon, my sister Yvonne came over just in time for me to start baking a new batch of cupcakes and I got to show her how to make that new buttercream frosting recipe I mentioned on my last post.  It really is SO yummy and if you didn't click on the link last time and you enjoy baking, you really must check it out.  It's on the blog called Crazy Domestic and it's a part of a fun cupcake workshop.  Go HERE to get the recipe.  It's so simple and consists of just four ingredients!

My sister left before I could start decorating the cupcakes and as I started on dinner, the thought occured to me that my sweet friend Bethany over at HappyascanB asked me on Facebook the other day to do a vlog on how I ice my cupcakes.  I decided to enlisted the help of Alyssa to record me icing cupcakes with our Flip camera.  Here's what the cupcakes ended up looking like...

and here's how I did them...

How to pipe on icing--Part 1 from Veronica on Vimeo.



How to pipe on icing--Part 2 from Veronica on Vimeo.

Hope this helps a little and like I mentioned in the video, I am so far from an expert.  I definitely have lots to learn but I'm having so much fun in the meantime!

P.S.  If you have a fun baking tip to share with me, please feel free to shoot it my way.  I love how we can all share fun ideas and help each other along the way!

Homemade buttercream delciousness!

I decided to try out a new recipe I found HERE for homemade buttercream frosting.  I was a little hestitant about it at first because I wasn't sure how everyone would like the taste compared the the usual whipped cream frosting I use.  Turns out I was worrying for nothing because the cupcakes were a big hit!  I was so happy to hear everyone's reactions and it make me excited to make more cupcakes with buttercream frosting in the future.  Here's what they turned out looking like...

I ended up using the spray on color like I showed in my Friday post.  The finished product didn't turn out exactly what I had initially envisioned but I decided just to go with it and stop being so critical of myself.  I really am my own worst enemy.

29

Last Thursday we celebrated my sister Dolly's 29th birthday! 

Dolly is our middle sister and she and I are just 18 months apart.  If you figure all of that out, I was just nine months old when my mom got pregnant with her.  Two years after Dolly was born, my sister Yvonne came along.  As you can imagine, it was a busy life for my parents but my mom loved every single minute of being a mom since she waited so long to become a mother.  My poor dad got made fun of a lot at work since all three of us came in such a short span of time.  Now that I have our three girls, I've been getting a taste of what it's like for random people to put in their two cents when they see us all together.  That is definitely something I'll be touching on later in the week because I have lots more to say on that topic!

Back to the party...We had a small get together at Dolly and her hubby Manny's house.

The night before the party, I went to Target (super last minute, I know) and found some cute black and white damask plates and napkins for the party.

At first I thought they were pretty plain but then my next thought was how cute it all would be if we could add some hot pink to the mix.  I even found some cool hot pink mini buckets in the dollar section and got some tissue paper in the party colors to stuff in the buckets.

 On the day of the party, my other sister Yvonne and I met up so that I could give her all the stuff for the decorating the party and got back home so I could start baking. 

When I got to the party, I was so excited to see what an awesome job Yvonne did with the decorating!

My BIL said he had already ordered  a little cake, but I decided to surprise them with cupcakes too.  Little did I realize that Yvonne and I think way too much alike.  Turns out when I got to the party, she had the exact same thought in mind too.  Down to the hot pink cupcake liners and chocolate cake mix! The only real difference is the way we decorated them.  I think they all turned out awesome!

Her cupcakes...

My cupcakes...

One thing I decided after making these cupcakes is that I'm done with using the gel color pastes from a certain brand you'll find at Michael's.  I was trying to get a super hot pink color for my frosting and put a lot of coloring in it, and as a result, the taste of the frosting was CRAZY strong.  I've learned my lesson and a couple of days ago, I decided to order the gel paste you see pictured at the left here from Amazon.  I can't wait to try it out for the next party I'll be making cookies or cupcakes for!

I had a fun time at my sister's party and hanging out with a few of her friends from work even though I ended up arriving REALLY late.  I had the best of intentions of making some super yummy and fun decorated sugar cookies but after mixing that in with cupcaking making and getting three girls ready with a Hubby who was gone for the evening, that didn't end up working out.  I have to keep reminding myself that I should try to limit what I can take on because things are a lot more complicated now that I have three kids.

I had fun taking pictures at the party although at times I'm finding my camera does weird things.  I MUST learn how to use this camera as soon as I can sit down to figure all of that out.  I know it can do lots more than just sit in the Auto function, where I usually keep it. )

Here was our mom and our girls, minus Livvie...

And my favorite Livvie pic of the night...

I love her smile!  She's looking SO much like Alyssa did at this age!

And here's one last picture of all of us girls.  For some reason, it came out a bit blurry, but I still wanted to post one of all of us. 

Our mom with her three girls and my three girls plus my niece.  I wonder if we'll ever get any boys in the family.  Maybe someday! :)

It was a fun night and I just can't believe my sister is only a year away from thirty!  It's crazy how fast time flies!

The kitchen sink...flowers, a movie, and cupcakes {A catch up post}

Since I've been crocheting my heart out this week, I've been so behind on blogging.  There's always so much I want to write but there's this little thing called time that always seems to go way too fast for me!

This week, I've been having a lot of fun working on my new flower clippies for my shop!  I've also made it my goal to make and add some new hats to my website in the next week here.  It's been bare for Lord knows how long and I've been meaning to do something about that.  I also decided that I want to go in a new direction with my hats.  One that's more focused on baby hats.  I LOVE all things baby and I enjoy making the little hats the most.  I've decided to work on making little baby hats to add to my shop and then if I happen to get an email for a custom hat order, I'll take those on if I have time.

Here are a few of the clippies I've made this week so far...

What do you think about them?  I've been having a good time working on them and the thing I like the most is that they'll all be different in some way.  I have a gazillion different buttons in my stash and the ribbon/button/color combos are endless!
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On Monday night, Alyssa and I did end up making it out to see Ramona and Beezus.  I was a little nervous about leaving my Hubby with the two little ones but it turned out everything went well and the baby didn't fuss even once!  Alyssa and I had a good time just me and her and we both thought the movie was cute.  After watching the movie though I walked away feeling like it left a lot to be desired. I wasn't sure if I was the only one who thought this, so just for fun today, I Googled reviews and happened on this one.  It pretty much sums up how I felt about the movie.  Despite my reservations, I do think it was worth seeing anyway. It was cute and the characters were well cast.  I especially love the girl who played Ramona (so cute) and the gal who played her Aunt Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin).  Oh, and I also thought it was pretty cute how they were babywearing Ramona's baby sister in the movie too!

Of course while we were there at the movies, I had to snap a quick picture for memories sake...

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One last thing I'm behind on blogging about is my niece Breanna's birthday party, which was on Saturday.  Since both Audrey and Alivia weren't feeling so good that day, my Hubby and I took turns watching the girls so that we could both attend the party.  My Hubby's sister's house is only about 10 minutes away from here, so it worked out that we could both go to party.  What is so special about this birthday is that Breanna turned 13!  She picked out a Hollywood theme and I was excited to help out and make the cupcakes for the party!!!

I knew I wanted to make some picks for the cupcakes but I wasn't really sure what to come up with.  I'm not usually super creative when it comes to making up something off the top of my head but after a trip to Michael's I found some cute metallic paper and some star stickers and set off to make my own toppers.  I found a Hollywood font here, and downloaded that, and cut out my own stars using my cookie cutters.  At one point I was wishing I had a Cricut machine, but that will have to get added to my wishlist for one day, alongside that KitchenAid Mixer I've always wanted!

Here's what the end result turned out looking like...

Everybody liked them and that made me happy!  My next assignment is some cupcakes for a triple "Fiesta" themed birthday next Saturday.  I'm still working on what I'll be doing as far as decorations, and I'm thinking about trying to get my hands on a big fat decorating tip like the kind they use on DC Cupcakes.  Speaking of that show, has anyone else been watching it?  It's one of my new favorites!

Okay...enough with the rambling.  I think I'm caught up now.  It's off to work on some more hats and flowers and maybe even the chores that have been piling up since I've been spending so much time working on crocheting flowers!

Fun on the Fourth!

I made it my goal over the weekend to give the computer a break and just enjoy our holiday weekend and that's what I did!

On Friday and Saturday, I spent some time baking some cupcakes and cookies to take with us to the beach on Sunday, where we spent the the entire day with our family for the 4th.  I had fun making the cookies and tried out some new techniques I learned on the cookie blog I mentioned the other day.  I think they turned out pretty cute but they were definitely a ton of work!  It'll be fun to work on more cookies like this again in the future, but I've learned that they are definitely something that would have to be a project for after I put the girls down for the night!

Here's how the cookies turned out...

And the patriotic cupcakes...

I found some cute printables to make these cupcake picks on this blog the other day.  I think they were a neat addition to the cupcakes!

We had a great time at the beach with our family just hanging out and BBQing.  The girls had a lot of fun with their cousins and friends too!  Here's our family pic from this year...

 I love how Audrey was smiling so big here!

And here was my Livvie, taking one of her many naps of the day!  She did so well and was such a good baby!  Can you believe her 3-6 months clothes are already getting a little snug? 

Here was another one of my favorite pictures of the day!  Me and my little mini-me!  Of all five of us in our family, she and I were the only ones who got sunburned.  Go figure!

After spending the whole day at the beach, we made it home, gave the girls their baths and headed off to the parking lot of one of the shopping centers downtown to watch the fireworks from the fairgrounds. 

It was a short show and nothing too exciting and before we knew it, it was almost 10:00 p.m. and it was time to head home and put the girlies down for the night.  All of us had had a long day and it was nice to finally get home and get settled for the night.

All in all, we had a great Fourth!  I let that be my treat day and let me tell you, I really splurged that day!  I probably had one too many of these...

so now it's back to being a good girl this week!

Hope you all had a great weekend too and I'm excited to get caught with everyone else out there! 

P.S. If you haven't heard much from me lately, please don't take it the wrong way.  Life's been crazy busy and I'm trying to do better about not letting the computer take over my life!  I have more fun stuff to share this week and even have a few giveaways coming up just as soon as I can find time to post them!

Dreaming of treats

Early Friday morning, I woke up with a killer sore throat.  It progressed from there to a day and a half of fever and feeling downright yucky!  A couple of times during the weekend, I almost thought I was going to faint and was so glad to have my Hubby home to help me with the girls.  At one point, my Hubby even asked me if I was going to make it, and told me he needed me to stick around and help me raise these girls!  Talk about silly, huh?  I was sicker than I'd been in a super long time and I was so glad when the fever finally broke by noon on Saturday.

By that evening, I finally felt good enough to get out because it was the last day to use my 20% entire purchase coupon and 40% off one single item coupons at Michael's.  Nothing like saving money to get a person to get well fast, huh?  I'm giggling on the inside about that one because as it turns out, I wasn't as well as I thought I was and now I've lost my voice completely.  Joy. :)  My girls keep looking at me like I'm nuts today as I point and nod instead of talking to them with my actual voice!

Anyways, back to Michael's...I needed to pick up a few things I'm going to be needing for this coming weekend's Fourth of July treats, like some dye and sprinkles for my the patriotic cupcakes I'm planning on making.  When I was in the baking aisle, I even spotted the cookie cutter set I talked about the other day.  It was in a different container but had all the same special occasion cookie cutters and I decided at that moment that I needed it!

I also picked up this super cute stamp in the $1 bin and I was so excited when I went to pay and found that after coupons and using a $3 store credit I had sitting in my wallet for Lord know's when, I only paid $13 for all this stuff.  How cool is that?!?!

I'm really hoping to get well by the weekend, because every year on the Fourth of July, we go to the beach and spend the day with the family, just hanging out and eating yummy food.!  I can't wait to make the patriotic cupcakes that I initally found out about through Veronnica.  I also saw on FB today that a neat website I follow called Amazing Mom's also had their version of red, white and blue cupcakes.  Way cute, huh?

 (photo courtesy of Amazing Moms)

And speaking of yummy cupcakes...I just had to share something else that got me so excited today!  I was looking at my sister Yvonne's FB today and saw these SUPER cute cupcakes she made over the weekend for a Michael Jackson themed birthday party for a son of a friend of hers.

Aren't these cupcakes the cutest you've ever seen?  I LOVE THEM!!!

 Well, just in case you think I've gone off the deep end and totally fallen off the eating healthy wagon, think again.  I've been eating bread and a few other things again but just in moderation.  I've also been eating a ton of salad's lately (well, when I don't have a sore throat) too!  Add to mix the family walks we've been taking at night and my total weight loss so far is 14 lbs!  I'm so excited about it and I'm learning that I can still allow myself to eat treats.  It just can't be an everyday thing and I think I can deal with that!!!