Girl's Night Out

My good friend Mellissa just started selling for 31 Gifts so I offered to host a party so I could get some great hostess gifts, and what better excuse for a wine and dessert party!

If you aren't familiar with 31 gifts I highly recommend you check them out, I know have accumulated quite the collection and have 3 or 4 bags in my car at all time. I especially like the bags that double as a cooler to have in the car or when I take Alex to soccer practice.

Lately several of the blogs I follow were discussing desserts in a jar so I decided to give it a try. I made triple chocolate brownies in 4 ounce mason jars and topped them with a buttercream frosting with salted caramel. These were the hit of the party and looked so cute! The 4 ounce jars were the perfect serving size and also very convenient for the girls to take one home for their hubbies. When searching for recipe ideas I came across this site that has 15 different idea for desserts in a jar, I took their idea for the salted caramel brownies and tweaked it just a bit.


I also whipped up some pink champagne cupcakes that turned out pretty but taste wise just couldn't compete with the salted caramel brownies. I also found a beautiful apothecary jar at Michael's that I filled with dark chocolate wafer cookies from Trader Joe's. It was definitely a night full of my favorite things - sugar, chocolate, wine and great friends.

Beach babies

A recent trip to the beach gave me a chance to take some great photos. Lucky for me my sister in law, who is an amazing photographer up in Canada, gave me some tips on editing my photos. I am really happy with the new tricks I learned.

All of these are done on the FREE program of Picasa which is a google program.

This one was done using 'focus' color. You turn the photo black and white and then choose what area you want featured in color. I love this photo of her, makes her look like Ms. America!

Me and my mini me! I love the soft glow effect.

Got some great new photos of me and my love.

My niece Livy came to visit for a few days. The girls were so darling together and I got some really beautiful shots of them. Just love it!

Learning all these new tricks will come in handy for Alex's big birthday party coming up. Lots of 'Rockstar' photos coming soon!

4th of July treats!

We are slowly recovering from an amazing 4th of July weekend. I'll say it again, we have an amazing and very fun neighborhood. We had a block party both Sunday and Monday....giving me a good excuse to make lots of fun treats.

My sister wife Erin made these little sammies. So easy yet so yummy! Toasted some bread, spread a mixture of cream cheese, fresh dill, sour cream and mayo and then topped it with red onion, cucumber and tomatoes. Perfect fresh treat!

I continued on with my new found love for whoppie pies and made red velvet whoppie pies with a cream cheese filling. Added some blue sparkles to be festive and they were a big hit! I found the recipe through an online blog that has become one of my new favorites, check it out here!

I also did some funfetti cupcakes with a buttercream frosting. I got the cupcake wrappers and decorations on sale at Sur La Table, they were so cute!

For Monday I did a different variation of the rainbow cake I had made for Amelia's birthday and did red, white and blue. I did a lemon buttercream frosting and it was yummy as well as really cool when we cut it!!!

The kids had a great time all weekend....us adults managed to fit in some fun time as well!

Between all the sugar, swimming and fun the kids were exhausted (as am I!) but had a great holiday. Hope you and your family did as well!

Whoopie Pies!

I have been seeing a lot of Whoopie pies around lately. They have been gracing the covers of many food magazines, Sur La Table sells whoopie pie pans, and many famous chef's have been promoting them, like Bakerella and Martha Stewart. So I gave them in decided to give it a go, I always have my handy taste testers around and knew they wouldn't go to waste.

You can make the batter and drop them onto a sheet of parchment paper or buy the Wilton Whoopie Pie pan, I opted to buy the pan at Sur La Table this morning since it was on sale and because I thought it would help me keep the size consistent. Yes, I really struggle with keeping size proportionate....it always start off good and by the end of a batch I've usually doubled the size.

I also decided to try making some from scratch and also some from a mix to see the difference. For the mix I bought StoneWall Kitchen's chocolate whoopie pie mix. Their mix is for the chocolate outer cookies and for vanilla filling. However I decided to add some peanut butter to StoneWall's filling mix to make a chocolate peanut butter whoopie pie.....because how can you go wrong with the combination?! Then I used Wilton's recipe for vanilla whoopie pie and their filling recipe, which I added cocoa powder to.

The verdict.....

I really liked how the cookies turned out for both. I liked Wilton's recipe from scratch a little more, it seemed more moist and made more. Also, from a cost perspective the Wilton recipe is a lot cheaper since the StoneWall Kitchen mix is $10 at Sur La Table. However in regard to the filling I did not like Wilton's filling recipe at all. It was really runny and too sweet - which is saying a lot with my sweet tooth. I want a thicker, more frosting like consistency. Wilton's recipe calls for marshmallow creme, which many don't. Think I will steer away from that in the future.


I'd never had a whoopie pie before today and I definitely love them. I'm excited to keep experimenting with new recipes and trying out new things. Thinking I'll try out a red velvet version next....!

Celebrations!

We have had a lot of celebrations lately! Lots to be thankful for and lots of happy occasions. To start with we have had two very special graduations which gave me a great excuse to make some baked goods!

My baby cousin, who is 22, graduated from Fresno State along with her husband. A huge accomplishment and she is onto get her teaching credential from here. I'm so proud of Sarah and her hard work at Fresno State. We had a lot of fun putting her graduation party together and making her cake! It was my first two tiered, two flavored cake and I was happy with how it came out.



Not long after was the next big graduation....my baby boy finishing kindergarten! I can't believe he is onto first grade! It seems like just yesterday I was dropping him off for his first day of school. I am so proud of how much he has grown this year and how much he has learned. He worked really hard and excelled in reading especially. In fact the week before graduation he got an award for finishing his first grade site words! Such a handsome and smart boy! I love him so much.

Yo Ho Ho and Once Upon a Time

We rang in Amelia's 3rd birthday with a fun fairy and pirate's theme! Amelia loves Tinkerbell but lots of boys were attending the party as well so I threw in some pirates to balance things out.

I was extra lucky this year to have my friend and neighbor, Melissa Garcia, take all of these beautiful photos! She did a great job capturing this fun day and my darling girl enjoying her special party.

Instead of a bounce house this year I decided to try out the company A Wish Your Heart Makes. This company has characters you can hire for your party so of course I had to get a Tinkerbell and Pirate. I was very happy with the characters and the kids loved them! They told a story, sprinkled fairy dust on the kids, played games and face painted. So much fun!

I made Amelia's cake for the party and was thrilled with how great it turned out! It also tasted delicious!


In addition to the cake I made lemon fairy cupcakes and chocolate pirate cupcakes.

I sent all the boy's home with pirate goodies (pirate hook hands, eye patches and suckers) and the girl's went home with wands, crowns and Tinkerbell crayons and notepads. I made some beautiful rose flower balls (that I discovered on the blog House of Smith) and I attached the silhouette's of some fairies to them and hung over the goody table. I also added a Tinkerbell centerpiece I crafted using my Cricut machine.






As usual I went over the top for this party and always have to thank those that support my often overly ambitious ideas. My mom came down early to help decorate and contributed some amazing food, as did my wonderful mother in law. My favorite girls came over the night before to help with the cupcakes and set up. My sister wife Erin especially was a help in keeping my head screwed on straight and did the amazing fairy wands! My cousin Sarah assisted with the banner and of course my loving husband supported me the entire way. Thank you to everyone who helped!

And a happy, happy birthday to my princess! We love you so much!

A colorful birthday celebration

My baby girl turned 3 this past Saturday and even though her big party (which of course I'm going over the top for) is this coming Saturday, I had to mark her big day with some fun.

I saw this beautiful rainbow cake on several blogs and Martha Stewart's website and I knew my princess would love it! Turned out to be quite a hit and was actually pretty easy!

To start, I took the easy way out and just bought some white cake mix. I bought two boxes knowing this would be a six layer cake to represent each color of the rainbow.

I made the mix according to the box and then divided it into six bowls, coloring each bowl a different color. I baked them for about 10 minutes, and presto - had my layers!



After letting them cool I made a lemon buttercream frosting and started stacking my cakes, putting a layer of frosting between each layer. I don't recommend this cake if you are watching your sugar, fat or carb intake.



After frosting the entire cake I decorated it with some rainbow sprinkles on top and around the bottom. It looked quite large and exciting!



Slicing it was so beautiful. The cake looked amazing when sliced and looked beautiful on each plate. My beautiful baby girl just loved it.






Happy birthday my darling girl!