Sooooo, exciting news! Little Muggsy turned 3 years old! 3 whole years old! I've heard that this is when dogs start calming down, but I don't really see that happening with this one any time soon. I decided to make some simple sugar cookies (not for her...she got to eat treats and some steak plus a new toy!). I wanted to make them look like her toys and so I picked her two faves! She LOVES her FETCH ball (so much so that she has already chewed off the blue FETCH letters off!) and her KONG toy. Read on for more!
Hey y'all, it's been awhile! Last week and this week have been very exciting and busy! I had my birthday last Thursday, our housewarming party on Saturday and today is my One Year Blogiversary!!! I can't believe that a year ago, I started this little old blog and began this awesome journey. I've met so many incredible people and have made some great friends (some who I've even met in real life!) I've loved it so much and I wish I was making something awesome to celebrate, but I have been dying to show y'all what I made for the housewarming and the cake I did for my birthday, so I think I'll share that instead... I hope that's okay with y'all :) First I'll talk about the housewarming things I put together, and then I'll move in to the birthday cake! So we all know that I love Pinterest. Like love, love, love it. I have about 65 boards and 6500 pins (eeek I'm out of control!) Anyway, Matt and I decided to have a housewarming to celebrate moving in to our new place. So, of course, I took this as an opportunity to make a new board. Now, I didn't make everything on that board, but I let it inspire me, and I definitely felt like I succeeded in making that board come to life! It ended up being a lot of work, but thankfully I had my friend Kristen in town to help me make all this stuff! Here are some of the highlights... I'll add captions to describe them and give some instructions.
Hey y'all... I'm doing the holiday thing early (or right on time, in blogger world). I realize that I posted my 4th of July cake ON the 4th of July, and my holiday cookies on December 30th (oy vey) and that does not give readers enough time to make these holiday items for the actual holiday (unless they have a time machine...if you do, please let me know). I wanted to make mini-cakes for St. Paddy's day that reminded me (and hopefully you too!) of little lucky pots of gold! (I have recently been informed that it is actually St. PADDY's day and not St. Patty's day...learn something new every day huh?!)
Yesterday, my friend Marina had a birthday. I won't tell you how old she is but I'll tell you that she is definitely a glamour girl... a princess... a girl who loves to and deserved to party in style. So nothing felt more right than making her a glittery, girly, princess-y cake! I had been brainstorming for weeks. Planning and pinning the best ideas I had found and inspiration for what I wanted to create for her. If you don't know what I mean by pinning, here you go. You're welcome. {Don't blame me when you get addicted...just warning you} Pinterest is the world's best internet site to find inspiration and amazing things. I had made a board with all of the best ideas I thought would fit her personality and be delicious as well. I decided to go with a few different ideas: Glitter, Bows, and Ombre. I used the recipe from Whisk Kid for a "White (but not really) Cake" which Sweetapolita also used for her amazing rainbow doodle cake. I then made all the layers different shades of purple. Basically I took the whole batter and weighed it on my scale, then determined that each layer (of 6) would be 9 3/4 oz and then it was easy to measure out each layer. I greased the pans and then did the first layer as white (real white, not off white...I used white Americolor gel to get the white layer perfectly white). Then after taking out the white layer and putting it in a 9in greased cake pan, I added in a little purple Americolor (these things are amazing) into the bowl (see below)...then measured out the next layer, added more purple and then did the next layer...and so on until I had done all 6 layers, the 6th layer being a deep purple.
Remember when I told you about my New Year's Resolutions? And how my friend Marnely from Cooking with Books and I had made a resolution to cook a live lobster (after humanely killing it, of course)? Well, we set a deadline of end of January to do so, so I needed to find a live lobster ASAP. I didn't even know where to find a live lobster, so I performed a google search and found a great lobster company out of Maine, Simply Lobsters. I worked with Don, who was an absolute joy to work with. He was so quick to respond to my email and sent me a lobster to review via overnight shipping. I spoke to him at 9am on Wednesday and by 9am the next morning there was a fresh 3lb. lobster from Maine sitting at my front door (carefully wrapped up of course!)! Keep reading to see how you can win the giveaway of two 1.65 lb lobsters for Valentine's Day! The lobster arrived alive, as it should be, and was carefully packaged with its claws wrapped in rubber bands (so it didn't attack me!). Here's a sneak peak at the whole process:
Hey all, I promised to post my holiday cookies and I know they aren't much use to you now but at least you will have this reference if you want to plan ahead for next year! I made a few different kinds. I made gingerbread cookies for Matt's boss (who is a judge...that's why they are wearing robes) and sugar cookies for everyone else!
Let me back up and tell you a little Christmas story. I was unfortunately scheduled to work on Christmas Eve and was very upset at the thought of not being able to be with my family during that time. I found two lovely ladies to cover my shift so that I could be with my family. I dubbed them my Christmas Angels, and made them cookies for being so sweet to offer to do it. That is what Christmas is really about to me-- being with your family, and doing kind things for others when you know it will mean a lot to them.
Now that you have a little background, I'll show you all the cookies and you can keep them as a reference for next Christmas.
So it's the day after Christmas! Actually it's almost the day after the day after Christmas because it's almost 11 on December 26th so I'm getting dangerously close to missing the "Christmas post" window... or maybe I already have...who know's I'm new to the blogosphere. Anyway, I had a really wonderful Christmas and I hope that you all did as well (or a happy hanukkah or whatever your celebration of choice may be!) I truly hope it was a happy one filled with laughter and family. Family is what Christmas is all about to me. This year was a completely different Christmas than we are used to. It was our first Christmas without our beloved Mimi, who always reminded us what the true spirit of Christmas was all about. This was also the first Christmas in I don't even know how long that our whole family has not been able to be together for the holidays. We had planned to go to West Virginia to see the whole family, as we did for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately sometimes life does not permit those things to happen. My Uncle J, with whom I'm very close, has been battling cancer since 2006. He's a stubborn man though and he's been fighting the fight so well. He's still doing okay but had to be admitted to Johns Hopkins last week, and so, the family would be split up for Christmas...half of us in NC and half of us in MD. We still spoke on the phone and we are going to have a January "Christmas" once everything calms down, but we are all certainly hoping that next Christmas we will get to be together again.
Remember when THIS happened??
And THIS had already happened in preparation for that? Well THIS is what happened next!:
Well, as promised, I made Champagne Cupcakes! I had promised to make this in the exciting event that I passed the North Carolina Bar Exam, and lucky for you (AND ME!) I passed and made treats for you all to celebrate with me! One of my favorite cocktails in the world is a Kir Royale. I discovered this delicious cocktail at Christmas last year and thought that transforming them into a dessert would be an absolute delight! I adapted a recipe for Champagne Cupcakes from my friend Yuri of Chef Pandita. She made lovely champagne cupcakes with lycee for her birthday and I've been dying to make my Kir Royale version, but I was waiting for that letter! Well I finally got it and it was good news! I already had a backup plan in case it wasn't (another cocktail) but I'm happy I can share these with you instead! Now that it's the weekend and I had time to go buy ingredients, I got everything I needed, including champagne and Chambord.
 Well, the bar exam is finally done! I finished it...and survived. Hopefully I passed and will never have to deal with it again. It was extremely difficult and the entire process was pretty grueling. I came home and decided to make a cocktail, as promised in my last post. This cocktail was so light and refreshing but needed a fun name. I know I'm done with the bar, but does that mean I have to stop making dumb law school jokes and puns? NO? Fantastic!
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