Cupcake Time Again!

My niece Carson’s birthday is on Saturday.  The theme is Strawberry Shortcake. Remember this cute little girl?  She sure has had some makeovers throughout the years.  I still remember her as the frumpy little girl on the left.  Then she went all casual with jeans, but still sportin’ a big hat.  But who is that girl on the right? What happened to the cute little red locks of hair?  All I can say is at least they brought back the cool green striped tights! 

My sister wants me to make some of my chocolate cupcakes with strawberry frosting.  I want them to be a little more decorative than just a boring chocolate cupcake.  But how do I get it to go with the theme of Strawberry Shortcake?  After several Google image searches here are some options that I may just have to incorporate into Carson’s cupcakes. 

 

I also found some amazing cakes.  If only I could do this, how cute it would be! I love the one with her house.  I remember playing with my sister’s Strawberry Shortcake house and you c ould put little strawberries in the oven after you picked them from the garden. 

These cupcakes are super cute.  I just need to learn how to use my frosting tips better. 

I will show you the finished product of what I came up with after the party. 

It’s been too long!

I realized tonight that I haven’t blogged in 10 days!  What have I been up to?  Fighting frogs, keeping track of the upcoming fall season premieres on TV and cleaning out my DVR so I have enough room to record my new shows.  There was a lot of new shows starting this season. Up All Night, The New Girl, Two Broke Girls, Unforgettable and The Ringer, just to name a few that have been on this week so far.  Was a little disappointed with the new sitcoms that started up.  I think Up All Night with Will Arnett and Christina Applegate will get better.  The Ringer actually kept my interest already on episode 2 this week.  I just taped Unforgettable, another crime scene drama, I hope it’s good.  I’m sad that Bones doesn’t start till 11/3!!!  November will be a good month for me with Breaking Dawn releasing too! Of the new shows I’ve watch so far this week, The Ringer gets my top pick.  Staring Sarah Michelle Gellar (who is not the best actress), she plays two sisters.  One is a recovering addict (Bridget) and the other a NY Socialite.  In the first episode the recovering addict is about to go on trial as a witness to a murder and is in protective custody but instead she escapes to NY to see her sister who she hasn’t seen in 6 years.  That same day her sister disappears and it seems she committed suicide.  Then Bridget (the one that was supposed to testify) takes her sisters place and pretends to be her but uncovers that her sister had a lot of secrets and not such a great life after all.  Not sure how long they can keep this plot line interesting but I’m hooked for now. 

I’ve also been on a Blending Binge!  I don’t own a real blender but I have this single serve blender.  I bought it at a garage sale for $1 a couple years ago and I’m finally using it.  I’ve been making Peanut Butter Banana Smoothies almost each night. Probably not the best for my calories for the day.  BUT IT’S SOOO GOOD!  I had all these frozen bananas in my freezer (a little habit I picked up from my mom) that I didn’t know what to do with.  If you want to make one it’s delish! or BAAANAAANAAs as Rachel Zoe would say.  Can you tell I started watching her show? Anyways I’m addicted.  I have 2 banana’s left and now I want to make another one right now!  I think it’s best I use up the bananas so I can kick this habit. 

This is not the most exact recipe I just eyeball most of the ingredients.
about 2 TBSP Peanut Butter
4 or 5 ice cubes
1/2 cup milk or a little more
2 1/2 TBSP Sugar
1 Banana
add Hershey’s syrup to make it even better (something I’ve been wanting to try)

 

I’ve been keeping track of my gas mileage.  I got great mpg one day - 31 mpg on average!  Wish I could maintain that.  I’m on average anywhere from 23 to 30 these days, which is way better than my Land Rover that was 16 – 19mpg. 
Been looking at fall shoe styles.  Can’t decide what I think about these.  Maybe a little to tomboyish for me? 

My parents came in town for the week.  We went to our favorite Thai restaurant one night and each got a dessert.  I got Thai donuts and my dad got tempura cheesecake. 
My mom had a fancy fried coconut ice cream dessert. 
 
So that’s what I’ve been up to.  I’ll try to do better with my blogging.  I have been getting better with Pinning on Pinterest.  If you aren’t following me yet click on the Pinterest button on my blog and start following!

See ya!

Go Rays!

Back on Father’s Day, boyfriend’s mom gave Daddy Gene a family trip to go see the Tampa Bay Rays play.  Daddy Gene has been wanting to go to a baseball game so it was the perfect occasion to give him some tickets.  So on Labor Day we went to St. Pete to see the Rays vs. the Rangers.  Before we left town we all met at First Watch for breakfast.  Then we all 12 of us squished in 2 cars and made the drive to St. Pete.  I got car sick after about 20 min on the road.  I hate driving but if I’m not driving I tend to get a little sick. 
My favorite part of going to any sporting event is the hot dogs!  I ate a $7 Footlong Hot Dog with my $9 diet Pepsi in a souvenir cup.  It’s crazy how much stadiums are allowed to up charge on their food.  I feel like there should be some regulations on that.  I passed a soda machine for $5 20oz bottles.  WOWZA!  I say regulate or tax stadium vendors heavily to go to schools or civil service workers. 
Daddy Gene had a fun time at the game.  He made friends with the guy sitting in front of him too.  I think he really just enjoyed being with his two daughters and 4 grandkids!  Afterwards we drove back to Winter Park to his house to have BBQ and cupcakes.  I had sooo much soda that day and all the car sickness I felt yucky the rest of the night. But it didn’t stop me from eating my cupcake!

Happy Birthday Nola!

This weekend my family celebrated my niece’s 1st birthday.  I made these very complicated but cute panda cupcakes for the occasion.   My sister couldn’t come up with a theme so we based it around the cupcake idea and did everything Asian.  Chinese food, paper lanterns, and Chinese birthday traditions. It sounds like a very unique theme for a 1 yr olds bday but it was fun.  Especially for the adults, yummy Crab Rangoon is a good party to me!

Making the cupcakes with Sarah. We were up till 1am and still not done.  I finished them up the next day. 
 

Rob didn’t know he would be roped into making the Oreo crumbs.  He wasn’t too happy about that. 

Time to make the tiny panda heads.  I was supposed to use a mini marshmallow as the muzzle but frosting over it was almost impossible.  So instead I carved out a little muzzle on every head.  Then I had to frost each head and add the face with black icing and mini chocolate chip eyes and nose.

Here is the finished product of Panda #1 Oreo limbs and all!

I made a lot of pandas that day.  We ended up having extra heads left over so there was   a plate of mini heads and big heads to choose from if you didn’t feel like eating the whole panda.
    

I made a larger panda for Nola to tear apart.  The first one turned out cute but I didn’t place her head centered enough and she started to droop like she was going to sleep.  I made a back up panda that wasn’t as cute but he had a loose cheek that kept wanting to fall off so his eye started to droop.  We ended up giving her sleepy time Panda instead.
   

Time for the party!  Everyone had their name written out in Mandarin.  Nola was Nu Ling.  I was Nu Nu. 
    

Nola started out the night in her cute little baby kimono! 

She really enjoyed her noodles.

Nola was very neat with her little Panda Princess.  She just took off the Oreos to eat and poked at her little panda. 

Happy Birthday Nola!!!

Photos from my phone

My phone takes really bad pictures but I still use it very often to snap photos of things around me. So if you ever see a fuzzy, poorly lit photo you know my Blackberry did it.

I saw the cutest old man at a red light this weekend riding his bike.  He had his safety helmet and vest on.  Absolutely adorable!

One of the biggest rainbows I’ve seen in a long time, it went from the horizon to horizon. Hope you are able to see it in this photo.

I’m dying for these shoes.  They didn’t have them in my size or the color I wanted.  Debating whether or not to pay shipping to order them from the website.  They are a fall must have for me!

My A/C went out the last two days.  Just got it fixed this morning.  Here is where I’ve been camping out the last two nights.  Steve, the A/C guy said some wires were loose because of how a random tech put them together, and of course it wasn’t their company when they came out just 2 months ago, it must have been the tech over a year ago.  That makes sense.  Steve also used my bathroom and didn’t wash his hands and left the seat up for me.  He knew I was standing right outside the door too, at least do it for appearance sake!
  

Loving my little 1 egg pan.  It’s great for making, well one egg, but also to keep it perfectly circular for sandwiches. I enjoyed my low calorie bacon, egg, cheese biscuit for dinner tonight. 
100 Cal Arnolds Sandwich Thins
20 Cal Canadian Bacon
70 Cal Egg
25 Cal low fat Swiss Cheese Kraft Singles
= 215 Calories
That’s pretty pretty good!
 

Family Beach Trip

I can sum up the family beach trip in two words: Ice Cream & Rain!  I normally don’t attend the family beach trips because they are usually just to chaotic for me.  I tried to be a good sport and participate for at least half of the time.  I thought at least I’ll get a good tan if nothing else.  But my luck it rained every day all day.  If it wasn’t raining it was super cloudy and windy.  Apparently the day after I left and every day after the sun was shining.  GRRRRRRR……   despite all the gloom it was fun.  I just wish I had chosen the sunny part of the week instead. 
Here are some of my trip highlights despite the gloomy weather.
 

There was a whole lot of ice cream eating…I ate it every day I was there.

 

 

There was also a whole lot of this…sad little babies.
 

A lot of hat wearing & sharing….

I realized that the older I get the more ADD I get.  I can’t just sit still so this…

lasted about 5 minutes until I was like “ok what do we do now?”  
So I took advantage of all the little kids being around to build sandcastles. So we all built a mega castle with shell walkways and a moat.
          

Then we made a turtle in the sand just for fun.

We also made a lot of silly faces for the camera.  Mainly sad faces because we were hungry and our food was taking forever.   

Family photo time…it was very windy and my hair got a little crazy, frizzy and big!     

Big Hair Nancy
  

 

Callie & Megan BFF!
 

And there was my beach trip!