I love all things handmade/homemade. Brandi is having an awesome giveaway open for a few more days- go check it out!!

http://bjewelledboutique.blogspot.ca/2012/10/exciting-new-things-giveaway-time.html?m=1

Today...

Today my house is a mess, after spending all weekend (on and off) cleaning. Pictures to come.
Today I am busy with massage/hair/chiro appointments. Which all 3 had to be switched to different times.
Today I have a strange man in my house fixing winter house cracks.
Today I cleaned out my entire pantry to fix the mega crack in there. There is food everywhere.
Today I am stuck at the computer sipping coffee and eating bran muffins.
Today my husband is coming home for lunch.
Today I am choosing to stay calm, and relaxed about this day.
Today I am planning meals for the weeks to come.
Today I am reflecting on the weekend which held a fantastic date night with the husband that included only fun stuff (supper, walk at the forks, Cirque, coffee and ice cream) and not a lick of errands (returns, grocery shopping...) and a wonderful church service and a nap with supper at one of my favorite places (Red Lobster) with some of my most favorite people.

Hudson's First Birthday

 First off I must say it's about time blogger got there act together and got a better way to upload pictures. I am still trying to figure out how it all works, so bear with me in this post!
** I just previewed my post before posting it and it looks NOTHING like its supposed to. some pictures are clumped on here and in preview they are all in a line. Blogger, you got a long way to go to make me like you. On the bright side I noticed while I was scrolling down the pictures kinda go wavy like a caterpillar!**

 Stef baked all the cupcakes and cakes and decorated the cupcakes and Hudson's smash cake.

I decorated the head

 The spread. Stef had the who Hungry Caterpillar story written out with all the food he ate through. It was amazing!

 

 

Smash cake! Hudson loved it!!

 Darcy made Hudson a toy box for his birthday

 

More presents!

The 'H' is branded onto the toy box. Darcy spent a lot of time working on this toy box for Hudson. I think it turned out great.

Happy 1st Birthday Hudson. Uncle Darcy and I love you lots!!

What have I been up to?

I have been...
- printing new recipes for my homemade cookbook
- soaking in my view of the river since it keeps dropping, and will soon be gone
- planting flowers (and a tomato plant) in my pots from auntie Hilda
- taking pictures of Darcy's latest creation - (stay tuned for Hudson's first birthday party)
- loving my new white vase from Gail's, now if only I would have flowers to put in it!
- counting down the days to...
                        - Fargo (2 days)
                        - Minneapolis (29 days)
                        - celebrating my favorite nephews first birthday (33 day, I realize this conflicts with us going camping but Sudsy's party will be at the end of June)
                        - relaxing at Hecla (33day)
                        - date night at Cirque De Soleil (51 days)
                        - standing up at some of our best friends wedding (65 days)
                        - relaxing at Hecla again (71 days)
- finding new sites to help my baking / cooking addiction
- printing coupons
- exploring a few new business ventures
- running into old friends and making dates to get together
- not feeling like uploading pictures to go along with this post
- spending WAY to much time on facebook and remembering why I quit in the first place
- looking at Jerry Seinfeld tickets and thinking its a 'must see no matter the cost' but cant imagine spending over $300 for Darcy and I to go (those are the CHEAPEST tickets, yeesh kapeesh!)
- listening to a friends anxiety about big changes in her life and trying to be supportive even when I'm not sure what to say
- being extra thankful for my husband
- really wanting to go to Brittany Spears, but don't know who I'd go with. I heart her! (well maybe more her music than her) 
- wishing I put more of my good intentions into action

So that is what I have been up to. Pictures to come?  We'll see.

   

It started with cake baking.

Then it turned into cake icing.

And cake piping.

And mixing the fondant to add some funky colour.

And then cake assembling.

And stopping to pose with our creation.

Then cutting the first layer.

And the second layer.

Lastly, the third layer.

And peeking into the three tiered goodness inside.

And just because I have you here, this is how I spent my Sunday morning.

Watching Darcy play street hockey in the parking lot of Kildonan Place Shopping Center. They lost. But it was nice to be in the sunshine with friends, having brunch on the patio, and enjoying each others company.

I also couldn't post without showing you these beautiful flowers I got from my sweet sister in law for my b-day. These pictures don't do justice to how gorgeous the colour actually is, but here they are.

It's been 13 days and they still look amazing. I love waking up to fresh flowers every morning!

It all started with one batch....

....so I donned my apron,


put my recipe on my handy dandy metal note holder thing Darcy made me, (since we have a stainless steel fridge and no mementos can be magnet-ed to there I wanted a place to put cute pictures of my niece's, cards, etc. and realized it would be a perfect recipe holder for when I bake. )


admired my view,

and got to work.

An innocent evening of baking a batch of auntie Renee's 5-star chocolate chip cookies (one of Darcy's all time favorites) quickly turned into this....

Since I just bought flax I thought I might experiment and throw some ground flax in


And some whole wheat flour, who said cookies couldn't be healthier?

Well as it turns out adding flax and whole wheat flour made the cookies a little bit of a flop. But I will continue to experiment because if I recall correctly Mckmama once said "You can also use 1 Tablespoon of flaxseed meal and 3 Tablespoons of water to replace an egg in a recipe, provided you are not already using it to replace oil".

I also tried out baking on parchment paper. I have used it in the past and never really liked it. So I stopped buying it.
But most of my recipes say to use parchment paper so I figured I'd give it another try, since it was on sale at superstore anyway. Well, wasn't I pleasantly surprised.


I have now converted to parchment. so. much. easier. to. clean.

After I took these pictures I thought that this was a much better idea for my change of heart.

Since all my ingredients were out any way I may as well try something new....

Bakery Style Cookies and Cream Cookies.

Darcy said the Oreo's were hard to taste - so next time I will try more cookies or leaving bigger chunks. The meat pounder kinda got away from me : )

And since all me ingredients are STILL out I may as well make MY favorite... (even though I can't eat them yet : ) )

...5 chip cookies

(not exactly the same recipe but it's pretty darn close - the only difference is I do 1/3 cup EACH of the 5 different kinds of chips)

and why not toss in some more flax seed?

And since I have made 3 different kinds of cookies I may as well use some of my new cupcake liners and make some bran muffins....



And even though I didn't use my new birthday muffin liners that I love (thanks Kels) I may as well make a batch of humming bird muffins to test them out...

.
Ok, so these never made it to the oven. It was getting late and I wanted to do some of the delivers tonight yet, so these will wait til morning. (we'll see if it works...)

Aaaaaaaand since I am baking all these for just Darcy I may as well give some to my loved ones...

Using my leftover-good-intention-but-never-got-around-to-making-gifts (did you get that?) Christmas wrapping paper

Poor penmanship and blurry I know...


Look at this nifty way to store cupcake liners. Instead of having them free floating in my cupboard they are all nicely contained in mason jars. (Are all jars mason jars? I am not even sure I know what a mason jar is!)

Have I mentioned that I love to bake?!