Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Yellow & Blue

Who's ready for spring?!? I sure am. Oh did I mention it's snowing outside? :( 

Yellow & Blue

Monday, February 13, 2012

iPhone Photo Update

My niece & nephew are still SO cute.



And I have ANOTHER niece on the way! Little miss Lillee Blau coming soon...

One night Brandon made African Peanut soup:

And it was SOOO good. You might read the recipe and be so skeptical, but it was SO delicious.

The superbowl was pretty fun, we went to Brandon's friends house and I made homemade oreos and funfetti cookies (see Hostess Cupcakes post). This is the wreckage:


My Dad likes to write poems:


I am on a MAJOR flower making spree:


The tutorial I used is here: Paper Flowers

But I might make a video tutorial or something because it was tricky to get the hang of it just through pictures. They are so cute, now I just need a great vintage vase.

Oh and my friend Amy Jo and I went rock climbing the other day, and I happened to park in front of a rather sneaky fire hydrant and my car got towed. Isn't that the worst feeling ever? Walking out to your car and it's GONE. So that was s SUPER fun way to spend $175. :( 

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Hostess Cupcakes FAIL

This is a picture of the Hostess Cupcakes I made:


 NOT.

My husband is so wise. 

I told him I was going to make this new recipe I found online for Homemade Hostess Cupcakes for a SuperBowl party we were going to. He lovingly asked if I was going to test out the recipe beforehand...because this man has seen me make recipes for the first time, and I am not kidding you 90% of the time they are totally messed up and don't work out at all. But I was confident and I said, "Nope! It'll be fine!" And on Sunday I started making them, following the directions letter by letter. 

I put them in the oven, and opened them to pull them out 20 minutes later and they were sunken in the middle, yet somehow OVERFLOWING onto the bottom of the oven. SO terrible. I was so sad, but I managed to salvage them somehow, threw some frosting on them, and took them to the party anyways. They were actually pretty moist and tasty, just super ugly, but people ate them anyways! Good thing I also made Homemade Oreos and Funfetti cookies, I could never have just shown up with crumbly lumps of chocolate covered in frosting. I have a reputation to protect! ;)

Anyways, here's what I learned. I have GOT to start adjusting my recipes for elevation! I was googling why this always happens to me, and it's got to be that. We are SO much higher than the rest of the U.S., that I just need to tweak the recipes a little bit to make it work! I will be trying these cupcakes again, and this time with a little work hopefully it won't be so tragic. 

P.S.
The site I got the recipe from is fantastic, this girl Andie is a doll. She comes up with these super great recipes, and she is so funny too. AND I posted on the recipe about my tragic experience and she emailed me back twice to try and help me! What a babe, you should all definitely check out her blog: