Hastily Thrown Together Baseball Cupcakes!

Ethan's baseball team played so well in one of their last games (and BEAT one of the best teams by 5 or 6 runs, ahem!) that I promised them some treats!!

After a miscommunication and a day of appointments, I only had a very short while to get their much anticipated treats put together. Very quickly I threw some french vanilla cupcakes into the oven and whipped up a batch of buttercream icing. Thankfully I only needed white and a teeny tiny bit of red.





I quickly slathered white icing on the cupcakes and then gave them some red stitches. I then had a container full of {crude} baseballs! The boys LOVED the cupcakes and were so excited that they were actually baseballs. I honestly didnt think they'd notice the baseballs, so I was pleasantly surprised :)

Weekend Visitor...

We had a guest today.. he showed up unannounced (I really hate it when that happens!) and wore out his welcome quickly.


I came outside and found this guy poking his head out of my flowers that sit directly next to my steps! He was draper between two large pots and was about three feet long. We kindly sent him on his way, but not before snapping some pictures of him, he was kinda cute after all. I thought that was the end to the excitement of my day.

Later...



I went out onto our steps, and there he was AGAIN! This time the brazen little reptile was stretched across my steps!! After the initial shock of seeing a SNAKEONMYSTEPSOMG!, I ran back into the house to get the camera again. What!? What would YOU have done? After I snapped the last of the pictures, he slithered off the steps and curled around one of my huge hydragena (um, sp??) bushes. Then I poked him with a big stick to make him scoot along! Im such a bad hostess!

New Cakes!!

Ella very recently celebrated her 5th birthday and to commemorate the occasion, I made TWO special cakes for a very special girl! Originally, Id planned a celebration fit for a princess at our local state park, but we'd had a lot of sickness going around, including my dad spening nine days in the hospital and my husband having pneumonia, so I decided to put the big festivites off for a while. We ended up having a small party at home, with just us, on a Sunday afternoon.

Ella wanted a Castle cake and I bought a huge Princess Castle Cake Kit, but it serves over 30 people and since there were only going to be a few of us, I improvised...











I take horrible pictures, and this cake turned out a whole lot cuter than the pictures let on. The cake was 3 layers with pink buttercream icing. I always use Wilton's buttercream icing recipe, minus the milk. I needed a double batch to ice this behemoth! Here are a few more shots of it, because Im super proud ;) It was very tasty, as well!





And of course, the Birthday Girl blowing out her candles (uh, candle)!! I couldnt find a pink #5 anywhere!!



Ella is our only child in school that has her birthday during the school year! The two oldes kids were both born in the summer and Sav was born over Christmas vacation! Ive finally had the chance to make something special for one of my kids to take to school... boy was I excited. It will be my one and only chance as well - next year we'll be homeschoolers! I guess we can have cake any school day we want to, then!

Ella's Pre-K class is very small, and there are only a few three year olds next door so I chose to make a cupcake creation instead of a cake. Ella loves anything pink and truly loves flowers, so thats what I made - pink flowers!! These were super fun and easy! (These were also made w/ Wilton's buttercream icing, minus the milk!)





Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy!

My Stick Family

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com

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My Latest Cakes

We recently had our Boy Scout Pack's annual cake auction... I wanted something fun and easy for us to do, and this is what we came up with...

The first is a "Snake Cake".. he could easily be made into a Dragon or Alligator, Im thinking. I made a bunch of devils food cupcakes and a double batch of homemade buttercream icing. I was able to create the "snake" using 24 cupcakes and I needed a 1/4 of one as a filler in one of his diamonds.




The second cake is a Pool. This idea is a variation of another pool cake that I saw online. It is a double layer classic yellow cake, also with homemade buttercream icing. The outside of the pool is alternating dark chocolate and hazelnut pirouline. The little accessories are made out of fondant... and... my HUSBAND made those!!

The cool thing about this cake is that the girl that won it at the auction sat at the back table with her two friends and they ate the ENTIRE thing before the auction was over!! They told me that it was delicious, so I was a happy baker!

Im sorry for the quality of the pictures, Im a horrible food picture taker, unlike my brilliant sister, who gets food pics published on AllRecipes all the time ;). I also want to apologise for the MESS in this picture... I canNOT make a cake without making an ENORMOUS mess, and for some reason I just didnt walk the cake into the dining room for a picture... this was the best one of the cake *rolls eyes in disgust*



This last cake, although it appears to be an Easter Bunny cake, is my daughter Savannah's 7th Birthday cake back from December. Her most favorite thing in the world in yellow bunnies :)

Seven Times Seventy

7x70 By Chris August - What a song! This is not the official video, for some reason that one would not load for me, but this one would AND it has the lyrics! ENJOY! (but grab a tissue first!)



~Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven. ~ Matthew 18:21-22

The City Harmonic - Manifesto (OFFICIAL)

We have a new favorite song 'round these parts!! Our family LOVES this song!! C & I have been jammin' to it for hours! This morning on K-Love, we finally caught the name of the band.. enjoy this AWESOME Praise song and tell us what you think!!



LYRICS:


We believe in the one true God
We believe in Father Spirit Son
We believe that good has won


And all of the people of God sing along

Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!


We are free He died and lives again
We will be a people free from sin
Well be free a kingdom with no end


And all of the people of God sing along

Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen, yeah!


Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed by Thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who have trespassed against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine Is the kingdom,
power and the glory forever.
We're singin!

Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen, yeah!