Since I'm sure you are all on the edge of your seats waiting to find out if I got the lawn chair....
I did!
I can't wait to go out in the backyard with the dogs and have a place to sit back and relax! Woohoo!!
Showing posts with label Birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthday. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
It's the greatest holiday of the year!
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Friday, August 14, 2009
Eating Ice Cream Cupcakes = Great Success!!
Apparently looks are not everything, after all. These cupcakes were friggin delicious! No one minded a bit that the frosting looked like poops. Everyone had two, because one just wasn't enough. I will definitely be making these again. Hopefully with a bit of practice I will perfect the frosting so that it is a wee bit more appetizing!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Ice Cream Cupcakes!
Today is J's 27th birthday! My old man. And I don't mean because he is turning 27, I mean because he has to ask me weekly how old he is. ::sigh::
As you may know, I am huuuuge on birthdays. J is not. But he has learned by now that it is just too bad, because I will make a big deal out of his anyway! Since he is not a huge fan of cake, I was trying to think of something creative to make him this year for his birthday dessert. I came across this recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Beantown Baker.
I let J pick whatever flavors he wanted, and he was torn between strawberry and coffee ice cream. I decided why not make them both!
I am a total cheater and I used a boxed cake mix, as well as frosting from a jar. Sue me. The cake is devil's food, and the frosting is chocolate cream cheese. We had a little leftover plain cream cheese frosting so I used that for a few as well. I ended up actually buying four different kinds of ice cream, which was dumb but oh well. They were buy one get one, and there were some really tempting flavors! So we have coffee, strawberry, mint oreo, and chocolate peanut butter cup.
Jen from Beantown Baker said that she filled the cupcakes a little less than half full. I think this looks about right, no?
Apparently not. They came out baked all the way to the top of the cups! I ended up having to cut the tops of them off. For the second tray, I used less, and they still baked up really high.
And can we talk about the fact that as I was doing it the ice cream started to melt again, and for some reason ice cream apparently defies gravity and rather than melting over the sides of the cups, it started moving up through the freshly piped poop, I mean frosting???
As you may know, I am huuuuge on birthdays. J is not. But he has learned by now that it is just too bad, because I will make a big deal out of his anyway! Since he is not a huge fan of cake, I was trying to think of something creative to make him this year for his birthday dessert. I came across this recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Beantown Baker.
I let J pick whatever flavors he wanted, and he was torn between strawberry and coffee ice cream. I decided why not make them both!
I am a total cheater and I used a boxed cake mix, as well as frosting from a jar. Sue me. The cake is devil's food, and the frosting is chocolate cream cheese. We had a little leftover plain cream cheese frosting so I used that for a few as well. I ended up actually buying four different kinds of ice cream, which was dumb but oh well. They were buy one get one, and there were some really tempting flavors! So we have coffee, strawberry, mint oreo, and chocolate peanut butter cup.
Jen from Beantown Baker said that she filled the cupcakes a little less than half full. I think this looks about right, no?
Apparently not. They came out baked all the way to the top of the cups! I ended up having to cut the tops of them off. For the second tray, I used less, and they still baked up really high.
::snort:: Baked up.. really high..
Anyway, it was okay because I was supposed to use a couple of the cupcakes to mix with the ice cream anyway, so I just used the cut out bits instead. However, after making 18 cupcakes (I only have a tray for 12 and a half tray for 6.. I need to get on that) I still had about half of the batter left, and I realized that was going to make a lot of cupcakes. Instead I used the last of it to make a 9" round cake.
So the cupcakes are done, and I am supposed to mix the cut outs with a bit of ice cream, spread that on, then spread just ice cream on the top. Well I still hadn't made the cake part small enough, because after adding just the slightest bit of cake/ice cream mixture, they were reaching the top of the cups! I stopped after three and cut more cake out of the rest, but I was starting to be afraid they would not have enough cake after all was said and done!
At this point they were becoming a bit of a melty mess, and I forgot to take a picture of this stage. I popped them in the freezer and we went to my parents' house to hang out with them and J&K. Played a little Scattergories, good times.
Got back a couple hours later and they were fully frozen - sweet! Time to attempt frosting them. I decided to pipe the frosting on like Jen did, but rather than get out my piping bag, I decided to just use plastic baggies with the corners cut off.
Bad idea.
My frosting looks like poops. Also please notice the top right cupcake where the plastic baggie burst and a big ol plop of frosting fell on top... so that is how it stayed.
And can we talk about the fact that as I was doing it the ice cream started to melt again, and for some reason ice cream apparently defies gravity and rather than melting over the sides of the cups, it started moving up through the freshly piped poop, I mean frosting???
Ya that really helped... not! I am headed straight for Cake Wrecks, I'm telling you!
Somehow, a few of them turned out semi-decent looking. I particularly like this coffee one, as well as the strawberry one that I showed at the beginning of the post. (Did you like how I showed the appetizing one first, to make you keep reading? How do you like that bit of trickery?)
Here they are sitting in the freezer, waiting to be eaten tonight. I will post again after we eat them to let you know how they turned out.
So about that 9 inch round. I figured I would use this to decorate and draw attention to the fact that it is J's birthday we are celebrating. Yeah, I should have just called it a day. If the cupcakes don't get me into Cake Wrecks, this certainly will!!
But at least my cake stand is pretty! I have to take a minute to AW this stand. I luurrve it. I found it at Home Goods recently and have been dying to use it. So I guess not all was a loss!
So about that 9 inch round. I figured I would use this to decorate and draw attention to the fact that it is J's birthday we are celebrating. Yeah, I should have just called it a day. If the cupcakes don't get me into Cake Wrecks, this certainly will!!
But at least my cake stand is pretty! I have to take a minute to AW this stand. I luurrve it. I found it at Home Goods recently and have been dying to use it. So I guess not all was a loss!
Stay tuned for a recap of the most important part of the cupcakes - eating them.
Monday, July 20, 2009
I slacked on blogging this week.
My bad. And I lost a follower as a result. Sad times... LOL! I guess my excuse is we have been pretty busy though. This weekend especially was packed.
On Friday night we celebrated J's birthday a little early. We went to see RENT at the Colonial theater. Amazing show. I had seen the movie (and loved it) but this was my first time seeing the musical. I was hooked from the second it started. And the crowd was great - everyone cheered when Anthony and Adam came on stage. And the girl who played Mimi too (forgive me, I don't know her name). J loved it too of course. It was his second time seeing it. He was very impressed that it was just as good as when he had seen it in NYC.
Saturday we played tennis all afternoon with J&K (my brother and his girlfriend). We have such a blast hanging out with them. I feel so lucky that I get along so well with not only my brother, but his girlfriend too! After tennis we came back to our house for enchiladas, then headed to the drive-in with them. Let's just say, K and I + enchiladas + the drive-in = a whole lot of flatulence.
Pause. In case you don't know by now, I am very open about these things. If conversations about farts, poop, and the like disturb you, you may want to tread carefully in here. (This may cause me to lose more followers, huh? Oohh well!)
Okay so as I was saying - holy enchilada farts. J and J sat outside the car in camp chairs, while K and I sat in the back of the Jeep at the level of their heads. Farting throughout two whole movies. Bad move, boys.. baaad move! K and I thought it was hilarious of course.
I've gotten off topic though. The real point here was to tell you to get your ass to the movie theater and see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen! What an aweome movie. (In case you don't live in an area with FiOS, please watch this video of pure awesomeness. Kthnxbai).
Actually, that commercial may have started my obsession with the word awesome. Awesome pussycat.
So ya - some people say the movie was all action scenes with no real plot. To that I say, 'uuhh your point?' I mean come on. It's Transformers. I don't think the first one had much of a plot either. It's not the plot that makes these movies so awesome!
I hope I'm not killing the awesome.
Also - the drive-in was great! If you have one around you I totally recommend going. It was 20 bucks per carload - so only 5 bucks per person, for two movies! The one thing that sucked was that it started late since the sun sets so late. And it was about 45 minutes from our house, so we didn't get home until about 2:30 am. That pretty much killed me seeing as I haven't seen that time of night (morning) in a lonnngg time!
Luckily our plans yesterday were very relaxing. A good friend of mine from home and her husband were in the area for the weekend (they currently live in Cali). We spent the day with them and a bunch of their friends and family at their beach house in Gloucester. It was a perfect day to be there! Friend is 12 weeks pregnant and looking great. Sadly I am looking the same size (if not bigger) than her. Can you say.. depressing?
Who am I to complain though, seeing as I have done absolutely NOTHING in the way of working out in the last three weeks. Sigh. Thus is my life. Perhaps I will lose some weight, perhaps I will keep slacking and not. Whatevs.
Anywho, it was a great weekend and I was sad to go back to work this morning. But I have a short week, and an even more AWESOME weekend to look forward to! This coming weekend I will finally get to see Jenny again! Super freakin huge SQUEEE!!! More on that to come...
On Friday night we celebrated J's birthday a little early. We went to see RENT at the Colonial theater. Amazing show. I had seen the movie (and loved it) but this was my first time seeing the musical. I was hooked from the second it started. And the crowd was great - everyone cheered when Anthony and Adam came on stage. And the girl who played Mimi too (forgive me, I don't know her name). J loved it too of course. It was his second time seeing it. He was very impressed that it was just as good as when he had seen it in NYC.
Saturday we played tennis all afternoon with J&K (my brother and his girlfriend). We have such a blast hanging out with them. I feel so lucky that I get along so well with not only my brother, but his girlfriend too! After tennis we came back to our house for enchiladas, then headed to the drive-in with them. Let's just say, K and I + enchiladas + the drive-in = a whole lot of flatulence.
Pause. In case you don't know by now, I am very open about these things. If conversations about farts, poop, and the like disturb you, you may want to tread carefully in here. (This may cause me to lose more followers, huh? Oohh well!)
Okay so as I was saying - holy enchilada farts. J and J sat outside the car in camp chairs, while K and I sat in the back of the Jeep at the level of their heads. Farting throughout two whole movies. Bad move, boys.. baaad move! K and I thought it was hilarious of course.
I've gotten off topic though. The real point here was to tell you to get your ass to the movie theater and see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen! What an aweome movie. (In case you don't live in an area with FiOS, please watch this video of pure awesomeness. Kthnxbai).
Actually, that commercial may have started my obsession with the word awesome. Awesome pussycat.
So ya - some people say the movie was all action scenes with no real plot. To that I say, 'uuhh your point?' I mean come on. It's Transformers. I don't think the first one had much of a plot either. It's not the plot that makes these movies so awesome!
I hope I'm not killing the awesome.
Also - the drive-in was great! If you have one around you I totally recommend going. It was 20 bucks per carload - so only 5 bucks per person, for two movies! The one thing that sucked was that it started late since the sun sets so late. And it was about 45 minutes from our house, so we didn't get home until about 2:30 am. That pretty much killed me seeing as I haven't seen that time of night (morning) in a lonnngg time!
Luckily our plans yesterday were very relaxing. A good friend of mine from home and her husband were in the area for the weekend (they currently live in Cali). We spent the day with them and a bunch of their friends and family at their beach house in Gloucester. It was a perfect day to be there! Friend is 12 weeks pregnant and looking great. Sadly I am looking the same size (if not bigger) than her. Can you say.. depressing?
Who am I to complain though, seeing as I have done absolutely NOTHING in the way of working out in the last three weeks. Sigh. Thus is my life. Perhaps I will lose some weight, perhaps I will keep slacking and not. Whatevs.
Anywho, it was a great weekend and I was sad to go back to work this morning. But I have a short week, and an even more AWESOME weekend to look forward to! This coming weekend I will finally get to see Jenny again! Super freakin huge SQUEEE!!! More on that to come...
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane!
So as I said, Buffett was awesome.
(Has anyone else noticed my overuse of the word awesome in all things me? - blog, nest, real life, etc. I think it becoming is a theme).
A short story before I recap the concert. We headed to my parents' house to leave, and what do you know, they only have four tickets. There were six of us going. PROBLEM! We called up ticketmaster, and it turns out two were supposed to be mailed to us, but we never got them. They ended up printing them out and holding them for us at will call. Crisis averted! But we kept thinking, I wonder who the lucky bastard is who stole them out of the mail, because s/he got Buffett tix for free!
Anyway, I was so excited for the tailgating, because it is said to be legendary! We set up our stuff and took a look around. This was probably the best setup near us, and it was tame compared to others we saw walking in to the show! But still worth mentioning. And they brought SAND. Awesome!
Here is a guy dressed as a Coors can. Only at Buffett!
For those of you who don't know, the northeast has been having the worst weather ever. I seriously think we swapped with the nortwest or something, because it is like Seattle here. It feels like the longest April ever, yet it is July 1st. Well we were blessed with a beautiful afternoon just for Buffett! It literally jumped about 15 degrees around noon, and cooled off and poured again around midnight, on the ride home. So of course I had to document the sun when it came out, since we hadn't seen it in about a month!
A shot of the jCam's :-)
Another shot of the sky. I couldn't get enough of the blue stuff! Plus, it looked so pretty with the cloud wisps and the sun setting.
And the main event - Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band! Sadly we were way back at the top of the lawn, so no nice close-up pics like I usually get from Dave :-P
P.S. Yesterday I got a pix message from J. Of our Buffett tickets. In the junk drawer. Apparently they came months ago and he stuffed them there and forgot about them. ::headdesk::
(Has anyone else noticed my overuse of the word awesome in all things me? - blog, nest, real life, etc. I think it becoming is a theme).
A short story before I recap the concert. We headed to my parents' house to leave, and what do you know, they only have four tickets. There were six of us going. PROBLEM! We called up ticketmaster, and it turns out two were supposed to be mailed to us, but we never got them. They ended up printing them out and holding them for us at will call. Crisis averted! But we kept thinking, I wonder who the lucky bastard is who stole them out of the mail, because s/he got Buffett tix for free!
Anyway, I was so excited for the tailgating, because it is said to be legendary! We set up our stuff and took a look around. This was probably the best setup near us, and it was tame compared to others we saw walking in to the show! But still worth mentioning. And they brought SAND. Awesome!
Here is a guy dressed as a Coors can. Only at Buffett!
For those of you who don't know, the northeast has been having the worst weather ever. I seriously think we swapped with the nortwest or something, because it is like Seattle here. It feels like the longest April ever, yet it is July 1st. Well we were blessed with a beautiful afternoon just for Buffett! It literally jumped about 15 degrees around noon, and cooled off and poured again around midnight, on the ride home. So of course I had to document the sun when it came out, since we hadn't seen it in about a month!
A shot of the jCam's :-)
Another shot of the sky. I couldn't get enough of the blue stuff! Plus, it looked so pretty with the cloud wisps and the sun setting.
And the main event - Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band! Sadly we were way back at the top of the lawn, so no nice close-up pics like I usually get from Dave :-P
P.S. Yesterday I got a pix message from J. Of our Buffett tickets. In the junk drawer. Apparently they came months ago and he stuffed them there and forgot about them. ::headdesk::
Monday, June 22, 2009
A Quarter of a Century!
That is how long I have graced the earth with my presence :-PSo as I blogged about before, I am really big on birthdays. Today is a first for me - I have never before worked on my birthday. I realized that today when my alarm went off and I grumbled, 'working on your birthday should be illegal.' I mean, seriously! This is not a way to spend the day! I should have been allowed to sleep in, have breakfast in bed, and do whatever I want - not work! Boo.
Also, this is the worst weather for a birthday EVER. I am wearing long pants and a sweater coat. Normally on my birthday I wear shorts and a tank top. WTF is up with this March weather we are experiencing?!
The good news is, it is supposed to be gorgeous on Thursday. To celebrate my big two-five, we are going to Jimmy Buffett with my parents, brother, and his gf. It's supposed to be 85* and partly cloudy. So that is perfect at least! I am so excited for that - it will be my first Buffett concert ever!
Tonight my parents will be coming over for dinner and cake and ice cream. You all know what I will be wishing for.
PS - in other news - my BFF got engaged on Saturday! I am over-the-moon excited for her! They plan to get married this coming May. I can't wait! Hooray!! :-D
Monday, June 1, 2009
Hooray for June!
I love June. It is my favorite month of the whole entire year. And let's be honest people, it is the best month evah! Okay maybe I am a little biased, since my birthday is this month, but let's consider the pros of June:
- SUMMER starts! (and who doesn't love summer?)
- My birthday.
- School ends (if you are still in school. I'm not, but it helps my list)
- My birthday.
- Clothing stores have awesome sales on the spring/summer clothes they brought out in January and we can just now wear - perfect timing!
- My birthday.
- The weather is perfect - not too hot, not too cold, not too rainy.
- Oh and did I mention my birthday?
Clearly, I am a birthday person. I LOVE birthdays. Mine, my friends, my family, all of em. I love celebrating birthdays. This year is a biggie for me.
A quarter of a century people!! I am looking forward to it though. I am so proud of all that I have accomplished in my life by the ripe age of 25. (here comes the cheesefest) I am the happiest I have ever been - married to my best friend, with two dogs, a house, and awesome friends. To top it off we are hoping to conceive sometime in the coming year. To celebrate my big two five, we are going to my first Jimmy Buffett concert with my parents, my brother, and his girlfriend. Talk about kicking the year off right!
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