Happy Birthday, Little Buddy!

My sweet little nephew turned 1 on Sunday!

To help him celebrate, my sister and I made him a cute little smashing cake.

And even though he didn't really love his cake (I think he'd rather eat his veggies), I still think it turned out pretty cute!

And the groundhog says...

 

 

Phil did not see his shadow this morning...Spring comes early this year!

 

 

Thanks for not seeing your shadow today, little guy!

Goundhog Day!

Here's a little groundhog, furry and brown -

He's coming up to look around.

If he sees his shadow, down he'll go -

Then 6 more weeks of winter, OH NO!

 

 

Will it be 6 more weeks of winter?

Or early spring?

 

We'll find out tomorrow...

Owl Cakepops

These cute little owl cake pops were for another baby shower last weekend. I think they turned out super cute. I love how the green cake pops are like the trees that the little owls are nesting in. But I think my favorite part has to be the big eyes made from pieces of a candy necklace.

 

 

 

And good thing they had the baby shower already, because the little guy was born yesterday - a month early!

Snickerdoodles with the Second Graders

Around this time of year everyone starts thinking about getting presents, of course, but I think I really love giving presents more. I like the challenge of figuring out what to get everyone on my list and then seeing everyone's reaction to their gifts. This year I wanted to help my second graders get in on the fun of giving. I decided we should bake some snickerdoodle cookies and then hand them out to the teachers and staff in our school building.

We made them at school, which was a little bit of a challenge, because we don't actually have an oven in the kitchen at our school. But it worked out pretty well anyway.

The day before baking day (also known as "the best day ever") we read the recipe and the kids got to sign up for the ingredients they wanted to put in. The next day, all they had to do was follow the recipe, and there was no arguing about who got to put the eggs in the bowl!

On baking day, first we gathered up all of our ingredients and called in some volunteers to help. Then we got to work. We mixed all of the ingredients together. It was hard work, because we didn't have any fancy mixers, just wooden spoons.

When we finally finished mixing, the next step was to roll the dough into little balls and then roll each one in cinnamon sugar. One of my sweet girls brought in some sprinkles, so we got to add a little color to our cookies! When we were finished, some of the balls of dough were little and some were big, but they all looked pretty and festive.

The next step was for me to take them home and bake them. It took a while, because there were 6 tables of second graders. Each table mixed up a batch, which made a lot of cookies! The next day, I brought the cookies back to school. We each sampled one, then wrote some sweet little notes to the teachers in our building, thanking them for all of their hard work. The kids went out on secret delivery missions and came back with reports of great success. They were so excited to spread some Christmas cheer throughout our school!

 

Now go spread some of your own Christmas cheer! 

 

Christmas Cake Pops

 I made these festive cake pops for my grandma's bake sale. I pulled out all of my Christmas sprinkles and went a little crazy! I think my favorites are the silver and gold. Or maybe the big green sprinkles. What do you think?

    

Happy 1st day of December!

French Night

Oh Paris, with your Eiffel Tower and sparkling city lights.

 

Really, don't we all wish we were on a plane to Paris right now?

 

Since that's not possible for most of us, the next best thing just might be making crepes and pretending you are there.

 

After my family visited Paris a few years ago, we were all obsessed with crepes. They were so delicious and the crepe guys on the street made it look so easy. We wanted to recreate the crepe experience at home, so my aunt went out and bought a pretty legit crepe maker. We made them a few times, but then kind of forgot about our obsession. Fast forward to last Christmas break, when I was lucky enough to go to Paris again with some friends from work. Of course our trip wouldn't have been complete without eating at least one crepe a day while we were there. Lately we've been wishing we were back in Paris, so we decided to have our own French night. I dug out the crepe maker and we got to work...

 

Our first attempts, not so great.

 

 

But after that, I think we looked a lot like these guys.

 

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

Tres Delicious!