August Re-Cap

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post.  Even more remarkable is that its been 30 days since I started "New Teacher Orientation".  It feels like that was months ago.  What a whirlwind August has been!  I absolutely love my new job and am so happy going to work everyday.  (Although I did very much enjoy my 3 day Labor Day weekend ;-)  The first month of the new school year has started off fairly typically with lots of teacher workshops & developments, meetings, assemblies, and Back to School Night.  So far everything is going well and I can't wait to see what the year has in store! 

Aside from work, I've kept fairly busy baking.  Here are just a few of the things that I worked on throughout the month of August.

A Special Peanut Butter Pie

                       Cornelli Lace Bridal Shower

Couples Shower Cake 

                                Chocolate Swirl

                                  Banana Bread

                              Mini Peach Pies

Looking back at these photos, and knowing that this is only a fraction of what I baked this month, I'm thinking I may need to tke a break for a bit....Nahh ;-)  I'll finish my post with one of my many highlights of Labor Day Weekend: Riding the ferris wheel at the Forest Park Veteran's Festival.....

Have a great rest of the week and hopefully it won't be another month until you hear from me ;-)

A Week of Baking

Despite starting back to school this week, (in a new district) I somehow managed to find time to bake Raspberry Blondies, Decorated Sugar Cookies, Dark Chocolate Browines, and Banana Bread.  I'd rate all attempts as successful, so I will share some recipes and ideas with you.

Raspberry Blondies

I found the recipe for these yummy blondies in the All You magazine (which I love for coupons, recipes, and crafty ideas).  I stole this picture from them as well, since all of the Blondies were eaten before I could get a picture ;-)  I found this recipe to be very simple (and yummy).  I had all of the ingredients except for the raspberries, which were on sale ;-)

INGREDIENTS

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup finely chopped almonds, walnuts, pecans, or mixed nuts

1 cup fresh raspberries

PREPARATION

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with heavy-duty foil, leaving at least a 1-inch overhang on all sides.

2. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir in brown sugar until moistened. Let cool slightly. Off heat, whisk in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Stir in nuts.

3. Scrape batter into baking pan, smoothing top with a spatula. Scatter berries over batter. Bake until blondies are set in center, about 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

4. Grasping overhanging foil on opposite sides of pan, lift out blondies and place on cutting board. Cut into 16 squares and serve.

Note: Nutritional analysis is per blondie

All You Raspberry Blondies

Pinwheel Sugar Cookies

I first saw these cookies on one of my favorite blogs, Bake at 350.  She does amazing work, and someday, I hope that I will be as talented and creative as she is.  I saw these cookies about a month ago, and had been determined to try them every since.  Logistically, these are not that difficult, but you do have to get the timing down just right.  I only attempted to make six, but these are my best four. 

STEPS

1. I took the easy route with making the actual cookies and bought a tube of Pillsbury's Sugar Cookie Dough.  I rolled half of the tube out and made 6 circular cookies with a circle shaped cookie cutter.

2. Once the cookies had cooled, I lined them with white royal icing.  I then thinned the remainder of the icing with a tiny bit of water so that I could easily flood the inside of the circles. 

3. This pictures shows how runny the icing needs to be in order for it to properly flood.  Once the icing had thinned out, I poured it into a bottle.    

   

4.  I then used the bottle to flood the cookies (2 at a time) with the white icing.  With my two other colors (also watered down) I drew a 'bullseye' on top of the white flooding. 

5. At this point I became a tad bit frazzeled and missed taking a picture of the next step, but here is what you do---using a toothpick, you drag the lines from the center to the edge, from the edge to the center, and repeat until you have gone in a full circle.  Again, here is the finished product:

 To find the link to the instructions that I followed (far better than the ones I've posted here), please visit Bake at 350-Martha's Fireworks Cookies.

Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate Brownies

Towards the middle of the week, I got a serious chocolate craving.  Dark chocolate is my chocolate of choice, so I chose to go with Betty Crocker's Dark Chocolate Brownies.  As much as I love making my sweet treats from scratch, I also very much appreciate a good "Box Mix".  They're fast, easy, and usually just as yummy :-) Like the Blondies before, these too disappeared before I could get a pictures.  Needless to say I was cured of my chocolate craving---for the moment....

Banana Bread

Banana bread is one of those things I make almost every time I buy bananas.  I only like bananas when when they are partially green, so once they become fully ripe, they are no good to me---except for banana bread, which I love :-) I've always used the same recipe, and I'll never use anything different.  It was given to me by my mom several years ago, and I scratched it down on the piece of paper below.  I don't know why I never transferred it to something a little "neater", but I think I've come to like the "worn" look :-)  If you don't have a good banana bread recipe, you should definitely try this one. Its easy and delicious, and my husband would eat the entire loaf in one setting if I let him :-)

I have a very special cake to make this week, and I'll be sure to share some photos soon!  Thanks for reading :-)



1st Anniversary Vacation

I can hardly believe that a year has gone by since our wedding day.  It really doesn't seem possible.  But here we are on July 28th, 2011, 1 year and 4 days later.  For the past week or so, Garrett and I have been playing the game, "remember this time a year ago...." We've had lots of fun reminiscing all of the wonderful events of our wedding week including our rehearsal dinner, the night-before BBQ, every detail of the wedding day, the 'happy hour' at our house the following day, and of course the honeymoon.  We had such a fabulous time with all of our friends and family and will never forget that week.  

When thinking about what we wanted to do to celebrate the year anniversary of this wonderful week, we knew we wanted to get away for a few days for some R&R.  Remembering the dreadful heat of our wedding day, we decided it might be nice to escape the constant "heat advisory" that seems to loom over St. Louis every July.    With this in mind, we settled on Door County,WI--a frequent childhood vacation spot for Garrett and his family.  

Aside from the gorgeous views, perfect weather, and relaxed atmosphere, one of our favorite aspects of going to Door County was the fact that we got to bring our dog, Sadie!!!  :-)  As you will see from some of the photos, I think she had just as much fun as we did.  We stayed at the Country House Resort in Sister Bay, which overlooks the water and was just a short walk away from the marina, shops, and restaurants.  Here are just a few photos from our fabulous trip!

Garrett & Sadie in Sister Bay

Mini Golf!!

Grilling out at Peninsula State Park

 White Fish Dunes

 Cave Point

 Sister Bay

 It was a little chilly, so we made a fire on Washington Island

 Drinks on the dock

 Garrett driving the boat we rented

 Sadie LOVED the boat!

   Watching the sunset on the last night

Hope you enjoyed the photos! These are just a few of the hundreds we took ;-) Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the week.  The weekend is almost here!   

Brian & Jessica's Baby Shower



We've come to that exciting time in our lives when more and more of our family and friends are expecting babies.  Our good friends, Brian and Jessica are due with their first baby (a BOY) this September and so we decided it would be fun to get all of our friends together and throw them a Couples Baby Shower.  Our parents (particularly our fathers) were baffled by this concept of a "co-ed" baby shower; however, as you can see from this photo, I really do think the guys had just as much fun as the girls:-)

The object of this game was to be the first to drink their (6oz) beer from a baby bottle.  It took a lot longer than you might think!

Brian and Jessica's nursery is sports themed, so that's the them we chose to go with for the party as well.  Here are a few photos of some of the sports-themed party decorations.



Wreath made out of diapers.

Onesie Jerseys

Score Board

Sports Cake

To make the base of the cake I put together two 9x13 cakes.  The baseball and basketball were used making the Wilton Sports Ball Mold seen here.  It was very easy to use.

We had so much fun hosting the shower and can't wait to meet their new baby boy!  Now that the shower is over, we are focusing our attention on getting ready for our Anniversary Trip to Door County :-) Can't believe that we have been married for nearly a year.  Photos from the trip are soon to follow...    



    



Blog Post #1: Meet our Family

I have worked in education as an elementary school counselor for the past four years, yet this is the first time I have NOT had to work through the summer.  And might I say, these have been the most relaxing few weeks of my life ;-)  So with all of my free time, I figured it might be fun to start a blog! I've had so much fun following blogs of friends, families, (and strangers) and I figured, why not take a stab at it myself?

With this being the first blog, I thought it seemed appropriate that I should "introduce" myself and my family and give some direction as to where I want to go with this blog.  So here goes... My husband and I coincidentally both moved to St. Louis the summer before our 7th grade year.  We became friends throughout high school and college (GO MIZZOU!) and began dating just before graduating from college in 2006.  We were married in July of 2010, and are looking forward to celebrating our 1 year anniversary in a couple of weeks!   

Although we do not have any "human" babies yet, we treat our dog, Sadie, as our baby and love to spoil her.  We adopted her two years ago as a puppy and are very much looking forward to taking her up to Door County next week.  She loves to swim and will be in Dog Heaven!   

When I am not working, hanging out with friends & family, or spoiling Sadie, I am usually thinking about food :-) I pretty much love everything to do with food including: planning menus, grocery sopping, cooking, baking and of course eating!! I'm currently taking a cake decorating class.  Here is a little of my work from last night:

So that pretty much sums up where my life is at right now.  While I don't claim to be a fabulous writer, I am looking forward to sharing our life's adventures and food inspirations through this blog.  I hope you enjoy!