Jackson's First Birthday

My baby turned one! I can hardly believe it. He is getting so big! Actually he's not that big according to the charts, but he sure is big to  me! Our wedding anniversary happens to be on the same day as our little guys birthday and for the second year in a row, we haven't done much to celebrate. But, we did have a big party for Jackson so I guess that's celebration enough. We had lots of friends come and support. It was perfect. Luckily the weather cooled off just in time because we had been having 97 degree days here with no air conditioning. Let me tell you, our apartment was hot! It ended up being a little bit overcast for the party so we were able to leave the back door open so that people could sit out on the deck.

 I made Jackson's "Birthday Suit" onesie. It was pretty simple. I ironed on the words "Birthday Suit." Then I sewed a little bow tie with Velcro on the back and stuck it on.

I have been wanting to make a tiered cake for a while. Mostly because I just wanted to see if I could do it. So, I decided Jackson's birthday would be the perfect time. My cake does look like a Charlie Brown cake. I am well aware of that. I am almost embarrassed to put up a picture of it, but we all have to start somewhere right? I did it, it may be leaning sideways, but I did it. The cake itself tasted yummy though so don't judge it by its looks.

 Here is Jackson's little smash cake. I put some white star sprinkles on it to give it a little decoration.

The smash cake part was so much fun, even though it was a pain to clean up. He somehow flung frosting all over the kitchen. But he sure did look cute!

Here is our family picture. Jackson was trying to touch me with his frosting fingers and he succeeded.
I had blue frosting all over the side of my shirt.

 Here is Jackson getting cleaned up by dad in the kitchen sink.

Yes, he's trying to grab my camera lens cap with his frosting fingers.

Jackson also officially started walking on his actual birthday. He is a rock star!



I used a recipe from Baking Vintage. I knew I wanted a white cake with cream cheese frosting and when I came across this buttermilk recipe, I thought I would try it. Don't let "folding in the egg whites" instruction scare you. It was really simple.

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 egg whites

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Line two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper, then grease with unsalted butter.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. In a medium bowl, whisk together cake flour, baking soda, salt and cream of tartar to remove any lumps. In a liquid measuring cup, combine buttermilk and vanilla. With the mixture on a low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture with the buttermilk. Beat the batter until smooth.

In a clean separate mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Working swiftly, fold the stiff egg whites into the cake bake in three additions. Pour into the buttered cake pans.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pans for one hour, remove from pan and allow to cool fully before frosting with the icing of your choice.

Makes 2 8-inch round cakes

With a double batch I made,

two-8inch cakes,
two 6-inch cakes and
two-4 inch cakes

One of the 6-inch cakes I didn't use and one of the 4-inch cakes I used to make Jackson's smash cake with.

I used a cream cheese frosting recipe from Dessert Now, Dinner Later

Ingredients:
 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Directions:
Place cream cheese in a mixing bowl, beat until smooth.
Gradually add the butter 2 tbsp at a time and continue beating until smooth and well blended
Add powdered sugar and vanilla. Using a hand mixer, mix until combined.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving this year was awesome! In June I was getting ready for this new baby of ours and I thought that we should pick a date for his baby blessing in church so that our family could mark their calendars. We decided to bless him on December 1st which would only be a few days after Thanksgiving. With that in mind, we decided to host Thanksgiving here in Huntington Beach. I was not sure how it was going to turn out at all. I've only cooked a turkey once before in college but that's pretty much it.

Thanksgiving morning I put the turkey in the oven roaster and started getting things ready.
I rubbed the outside of the turkey with olive oil and then I seasoned it with an Italian herb seasoning, fresh grated garlic, and salt and pepper. I chopped up half an onion, two carrots, and a celery stick and placed them inside the bird with Italian seasoning as well to keep the moisture in. Then, I cooked it in the roaster oven at 350 degrees for about 4.5 hours.

Mr. Tyrone carving the turkey

To make Thanksgiving fun for the kids I made a turkey vegetable tray and a turkey caramel apple dip. I got the idea for the vegetable tray from Eating with food allergies. Everyone loved it. They were also pretty simple too. Tyrone had to help me with the turkey face on the vegetable tray though. He's much better at artistic stuff than I am.

On the table I used wide wrapping paper that I had found at the dollar store. I had bought brown craft paper at the dollar store a while back but when I went to pick some up they didn't have anymore so I went with the most Thanksgiving looking wrapping paper they had. This was basically the only one that didn't have any sort of Christmas print on it. It worked fine. Then I bought a big roll of ribbon at Sam's Club to tie bows around the back of the chairs. Again, all they had was Christmas ribbon so I went with the most Thanksgiving looking one.

For the table settings I bought napkins at Bed Bath and Beyond. Then, I made some "Give Thanks" burlap napkin rings. I'm not really that good at crafts like this but they ended up turning out really nice. I had a hard time finding the charms to go on the napkin rings like the tutorial shows but I think that just the ribbon looked nice. I got the tutorial from two it yourself.
 
On each plate I placed a small treat bag filled with "acorns." I used a Hershey's kiss, a small nutter butter and a mini chocolate chip held together by peanut butter. I put 6 in each bag. My father in law loved them. He took all the ones that were left on the table and hid them in the bushes. This is not a joke. I'm glad they were a hit.

Overall I think it turned out great! The weather was gorgeous and it was so much fun to have everyone here in Huntington Beach. Our one bedroom apartment was quite squishy at times but no one complained and I think it was nice to have everyone so close. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to this little place. There are a lot of memories here.

The whole family!

Funnel Cakes for the Whole Family

My mother in law gave me a funnel cake kit last year for the fourth of July and I kept telling myself I need to try it but I never did. I finally decided this year that we should have a big funnel cake party with our friends and neighbors. I figured that would be more fun than making funnel cakes for just the two of us anyway.

I decided to send out an invite for funnel cakes but it took a lot more planning and figuring out than I thought. We have a small one bedroom apartment and so we can only invite a small number of people over. We decided that if we made them downstairs in the courtyard of our apartment we could invite a lot more. That's what we ended up doing and it was perfect. The weather was great and we started at 6pm so that friends with kids could come before it got too late.

The chefs.

our toppings table

We were trying to figure out how to cook funnel cakes outside and at first I thought we could just do it on the grill but then we realized that it won't stay hot enough to keep the oil at the right temperature. We decided to use outdoor stoves. We borrowed one from our neighbor and then we bought one at Sports Chalet for only $29.99. It will be awesome to have next time we go camping. It even comes with a little carrying case.

With the funnel cake kit we got, it came with a metal ring, to make the funnel cake in, a pitcher, and some funnel cake mix. The pitcher for pouring the batter works awesome. I would recommend getting one. I also bought a small 4.5 inch metal cookie cutter so that we could make small funnel cakes for the kids. I used a small clear plastic ketchup bottle and poured the batter out of that. They turned out great. They were the perfect size for the kids.

My husbands funnel cake. With how big my belly looks here you would think I already ate one.

Now on to the recipe. I tried a few before I found this one and this was definitely the best! I got this recipe from Taylor takes a taste

You will need a deep frying pan with oil filling the ring up about half way. When you pour your batter into the ring, pour it in a circle around the outside twice and then pour the batter crisscross all directions to keep the funnel cake together.  Cook for about 30 seconds on each side. The funnel cake should be a golden brown. Then add whatever toppings you'd like.

We quintupled the recipe. This much batter fed 26 of us, 14 adults and 12 kids, with many people having seconds.

Dry ingredients
1 1/2 cups AP Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Wet ingredients
1 1/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp lemon zest (I omitted this)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg

Toppings:
powdered sugar
whip cream
chocolate syrup
cut up strawberries

Three Ingredient Fruit Dip

 

 I've made this fruit dip a few times now and it is absolutely amazing. Every time I have made it, it's gone in an instant. I'm not a huge fan of fruit dip to be honest but after eating this one, I have definitely changed my mind. The best part about it is that it is so easy and there are only 3 ingredients all of which I usually have on hand. 

I bought 5 cartons of strawberries at the store this week in anticipation to dip every single one of them into this mouth watering dip. Well maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. Tyrone came home one day and looked in the fridge and asked, why do we have so many strawberries. My response was, "to eat them, duh!" But in reality they were on sale for 88 cents so I figured I would stock up and whatever we didn't eat I would freeze and make yummy smoothies with. 

Ingredients: 

1-8oz package of cream cheese

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract 

That's it. I put all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and mixed it with beaters until the dip was smooth. You don't want the sugar to be grainy. I tried originally to mix it with a fork and that didn't go so well. As long as you use a mixer, the cream cheese will mix right in with everything else and then it tastes great cold. 

Vegetable Christmas Tree

This Christmas tree was so fun to make and it turned out excellent! I always have the hardest time trying to figure out what to get my grandma for Christmas. Last year, I made a fruit Christmas tree so this year I decided to make a vegetable one. What else am I supposed to get my awesome 89 year old grandma??

So, to start, I got a 12 inch foam cone and I  hot glued it to a square piece of wood. I did this because the fruit and cheese are heavy and if it doesn't have a stable bottom it will topple over. Then, my sister cut out small square pieces of felt and glued them to the base of the cone so that it looked somewhat like a tree skirt and it covered up the ugly piece of wood. Then, the last thing you need to do is to wrap tin foil around the foam. Last year when I made the fruit tree I didn't do this but I think its a good idea so that the vegetables aren't coming in contact with the foam.

Supplies:
Cheese- use whatever type you'd like
broccoli
cauliflower
cherry tomatoes
Christmas cookie cutters
12'' foam cone, or smaller if you'd like to make a smaller one
wooden block
hot glue gun
felt- optional
candy (to look like gifts under the tree)
toothpicks

Then, you can put the fruit on with toothpicks however you would like. We were planning on doing all broccoli and cauliflower as the main part of the tree and then using the cherry tomatoes and cheese as the ornaments but we realized we didn't have enough, so this is what we came up with.

Now, just something  to think about, with the cheese star on top, and the block of wood on the bottom our tree was about 17 inches high. Luckily my mom had a shelf that was adjustable so we could fit it in the fridge overnight. We then put a plastic bag over the tree and tied it so that the cheese and vegetables wouldn't dry up.

On the bottom of the paper plate, we put candy bells to make it look like ornaments and to hold down the pieces of felt hiding our block of wood. 

Now, I officially out of ideas on what to get my grandma for Christmas. Maybe I'll find another edible Christmas tree idea. 

Bow Tie Themed Baby Shower

 

I helped throw my first baby shower a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome. There were about 5 girls that all pitched in to help throw it. I think it turned out adorable. We had a bow tie theme. My friend Wendi made the invitations that were so darling. I meant to take a picture of my invitation but I forgot. But, you can order them here if you would like. I made baby bow tie onesies to match the gray, blue and red invitation color scheme and my friend Alicia pinned them and turned them into a banner to hang over the mantle. I made small bowties out of felt. I just used a hot glue gun. Then I sewed one snap onto the onesie and hot glued the other snap onto the bow. That way, you can unsnap the bowtie and throw the onesie in the wash. They were really simple and easy to  make. I think I might try to make more using cute fabric next time. I'll let you know how that goes.

For the food, Wendi made the food labels with the same bow tie scheme. We had, blue frothy punch, pineapple and strawberry mini skewers with fruit dip, vegetables with hummus, blue and red cupcakes and water bottles with cute bow tie paper around them. My friend Christi also made the bow tie back drop behind the table. Sorry the pictures aren't very good. There was a lot of light coming through that window. I made the fruit skewers and the fruit dip as well as the blue frothy punch. I had bought white ducks to float in the punch and I had made mini bow ties and hot glued it on their necks, but they fell off. I should have used super glue. So, we had a duckless punch. 

Here is the recipe: 

 1 pkg berry blue unsweetened Kool-Aid

 1-2 liter Sprite

 1-64 oz white cranberry juice

 8 scoops vanilla ice cream

 1 c sugar, or to taste 

 In a large punch bowl, stir together the Kool-Aid, Sprite and cranberry juice. Stir in sugar to taste. (I used the full cup) Float scoops of ice cream on the top. The ice cream melts somewhat and turns the punch a beautiful baby blue color with frothy white clouds floating on the top.

The night before the baby shower I was lying in bed and I thought,  I should probably stick the sprite and cranberry juice in the refrigerator. I would recommend this. The ice cream still made the punch frothy with the liquids already cold. 

The fruit dip for the pineapple and strawberries was to die for! A friend of mine gave me the recipe in a text. That's how easy it is. She said that it is best with pineapples and strawberries so that's what I got but I also tried bananas and it was good with that as well. 

Ingredients: 

Mother's macaroons

2 cups greek yogurt or sour cream

2 cups brown sugar

I made mine with greek yogurt and it was really yummy. Mix two cups of the greek yogurt or sour cream with two cups of brown sugar. Add crumbled cookie pieces. Chill and serve. I doubled my recipe and still only used half of the macaroons. It's up to you how much macaroons you would like to put in. And viola! 

 

I think it was a successful baby shower. It's always fun to buy or make cute baby things. They are so precious. I wish Crystal and John the best of luck with their new baby Thor.