have you seen my room?

 So, considering this last weekend was father's day I decided to go home to visit with the family. it actually turned into a rather productive day for me.

I got to play fetch with Maddie for a large chunk of may afternoon..

Found my mint plant and two sunflowers were the only living things left from my garden.... which was actually rather remarkable considering the neglect.

 I took a trip to Good Will and was lucky enough to find an awesome "me" sized chair (and that super cool cheetah mug) for $20. SCORE!!! it didn't even smell bad and it fit into the corner of my room perfectly!

Now I really just need my art table so I can get some work done and get things organized... slowly but surly things are coming together and I'm feeling more at home.


there are so many projects i want to try now and i really need to figure out a way to better use the vertical space in my house. The ceilings are SO high. it seems wrong to not have things more evenly distributed... maybe its just me?

 I'm ready to be settled in...

the big move

so as you noticed... may was less than a productive month for my blog.

(i feel like i'll be doing a lot of apologizing for that)

May was a HUGE month for me.... mostly because I have moved into a new place, got a car, sister's 18th birthday, graduation... yada yada yada. Most importantly.... I'm living in the epicenter of awesome and loving every minute of it. 

Moving in has been a relatively smooth process... lots to juggle between work and trying to settle in but its going nicely... there's lots of cleaning to be done and this old house needs a lot of TLC but it's coming along nicely, and my roommates seems pretty eager to see things come together too, so thats always a good sign (I think)

anywho

a lot of my evenings are being spent cleaning up a room or decorating a little...i'm working in a new running schedule too since I'll be doing the color run in Portland come September, figure I should probably start running again. but yeah... this is my new place.... I love the high ceilings... and did I mention the location already? 'Cause its awesome!!!!!!! I can walk to everything!

Ok. I gotta run to work. :) check in with you guys later!

Another Batch of Cupcakes

So I was a little late with this month's cupcakes... the first friday... was the first, go figure and i totally missed that one... and the next one...... my friday cupcake thing turned into more of a monday cupcake thing but hey... what can you do. the good news is, they got done and were AWESOME!

On the menu this month were a creation of my own... Blackberry filled lemon cupcakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting... did I mention the blackberry filling? mmmmm. These actually turned out exactly how I envisioned them.

Lemon Cupcakes

3 c flour

1 T baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 c unsalted butter, room temp

2 c sugar

4 lg eggs

zest of two lemons

2 T lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

1 c buttermilk

 

It followed the usual, mix the dry, cream the butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time then the lemon zest, and mix it all together alternating the buttermilk, vanilla and lemon juice with the flour mixture... for more detailed instructions check out this blog. I used the cake recipe shown there.

 

the frosting was basic.. I used the concepts from my first batch of cream cheese frosting (if you recall it was orange and delicious) and instead of adding orange peel to my cream cheese, powdered sugar concoction...I added the zest of two lemons. Go figure!

the blackberry filling was simple too, two bags of blackberries, a cup of sugar, and lemon juice from a lemon or two...(I cant really remember.. I was in a lemon zesting/squeezing frenzy and almost killed a whole bag of lemons since I doubled the recipe...well all but the frosting (I decided to use that sparingly this time and only made half my original recipe, mostly out of laziness)

So there you have it!!! 

SO TASTY!!!!!! 

The only down side I can see to this is how quickly next month's batch of cupcakes are sneaking up on me. I should probably start thinking about what I'm gonna make this time. 

May cupcakes

This morning I mentioned May's birthday cupcakes were to die for... they REALLY were.

After I made the first batch of cupcakes, I was talking to my best friend about them... and we brought up our love for chocolate, raspberry and cream cheese combination and it got me thinking... i need to make a chocolate raspberry cream cheese cupcake! HELL YES! However I couldn't find a good recipe for each of the parts i wanted to it was kind of a mix and match from my recipe book..

I used the same awesome chocolate cake recipe as last time... added white chocolate to the cream cheese frosting instead of orange, and made a simple raspberry filling... thats right my friends... FILLING.

these cupcakes were AMAZING! it'll be hard to make something better...(i'm already late on my cupcakes for this month because I got a car and was moving over the weekend...there's a lot to catch up on!!!)

sad ending to this story. (and also why I don't have a picture of the awesome filling) I had asked that someone save me a cupcake at home... and luckily when i got home there were actually 2 cupcakes saved.. just for me.... i thought i'd be patient and enjoy it after dinner.... and waited and waited and waited... and by the time i went up to the fridge to grab my amazing cupcake.... there was nothing but an empty plate. I was devastated...crushed... oh so angry! but yeah...
may was a good batch.