Will had a great birthday and a great day to celebrate! The weather turned out to be perfect, it was about 80 degrees with 100mph winds. Okay, so the wind wasnt that bad, but it was windy. We cant complain though becaue we could open presants outside!

Will loves his mower he got from Grandma and Grandpa, he was taking it all over the yard that day. Now he mows the carpet in the living room since the cold weather is back. Of corse, children who are so layed back and easy going will always be tiered and cranky on thier birthday party!

Alright, so Mom is really pushing the basketball game instead of football, since this is from Mom and Dad. He has his own basketball goal.

Here are all the wonderful cupcakes I made for Will! I counted and yes, there were 100 cupcakes!!!!! Hence why I did not make the bacon cupcakes.

The picture is a little out of focus but here is Wills smash cake. Boy did he smash it!

He is so excited to get dirty!!!

Talk about a sugar OD! His diapers looked like that for the next two days. Just a little TMI.

Not cake...

I really wanted to try out the smooth icing look on cookies. Now, this being my first try, I was pretty pleased, but, this is something that takes lots of practice. I had bought some Easter cookie cutters at Target the other day and gave it a go. Not being able to find my Grandma's sugar cookie recipe, I had to resort to a cookbook recipe. The tulips and carrots turned out the best. Probably do to the fact that they are pretty plain. I didn't want to go threw all the work of coloring even more frosting yellow so I went with store bought yellow icing ready to go in the tube and all. Bunnies were very fun and turned out pretty cute. Obviously, I need to practice on them more but until then, these were pretty cute. With the frosting having to set out for a night before being able to wrap them up, I thought the cookie turned out to be kinda dry. I had reports that they were not so much but, I guess I am my own worse critic.

What does a sugar overdose look like?

We went to the St. Beneidict's St. Pattricks Day Parade. Will of corse injoyed himself because he got candy! Here he is sucking on a sucker. (Parental advisory was in affect at all times)

And.... he layed down in the middle of the kitchen floor. Just being goofy!

What does 'Heaven on Earth' look like?

Happy Birthday Will!

He hasn't changed much in the course of a year. Still the sweetest, most beautiful baby.

Has it really been a year?

Where did the time go?

So far this morning, every time I look up at the clock to see what time it is, I have flash backs of what I was doing at that exact time a year ago. The good thing of this is that I didn't start doing this until about 7:06, at witch point I had just gotten my epidural and started to feel no pain. Even the worse pain I had that day was so worth it, I would even go as far as saying, I would have gone through that much pain for several days, or even a week just to have my little man.

He is the best of both Dennis and me. At one year old, his personality shines. He love to play hide and go seek with the kitchen towel. He throws it over his head and chases you around laughing hysterically. When he plays tractors he has to make tractor noises. Bath time is probably the most fun he has throughout the day. It's a 'lets see how wet we can get Mom by splashing!' When he is being kissed on his neck, he laughs so hard that he can hardly catch his breath! I guess all of that would be part of me, the laid back, care free, have fun in life, that I think is the best part of me.



As for what his strong parts of Dennis would be that he is so determined. Once Will gets something in his head, he will do it, one way or another. When his father does this, it of course irritates me a bit, but in the light of things, this is a huge plus in life. Will also gets his stubbornness from his father. Another thing that can be quite annoying and testing at times, but is truly a great trait to have in life. He is also very brave. I have said many times that if something could be dangerous, Will will do it!

It is now 10:35 AM and one year ago I started pushing. See I keep doing this, as I am sure I will all day long.

Now that things have been quite busy and I ha vent gotten back to this for awhile, and the time now is 11:28 and 3 minutes until Will was born a year ago! Happy Birthday little man!!!

Will and Jaelynn's birthday pictures!

For my first attempt at taking pictures of one year olds, I didn't think I did all that bad. But, one year olds are so, so, so, hard to photograph! Most of my favorites are of them eating the cupcakes, maybe this is because they actually sat still.

I have decided that one year olds have to be the hardest to photograph. Obviously, I do not have much experience but, think about it. Nine month olds don't walk yet so they just crawl everywhere. Granted, they crawl fast but you surly can get a great shot or two. Eighteen month olds will listen if they are in a good mood and will stand in one spot for at least a little while.

This has to be my favorite one of Jaelynn. The editing and everything turned out great. I LOVE it! She is such a pretty girl!

Will was the food monster of course! Who would have thought differently? He took the wrapper and shoved the entire cupcake in his mouth. The entire cupcake. It was so much fun, I cant wait until his party. He will have his very own 3" cake to demolish! So much fun. I guess you can say that the seven teeth he does have are the sweet teeth he got from his Momma!!!

The only time he was still enough to get a great shot was when he was eating his cupcake. It was a great time! (No, I did not make the cupcakes, I bought them!!! I knew Dennis would question my thinking on that, but all the ones in the freezer are for his party!)

This is probably the best one he took while clothed. You can almost count those little chompers!!!

She is such a beautiful little girl! I cant get over how cute she is. Her Momma made her outfit. It went great with her lady bug themed party.

Will was very unsure of these steps. This may have been a first time he has actually gotten scared of something. Usually if it is remotely dangerous, he is all for it!

GOTTA LOVE THOSE BABY BUTTS!!!!! This is most definitely my favorite picture that we got! It is so fun to see these two grow up together. I love having fun nights together, Will chases Jaelynn around all over the place. If we are at Wills house then he is very possessive over his toys and same with Jaelynn. It's so funny!

Chocolate Cherry Cola cupcakes, with red licorice filling, and marshmallow frosting

This was a copy from the show Cupcake Wars on The Food network channel. It was a very fun cupcake to make. I have enjoyed finding so many fun recipes. First of all, if you have never seen this show, you need to. You will get addicted!

These chocolate cherry cola cupcakes were easy to make, they are your typical cupcake recipe. The only thing to say about this cupcake is when it says to fill 3/4 full, it really mean 1/2 or less! They overflowed all over the pan, it looked like I was baking a sheet cake!

The recipe says that red vine licorice is the best kind but, apparently no one in the entire town sells red vine licorice. I did find this Australian licorice. I bought some with Twizzlers just to see what one would taste more like Red Vine. I ended up using about half and half.

You have to boil the licorice in water for a while until most of the licorice is melted... There will always be some chucks left but that's okay right?


Then adding some sugar, corn starch, and other ingredients, you boil that until it becomes this thick. Takes forever... trust me. After about 15 minutes of sitting and whisking, it became the right consistency.

Time to inject the cupcakes! This is supper easy. It isn't even necessary to cut a hole in them, just put your tip inside the cupcake and fill away!

This is the marshmallow frosting. I'm not quite sure why it is called marshmallow because it is really a meringue. After beating the frosting for well over 20 minutes, I still didn't have the right consistency to make it look like a true frosting. It tastes amazing but ended up more like a ganache.

Apparently, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Just imagine the cupcake with a white layer on top. For Will's birthday I have made some chocolate cowboy hats I will lay on top of them. Can't wait!!!! Can you tell? ;)

Samoa cupcakes

If you will be coming to Will's birthday you will get the opportunity to experience these cupcakes first hand without having to make them yourself! I can post a recipe but this is what I did and needed.

Our couch (Nikki) held a bake off for a fundraiser. I received 'Peoples Choice' for my Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes. In winning this I received quite the award, I got this this caramel sauce, along with some other goodies.

I baked chocolate cupcakes, it was a certain recipe but lets just say chocolate cupcakes. After cupcakes were made I stuffed some of this yummy caramel syrup.

After the cupcakes have the caramel syrup in the center you dip them in chocolate ganache.

This is the coconut frosting. Lets talk about buttery! Next time that I make it, it will be lacking at least one stick of butter that the recipe called for. It was so buttery that the before I added coconut to the frosting, it wouldn't even stay on the spatula! It didn't call for the coconut but I had to put something in it to thicken it up. I am glad that I did though, it made it much more 'coconuty'

This is the end product! Don't they look scrumptious?!?!? Can't wait for Will's birthday to share these amazing cupcakes!!!!

Fun days off!

So, a few things to start this off. One is that for Jaelynn's birthday party, Lacy and I made some cake pops. They turned out so cute! I was so happy with how they looked. Absolutly adorable!










And at Jaelynn's birthday Will was playing with all of her books. The sweetest baby in the world to me is of course the one in the mirror!











On my first few days off I baked up a storm! I made so many cupcakes mostly for Will's birthday. For breakfast, I made waffles. Will loved them and I sure hope Dennis did too since he had said the day before that he used to love eating those as a kid, pouring the syrup in each square.






(Stay tuned for the cupcake posts)