best cupcake ever

Yes, Another food post... You see, this was quite certanly the best cupcake I've ever had. I wasn't expecting much from this blueberry cupcake (top R.), picked out by Millie, but it topped the list! Very dense, with real blueberries inside. The frosting must have been half freshly whipped cream half frosting. Just wishing I could have another! If you are ever in Fayetteville AR. (on the way to most places, jk) stop by Bliss Cupcakes and try out one of these!

Weather

Memphis weather is pretty crazy. I love that these 2 pictures were taken the same week. Start out with a snow storm and temperatures in the 20's... end the week with some sunny 60 deg. weather! (It's like coach Kuhlmann always says, "you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes" ha ha, love that guy!)

last minute valentines

My Valentines is kindof last min. this year (due to being out of town last week, and planning for New Beginnings) but here are some cute, easy valentine ideas... just in case you are on the same track that i'm on (well, on second thought, if you are on the same track i'm on you may not check blogs on a busy day, but oh well, i'll post anyway)

All images from B.H.G.

Message in a bottle!

(mini candy bar for the body)

This one for mill.

This one for Josh

and some yummy treats that you could make later this week- from BHG as well (you can find the recipes by using the recipe search on BHG.com)

Chocolate-covered strawberry cake(only i'm using a cake mix rather than making home-made cupcakes like the recipe suggests)

chocolate-malted mousse

New Favorite Activity

Playing "snow" is Millies new favorite activity- We play this like every day or two lately! The supplies, ie: Gillette shaving cream, only cost about $1.59 ... it has provided about 3 hours of entertainment so far --and is super easy to clean up! We just put out a plastic placemat (or just put it on the table) and squirt away. we had some plastic arctic animals that millie loves to cover in the snow. Of course the snow generally ends up all over her face and cloths and on the chair etc but it is so easy to clean up!

Valentines Wreath

I saw a wreath like this in my friends magazine and thought it was pretty cute. I like how it looks home-made and kind of cheesy with all the glitter but that's what valentines is about! The cost was about $4. I've written up a little "tutorial" below

Supplies:

-scizzors

-newspaper or pages from an old book

-4-5 different sheets of "valentines paper"

-red cardstock

-glitter glue

-glue stick

-modge podge

-sponge brush

-Thin card board box (like a cereal box)

-normal cardboard box

-ribbon to match

-glitter love letters (Target has a pink glitter pack of ABC's for .99 cents)

1. cut out hearts from scrap book paper. (I got my paper after last Valentines so it was like 50% off) You will want to cut 4 big hearts (out of same paper), 8 med hearts (1 did 5 out of newsprint and 3 on a brown print) and about 12-13 small hearts, can be cut in various small sizes.(I used about 3 different prints AND the plain red cardstock for the smaller hearts)

2. brush modge podge on the back of the hearts and stick them on the thin cardboard (ie; cereal box) when the Modge podge is dry, paint over the tops of the hearts. wait for it to dry.

3. Glitter glue!

squirt red glitter glue around newsprint hearts, and silver glue around the 4 big hearts... I was to cheap to buy red glitter paper so I just painted my small plain red hearts with the glitter glue...

4. cut out wreath from thicker cardboard- I traced a large mixing bowl (about 12") then I cut out the center- leaving me with a wreath that was about 1 1/2 in wide.

5. arrange hearts on wreath, and glue them down with glue stick (or hot glue or what ever you want) I also wanted my hearts to be a little more 3d so I cut some small tabs out of cardboard (like the one in the gap between hearts in photo above) and then glued the heart onto that. some hearts were glued directly to the wreath, some on 1 tab and others on 2 tabs (does that make sense?)

6. make sign- I had reversable paper so I used the back of one of my sheets. covered it with modge podge and glued on the love letters. (the ribbon looking things off to the side of the sign is just paper that was modge-podged and folded like a ribbon)

7. attach ribbon to top!

Young Womens New Beginnings

New Beginnings is comming up in our ward. I'm the "Personal Progress Advisor" so I'm the one who gets to head up New Beg. The girls in the presidencies came up with a cute theme- "Girls just wanna have F-U-N" - accompanied with sleepover themes (the "fun" stands for the sponge bob song; I do NOT like sponge bob, but the song did fit and was kinda cute so we let the girls use it) I'm excited about it and think it's going to turn out really cute, so I thought I'd share a few of the fun things we came up with:

Invites

these took me a little to long to make but I think they turned out cute. The paper doll is in a sleeping bag, you pull her out and the invite is on her dress. (template for doll head found at (http://greenbeanbaby.typepad.com/main/2006/08/cut_paper_illus.html)

DECOR:

Like the flower vases filled with candy (photo from "the celebration shop")

Cute and super cheap tabel decor. The girls are just bringing patterned sheets/bedspreads.(photo from "the celebration shop")

FOOD:

(photo from "allergymoms") we'll just bake cookie dough in a pizza pan, then use red frosting for sauce, white for cheese, and fruit roll-ups for the pepperoni's

chocolate dipped mallows- but we'll do rice crispy treats

**So, if any of you other gals are in Y.W. you should post what you are doing and then I can steal some ideas for next year ;)