Girlfriends

Look at these gorgeous ladies, all of my best girlfriends from High School! We got together to celebrate Maggie's Bridal Shower over Easter weekend.

We had such a wonderful time at Maggie's sister Angela's lovely home.

What can be better...good friends, good food, good wine, and a reason to celebrate! I only wish we had a longer visit. I'm looking so forward to spending a fun filled weekend with them two weeks from now for Maggie's wedding. I can't wait girls!!

Happy Second Birthday Ryan!

This adorable and very special little guy is my Godson Ryan. He turned two last weekend, and it was a very special celebration. Ryan wasn't yet here in the US to celebrate his first birthday. His Mommy and Daddy, our good friends Amy and Rick, were very impatiently waiting for his adoption from Guatemala to complete...a very long and drawn out process that started when Ryan was only a couple of months old!

We're so glad to have him here now! Ryan LOVES Elmo, so of course he had an Elmo party. I made these cookies for him and his friends to celebrate his daycare birthday party.

This is a cute little video of him telling us how old he is. He's such a doll!

Happy Birthday Buddy!!

Decorating Easter Eggs

Tonight the girls and I dyed our Easter Eggs while Bill was at work. They picked a kit that jazzed up the decorated eggs with glitter after they were dyed. I tried and tried to get them to slow down and decorate them with crayons before dying...but they wouldn't have it. Sadly there are no names or designs on our easter eggs this year, only pretty colors and glitter.

The kit I purchased was supposed to have six colors: blue, green, yellow, purple, pink, and orange. I guess when you purchase you kit from a discount store, like Aldi, you are taking your chance at getting six tablets, but not necessarily six different colors. We ended up with two green, two purple, a yellow and a blue. Originally when the girls saw the tea cups full of dye they were nearly in tears about the lack of their favorite color PINK, however the purple dye ended up creating a nice pink egg color. Whew!

After the eggs were dyed, they took a quick dip in the "magic glitter solution" before sloshing and spinning in the "magic glitter dust".

Amazingly, we managed to dye all of the eggs with only one casualty:

I always make a couple more than a dozen for just that reason! Here is the finished product, as Brie would say: Taa Daa!

Arguably the Best Present I Have Ever Received!

Oh, how I have dreamed of owning a KitchenAid Stand Mixer! Seriously, I have! I LOVE to bake, and every baker needs a great mixer.

I'm happy to say I no longer have to dream, I'm the very proud owner of a beautiful Red KitchenAid Artisan Mixer! Thank you so much Mom, Dad, and Gigi for my EARLY birthday present!! Lucky for me Beth's Birthday is a little over a month before mine, so in order to give the proper surprise we both received them at the same time!

I'm proud to tell you I broke this baby in good this weekend! We had a Trivia Night on Saturday, so I baked two different kinds of cake truffles, along with pudding shots for this event. I was also in charge of Beth's Birthday cake.

Since everyone is always asking me for my recipes...I'm including them!

I didn't take pics of the pudding shots, I'm going to share the basic recipe. The flavor combinations are endless. I made Coconut Creme - yumm!!

Pudding Shots

1 small package instant pudding(I used coconut creme)

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup booz(I used Malibu)

1 8 oz. container extra creamy cool whip

In a bowl combine pudding mix and milk, beat until smooth. Add alcohol and beat until thoroughly combined. Fold in cool whip. Package in "shot" containers(I use the same ones I use for Jello Shots - 2 oz. clear cups with lids), store in the freezer.

My sister made chocolate ones using Godiva liquor and vodka - also a big hit!

Cake Truffles

Next I made cake balls, I think I'd rather call them cake truffles though. Bakerella makes really great cake balls, hers are actually balls - or really fun shapes and pops. I love Bakerella's great ideas, her stuff is adorable, but for everyday baking I don't share her attention to detail - instead of spending all of that time rolling each one into a perfect ball I like to use my cookie scoop which gives me a really nice even amount of cake with a nice flat bottom. I'm okay with the little pooling and drips of chocolate around the bottom. I think it gives the cake truffles character. I also would just rather call it a truffle than a ball - doesn't that sounds more appetizing?

Anyway, cake truffles are great. There are tons of flavor combos, I love thinking of all of the possibilities. For Valentine's Day I made chocolate covered strawberry(strawberry cake, cream cheese icing, dipped in milk chocolate). This weekend I was in a coconut mood, so I made coconut rum flavored cake truffles and also chocolate - because you can never go wrong with chocolate!

Here is Bakerella's basic recipe for cake balls.

For my coconut rum flavored cake truffles I used a white box cake mix and substituted Malibu coconut rum for the water in the package directions. I chose to use a store bought frosting, I picked coconut pecan flavor which had lots of nice pieces of coconut, which I then jazzed it up a bit with a shot of Malibu. After scooping into balls and freezing for about a half an hour I dipped them in white chocolate.

For my chocolate cake truffles I used a devils food cake mix, milk chocolate icing, and dipped them in milk chocolate.

Both flavors went over equally well at trivia, I took the left overs to work today where they were quickly gobbled up by my co-workers.

Beth's Birthday Cake

After receiving our new mixers last week it was decided that I should make Beth's birthday cake so that I could use my new mixer - as if I needed an excuse! My sister shares my affection for Bakerella's adorable website, and had been wanting to try the recipe she suggested for Peanut Butter Fudge Cake. It was very good, and very rich! No calories involved here - all in all this cake included two whole bags of Reece's Peanut Butter cups!

Bella thought it was yummy in her tummy - she even showed us!!

St. Patrick's Day Parade 2009

St. Patrick's Day Parade

We decided at the last minute to enjoy the nice weather and head over the St. Louis for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Beth, Jason, and Bella joined us and we had a great time.

We went to Keener Plaza, they had all kinds of great free stuff for the kids to do. Face painting, bounce houses, etc. We spent a little too long on this stuff, and unfortunately didn't get very good spots to watch the parade, but we had fun anyway. We definitely want to go back next year and decided that we will send the boys to camp out for parade spots why we take the kiddos around to all of the festivities.

Because we had bad spots, and the kids were whining a bit to see better, you'll notice they spent lots of time on our shoulders. Primarily Bill and Jason's, but Beth and I got in on the action too. Notice all of our fun garb, gotta love the dollar section at Target! I realize after looking at these pictures that the green I choose to wear really wasn't that green. Oh well!

The girls really enjoyed the Irish Dancers. Here is their interpretation...they are such a hoot!

Catching Up

Hello, my name is Becky, and I am a horrible blogger. Yes, I know it has been over a month since my last post, so I'm going to catch you up. I will try to do better.

Here are a couple of the girls playing in the snow.

Here are a couple at the mens SIUE basketball games. We have been to most of the home games this year. The girls love going. This particular Saturday, I was feeling brave and let both of the girls invite a friend to go along. Brittney brought her friend Morgan from our neighborhood, and Brie choose her best friend Sidney. It was fun, but I will say I didn't see much of the game that night.

Next is Superbowl! This was right after Grandpa passed away, so none of us were feeling much like partying. A nice relaxing family evening was just what we needed. The boys watched the game in the basement on the big screen, while us girls wachedthe kids and the commercials upstairs. Bella wasn't very intereseted in the game...she wanted everyone to read her gooks to her. Notice Gigi and Aunt Katie both gave in.

My girlies were acting silly in their 3D glasses before watcing the Alien preview.

Sweet Bella wanted to take some pictures too!

Beth and Brit looking through Auntie's pictures.

Here is a little video of Bella showing off all of her tricks. She is so precious! Notice that she knows where many of her body parts are now, and my girls favorite Extreme Bella!

Here are a couple of pics of the girls at Noel Richey's birthday party which was at Collinsville fun park. Fun! Their favorites were Air Hockey, and of course the bumper cars!

Last, a couple of weekends ago we went out with our good friends Amy and Rick and their two sons Ryan and Alex and Beth, Jason, and Bella. During our 1 hr and 15 minute wait for dinner at Alfonzo's we played at Family Fun Time. It was very crowded, but fun.

Alex was a little young for the festivities, so here he is chilling with Mommy.

Ryan trying out ski ball.

Bella chilling in the Ferrari.

Brittney playing air hockey with her Daddy. She's very serious.

Brie riding the rides.

Ski Ball! The best game, as you get the most tickets. The goal...the girls must win at least 200 tickets so that they can get some annoying noise maker thing, a "diamond" ring, a bouncy ball, an air head and a jolly rancher. I'm pretty sure we hit the jackpot on he machine Brit was on. Must have been broken and spitting out extra tickets. There was quite a line of people waiting for Brittney to leave so they could have her machine!