Easter Egg Hunting Can Be Exhausting

I'm sharing the obligatory Easter shot of Little Mister.  He was all smiles on Easter morning at my parents' house and loved the thrill of the hunt.  And for those of you who haven't noticed, we caved and cut his hair.  I'm not sure if me or Matt was more distraught during the actual clipping but Little Mister seems to like it and admired himself in the mirror.

When we finally got home that evening, this was how we spent most of it.

All he wanted to do is cuddle with his daddy.  I absolutely love this picture and I'm so glad I was able to capture this moment.

Photos by me with the Nikon D40X

Cupcake Detour - Bird Bakery San Antonio

After dinner the other night, the three of us were craving something sweet so the car veered us to a new bakery conveniently located near our home in Alamo Heights, Texas.  We were treated to the warm decor of Bird Bakery and the welcoming smiles of the beautiful Elizabeth Chambers, the owner of this brand spanking new establishment.

In a nutshell, the ambiance cannot be beat and I've been to my fair share of cupcake eateries (what?  I'm pregnant!).  There is still that chaotic newness about it and I can sense it will take some time to get broken in.  All the hype leading up to the opening gives it a lot to live up to and with that, I only wish it the best.

Little Mister was in cupcake heaven and was smitten by our gracious host to say the least.  We will be back.

photos taken by me using Instagram

Spill the Beans, Already!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been going through a bit of a change:

 A bunch of you probably got the hint from my Pinterest board.  I couldn't help myself!  You all know my (un)healthy addiction to Pinterest! 

We are excited and super surprised to say the least.  I can't express ENOUGH the extent of our surprise.  We were told by more than one medical professional that we would never be able have children on our own.  Little Mister finally came to us by way of in vitro fertilization after years of trying, invasive tests and procedures, and disappointing results.  He is truly our little blessing and there isn't a day that goes by that he doesn't make me smile at the miracle of it all. 

So apparently as the story goes for many in our shoes after going through fertility treatments or adoption, we took it easy and didn't worry too much about having another one anytime soon.  We were convinced that it couldn't happen to us, right?  Wrong!  It was only after a couple weeks of just feeling downright crappy and (coincidentally) I had my yearly scheduled with my OB/GYN that I requested, "While I'm here, could I get a pregnancy test?"  At that point, I had a feeling but wanted to be certain. 

My next phone call was to Matt:

"Are you sitting down?"

I haven't been 100% but I'm feeling that second trimester resurgence so I'm taking advantage while I can.  Running after an energetic toddler has left me less time to worry about the little things this time around and trust that my body will do what it's supposed to do so long as I keep eating healthy and getting lots of rest.   We ask Little Mister if he knows what's in Mommy's belly - he says "Bebe."  (swoon!)  He's going to be a wonderful big brother and we are looking forward to the new adventure.

Oh and by the way, it's a girl!  Let the shopping commence!

Until next time!

Test Kitchen - Personal Apple Pies

Hello there!  'Tis the season for gatherings and parties and what better way to celebrate than with a bit of dessert?  I made these personal apple pies with inspiration from Renata at Testado Provado Eaprovado blog for our office wide Thanksgiving feast this week and although they didn't turn out quite like I imagined them, they weren't too shabby!  

I started out with a dozen medium sized granny smith apples and sliced off the top of the apple.  The hubs and I then proceeded to go to town on the apples coring each one first with a melon baller to eliminate the seeds (we found that it had nice sharp edges to work with) and then with a spoon to get the rest of the good stuff.  There was some trial and error early on in the process but eventually we had a mini assembly line going.  

To keep the apples from going brown, we periodically sprinkled them with a bit of lemon juice.  

In a separate bowl mix together the following ingredients:

12 Tbsp sugar

6 Tbsp all purpose flour

3 tsp powdered cinnamon 

Sprinkle over the apple bits and toss well.  Spoon the bits into the hallowed out apples.  

For the topping, I took a shortcut by using store bought pie crust to crown the apples and then I used a small flower shaped cookie cutter to create the pattern but really, anything goes.  Just provide a little bit of space for the apples to vent while baking.  Have fun with it!

Ok, so we were quite proud of ourselves up to that moment.  Everything was looking really good!  I put them into a 370 degree oven for 40 minutes with the intent on checking back every so often.  Then I got caught up watching last night's How I Met Your Mother (for those of you who watch it, I hope you know what I mean when I let out an audible "gasp!").

I ran to the kitchen after the show finished and panicked.  This is what came out -

Yup.  The apple containers exploded.  All that work down the drain.  

And if you don't already know by now, I'm not an expert baker of any kind so a number of things might have been the deciding factor to their demise:

a.  I left them in the oven too long

b.  I didn't allow for enough venting

c.  The temperature of the oven was set too high

d.  A mystery yet to be solved

e. All of the above

I'm going to go ahead and go with E.  Do any of you know what could've happened?

I still needed to get a dessert together for the feast so I wasn't going to give it all up.  I proceeded to carefully spoon all the fillings of the cooked apples filling including the pretty topping carefully into cupcake liners.  They held up pretty well, thankfully and no one was the wiser!  

Two of the apples survived the ordeal and I'm happy to present them here as my intention all along:

Hopefully you'll have more luck than I did and in the meantime, I will try this recipe again. Cheers!

Finally!

This came in the mail the other day and frankly, it couldn't have come at a better time.  I've held out with envy as the rest of my friends flaunted the iPhone 4 in my face.  But I was patient!

It was a good thing too, because just weeks before my phone fell 18" to the floor and when I picked it up, this was the state it was in.

Sad, isn't it?  What's worse is that I was cutting my finger on the shards of glass so I put packing tape over it.  Then the packing tape started to peel so I added more masking tape on top of it.  Be honest, you think it's trashy.  I do, too.  I promise that it wasn't on purpose but I'm sure others in my life might tell you otherwise.  (All lies!)  I'm still considering selling my phone to a place like Gazelle or Target.

I'm in the middle of making a snazzy cover for my new iPhone with inspiration from Purl Bee.  I don't have a lot of the colors that she recommended but that just gave me room to experiment a bit with what I have.

It's getting there!