Wake and bake...

My cousin says baby girl doesn't want to come out because the foods too good at the Womb Inn. I might have to agree. Coffee cake and my world famous sea salt chocochoco chip cookies. And these are just what I have photo's of. There's been pumpkin mochi cake (if you haven't tried this or made it and love a really dense cake you must!), a bellewood acres jonagold apple pie, grandma's okanomyaki, gyoza, and chicken spaghetti. Plus! Jesse's off work now so even breakfast has been gourmet! I ran out of flour so I'm hoping without all the baking going on this little one will decide she's done baking too...3 days shy of 41 weeks.

Pumpkin Mochi Cake Recipe (based on the allrecipes.com recipe)

2 1/2 cups mochiko (glutinous rice flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

4 eggs

1 (29 ounce) can pumpkin puree (I used a real pie pumpkin that I roasted with just some butter. I scooped out the meat and blended it with a little apple juice to make it smooth like canned pumpkin. Oh, and I added a tsp. of cinnamon!)

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 cup butter, melted

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish. Sift together the mochiko, baking powder, and white sugar in a large bowl. Mix together the eggs, pumpkin puree, condensed milk, butter, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a separate bowl. Stir the egg mixture into the mochiko mixture. Pour into the prepared dish. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. Allow to cool before serving.

Jesse will eat an entire cake in one sitting, so if he's near, hide the cake!

xoxo.

Why can't men witch have babies?

...Because they have HOLLOW WEENIES!!!

(groan, I know.)

Despite being 38 weeks pregnant we couldn't pass up my favorite holiday. We love this shit so much we celebrated twice. Which is one less than usual, but one more than last year. We did it so good we even had two sets of costumes. Hallownerds, for sure.

Happy Halloween from our crazy family to yours.

xoxo.

A sneak peek-a-boo

...wondering where I've been? Well, drowning in the fun o' remodeling a room and decorating a nursery for our up and very soon coming baby girl. Not quite done yet...but here is a preview!











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...and to top it off...

The official wedding photo of the official wedding cake topper atop the official wedding cake!

The officially adorable picture of the officially adorable and officially married bride and groom.


I promised a picture of the cake topper on the cake, so here you go sports fans!

xoxo

UPDATED! Joshua Huston is the photographer and all of the photos he did from the day turned out beautiful. You can check out his other stuff at www.joshuahuston.com (thanks wolf lady!)

(These were stolen off their facebook pages and I don't know who did the photography, except that it was a friends boyfriend, I'll give credit when I find out, because they deserve it, these pics are great!)

Hope this kid has a sense of humor...

Our first nursery purchase.

xoxo.

I made it!

Woah hey look! More stuff from the past...all hand made by me. Awwwww. I'm so awesome. This was a Kale, Sausage, Potato soup....because this summer has been more of a Wummer, or a Sinter? Either way, it was 55 degrees that day and all I wanted was a hearty soup. It was deliciousness...and good for us! Kale! Lot's of Folic Acid! Good for babies! Speaking of babies, I couldn't actually eat that yummy little tomato salad because of heartburn. yay.

Horrible picture! Remind me to only take pictures of the jewelry I make on a person. On the inside of a shoebox lid just doesn't do it justice. This was a grad gift for a cousin of mine. I think I'll do a jewelry post soon...

Boom! And I'm a plumber. Daaamn. I need to take baths, a lot, because my feet keep swelling (yay preggo!). So when our drain thing broke, as in it was permanently in the plugged position, I came up with this amazing solution! Well, it was amazing until I needed the Cream of Mushroom soup to make dinner one night.

I'm ACTUALLY proud of this little gem. A gift for a friends nursery. It was so much fun to make and I just may have to make one for our little buddy too.

Still cleaning out the photo files...keep finding all these goodies. Goodies? Well, some of them anyways...

Can you tell Baby has been craving berries (any summer fruit really) and pastries? Good thing it's the right season...bad thing is I decided to start baking for the first time in my life. How is this a bad thing? You ask, so innocently. It means we have berry filled pastries around all the time and then...I EAT THEM ALL!!! ahhhh!!! Attack of the giant pregnant fruit loving monster!!!!


Raspberry creamcheese muffins.


Stone fruit pie. Nectarines, peaches, and cherries.


An awkward cherry almond tart. Awkward looking, delicious tasting. It set up and stopped leaking fairly quickly, we just couldn't wait and cut right into it!

Xoxo

Location:Berry, berry, quite contrary...

summertime?

You know it's a weird summer when this is the forecast for the day. And just simply reading the words 'decreasing clouds' gets your spirits up.

The weather gods are just keeping our expectations low so we'll be grateful for anything.

Cuppa Cake

Oh! I forgot about these! I made these for the wedding as well...the bride asked a bunch of friends if they would put together a dozen cupcakes for the wedding. It was a great idea, the dessert table was a beautiful array of all different kinds of cupcakes. And there were plenty for everyone to try a couple. I wasn't going to make any but decided someone needed to represent the gluten free world! So I put together some Gluten Free Raspberry Lemon cupcakes.
Did you know Micheal's has the CUTEST cupcake wrappers ever? Well, they do. Also I got it into my head that there existed a raspberry shaped candy. I was a little concerned I wasn't going to find any because I have a tendency to imagine things exist simply because I want them to. This was sooo not the case, right there in the candy aisle of our grocery store was a bag of raspberry candies. And they are reallllly good. The 'leaves' are pear jelly beans. My least favorite flavor, but the color was perfect. The sacrifices I make. The frosting is simply a pre-made vanilla frosting with some organic raspberry preserves and lemon zest. I could've eaten the frosting by the spoonful....oh wait, I did. Which is why I don't make cupcakes very often. I will eat them all. In one sitting. I would like to blame it on baby...but we all know this problem existed long before she did.

xoxo,

craving cupcakes all of a sudden.

Holy Matrimony Batman!

I am getting realllly good at staying at home! boom! it helps when a very good and old friend gets married and lets you make her boutonnieres and wedding cake topper! Somewhere I have a photo of the cake topper on the actual cake, it really looked at home up there. I'll post it soon for you.

The bride and groom looked a million times more beautiful than their miniature versions. And the wedding was beautiful as well. Sigh. It actually makes me wish we had more weddings to go to...which is a far cry from the usual summer wedding extravaganzas! One summer we had 7! Whew. Maybe it's a good thing to only have one....

anyways, post number 3 in the catch up or get lost post-a-thon.

xoxo,

Slacker

Father knows best...

The week after I stuck my hand through a window my dad tried to one up me by drilling a hole in his finger. I learn all my good stuff from my dad. See, he's got this rad new shop filled with all sorts of dangerous goodies, so he had to get the inaugural injury in some time. Luckily he was ok and didn't even need any stitches (nice try, I got you beat dad!). But it did inspire me to make him a first aid kit for this shop for Father's Day this year. I found a neat old tackle box at the goodwill and after a trip to my favorite store in Bellingham, Sanderson Safety, and a lot of advice from Jesse, we filled it with all the necessary accouterments should he drill his hand or get wood stain in his eyes. Oh, and a little OCD lettering work from Jesse and we were all set. I say OCD, but I mean perfection, I would've sloppily thrown them on there without a thought...his version is much nicer.
File this one under, "oh? it's been a month since father's day, and I'm just now posting this? Wait until you see my Christmas post in August."

xoxo,
PRO.crastinator

I'm a Pro. Procrastinator.

Since it's been awhile, I thought I'd just go through all my old pictures and do a little photographic trip down memory lane for awhile. Starting all the way back at Easter. Is that totally ridiculous? Who cares! I played a lot this Easter...it was the most fun ever. I crafted and I cooked...and my in laws and my parents and my brother and his fiance all showed up to feast. So here we go...post number one in a series I'd like to call "Where the Frick Did the Time go?".







Oh, did I mention that along with all the cooking and crafting I also managed to stick my hand through a window. 8 stitches and a real fear of not being able to move my thumb again later and all is good...this may have had something to do with my lack of posting. Or maybe it was my being completely and utterly distracted by this:

Best project by far.

The plan keeps coming back again...

I am 31 years old, I am married, I have a fun job, I have a puppy and I own a home. Things are looking up for us kids over here. The only thing is, we aren't actually kids anymore. I know that this is the time when many of us start panicking about our place in life. It used to be that we would worry about our futures, and now it seems we are worrying about whether we have made it. As though we are running out of time. But I have a secret, a secret that helps calm the panic of the ticking clock. I made a plan when I turned 30 and I owe it all to these women.

I worked for a great little kitchen store for many years, the owner, a woman, started her first business when she was 39 years old. She had two young kids and just decided to make the leap. She started her third business (while the other two were still going strong!) when she was in her mid 50's.

Julia Childs was a strong and successful woman her whole life. While she may have not known where she was going or where her passion was in her twenties she still did everything with fervor. When she met her husband she ended up following him to Paris for work, she was 37 years old. While she was trying to figure out what it was she was going to do with herself in Paris she decided to take a cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu. That class turned into a full course which eventually turned into the groundbreaking cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking and at 51 years old ms. Julia Childs starred in her first cooking show The French Chef.

Syrie Maugham is an important interior designer from the 1920's and 30's. She was most well known for being the first person to do an all white room. When you think of old Hollywood boudiors it's her your thinking of. Mirrored walls, 'antiqued' white furniture, feathers! All Syrie. She would take vintage pieces and refinish them, she faux finished antique dressers, she had an eye that was unlike anyone at the time. She was 42 years old when she began her career as an interior designer.

Lucille Ball was 40 years old when I Love Lucy was created.

Life does not end at 30, or 40, or 50 or any age. Life begins when you say it does. It's not that these women didn't have accomplished lives before they made the leap, that's the most exciting part. They had wonderful adventurous lives, they played, they worked, they struggled, they discovered, and they grew all before they found their niche. They had lives before their lives and that is what is so striking to me. My plan that I created at 30 was to follow in their footsteps. To enjoy the journey and learn from it and just know that when I finally fulfill my dreams it won't matter what age it's at. What will matter is that I did it at all. And I that I did it with the grace, humor, and intelligence you can only gain from having had a life before your life.

excuses.

I got distracted.

I apologize.

Life sometimes has a way of getting in the way.

Coming soon...

Julia Child

Syrie Maugham

Why these women are my heroes, and should be yours...coming soon to a blog near you. No really, I just need more time to articulate my thoughts. That is how important these ladies are. I am actually going to think before I type. Woah.

new year...

new blanket coat and new boots...best way to start a new year, ever.