Happy St. Patrick's Bday

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!  

This very special Irish holiday (a.k.a. my hubby's 2nd birthday) is now extra special for this household as we have designated it as Tigger's official Birthday.  We know she was born in March, but can never remember the actual day.  This is so much easier to remember...  Same reasoning for making Gizmo's bday Cinco de Mayo.  Man, we sure do love those drinking holidays, don't we?

Well, our little cutie is 2 years old already!  I had a mini-photo session with her today, really these are all the shots she let me get.

She is so darn cute!  Here is the post from her 1st Birthday  and the follow up to pictures of her as a kitten.  

We love you Tigger - Happy Birthday!!!

Orange Blossoms

It's that wonderful time of year; you know, the birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and Spring is here!  Since I have spent the last 4 years of my life in New Jersey, I have missed out on my favorite part of Spring...Orange Blossoms!  I did, however, gain a new found appreciation for Spring and all the beauty that it brings.  It gets pretty depressing in the North East after months and months of no green on trees, dreary skies, and cold.  I think Spring is my favorite season in terms of nature.  (Summer can't be beat for activities though).

Oh, to smell an orange blossom.  I always knew it was my favorite smell in the whole entire world; but to not smell it for 4 years?  It really puts the little things into perspective.  I can say without doubt that it is by far the best smell anywhere.  Nothing beats driving towards my parents house with the windows down and smelling that great scent.  I will even just stand outside and take in the sweet aroma for a few minutes before I go inside.  Even the wonderful smell of my favorite foods cooking cannot compare, and I LOVE cooking smells.  (this was discussed with my food loving hubby earlier).  Just try to name a better smell.  Of course you can disagree, it just doesn't make you correct =)  Just kidding!  You are free to your opinion, you just won't be able to sway me in any other way.  Please share your favorite aroma!

I leave you with a pic (not mine) of the beautiful flower that brings the sweet smells of spring for just a short while here in California.  

Jen's Baby Shower part 2...

I thought it would be a good idea to share some photos I took of the previously mentioned baby shower.  My awesome Girl Scout leader was the hostess of the party,  not to mention the future Grandmother.  Her beautiful decorating skills were perfectly done and very inspiring.  Everything was so cute!  

There are a lot of pics, it was difficult to not include these, so I decided to show a little bit of everything.  Starting with the table designs...

Cookie favors made by a good friend Jen and her mom

Moving on to other decorations.  I love the clothespins hanging the baby clothes!

Even the piano got spruced up!

Great idea!  Pictures of "moms" placed on the mantle...there were six total included.  Love the little touches!

The mom-to-be as a kindergartener!

Some of the gifts all wrapped up.  Starting with a beautiful diaper cake that was created by my wonderful friend Elizabeth.  You can go here to check out her blog.

Jen "opening" the diaper cake.  Her two wonderful friends looking on (including the diaper cake maker)

The gift Andrea, her mom, and I brought =)

A fun craft to keep people busy...

Great idea...decorate burp cloths!

Opening gifts...

Grandma and mom-to-be

Jen's friend Christy gifted a very creative "year of holidays" baby clothes!

Troop 408 celebrating together

Congrats Jen and Joey!!!  I can't wait for the arrival of your little girl!

Baby Shower Dessert

One of my friends from my Girl Scout Troop is about to embark on the wonderful journey of motherhood.  She is the first one in our group to have a child (and she was the first to get married !)  I volunteered to make the dessert for her baby shower since my sister and I are very interested in baking.  She has been working on finding great recipes for quite awhile now and also perfecting her cupcake skills.  The cake pop idea is new to us so we thought the baby shower would be a great opportunity to try out our work on a bunch of people.  

I needed to come up with a way to display the cake pops.  Originally we were thinking of sticking them into cupcakes so each person would have the cake pop with their cupcake, but the pops were way too top heavy.  I scoured the internet for photo ideas, but really nothing stood out to me that would work for the vision in my head.  I decided instead to just head down to Michaels and search for something that would work.  

This is what I came up with:

Fake flowers pushed into styrofoam inside a white basket.  Perfect idea since I will be able to reuse the flowers, if needed and the styrofoam!  I gifted the basket to the mother-to-be.

The cake pops this time around were picked out by the mother throwing the party.  She wanted a baby head and a chocolate cake.  Previously we have only used box mixes and frosting for the trial runs, but this time we wanted to make it extra tasty and make it from scratch.  We went with this great chocolate cake that had hot coffee in it.   It turned out delicious!  For the frosting we tried a new frosting recipe that was a chocolate cream cheese.  Sooo good!

Once the cake and frosting were ready I followed the same procedure for making cake pops.  You can go here to read the basics for making the pops.

Here they are almost finished...just need eyes =)  Candy necklace piece for pacifier, candy melts made into nose and bow.

Blue eyes for the mom-to-be...thanks to my mom for improvising on the eyes.  It was suggested that I use an edible marker for the eyes but it didn't work on the surface.  Last minute scramble and my mom saved the day.  She happened to have a squeeze tube of icing and food dye!

This little guy was the best one...and later eaten by my best friend =)

We placed the little girl pops in the field of flowers, with the styrofoam keeping them secure.

Andrea goofing around before she ate the best pop

Here is a pic of the frosting being made.  It really was sooo good.  I hope we find an excuse to make it again soon=)

Besides the cake pops, we decided to also make cupcakes, even though we weren't asked to.  I baked them and made the frosting this time around and my sister and mom did most of the work on the paper designs.  They did such a great job!

I really enjoyed making these, hopefully we can do this again soon!

Sneak Peak...

Here is a look into my weekend project for a friends baby shower:

Will post the finished product later!  Have a great weekend.

The Royal Wedding

I am so excited for the upcoming wedding.  I don't know what it is, but I have always been so fascinated with British Royalty.  I love the history especially and will read anything I can get me hands on pertaining to it.

My latest obsession was the Showtime series "The Tudors." Pat knows this about me and bought me a very accurate book about the family line.  I read it after I finished the series and just let me say, the show did an amazing job of telling the story as historically accurate as possible.

Back to the actual point of the post.  I discovered today that the Royal Family has an officially sanctioned website all about the upcoming wedding!  I am so excited to peruse the site in my free time.

You can go here to check it out for yourself...

I think the biggest reason I am so excited is because of the opportunity to watch something that will be talked about for the rest of my life.  I wish I was old enough alive to watch Princess Di get married, but I will just have to settle with knowing my mom got to watch it.  Even though the wedding is starting at 11:00 am England time (3:00 am for us West Coasters!), I think I might just have to try to stay up and watch.  I will of course set me DVR, just in case.

Bring on the excitement!!!

She is so pretty...can't wait to watch her stylish ways continue!

Pics from official photo release