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Irish Apple Cake with Irish Whiskey Caramel Sauce
The weather was gorgeous outside today. Sunny, nearly 70 degrees, no wind – and my kids played outside. We went for a walk. We didn’t wear jackets, and we didn’t come in until almost bedtime. These things, along with the fact that college basketball tournaments are on TV and St. Patrick’s Day is a mere three days away can really only mean one thing – SPRING IS HERE! Well, almost. Still a week or so away but whatever.
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Healthy(er) Chocolate Oatmeal No-Bake Bars
My girls have been begging me for no-bake cookies for a couple of months. Since we always have a million other desserts on the agenda, I just haven’t gotten around to it. But then, I saw this “heathier” version floating around Pinterest and I was intrigued. I’ve always thought no-bake cookies were just kind of too-sweet and too-messy to get excited about, but the girls love them. And I have to admit, I really like this version too. Especially right out of the freezer. Now,…
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Waffles. Really Delicious Waffles.
See the updated post, here! Waffles are one of those things that we never really had growing up. We had our fair share of pancakes and french toast, but I can only remember having waffles a couple of times in my childhood. They seemed to be more of a restaurant treat, usually topped with strawberries and whipped cream. After trying a number of recipes at home, I determined what I DON’T like in a waffle – a heavy, egg-y taste. These waffles were the result…
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Giant Chocolate Muffins
Can you justify eating a cupcake for breakfast? I can. It’s easy, really. You just call it a muffin. I mean, it doesn’t have frosting, so clearly it isn’t a dessert – and everyone knows that muffins are perfectly acceptable breakfast fare.
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Chocolate Marble Cheesecake
Cheesecake and I have a love-hate relationship. I love to eat it, but hate to make it. I have never, ever had much luck making a successful cheesecake. I’d make one that tasted amazing, but was flat, or cracked, or fell apart. Or, I’d make a pretty one that of course, was bland or the wrong texture. It got so bad that I pretty much gave up on them altogether. But, you know me. For some reason, I just can’t let things go. My husband…
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A Playroom Makeover: Part 2
First things first, if you haven’t read Part 1, go back and read it now. Good? Ok. After we got all of the construction, painting and cleaning behind us, it was time to do the fun stuff – it was time to make the room look like what we’d been envisioning for almost a year now. Because we adore everything about our new pantry, we teamed up with Organized Living to give our two little girls a bright, clean & efficient play room. Their bedrooms…
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Biscoff Truffle Brownies
Three awesome things happened yesterday. One, I got up at 7:30am (which is like sleeping in around here) and made some cinnamon rolls. Then, I took A NAP. Like, a NAP. On the couch. In the middle of the morning. And my husband took care of the girls and I slept, and it was FAN-tastic. I felt well-rested for the first time in months. Or years. Nearly eight years, to be precise. Secondly, I bought a new cake stand and I’m kind of in love…
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Skillet Apple Pie
There is just something about good apple pie that makes me happy. Obviously, it’s delicious, but there’s a lot of nostalgia that comes with it, too. The smells of baking apples, cinnamon and buttery pie crust take me back to my childhood and for a moment, I’m back in my Mom’s kitchen, or in one of my Grandma’s. My Grandma used to sprinkle the leftover pie crust with butter, sugar and cinnamon and bake it – I can remember fighting over those little bites of…
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Whoopie Pies
I did a lot of baking this past week. I think I made eight different recipes in five days. In fact, right now I’m working on this blog post in an effort to ignore the mess I made in my kitchen. It’s not pretty. I even promised my family that I would host Sunday dinner this week to force myself to get it cleaned up…so far it’s not working. Sigh. Since I had so much baking to do, I had to make sure that some…
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Ranch Dressing
Those of you who know my husband and I know that we are borderline, wanna-be hippies when it comes to food and sustainability. We would eat all natural, all fresh food all the time if we could, and for the most part we try to avoid preservatives, chemical additives and processed food. That’s not to say that we don’t eat plenty of bad stuff, but we’ve definitely made a conscious decision to do the best we can for ourselves and our girls. Our beehives, chickens and expanding…
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Erin’s favorite recipes from 2012
As we say goodbye to 2012, it’s fun to reflect on everything that happened during the year. My family had a wonderful year full of blessings. We celebrated my parent’s 35th wedding anniversary in May. We traveled to the beach with our extended family, filling up three beach houses. My oldest daughter completed Kindergarten and started 1st grade. We coached T-ball, we celebrated 1st birthdays for my niece and nephew, and found out my brother and sister are expecting again. We attended dance recitals, hosted…
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Old Fashioned Chocolate Sheet Cake
You know that feeling when you’ve just come home from a whirlwind road trip to Omaha, Nebraska and then you wake up and watch a travel show where they’re diving off the coast of Thailand and you’re like, “Hrmph. Nebraska was almost as cool as that…”? Yep, I’m there. Don’t get me wrong, our “stay-cation with a mini-roadtrip” vacation was nice, relaxing and easy, but I’m a total beach-vacation kind of girl. We had a great time in Omaha, but I need that sand, surf,…
