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Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Chocolate. Strawberry. Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Heaven. Have you ever had Swiss Meringue Buttercream? It’s amazeballs. It’s silky, buttery and not too sweet. This particular frosting tastes like strawberry ice cream. I’m telling you, it’s fabulous. Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC) starts with eggwhites and sugar heated on the stovetop, and then whipped into a stiff meringue before adding butter and flavoring. It has a reputation for being difficult and finicky, but really I’ve never had any trouble with it. Once you add the butter to the…
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Creamy Skillet Mac & Cheese
My oldest daughter is learning a hard lesson this week. She’s found her independence a bit, and has used her new-found “power” to voice her opinions rather loudly and forcefully to her Dad and me. In other words, she’s a back-talking fool. We’ve noticed it more lately, the back-talking with a twinge of sassy-attitude, and it’s just gotten worse. She’s particularly offended by chores it seems, and when her Dad told her to go “pick up the office a little bit before lunch,” she did…
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Spinach Queso Dip
So, let’s talk football. My family is obsessed. College football on Saturday, NFL on Sunday, Monday and even Thursday sometimes. High school football on Friday nights, fantasy football leagues everywhere I turn, and pick-up games of catch before and after Sunday dinner. Now, I like football as much as the next person (ok, well maybe a *tiny* bit less), but I have to say that I get more excited about the football parties and the tailgating than I do the actual games. And right at…
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Coconut Streusel Muffins
If you follow my Facebook page, you know that I had a pretty rough week last week. Among other things, my husband and I have been planning a trip to Mexico for ages to celebrate several events…his birthday, our five year wedding anniversary (18 months late, but who’s counting?) and most importantly, 20 years together. We’ve been together since we were in junior high, so this is really quite the milestone for us. Well, a VERY long story short, we were turned away at the check-in…
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Double Chocolate Cupcakes
This year, Halloween snuck up on me. One minute it was my birthday and mid-September, the next minute I realized I had less than a week to come up with costumes for the girls. I had the best intentions this year, too – I was going to make them both really cute tulle-ghost costumes, order white leotards and buy white tights – it was going to be adorable. Instead, I recycled a bumblebee costume for my youngest and bought my oldest a tacky, chintzy mermaid-princess…
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Mini Peach Cobblers
While we were out and about yesterday, my husband and I both noticed that things are finally starting to turn green – the pastures are now more green than brown, the trees all have little buds on them, and daffodils and hyacinths are starting to poke out of the ground. SPRING! Spring is finally, finally, finally here. {I should note that I checked the weather earlier, and we actually have a slight chance of snow tomorrow morning, but I’m just going to pretend like that’s…
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Chocolate Dipped Holiday Cookies
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #NestleHolidayBaking #CollectiveBias My daughter had a couple of friends over last weekend to play for a few hours for a “BFF Gift Exchange,” and because she’s just like her mother, she wanted to decorate for her party and create a dessert table to display our cookie creations. The girls had pizza for lunch and we made some chocolate covered cookies with fun decorations for dessert. It’s a quick and…
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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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Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes
You guys, what a week. What an up and down, crazy, emotional week. A week later, my heart is still raw and aching from the events in Newtown. Then, in a nearby town, two police officers lost their lives in the line of duty. And I sat at home, watching it all, with my young daughters (one of which is a 1st grader), and my police-officer husband. And I cried. A lot.
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Perfect Sweet Tea
Today was a good day. I was kind of expecting a quiet, boring day because it’s cold and dreary outside and I had tons of work to do. But as the day went along, it just kept getting better and better. A message out of the blue from an old friend. A super-cuddly three-year-old. Maddie brought home a kindness award from school. A late dinner with my family, at the table, talking about our day. Easy bedtimes. A clean house. A cute…
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Just Cherry Pie
It’s just really been a strange week. We were supposed to be in Mexico, celebrating not only our anniversary but my husband’s birthday as well. Because we were planning to lay on the beach and drink fruity drinks to celebrate, I didn’t plan the usual birthday celebration with dinner, guests, dessert and gifts. I feel bad that my hubs kind of got the short end of the birthday stick this year, but promised him that we’ll celebrate his birthday on our rescheduled trip. So, in…
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Chocolate Peanut Butter Torte
There’s a thing in this world…it’s called too much peanut butter. This is not that. This is the perfect amount of peanut butter. Which, I suppose is hard to measure because some people don’t like peanut butter. Who are these people? I’ve heard of them, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever met one of them. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not even sure that there’s a thing called too much peanut butter. That’s probably not possible. This is what happens when…
