Did somebody say chocolate???

Chocolate is my downfall!!!  I love dark chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, semi sweet chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, German chocolate, chocolate with nuts, chocolate with caramel…I LOVE chocolate!!!  So when I found this recipe I knew I had to try it.  BUT if I tried it I had to make sure it wouldn’t stay in the house for too long because my thighs would pay dearly for it!!!  So lucky for me we have a PTA potluck to go to and I won’t sit in the pantry stuffing my face with them!

Doesn’t this look YUMMY!!!!

Here is the recipe I used for them…

Chocolate Cupcakes

1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1 cup boiling hot water

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour (sifted)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Lightly butter, or line 16-20 muffin cups with paper liners.

In a small bowl stir until smooth the boiling hot water and the cocoa powder. Let cool to room temperature.

In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Then cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat only until it's incorporated. Then add the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

Fill each muffin cup two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 16-20 minutes or until risen, springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.

Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost with icing. You can either spread the frosting on the cupcakes with a small spatula or if piping, use a large Wilton 1M open star tip to the swirls.

Chocolate Mascarpone Frosting

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

2/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
8oz Mascarpone cheese or can substitute cream cheese

2 cups confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until smooth and creamy (about 1 minute). Add the sugar and beat until it is light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the chocolate and beat on low speed until incorporated. Then add mascarpone cheese until mixed well.  Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until frosting is smooth and glossy (about 2 -3 minutes).

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I’ve also been busy doing some PTA stuff.  We went to a PTA conference in Austin and had a great time.  Here are a couple of pictures of that…

Yes the snake did scare me!!!

This is a really cool sticker and pencil machine to help with raising money at our school…it of course will have our mascot in place of the one they used for demo.

I’m doing the Vanna White…hee hee.

 

Quick and Simple

Have you ever needed a REALLY quick birthday present/idea for a birthday party for THAT day?  Or in our case in a few hours….Well my oldest fairy was invited to one of her friends’ brother’s birthday party.  And even though my fairy doesn’t hang out with the older brother and wasn’t expected to bring a gift I still felt like we needed to do something for the birthday boy.

So we went and got him 4 boxes of M&M’s and went from their.  Even though I don’t have any boys, I figure boys like food, and boys like chocolate, and M&M’s would be perfect.  I made a card and a topper for the M&M’s. 

Here is the card…I actually had cut out the oval to put on the back of the cork I used for the topper.  I figured it would make a great card too.  I punched out my stars and put the yellowish orange one up on dimensional.  I used stamps from Papertrey.

I’m loving the orange dots background….

Here is my topper for the M&M’s.  I used curling ribbon to give it that “happy birthday” feel to it…

Here are a few pictures of our outing earlier that day…we had just a little fun.

My oldest fairy sporting the blue and black boa…

 

The better to see you with my dear…

Here’s my littlest fairy again…she’s got style…

My middle fairy…loving the color combo…

Just a side note…all messes were cleaned up by an experience picker-upper…ME.

Happy Crafting!!!

Rebecca

Party Time

Whew...I need a tall glass of lemonaid and a nice comfy chair! We have been super busy!!! My parents are in town from Germany and we have been spending lots of time running around, going to Walmart, Target, and all of those other awesome stores they do not have over their. And on top of that it was my sisters birthday this past week. So since my parents were in town we decided to have not only my sisters birthday but we would do my oldest fairies birthday **August 4th** too since my parents wouldn't be here to celebrate it. We had a great time, tons of food, fun and lots of laughs and memories.

I usually go overboard with parties and decorations so this time I went simple, mainly because I didn't have time to go overboard...hee hee. I did make a really cute banner. I cut out triangles and sewed them on to ribbon. I cut out two triangles for each one and placed the ribbon between the two and sewed.

Here's a little picture of that...




I love fresh flowers and all the flowers were super inexpensive...I paid less than $3 for each bunch! Here are some more pictures of the party...




I didn't have a lot of time to make a card for my sister or fairy but I did manage to make this simple card. I made them each the same card. I used the banner die cut from MFT. I really like all their new dies!



Well THANKS for stopping by...and remember Happy Crafting!!!
Rebecca

Celebrate

These are some of my favorite quotes…

Stop worrying about the potholes in the

road and celebrate the journey! 

Barbara Hoffman

 

The more you praise and celebrate your

life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

Oprah Winfrey

I love these quotes, I think they have a great message.  My grandmother would always tell me as a child, “Don’t worry about what other people think all that matters is what you think”.  I never truly understood it until years later.  We live in a world where we worry about what everyone else thinks about what we do.  I try to live my life the way I would want my children, and their children, and their children’s children…you get the point, would live their life.  I’ve always heard the saying ‘raise your children like you want your grandchildren to be raised’.  This makes me stop in my tracks a lot and think about how I respond to my kids fighting, or when they break something, or do something that I’ve asked them over and over not to do. So today I made this card and bookmark to reflect taking the time to celebrate.

The card…

The bookmark…

I did a little stitching with my sewing machine on the bookmark.  I also ruffed up my edges of my flowers that I had punched out.  I really like how this turned out.

Also here is a picture of some of the remolding we have done to our house.  My super handyman hubby made the mantle for me.  I am so very lucky to have such a wonderful husband!!!

Here is a before…I could only find an old Christmas photo…

Please don’t mind our sad little tree, we were short on time for only being in the house for almost a week.

Here is the after…the walls are painted and the fireplace got a coat of paint.  The walls in real life are a light tanish green color and the fireplace is a dark dark hunter green.

 

Here’s a different view…

 

    

 

 Happy Crafting,

Rebecca

Life is Busy!

Well things have been so crazy around here lately with remodeling some of the house and with the holiday weekend!  First off, we have finally finished…BIG emphasize on the FINALLY part…painting the inside of our house!!!  YAY!  I personally do not want to paint for a very VERY long time.  And then with the holiday weekend (my 11th anniversary and the 4th of July) it has been busy!

I did manage to make my fairies a 4th of July outfit (skirt and shirt).  It turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.

Here’s a close up of the shirt.

I just sewed some star fabric on top of some red polka dot fabric then made my white stripes with some ribbon that I ruffled.  The fairies loved them!

I even had time to make a quick card too.  In honor of ALL of the rain we have been getting, I made my own rainbow.  Hopefully sometime in the future we will see a rainbow and have some sunny skies!

Here’s a close up of the buttons…

Well I hope you have a wonderful day!

Happy Crafting,

Rebecca

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone!  I hope you have a wonderful and fun filled day!  My little fairies are excited to watch fireworks and play with sparklers (under Mommy supervision of course,).  They also can’t wait to eat these yummy cupcakes I made today, but who can blame them they look and taste delicious!  

I hope you have a safe 4th of July!

&

To all of the Hero’s who fight for my freedom,

Thank You! 

 

Happy Crafting,

Rebecca

It’s a Pretend Party!!!

In our house we like to do positive reinforcement for the fairies.  So we have a little ‘friendly challenge’ going on in our house.  A while back I had bought this coupon book “What a Great Kid” at Hallmark or you can get it at the link from Amazon.  It has some really neat coupons in it for when your little fairies are being, well Great! 

So anyways, back to our ‘friendly challenge’…We have a system for doing chores.  It’s basically a white board and when the kids complete a chore they can put their initial in that spot.  Well we were having a phase, as I like to call it, where no one wanted to do chores.  So the mister and I put our noggins together and came up with whoever does the most chores gets a coupon from the book.  It can be anything from, double your allowance, go to a movie of their choice, ect…  One of the coupons they were competing for was “It’s not your birthday…but redeem this coupon, and we’ll pretend it is!  There will be presents, cake and lots of fun. (at least 3 days notice, please)”  So my middle fairy won the coupon and got to pretend it was her birthday!  We were a little late in having the pretend party due to illness.  So yesterday her and the daddy went to a water park and when they got home we threw her a party and boy was she surprised!!!

We had games…

Bean bag toss…I bought some buckets at Wal-Mart for $1 each and made some bean bags with left over fabric.

Pin the cloud on the rainbow.  I cut the clouds out with my cricket and two of my fairies colored in the rainbow that I drew on poster board.

We made a banner with the fairy’s name on it…later we put it up in her room.

Surprised!!!

Bean bag toss…everyone got in on the action…

   

Pin the cloud on the rainbow…

Getting ready…   

Spinning Daddy…    

The cupcake…it was yummy despite it was a little burnt on bottom!

Fun with balloons!  Lots of  Fun!            

           

It was a fun “pretend” party if I do say so myself.  My fairies had a great time and we even decided to put this coupon back in the book so that someone else could win it.  These coupons have made getting chores done a lot easier and more rewarding for all their hard work!

Until next time…

Happy Crafting!

Rebecca