Wordless Wednesday - First Wall Masterpiece

A Birthday

What a beautiful celebration we have had here. Sunday we celebrated with family and friends and muffins at the park. It was a gorgeous day and it was so nice to see Q enjoy having so many of his favorite people in one place, celebrating him! Monday (his actual birthday) we celebrated in a much smaller way, just mom and dad and Q sitting around the table with candles lit, playing on the floor with his dog, just his family. Both days were just perfect.

I cannot imagine life without him. He's just perfect.

More Birthday Preparations

Still in celebration mode around here - one week until the little boy is ONE and we're having fun making preparations for a little family get together.

We've got homemade birthday decorations finished

birthday outfit just about done

and birthday crowns (that still need elastic)

Something tells me that not all of Q's future birthdays will have this much fanfare, so I'm trying to enjoy it now and revel in my sweet sweet almost one year old boy.

Wooden Growth Chart

I've been neglecting my 'current' and 'recent' projects list over on the right side there and I'm feeling bad about it. I've been getting back into my crafty stuff lately and have completely neglected to take pictures or blog about it. The lists need an update but first I want to explain and move some of them around. First, the growth chart.

I had this idea when Q was a couple months old that I would like to make him a growth chart. My dad is a contractor and has a shop full of wood and tools so I asked him to cut me a piece of wood 5 1/2 feet tall by about 10 inches wide. My plan was to make the bottom be the 2 foot mark and then have it go to 7 feet, with room to paint his name or otherwise decorate the very top. I don't know exactly how I was gonna decorate it, maybe a vine growing up the side, maybe paint it very simple... I dunno.

But you know what happened when my dad brought me the piece of wood? he brought me this

I couldn't have asked for a better growth chart cause you know what? Grandpa made it for his Grandson. I love handmade pieces and handmade with love from your family is even better.

Since this one was created he has also made a growth chart for his Granddaughter, my niece Sophia - with her whole name on it.

Snowy Saturday

Snowcream for breakfast, catching up around the house, lots of time in the rocking chair, it's the perfect snowy saturday

Celebrate!

Thank you to all the wonderful mommas that entered my giveaway. It is SO much fun to give something away - I want to do it all the time now!

So here we go... the winner is.... budum dum dum dum...

that was a drumroll by the way.

Annette from Seasons of Joy! Congratulations Annette and thank you so much for entering my giveaway, I hope you enjoy this celebration ring as much as we enjoy ours.

Wordless Wednesday

Chocolate - Better Late (and Dark) Than Never

Sorry for the late posting of this weeks Tuesday's With Dorie, but life is as always full and wonderful (and fantastic).

Yet again, it's chocolate on the menu. This week may have put me over the top for my chocolate quota, eating uncooked brownie will do that to you. Yup, the center of these fudgy brownies never cooked for me (even after adding 7 minutes to the cooking time). I mean, they say they are delicate and should be gooey but I honestly felt sick after eating the center piece. Ugh. That said, they were delicious really. Just watch out for that gooey center piece. They fulfilled all brownie, ooey gooey chocolatey desires I had (and frequently have).

I liked how this recipe was different - you divide the egg mixture in half, one half you mix into the chocolate and the other half you whip until it's doubled in size and then carefully fold into the batter. I think it was this subtle difference that made these brownies fudgey but not dense. Decadent but still delicate. Mmmm. They were much appreciated in this household - can you tell?

Thank you to Tanya at Chocolatechic for choosing these and as always check out the rest of the TWD bloggers here.

Hearts In The Home

Thank you to everyone entering my giveaway! I'll leave it open until Feb 11th. Until then I'll keep on blabbering (and blogging) away about what's going on in our house.

We're trying to cheer ourselves up while the weather outside is gross. We're always looking for reasons to celebrate in our house and I love celebrating holidays. No matter how small and trivial they may seem I love the way holidays serve as markers of our year and we can measure how things have changed when we look back on our past holidays. Like Valentines Day. I know a lot of Valentines Day is commercial (and annoying) but I've never really disliked it personally, it's a day focused on love - what could be better than that?

In honor of the upcoming holiday (and the rediscovery of our cookie cutter collection) the little boy and I made some heart cookies.

a simple sugar cookie recipe and a bucketful of cookie cutter is always a fun rainy day activity

They were so beautiful and tasty right out of the oven that I forgot to take their picture and then last night I finally got around to icing them. Confectioners sugar, milk and lots of food coloring...

I promise they weren't quite that electric colored (I took this at night and can't get the white balance right) , but they were pretty darn close.

While making these cookies and thinking about Valentines Day I noticed all the hearts we have around our house, I thought that for the rest of the month I'd feature some of these hears and tell you a little bit about them. Look for lots of things heart-y in the coming weeks.

Giveaway!

I know I don't have a lot of readers like most blogs that host giveaways, but you know what I do have? an extra one of these beautiful celebration rings! and what a great month to give it away!

I have always admired these rings, they are great for birthdays or any other celebration and through an interesting twist of fate I have ended up with an extra one. There are four separate pieces with three holes in each - great for candles, or ornaments or anything else that will fit. Here is a great blog post where you can see a birthday ring (spiral in this case) in use to give you a better idea.

So here's the deal, leave a comment on this blog post to enter. I'll pick from the comments randomly and send this over to your house! It doesn't have to be for an upcoming birthday or celebration, you can use it for a nice candleholder or even four separate candleholders!

Milk Chocolate Mini (notquite) Bundt Cakes

My dad doesn't think Tuesday's With Dorie is ever anything but chocolate, I keep telling him it's not always chocolate, but this week I have to prove him right - it's chocolate. Good good good chocolate. Chocolate on chocolate with a nutty chocolate swirl. yummmm.

Of course I didn't have a mini bundt cake on hand so I improvised and used some old pans I had in the cabinet. Sort of look like mini bundt cakes right?

This recipe really intimidated me in the book, I think part of the reason the TWD recipes often intimidate me is that there are like 3 separate recipes, one for the filling, one for the cake, and one for the topping and they all have multiple ingredients. but when I actually get in there and start it's really simple, it's just mixing a few things together and setting them aside in a bowl for later use, not that hard. Basically it was a nice simple chocolate cake recipe (that I didn't despise for once!) and a mix of nuts, cocoa and sugar and then a bittersweet chocolate top to drizzle over the mini cakes. Mine were so small that instead of making 6 mini bundts I had 16 mini whatever these are. They overflowed a good amount too, and I had a hard time with putting one scoop in and then some of the nut mixture and then another scoop in because my pans were so little! it was like, put a tablespoon (or even less!) of batter in and then another tablespoon on top of the nut mixture. Luckily, they turned out wonderful! They slid right out of the pans and were so cute. The topping didn't really work out for me that well. It was supposed to be some chocolate, some light corn syrup and then optional nuts (that I omitted) and then drizzled over the cakes. Well the chocolate looked lovely and then when I added the corn syrup it got all thick and grainy and there was no way it was gonna look pretty or drizzle over the cakes. I scrapped that and just melted some bittersweet chocolate and drizzled that over the cakes. I think it came out looking lovely and tasted even better! who needs corn syrup?! not me!

These were sooo yummy. I probably should have cooked them for a few minutes less than I did, but even so they were delishhh. I even had one for breakfast!

Super big thank you to Kristin of I'm Right About Everything and as always check out the other amazing bloggers here

Welcome February!

In this family we like to celebrate our birthdays all month long. Especially the big ones. What could be bigger than 1??