Monday, February 28, 2011

Cupcakes from Scratch

Yesterday was my baby's First Birthday.  My 30 day challenge officially begins tomorrow but since I love baking and have become obsessed with cupcakes I decided to forgo the traditional birthday cake which we usually let our oldest son pick from the store cake book, and just bake up a few batches of yummy cupcakes at home.  I had a lot of ingredients already from when I baked for Valentine's Day (side note to guys...even when a woman says she doesn't want anything for Valentine's Day or that she doesn't really care about Valentin'es Day, she DOES and yes you need to get something and/or celebrate...usually best accomplished by making plans ahead of time.  Alright, returning to our previously scheduled broadcast.)

I had a hard time narrowing down the recipe list since I would have made them all if I could.  Alas, common sense won out in the end and I made four different flavors of cupcakes.  I made a Devil's Food Chocolate recipe and added in some chopped semi-sweet chocolate to the mix with a homemade whipped cream frosting, then I made a delicious Coconut cupcake and topped it with homemade cream cheese frosting with coconut flakes, the third flavor was Chai Honey cupcake with a Honey Whipped Cream frosting, and last wast he Pumpkin Cupcakes with Whipped Cream frosting for my little Pumpkin.  He wasn't quite sure what to do with it!  He got a little of the whipped cream on his hand and just stared at it, clearly not pleased with being dirty.  I thought it wast he funniest thing since usually he would not think twice about being covered in food.  Children will surprise you at every turn.

I have located my cheap grocery stores, and after getting my hands on some coupons I will be all set.  Lets see if I can do this.  I'm glad to have you along for the ride.
Love, Katie

Can I stick with a 30 day challenge?

This is my first blog post, ever.  Who am I?  How do I identify myself?  Well, some facts about my life are thus; I am a wife, my husband is in the military so I am often referred to as a "Military Spouse," the most important thing I will ever do in life is be a good mother to my two little boys, I am in the Reserves, so sometimes people call me a "Reservist," I like to think of myself as a student even though I haven't taken a college course in almost 4 years, I love reading and watching a few select shows on TV and hugging my giant four-legged fur baby who in reality is not actually my child but our adopted Dalmatian.  But if I had only one word to describe myself, hands down I would choose Mother.  I believe that the greatest thing I can do is help guide my children, ensuring that they have the tools and opportunities to grow into kind and good men.

Last Thursday I found out I was going to be out of work...starting on Friday.  So now that I am out of work for a little while I have two concurrent thoughts that keep running through my head.  The first being that I am going to get to spend so much time with my boys and be there for all those great little moments.  The second thought is that we could really use my paycheck right now and we are going to have to cut out what we don't need.  So I have decided to try to live as cheaply as possible for the next 30 days, mainly by grocery shopping smarter and cooking at home so we can be prepared with meals ready to go, and get rid of the excuses to eat out.

So my plan, what there is of one, is to shop at the "cheap" grocery store, use coupons, and try to figure out what meals I will be making for the week.  One complication is that I like buying organic when I can and using a lot of produce not packaged foods.  It isn't often you come across coupons for organic foods and produce. Now I'm not bashing the greatness of packaged foods, I too love the convenience of opening one box pouring in some water and viola, dinner!  But the reality is that preparing your own meals, in general, is healthier and can be cheaper if you play your cards right.  So I am going to let this blog hold me accountable by keeping track of what I spend on groceries, the recipes I use, and how much we end up spending eating out.

If anyone is reading along with me I'm glad you are here.  I hope that maybe we can learn something together.  Thanks for stopping bye,
Love, Katie