Birthday Cupcake Cookies

I have been reading the Bake at 350 blog for some time now and got it in my head that I needed to make some pretty cookies. Since I received some cupcake-shaped cookie cutters as a gift, I decided Na's birthday was the perfect excuse to try them out. I used this recipe for the cookies, and followed these and these tips for decorating, however I cheated and bought a royal icing mix at a local baking supply shop. All I had to do was add water and extract (I chose almond) - easy peasy.

The hard part was the decorating. I definitely need more patience and practice outlining the cookies, but I thought flooding would have been much harder than it was.

The best part was, they were delicious! And they tasted good throughout the whole week.

Na planned a girls night for her birthday, so I brought cookies to share with everyone. We first went out to dinner, and then to the Eldorado to see Illuminaire. The show was really cool - it was amazing what the performers could do and I would definitely go see it again. (Shout out to Tyler who hooked us up with great tickets!)

Here is the birthday girl with a couple of the performers following the show.

And, all of the girls :-)

Happy Birthday, Na!

So fresh and so clean clean

Things have been pretty mellow around here, hence the lack of posts. Maybe next week will be more exciting? In the meantime, please enjoy this video of Scoop after her bath.

Mama in the Making

For someone who is a mom-in-the-making (and not quite actually a mom yet) I was pretty overwhelmed with Mother's Day love - there were cards, calls, text messages and gifts. Scoop even seemed to know something was up because she let me sleep in until 8:45 (very rare these days). Chris took me out for a delicious brunch. It was really a great day. I get the feeling Mother's Day isn't always quite so relaxing after the little ones arrive, so I'm thankful to have been so spoiled this year.

Our little fam - soon to be four

29 weeks + 6 days

I hope all the other moms, grandmas, sisters and aunts had a wonderful day, too!

P.S. Doesn't the yard look great? Chris has been working really hard on it. We hope to have people over to enjoy it real soon!

Scoop's Big Weekend

On Saturday, Scoop and I got up early and headed to the Marina where we met Julie, my co-worker Angela and her dog Yogi for the March of Dimes March for Babies. There were lots of people there to do the two-mile walk and it was a great, sunshiny day with good company.

Scoop got a little nap in, and then we headed off to Bully's Sports Bar for the annual Chihuahua Races, a fundraiser for the SPCA (you may recall I shot video of the races last year). Chris and Erin joined - Chris to help send Scoop down the track and Erin to shoot some video. The track was set up with two lanes, side by side, and each race was the best two out of three. Scoop easily won her first race, but the next one was really close. Everyone actually thought the other dog was going to win. So, no joke, they did a slow-mo replay and Scoop won - by a nose. It was hilarious. In the next round, she also won both races.

She was four-for-four and advanced to the championships on Sunday. Unfortunately, we misunderstood the instructions. Told to come back at 11 Sunday, we thought she could race before we had to leave at noon (Chris for work, me to volunteer at Earth Day) but it turned out sign-ins were at 11 and races at noon. So poor Scoop had to forfeit. But at least she is still undefeated! Maybe next year she will go all the way ... in the meantime, please enjoy this video.

The day wasn't a total loss for Scoop. On my way to Earth Day I dropped her off at Erin and Sandor's so she could play with Sierra and Warren. She must have had a fun time, because we were barely out of the driveway before she fell asleep in the car.

It was quite a big weekend for such a little Scoop.