Nothin' Like Buns 'n Coffee to Start the Day

Over at Quilt With Us (Connecting Threads quilting community) there's a quilt along group called Darlene's Slackers. These ladies are a little crazy...often posting 10 pages of comments in a single day. Since 5 of my co-workers are doing this quilt along I've been trying to keep up with all the chatter. On Friday (one of my days off) while reading along I came across a bunch of posts about an imaginary trip they were planning to visit one of the gals in Canada who had baked cinnamon rolls. Everyone was talking about BUNS and that reminded me of this great mug my wonderful Mother-in-law gave me one year for my birthday.


It just so happened that we had planned a sew day on Sunday at work and all the talk about cinnamon buns gave me the great idea to make some.


From scratch.


With cream cheese filling.


Because there was nothing else I should be doing. Like laundry.


And because Dearsie was afraid he wouldn't get any unless I made a double batch, I ended up making 4 dozen on Saturday evening. Didn't finish until 10 PM.


It was worth it.

YUM!

Cupcakes and the Baby Shower

I love to bake. Not cook, mind you—bake! Kent’s the cook in the family and has done a good job teaching the boys to cook by instinct and not totally by recipe; something I have not mastered.

But back to baking…I don’t have time to bake much and it’s not the best thing when you are semi-trying to keep an eye on caloric intake…so when an opportunity presents itself I tend to jump in with both feet. Such an opportunity arose with a baby shower planned for May 5th at work.

Teri started planning her own shower by arranging for a cinco de Mayo taco salad potluck after work. Her baby had other ideas. Tyler arrived April 30th--6 wks early. (Mom and baby are thriving) So the baby shower ended up being moved to Tyler’s actual due date of June 9th.

In the meantime I had discovered this wonderful website by Bakerella. OH MY! Just go browse around that site! Talk about creative and inspiring, and for all the wrong things! After poking around for days I decided to be brave and try some new things:

1. I’d never worked with fondant. I’ve seen it many times and marveled at what you can accomplish with it.
2. I collect mini cookie cutters but had never tried icing the cookies with royal icing.
3. I’d never tried candy melts/molds

Because of limited time I didn’t even attempt to make my own fondant. I purchased the only pre-made I had access to, Wilton brand. I found out that it looks wonderful and tastes, um, well, not delicious. It’s not totally gross, mind you, just not yummy. So I hope to find a tasty recipe for the future.


My attempt at frosting the cookies was not even close to professional quality but they were incredibly cute sitting on top of the mini cupcakes and everyone has always loved my sugar cookies.


The candy melts were quite easy and another fun way to decorate the cupcakes. I found molds for a baby carriage and baby booties.


It was a lot of work and it did take me a week to clean up my kitchen but it was great fun and the folks at work were the perfect guinea pigs for my experimentation.

Here's Teri enjoying her shower while co-worker 'Grandma' Judy holds Tyler and a close up of Tyler

Aloha Eeyore

My friend and co-worker, Judy, collects Eeyore items so I brought her a little Eeyore with magnetic hooves from Disneyland after Spring Vacation. Because of his magnets he's been able to stay on top of the wall of her cube and he's become quite the office mascot. Dressing him up for the seasons or holidays is becoming a planned event at work. So, the week before she left to go to Hawaii for vacation, I found a perfect 'Eeyore-sized' palm tree, lei and umbrella so he could get us all in the Aloha spirit. I also found tropical confetti to put on her desk. Normally gloomy, Eeyore almost looks like he's smiling, don't you think?