Halloween Cupcakes

Halloween cupcakes for work

Have a spooktacular Halloween!

Spooooky...

Our Sunday night activity. Yes, we are digressing back a few years, but it's so much fun. Oh, word of caution... buying your Halloween candy a week in advance BAD idea :)

That's not mold in my pumpkin, I read in a magazine that if you sprinkle cinnamon in your pupkin and light a candle it smells like pumpkin pie... didn't notice that much of a scent, but it was worth the try.

Boo!

Cowgirl Cookies

My first attempted decorating sugar cookies with Royal Icing-Yee Haw!

Thanks Uncle Jack!

Sunday night I was very thankful for Greg's uncle Jack. We used our new pan he gave us to make a new recipe that... he also gave us. The recipe is for a really simple homemade pasta sauce-I was debating on whether to post on it or not, but decided it was worth sharing; yummy and simple.

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

3 lbs. Roma tomatoes quartered , it says you can mix in cherry tomatoes too (we had so many tomatoes from Greg's garden and since he is the only one who eats tomatoes lol this worked perfect ).

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

12 cloves garlic, peeled

2 tbs oregano

2 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper (and you all know me and measuring, don't really do it while cooking lol so throw it all in there and give it a taste).

combine all ingredients together in a roasting pan.Cook until the tomatoes begin to caramelize, about 30 minutes. Stir tomatoes after 30 minutes. Continue to cook until much of the liquid has evaporated, about 30 minutes longer. Remove from the oven and cool slightly. Blend everything until coarsely pureed (hey just dawned on me I used our hand blender for this which we got from...uncle Jack!-Gotta love hand-me-downs).If the sauce seems too thick, thin with a bit of water or chicken broth.

Ok, honestly is it easier to buy a jar of sauce-yes! I was a sceptic myself, probably if we weren't up to our ears in tomatoes I wouldn't of tried this. It really is delicious though, simple, better for you and it makes your kitchen smell good. Thanks uncle Jack...for everything! ;)

Proof

This is from one of the girls cell phone! Yup so close, it's amazing!

Still Smiling,

Fun with the Flatts!

So, last weekend was void of post's for a very simple reason...it was a boring one lol. I cleaned,worked out, knitted a scarf, grocery shopped and baked some cookies I didn't need to. This weekend however was pretty much amazing!

I got to see my friend Tish, from high school who was up here visiting her sister in Roseville. Always nice to see a familiar face and catch up!

Then off to a Rascal Flatts concert with the gals from work! So glad their concert got rescheduled and SUPER glad they invited me to go. These girls are so much fun and we wound up having the best seats ever!

Yeah, look behind my new found friend Starla... what is that behind her my dear family-Oh Yeah, Blongo Ball. She is one of my people lol.

She also, has boot shaped shot glasses...

A friendly game of football :)

Fun Times tailgating! Oh, we won these cowboy hats from a trailer next to us-pretty snazzy.

And as if the tailgating wasn't fantastic enough... We had lawn seats and right when the show started some of the girls went off to the restroom and when they came back they had these! What do those cool bright green wristbands mean? It means we no longer were in the nose bleeds, but front row-TOUCHING the stage!!! We saw Sara Evans and Rascal Flatts so close that we could see them sweat. Some of the girls even got them to tough their hands all I can say was it was AMAZING!

We even got the guitarist of Rascal Flatts to say Happy Birthday to Starla-thanks to a wonderful sign by Jessica!

Fun Times Girls, hopefully with more to come-Thanks for inviting a newby!

Apple Hill with the Birthday Girl

We have this place that was a huge tradition growing up, Oak Glen or "The Apples" where we would picnic, eat caramel apples (giant pickles for heather) and walk around apple orchards. Well, about 45 minutes from our house there is a place called Apple Hill-which is just like that maybe even bigger.

Us girls had fun shopping, walking around and EATING while the boys were...you guessed it fishing/scouting out ducks.

Giant Pumpkins

So, you know it's bad when my first purchase of the day (@ 9:30a.m) was a giant bag of kettle corn-but it's my favorite and it was yummy, good job Tana talking me into getting the large bag (this is why we get along so well...lol).
Apple doughnuts- YUM YUM!


We had really tasty turkey sandwiches at this spot-smoked with applewood.

Pretty views, pretty girls!

and...more food! Apple Pie a la mode.


Back home to barbque.

Brother and sister in law ;), mom and dad Heydeman, uncle Jack and kira dog.

Cutest couple ever...yup pretty much!

There gonna make some cute kids ;) ...and then roll down the hill with them at apple hill lol

Tuck Tuck came.

Birthday girl and big Greg

We busted out the bocce ball set, I won one year at schuler christmas(def not as fantastic as blongo ball, but it's all we had). Look at Claudia's concentration lol

I love this picture of the boys, they look so smiley and happy go lucky ...it could be the beer lol

Will I ever stop looking 12?

Ended it with lots of food.

Thanks for the amazing time and company Heydeman family!
I hope you had an amazing birthday Claudia, you really are so special to all of us.

Home is Where the Heart is.

So if this saying was true, I would have many homes. Last weekend I got to go "home" and I was lucky enough to get to spend some much needed time with my mama, shmo shmo and dad...oh and guin guin ;). A huge hunk of my heart will always be here in Southern California, but I realize too that my heart has a new home . This tug o war on my heart is probably the hardest thing I will have to do and I know as my nieces and nephews are born it's going to get even harder. That is why these visits are so special and an absolute must for me, I hope that they can become more frequent.

Thank you mama for a great weekend, lol I am saddened that for some odd reason we didn't take a picture-but I Love You Lots!

Thanks for lunch dad and thanks for driving down even though you didn't have too, just to see us.

Shmo thanks for being you ... making me smile and laugh.

Among family, we were blessed to visit with friends too. Here is my best friend from high school, Brandi and her 3 cutie pies of kids ... and one on the way. Natalie is almost 6, Noel is 3, Ezekiel is 1 and un-named is due the end of October ;) LOL the girls loved using Greg as a jungle gym-it was a great morning, with an amazing family.

Doesn't it look like she just has a basketball under her shirt? he he. After the visit I showed Greg my old hood in Moval, is was fun to see and share some stories.


Here we are all gussied up for the wedding. I wish I had more pictures, but my batteries died in my camera, Terra hopefully will send me some with me and the beautiful bride.

Here's one I got of her, The wedding was beautiful-but Sherina took the cake she looked amazing! We had a lot of fun, Greg even cut a rug on the dance floor, and you really could see how happy Sherina and Danny were to be husband and wife.

Terra and I at cocktail hour.

Tish and I at the reception.

On Tuesday we were SUPER blessed to have my grandma come to our place and then go to dinner. Unfortunately, our car problems forced them to have to drive all the way to us from Tahoe-but secretly I think my grandma is happy she did so she could rub it into my mom that she has seen our place before her ;) lol. We had a great dinner, and anyone can argue with me-but I SO have the best grandma EVER! Love you grams B , thanks again so much for coming to us-it meant so much (p.s used the knife this weekend-loved it...and we went to the places you circled on our apple hill map!

Love you!

Busy, Busy...Busy

As you probably have guessed from my lack of posts, that I have had a busy couple of weeks. To summarize in a few bullet points; baking, flying home, friends wedding, new job, both Greg's and my car in the shop, Getting with Grams B, more baking & cleaning/prepping the house for guests this weekend.

Whew! So to not bombard you with too much at one time I am splitting all of this information into two blogs-one about tasty treats and the other about getting together with loved ones (shooting for Sunday for them both to be done lol).

Tasty Treats Portion ;)

For starters I made treats as a thank you for my old job...so glad it's my OLD one now! This is a super easy,quick, yummy treat that makes a lot for little $.

Package of snickers minis (I used Milky Way because it was a peanut free place, but I suggest Snickers-SO much better)!

Buy a roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough -then cut like you were cutting circles for the cookies, but cut the circle in half. Smoosh with your fingers until you get a circle and then make an indentation in the middle (the perfect spot for chocolaty goodness).







Wrap the cookie dough around the candy and roll in a ball.

Put in mini baking cups on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 350 degrees until golden brown (I always under cook mine a lil), and do as I didn't lol-don't set them as close together or you will get awkward shaped yummies.

After they cooled, do a dollop of can frosting (I used a piping bag and a star tip-so much quicker and cuter than spreading).

Sprinkles!

These little treats are deceiving...surprisingly addicting (I had 3 that day lol).

Than, I flew to Southern California with this thing in tow. I made my wonderful sister and her fantastic Hubby this Mini Wedding cake for their one year anniversay. They never got a wedding cake, so I thought I would surprise them-LOVE YOU Sissy! I am awaiting a picture of them cutting into it ...or putting it into each others faces.

Monday when we got back was my last cake decorating class for Fondant, I did a Fall themed and shared it with my NEW job :)

Made spiced apple butter cupcakes for Claudia's Birthday, The whole gang is coming this weekend and Saturday is her Birthday-so await pictures from that!

P.S These are the pink flower baking cups I got from Tana for my birthday, so cute!

There's my treats for the past weeks, the loved ones were even better so stay tuned!