What’s Up Cupcake?

By now you are all probably wondering what the heck was up with all of those fabulous cupcakes you’ve been seeing around here!  :) 

Back in December, TJ at Susie’s Shortbreads did a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on Twitter.  She gave away a dozen of her freaking adorable cupcakes every day for twelve days to a random entrant.  I won!!  I think I was Day 11. 

Bummer was that I was leaving town like two days later to go home to visit, so I asked her if I could retrieve my gift when I returned.  She was very obliging!  I did try to grab them for our New Years get together, but we missed each other via email so it didn’t work out.

So this past week I thought I should probably claim them because it would be rude to continue dragging it out toooo long.  Again, TJ was very obliging.  She promised to have the dozen all ready for me with labels in the box so I would know what they all were.  What a girl! 

I arrived in the SUPER CUTE shop on Dresden Row mid-afternoon on Saturday.  It’s gorgeous inside.  Retro and pink and lovely.  I honestly felt like I had walked inside a giant hot pink cupcake.  Loved it.  I cannot believe we have been here two years and I had never been to Susie’s. 

Not only do they carry the amazing cupcakes…all displayed behind glass for you to oogle and drool at, but also several varieties of cookies, fudge, buttons, and treats galore.  I will have to really have a look around the next time I go in.

[photo borrowed from Susie’s website]

Anyway…on with the good stuff!  TJ put together one of each of the flavors of the day for me.  Some are everyday favorites, others rotate on and off the menu.

  

As you saw, I choose the Caramallow for my first cupcake.  It had marshmallow fluff in the middle!  And a Caramilk square on top! It was a seriously difficult decision, trust me!  Every.single.cupcake looked absolutely deeeeelish. 

FH chose the Death by Chocolate for his first venture into the cupcake box.  When asked for his review, he gave a resounding “YUMMY”.

(It must have been good, I don’t have an individual pic of it!)

Wisely, I opted to share half the box with friends.

As you saw, this morning we brought the Red Velvet, Black & White, and Root Beer Float to Mark, Coco, and Camille…

We also gave three to Frank, Joanne and their daughter Danika…Toasted Coconut, Peanut Butter Cup (that was a tough one to let go of!) and Birthday Cake…

FH opted to keep Twice Baked…

…and S’Mores (I called this as possibly the best in the box, and I can now say that after stealing a bite I think it was!!)

And I saved Suzie’s Classic and the Mint Chocolate…I was trying for variety…

I adore the Classic!!  My favorite simple vanilla cupcake base, topped with lovely light pink buttercream.  O.M.G.

All of the cupcakes are dense and delicious, with large stiff peaks of frosting.  Perfectly swirled and slightly hardened, they were all just as fun to look at as they were to eat.  FH and I both agree that we’ll be heading in and trying out EVERYTHING Suzie’s has to offer.

Thanks so much TJ!! 

(Let me just say how fun it was to photograph the cupcakes too!!)

…and now back to our regularly scheduled healthy lifestyle programming…  ;)

Yoga a la Booty Camp

So I totally forgot to mention that I did a little more Booty Camp DVD action on Friday before heading off for girl’s night.

I actually plugged the DVD into my desktop computer and rolled my yoga mat out in my office to do my workout. I was pressed for time…but I wanted to get something done, so the DVD was a great option. 

Tasha gave the Serenity Stretch yoga practice a great review so I definitely wanted to give that a go…but first I did the Booty Booster again.  Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment because my calves were still super stiff from trying that session on Wednesday!  But doing it again, it was a teeny bit easier.  Burn tushie burn!!! 

The yoga session is about half an hour long and by the time I got to it I was running late so I only did about half…but I liked what I did.  Lots of simple yet effective sun salutations and Sammie’s voice is quite soothing and easy to follow (the only note I would make is that they don’t really spend much time describing the poses so if you are a beginner you would really have to be sure watch the screen…I was going more by voice because it’s hard to watch and perform the poses at the same time).

The yoga totally kept me limber after the booty session though.  Definitely will work on doing them both at the same time in the future.  Yay!

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This morning we headed out relatively early to meet friends for Sunday breakfast at Athen’s.  Can’t go a whole weekend without some bacon and eggs!  :)

My usual scrambled eggs, bacon, multigrain toast and pan fries (they changed their breakfast potatoes again…they are better now)…

With a pancake stolen from FH…

Camille enjoyed her chocolate chip pancake!  :)

I also brought along some cupcakes for Mark, Coco and Camille…

Red Velvet, Black & White, and Root Beer Float!!

Obviously Camille totally wanted the Float!  :)

The rest of today consists of baking the cookies for the Bake Sale for Haiti, cleaning my office, looking for a pork roast recipe, and hitting up the 5pm warm yoga class.  I love Sunday.

What are you doing to relax this weekend?

A Saturday Pioneer

I wrote this morning’s post while enjoying an hour at Starbucks before tackling my Saturday.  Sipped on a double tall vanilla non-fat latte…and chewed on a slice of low-fat banana chocolate chip loaf…

It was a fun change of pace to hang out somewhere other than my office or couch to write a post and catch up on a few things.

Afterwards I took on the grocery store for a much needed restock. 

Came home to drop the groceries off and made a quick snack to fuel me for my workout.  Plain yogurt, sliced banana, hemp seeds, and kickin’ it old school with some All-Bran…

Topped with a spoonful of The Bee’s Knees peanut butter…

And packed up a post-workout drink to take with me.  I decided the vanilla-chai flavor of Vega would be good mixed straight up with unsweetened Almond Breeze…

I guess it’s sort of blasphemy to use my Amazing Grass shaker cup for a Vega drink.  *hangs head* 

Today marks Day One of Week Three of Intro to Iron.  I love Day One!  It’s lots of shoulders, chest and triceps and I can really tell I’m getting stronger!!

Added some of Jenna’s “eagle” crunches at the end of today’s session…those are brutal!  But I could do more this week than I could last week, so I’ll take it!!

Also added a 15 minute run on the treadmill.  I was exhausted afterwards.  Must be my late night catching up with me.

In the car, I shook up my protein drink…

And chugged it on the drive home…

OH!!!  I picked up a super-fabulous package today too!!! 

Yes.  That says CUPCAKES!!  Full post to come…be prepared to get your drooooool on.  :)

I did have half of something called a Caramallow while making dinner…

Heaven!

For dinner I wanted to try a Pioneer Woman recipe.  I’ve been spending a bit of time reading through her photography posts, but thought I should keep an eye on her recipes since that’s what she is famous for!  (I actually ordered her cookbook too.)

A week or so ago I printed out her recipe for Italian Meatball Soup.  Today I picked up the ingredients and got to work on it as soon as I’d showered and put on my comfy clothes.

The meatballs.  :)  Cute and mucky.  Ree’s are nicer than mine, but ah well.  She also got 24 and I barely got 16…guess I was a bit heavy handed.

Love the addition of fresh parsley.  Especially because I was able to buy Italian parsley…so fragrant.

Simple ingredients…

My first bouquet garni…bundle of herbs…

The pitfall to this recipe is that it takes some time.  I didn’t read the entire cooking process in advance and including prep it took more than two hours.  We didn’t eat until 8:30.

But when we did, it was pretty tasty!! 

(In looking at her post…wow…my pictures are awful in comparison!)

We think we’d add more herbs next time…but I’m betting that when we eat the leftovers tomorrow we may not feel that way anymore.  We loved the meatballs though! 

Enjoyed with this super fresh, soft, tasty and crusty multigrain Italian bread…and real buttah!

For dessert you know I went back for the other half of that cupcake!  :) 

I think it’s going to be an early Saturday night…zzzzzzzz.

Girls Night In

Last night FH had a couple of buddies over for another rousing round of Beatles Rock Band.  He has now downloaded a couple more albums so they had a whole new repertoire to work from.  I decided to call up the other wives and see if they wanted to get together and give the boys their space.  We opted to grab some snacks and a movie and hunker down over at Cosette’s house.

(I apologize now for the picture quality…I just used my point & shoot and didn’t really worry about lighting or anything.  Sorry!)

Joanne and I hopped in the car and headed over to Coco’s.  On our way, we grabbed some snacks at the grocery store.  We brought the junk food! 

Look out people!  I know you love these!  Broooookies!!  haha.  (For those of you that didn’t see these the last time I bought them…they are half brownie/half cookie…and the comments went wild when I posted about them.  LOL.)

I made sure to leave the leftovers behind for Mark otherwise they might have been breakfast today. 

We also contributed Swedish Berries, Twizzlers, and Kettle Chips.

Thankfully Coco can always be relied on for the healthy snacks!  Veggies, hummus, spinach dip, yummy rustic rye? bread, lavash crackers…

And lots of tea and water. 

I actually brought her this fabulous tea from Silk Road in Victoria.  Super fabulous little store carrying a zillion types of organic loose leaf tea (among other things).  AngelWater has always been my favorite…I really should drink it more often.

We watched It’s Complicated (shhhh…don’t ask where it came from…Thanks Sarah!!).  Soooooo good.  I really didn’t expect much, but it’s a very smart script, well told and really funny.  Let me just say that I truly believe…

Alec Baldwin is the new William Shatner. 

You can quote me on that if you like.  :)

Anyway, Joanne and I didn’t roll home until like 3am.  The boys were still kind of playing but shut it down after a finale encore.  Amazingly, Mark and FH stayed up and watched a movie after that.  Crazy boys!

Smitten Mittens

Holy cow people!  I really had no idea how popular the Olympic Mittens would be!!  I mean, I should have because I danced around like a fool when I finally got a pair but I thought I was just a nutter.  :)  So glad so many of you are as excited as I am!  Keep those entries coming!!  *waves* at all the new visitors!  Welcome!

So, I put myself on a strict social networking schedule today.  I often get caught up in Twitter, Facebook, GMail, blogs, whatever and can easily lose like an hour without even blinking an eye.  It’s ridonkulous (I love that word!).  Being Friday, I like to get as much work as possible caught up and don’t wish to work late at all…so I instituted a self imposed timer on my work schedule.

One hour work = ten minutes gallivanting on the internet

Totally worked!  I accomplished a TON in that first hour.  Made my day soooo much more on the ball.  It did slightly fall apart around 3pm when I hit that dreaded “wall” but I’ve managed to pick it back up and I’m pretty much on track to be done on time.  Totally try this if you are an internet junkie like I am.

So anyway, no gym this morning as it’s FH’s half day so he drives himself.  Fine with me cuz it dumped a couple of inches of snow last night. 

So I lounged in bed right until starting time, then had me some coffee and toast.

Today’s coffee with some egg-noggy goodness.  Yes, I’m still finishing the egg nog.

And toast with peanut butter and banana…

Lunch was consumed at my desk while putting together my earlier blog post.  Leftover tuna salad with multigrain Wheat Thins (crack crackers) and carrot sticks (literally the only vegetable left in our house)…

My belly is feeling a little off today so I’ve been sip-sip-sipping as much water as I can take…

Afternoon snackie of some fresh-frozen strawberries I thawed out…

Mixed with plain yogurt and this Nature Valley granola bar I found hiding in the pantry (why do we never have cereal when I want it?!)…

Tonight I’m off over to a girlfriend’s house for movies and a few snacks.  Not entirely sure I’m even going to bother with dinner as that snack was really late and there will be hummus tonight.  We shall see.

I do, however, think that some Booty Camp DVD action is on the horizon before I head out.  Guess I ought to finish work first though!  TGIF!