Living in Long Beach

Last night, we had our monthly book club gathering. This month’s book was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. When I was first invited to join the Stoneybrook  Book Club, the books had already been selected for several months. A different member of the club hosts the gathering each month and for my month the book that had been preselected was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I loved this book and went on to read the other two in the series. For my first book club gathering, I added a Swedish dinner. It was really a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of my delicious princess cupcakes. They tasted a LOT better than they looked and had all the requisite layers. If you want to see the look I was going for (and the recipe), go to the cookie shop blog. This is very labor intensive but way better than the Ikea ones (which are good in a pinch.) Plus, mine had alcohol in them!!   Anyway, I digress. The reason I give you all this backstory is that I had so m...

My good friend and neighbor invited me to attend her Bunco Night last night. (I was a substitute.) It really was a fun night with a great group of ladies! And I had the high score for the evening. Whee! Beginner's luck, I guess. Anyway, I asked her if I could bring dessert as I wanted to try and recreate these cute candy corn cupcakes that I found on the cool blog The Sugar Turntable. I used a chocolate cake recipe that I like because they are so light and moist (secret ingredient in them is sour cream and of course I added additional cocoa powder!!) I had never made them as cupcakes but so far every cake that I like works as cupcakes too. And for the filling, I completely made up a recipe that was delicious! Very light and fluffy. Email me if you want it! So I started by using only cupcake liners that mimicked the colors of a classic candy corn. Once the cupcakes were baked, it was very hard to tell unless you were really looking for it. After I...

As I was doing laundry today, I thought I'd share this cute little apron that I made a while ago. My friend Arlene got me two cute dish towels for Christmas last year. I took some organza ribbon that I had on hand, pulled out my Hello Kitty sewing machine , and tada!! A cute little apron that I use all the time!! (click on picture above to "bigify") Wanna closer look at the cute Hello Kitty spoons? They are from a past Yogurtland promotion.

I know. I have no excuse. I just couldn't resist!!

My parents have been visiting with me this past week. My mother's birthday is in March and my father's birthday is in February, so we celebrated them both while they were here. I let them each request a special cupcake...Father requested a groundhog and Mother a frog (big surprise, right?) I also made a "G" cupcake in honor of Greg's birthday which was Saturday. (I ate it for him too!!) I had a lot of fun making these cupcakes. And since they were double chocolate Kahlua cupcakes filled with a Starbucks liquor cream center, we had lots of fun eating them.