The pear tomatoes are as delicious & sweet as I remember. The red tomato just ripened today, so I’m definitely planning on making some sandwiches with it tonight. It was a TON of work to keep those tomato plants alive, but so worth it. It really makes me appreciate all of my mom’s planning & hard work with the garden she kept when I was growing up. Gosh, she grew thornless blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, squash and cucumbers! We even had peach, pear, plum & apple trees at one point. There’s nothing like fresh produce. MMm!

Right now I’m in full-on Blogher mode; so from here on out posts might be a tad sporadic and a little heavy on the before & after refashion stuff. Hope you don’t mind!

I love my ice cream maker. I’ve had it for a little over 2 years & I still love it. It’s so nice that I don’t have to use ice or rock salt, so I can make ice cream/sorbet whenever I want. The only thing that sucks about it is I usually make too much ice cream liquid & as the ice cream sets, it expands & spills out the top. It can get pretty messy if I don’t have a spoon & a hungry husband on hand.

Yesterday I thought I’d try something a little different. See, when the ice cream starts to overflow, it’s partially set, perfect for making popsicles. I didn’t have the time/desire to go out on a Sunday and get some popsicle forms, so I improvised. I snagged a bunch of cupcake liners & trimmed bamboo skewers to the appropriate length. I lined a tupperware with cupcake liners & spooned the half-set ice cream into each liner. Then, I stuck a bamboo skewer in each cupcake and put my popsicles in the freezer to set.

My crazy hair-brained idea worked! We have delicious deformed popsicles!! I have a few more ideas of different ways to do popsicles without popsicle forms and still make them pretty, I think I might need to make some more ice cream pops soon.

How was your weekend? What’s your favorite thing to make on a hot day?

Last weekend I found a recipe for homemade york peppermint patties that only calls for 3 ingredients with an optional 4th. It’s definitely my kind of recipe! I had to give it a go. Mine didn’t turn out nearly as beautiful or small as the ones in the recipe. Mine also (probably) turned out a LOT stronger than hers, too. I think my brain fell asleep at the wheel when I was adding the peppermint because they’re UBER strong. They’re so strong, you only want to take very small bites at a time. They’re still good, though.

I packaged three of them to give to some ladies I visit & couldn’t help but use my neon orange vellum envelopes for the packaging.

I’m definitely going to give this recipe another try sometime, but I’ll certainly pay more attention when I’m adding the peppermint.

How to Make Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes:

• Make the fluffy white cake from epicurious. (this makes over 3 1/2 doz cupcakes, so you may want to half the recipe). I’m sure any white cake recipe would do, but I really like this one.
• Fill cupcake cups with a heaping spoonful of batter and bake at 350º for 15-17 minutes.
• Allow cupcakes to cool. Put the cupcakes in an airtight container and allow to rest for a few hours or overnight. If you don’t cover the cupcakes, they’ll dry out!
• Make the lemon curd recipe from epicurious. You’ll want to half the recipe if you don’t want loads of leftovers & even if you’re making the full 3 1/2 dozen cupcakes. You could always just buy the curd if you wanted to.
• Poke a hole in the middle of each cupcake using the back of a fork or knife.
• Fill pastry bag with lemon curd & fill each hole with curd.
• Make strawberry lemon icing (recipe below).
• Fill pastry bag or plastic bag with frosting and frost each cupcake.
• Garnish cupcakes with sliced strawberries just before serving.

Strawberry Lemon Icing
from the kitchen of Melissa Esplin
makes enough to frost about 1 1/2 dozen cupcakes

1 tablespoon lemon juice
4-6 fresh strawberries
1 cube or 1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar

Puree strawberries & lemon juice in a blender. Allow strawberries to macerate for about 10 minutes; it helps with the flavor. With a hand mixer beat strawberry mixture, butter and sugar until consistency is smooth. You may want to add more sugar or more lemon juice to get your preferred consistency. Frosting is perfect for sugar cookies, cupcakes, cakes, etc.

Hope you like them! Let me know if you have any questions about the recipe. I used the fluffy white cake recipe for Penelope’s birthday cake. It was really good, but I think this recipe works better as a cupcake. I don’t know what it is, but that’s just how I feel about it. Enjoy!!

The party was organized chaos. I didn’t take very many photos of the festivities, but I did manage to document the food table. We had Bee’s lemon water (a delicious homemade beverage that’s clear – perfect for living room dining), pulled pork sandwiches, clementines, bananas, cut veggies, chips and cake. The food was all pretty low-key except for the cake, which took a few hours to make entirely from scratch. I made a white cake with lemon curd and lemon frosting. It was deliciously moist and dense. MMM! I’ll make it again and share the recipe with you, if you’d like.

I used the Silhouette to cut a P out of paper to use as a stencil for the decorative sugar. It kind of looks gritty as if I spray painted the P on there. I like that.

I kept the decorations simple by using balloons and a handmade garland using the same paper I used for the envelopes. It was really easy to make. If you’d like a tutorial for the garland, comment! I was going to make the vellum mobiles as seen on Oh Happy Day, but I didn’t have enough time to run to the store for more paper, so I opted to make the strips into a garland instead. The vellum mobiles would’ve looked really rad, had time been on my side. I also made Penelope’s party favors using the envelope paper and a variation on the petal box template (cut with the Silhouette). I filled the boxes with hard lemon candies and candy orange slices.

The festivities were really simple: eating and dancing. It was great to keep things simple, otherwise it would’ve been like hearding cats. Plus, after spending so much time on the invitations, I wasn’t about to plan a creative party curriculum. I’m much too lazy for that. The kidlets enjoyed dancing, screaming, fighting over balloons and playing hide and seek in the ikea garbage cans that we use for storing Penelope’s toys. I say it was a great success! Also, the kids were so entertained, us parents had a great time catching up.

Click here to read part I: The Invitation

Click here to read part III: The Thank Yous

I really wanted to make a big deal out of Penelope’s birthday this year. I’ve never planned a party for a little one before, so it was definitely new territory for me. I had a lot of fun being creative, but it was SO MUCH WORK. I see why most parents only do parties every other year, or so for kids. I’m still exhausted. GEEZ.

Penelope’s invitation took hours and hours to put together. Mostly it took so long because I was a loser and didn’t read the Silhouette manual on how to cut vinyl. Yeah. I figured it out after 8 hours of trying. Not kidding. Turns out Silhouette’s FAQ’s are really helpful. Go read the manual, then go read all of the FAQ’s. You’ll thank me later.

I also wasted hours and hours on brain-dead printers. At first, I wanted to avoid printing at FedEx Office because they’re expensive and slightly annoying. I thought printing at the local UPS store would be smart. Worst idea, ever! First, it took the ladies 3 days (THREE DAYS!) to print 10 color copies on card stock. Seriously? Second, the colors were not even close to what I had designed. Third, the employees were annoying and told me that colors always come out different than the computer screen. Yeah, always is right if you have a crappy printer and don’t know how to use it.

By the time I gave up on printing at the UPS store, I was in a bind and needed the files printed ASAP. I headed over to the FedEx Office down the street thinking they’d get the job done fast. NOPE. After an annoying conversation with the employee there, I left. UGH. I sat in the car with my iPhone (hallelujah for the 3GS) calling around different print companies to see what they could do on such short notice. I remember DownEast had done some printing with Documart just downtown so I called them. I explained the type of print job I needed and asked how long it would take him to do it. His response, “Seriously?! They’d be done in less than five minutes.” NICE.

The guy at Documart was on the ball, and he didn’t charge a million dollars per copy, either. Hooray! Seriously. Three cheers for competent and kind printers!!

The Envelopes:

• I used American Crafts Moda Bella craft paper
• I designed a CD case template in Illustrator and cut it out with my handy dandy Silhouette
• I hand addressed each envelope
• I designed the circular PEN sticker to secure the envelope closed and cut it with the Silhouette

The CD:

• I burned 4 of Penelope’s favorite dance songs to CD for attendees. They aren’t children’s songs, but they had clean lyrics (CD included: Calvin Harris, Discovery, Yeasayer and Hey Champ)
• I designed the LISTEN sticker and cut it out with the Silhouette

The Invitation:

• The colors and style were heavily inspired by the Pretty Little Thieves post on one of my new favorite blogs: Color Collective. Genius.
• Using my Wacom Tablet, I hand-drew the picture of Penelope because the actual photo of Penelope was junky
• I used Bebas, Adios script and Glypha LT for my fonts

I was really excited how the invitations turned out, despite all of the setbacks. After I mailed them, it was like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders! This invitation would’ve been much more labor intensive if I didn’t have the Silhouette to do half of the work for me. I love it! Stay tuned for Part II, the party!

Click here to read part II: The Party

Click here to read part III: The Thank Yous

Here are a few pictures of the Spring/Easter-themed cookies I made with my in-laws while visiting in Arizona last week. We had so much fun stamping out the cookie dough and frosting them. We used Williams Sonoma cookie cutters and decorative pens to make these cookies. Aren’t they just beautiful? They sat around the house for about two days before we ate them. That’s pretty impressive considering my sweet tooth!

I hope you all have a weekend full of candy, delicious food (maybe a vegetable or two), friends and most importantly, family.

Aren’t those greedy little fingers adorable?

I love spritz cookies. I have very fond memories of my mom making a million of these little cookies in assorted Christmas colors and in the cutest, petite shapes. They’re incredibly addicting and easy to make. I can’t tell you the excitement I felt when my mom gave me a cookie press for Christmas. There may have been an audible squeal. These cookies are divine when dipped in chocolate, topped with a melt-in-your-mouth lemon icing or just by themselves. Without any further Ado, here’s the recipe:

Spritz Cookies

no idea where this recipe came from– my mom?
makes about 70 cookies

• 1 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Cream butter, sugar and egg until smooth. Add milk, vanilla and almond. In a separate bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour mixture to wet ingredients. Mix until flour is incorporated. Use cookie press to form cookie shapes. Bake at 400º farenheit for 8 minutes. Cool and serve.