Baking Shenanigans 2015...

So far, this year has been insanely busy on the baking front. I did have a few weeks in January to recover from the holidays, but I still got to bake up some pretty fun stuff.

1. First birthday cookies in pink and gold.
2. 6th birthday bowling themed cookies.
3. Norman North semi formal invite cookies.
4. Frozen themed birthday cake.
5. Frozen themed birthday cookies.
6. Matilda Jane open house cookies.
7. German chocolate cake for my fabulous father-in-law.
8. Birthday cookies for two of my favorite kids' mimi.
9. 60th birthday golf themed cookies.

1. Birthday cupcakes cookies with polka dots.
2. Personalized valentines cookies.
3. Thank you cookies for nurses.
4. Burger cupcakes and love cookies for Josh's cousin Jennifer's wedding shower.
5. More birthday cupcakes with polka dots.
6. Elephant baby shower cookies.
7. Valentine cookies!
8. Wedding shower cookies.
9. Grey and yellow chevron birthday cupcake cookies.

1. Fire truck themed 3rd birthday cookies.
2. 50 Shades of Grey birthday sugar cookies.
3. Winnie the Pooh birthday sugar cookies.
4. My favorite Frozen sugar cookies so far.
5. Ninjago birthday cookies for my nephew Haden, and Japanese cookies that say Paige for my niece's 16th birthday.
6. Cookies I donated for a local church.
7. Cookies for my friend Kristy who headed to Arizona for a marathon.
8. Wedding shower cookies, love the white on white.
9. My biggest order to date, cookies for the OU College of Arts & Science's gala.

This is not everything that has been happening this year, but it's a lot of it. It hasn't been too easy keeping up with all of it, but it has sure been fun making goodies. I am glad to have a few days to catch my breath and catch up on my DVR and get a little blogging done. I promised my girls that I would make them some chocolate chip cookies this weekend. They have been feeling a little neglected lately.

I am looking forward to what is coming up for March. 

How About Some Goals…

So I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I think they are silly and people don’t stick to them. I think if you want to do something you should set goals. Small steps in the right direction are more apt to get you where you want to go than a New Year’s Resolution.

I have considered my goals for the year, but I thought I would focus more on monthly goals for now.
Here’s what I have come up with so far, they cover a range of shenanigans.

• On the running front, how about I start running again? My total of 9 whole miles run in December might seem impressive, but I’m ready to start hitting the streets again. So far, so good. I am focusing on running because it’s fun, not because I have to. Two Saturday’s in a row of 5 miles a piece, a hill workout, and even a not so terrible treadmill workout so far. I’d say I’m off to a pretty good start.
• Running naked. Yep, for the entire month of January my goal is to run sans Garmin. I do not want to worry about pace AT ALL for at least one month. (I will reassess this goal for February when February gets here.) This is not to say that I am not keeping track of my miles, but I know most of the routes we run so I can keep track of my distance but not care about how fast I get from the start to the finish.
• As for meal planning, I plan to do it. December was especially hectic with all the baking, and I feel like we were always scrambling for what we were going to have for dinner. Now we talk about it, or we have for the last two weeks, and we have a list of dinner options on the fridge and the girls get to pick.
• January has been much less busy on the baking front, but my goal for this month is marketing, marketing, marketing. I’ve baked up a couple of batches of cookies to take to my favorite salon for passing out. Valentine’s day is right around the corner!

• I also plan to get more organized with my business. (Set up my LLC, and open a business account.) There I sais it, so I have to do it. I have the forms for the LLC in my in box, just have to do it.
• I am so excited that I actually bought a new, to me, fancy camera last week. It’s a Nikon D3000, and my first goal with it is to learn how to use it. I signed up for a photography class, and since I missed the first class last week I am going to night for the make up class. Should be interesting.
• Finally, my last goal for January is to get more yoga back in my life. When I PR’d the marathon, almost two years ago, I was practicing yoga pretty regularly. In fact, all I was doing at that time was running and yoga. No strength or anything. After the horrible miles of 2014, I realized that the thing that was missing for almost the entire year was yoga. I am working on getting back to my mat. It’s good for me and I really enjoy it. It’s practically a no brainer.

A Little Shenanigans...

I feel like I have been baking non-stop lately! That is not complaining at all, but I have been super busy. I thought I would take a break from running and show off some of the cookies I have been baking up...

There have been lots of football cookies, including OSU (gasp!), WVU and Arkansas. I will be sad to see football season go.

I love cupcakes, and I especially love cupcake sugar cookies!

Sometimes the design I have in my head doesn't actually translate in reality, and the cookies I made before these roses are definitely in that category. Multiple cookie cutters to get the shape I wanted made these not the easiest cookies I have made, but they sure turned out cute.

Custom cookies for a shower. I was so happy with how these turned out. I always say I am not very artistic, but I was amazed that I could take an invitation and get parts of it to translate into a cookie. Not the easiest to make, but the end product was one I was very happy with.

The horse shoes on these cookies were royal icing transfers that I made myself. Another pat myself on the back moment. I had to make them a little shimmery with gold edible dust, they were for a little girl's birthday party after all.

October is breast cancer awareness month, and I was super excited when my older sister asked me to make cookies to go along with her Halloween costume. Here theme was "Fight Like a Girl" and she gave out these individually wrapped goodies.

Lastly, for today, it is always someone's birthday, right? These were last minute cookies done for a birthday. I am a big fan of sugar cookies to celebrate birthdays. Okay, to celebrate any day, really.

 

 

So that's just a bit of what has been happening in my kitchen lately. I am hoping to find more time to blog about all the shenanigans. (I really love the word Shenanigans!)

Hello There...

I don't know about you, but my life has been a little crazy so fat this year. Between family, work, running and baking I feel like I never sit down anymore. Although, technically I am sitting almost the entire time I am at work, but you get the idea.

So how about a little summary that I will go into more detail on in the next few days? Okay, good. 

• Number of weeks left until my girls are officially high schoolers? 9.5

• Number of times the Service Engine Soon light has been texted to Josh because it has made another appearance? At least 3. 

I have been told that this is nothing to worry about.

 

• Number of miles logged in 2014. 242

• Number of miles logged in my latest pair of Brooks Ravenna 4s. 204 (I am very sad to be about 2/3 of the way through these shoes. Not sure if the 5s are for me. 

If you can believe it, I am actually stretching here, not just showing off my awesome shoes.

• Number of races so far in 2014. 2 (Number of recaps, none so far, I will be getting to this.)

• Number of sock cookies made in 2014. About 8 dozen, with another 2.5 dozen to make this weekend. 

I am sad I didn't make these when my girls were small. Carson loved her sock monkeys.

It's been a pretty eventful year so far. I am going to try to get better at keeping track of it all. More later!

Baby Shower Goodies...

This weekend I am baking for babies. 

The first baby is a little boy, and for his mom's baby shower I made two dozen very vanilla cupcakes, with blue tinted cream cheese frosting.  I have not used the recipe for the cupcakes before and I am very happy at how they turned out.

The second baby is a little girl.  For her mom's shower, which is being hosted by my friend Kendra, I made carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  I did a test batch of carrot cupcakes last week, and was not thrilled with the results.  I did get good reviews from my co-workers, but I was still unsure.  I don't have much of a history with carrot cake, so I don't really have a point of reference for this one.  The initial batch called for crushed pineapple and raisins.  I have never been a huge fan of raisins.  When I got ready to whip up this batch, I opted for Martha Stewart's version of carrot cake, it didn't contain pineapple, and the golden raisins were optional.

I also made a batch of sugar cookies.  I love the little feet cookie cutter I bought the other day, though I kinda think I should have gotten the left foot and the right foot.  They are iced with pink and yellow royal icing.  I have been worried about these because the icing didn't set up as quickly as I like, but they seem to be okay now.

Later today, my niece Lanee will be here, and I told her I'd make her some cupcakes for her birthday party tomorrow.  I think she wants cherry, but we'll see when she gets here.  I love having a pantry full of supplies and people that need baked goods.