First Time Flyers {GBD Part 4}

Tags

air, first flight, flying, GBD, travel

I realized I hadn’t written an installment of The Good, The Bad, The Delayed in a while, and after a quick New Jersey trip, I thought it might be time to chat it out again.

This is a short, sweet, and fun little story, placing it in “THE GOOD” category of GBD. On Monday morning, I took a flight to Baltimore along with about 40 8th grade students. I’m guessing they were on an end of year trip, but their chaperones told the gate agent that they would go straight to the back of the plane, and they would be as quiet as they could get them.

Well, rumor quickly spread among passengers that for many of these 8th graders, this was their first flight EVER! How exciting!! It was fun to see them chit chatting and adrenaline-filled just before take off.

But the best part? As we raced down the runway, their giggles got progressively louder – and I looked back to see that just about all 40 of them had their hands in the air like they were on a roller coaster. Man oh man! a) I wish I could remember my first flight, and b) I hope I had that much fun with it!!

It really made me laugh to see something that is becoming so routine for me – something that I can practically sleep right through sometimes – bring so much joy and excitement to some eager kids.

This week, I’m going to try to see old things in a new way. You should too! Happy Thursday!!

Apple Cobbler

Tags

apple cobbler, dessert, food, recipe

This recipe for apple cobbler comes to you from Food Network. I made it for Mother’s Day, and it turned out oh so delicious! I highly recommend it. It was easy, tasty, and well-liked! And I have just a few appley photos for you…

Look at that golden crust…

Songs For Sound

Tags

nashville, dessert, cake, event, songs for sound

This weekend, I had the privilege to help out a local fundraiser by donating some of my baking skills. I made nearly 300 cake bites for Songs for Sound, at the Franklin Factory. Songs for Sound is a non-profit aimed at supporting cochlear implant awareness and resource availability.

The event was really great, with local musicians, great food, and plenty of drinks. Here’s a quick shot from my phone of the dessert display – I did not make cupcakes, but I would say my cake bites were a big hit!

And here are a few up close shots from before the event! I am currently working on a website, and cannot wait to share it with you all. But here are a few teasers for the time being…

I have a blog?

Tags

life, blog

I know…I have COMPLETELY neglected my favorite little blog this week! But I will blame it on the fact that I have something fun in the works that I hope to share with you soon. Meanwhile, please stay tuned, and I promise to have more recipes and photos and fun things heading your way soon!!

Love,

MM

Lynchburg, TN

Tags

travel, tennessee, lynchburg

This is the best time of year for taking fun little day trips. Earlier this month, The Boyfriend and I took a day trip down to Lynchburg, TN, home of the Jack Daniels Distillery. It is such a beautiful place, and ALL of the world’s Jack is made and distributed out of this one tiny little town in Tennessee. I took a few pictures of the grounds to share with you all!

And, of course, of the town square:

Farm Themed Baby Shower

Tags

baby shower, boy, farm, picture thursday

Like I said on Monday, I recently co-hosted a baby shower to celebrate Baby Jack. I wanted to share a few pictures with you of the themed items. You’ll see the bunting I made, as well as some egg-shaped cake bites. They have the same yellow cake filling as Sara’s golden birthday treats, and were very successful!

I cannot take credit for these AMAZING cupcakes from Sweet ‘N Sassy Bakery, but aren’t they cute or what?!?!

And here are the “egg” cake bites I made to go with the theme:

And of course we had barbeque, sweet tea, and mason jars…

And we had a very happy mommy and daddy-to-be!

Golden Birthday Cake Bites

Tags

birthday, cake bites, godlen birthday, tasty tuesday, yellow cake

I had a fun little request last week from Sara – she turned 26 on the 26th! As you probably know, that means a GOLDEN BIRTHDAY! I have fond memories of my golden birthday, when I turned 7 in Ms. Heinz’s 1st grade class. Oh yes, I really DO remember it well.

Any, when she requested some cake treats, two things came to mind: 1) birthday = sprinkles, and 2) GOLD! So I made a yellow cake filling with colorful sprinkles, and added a gold touch with sprinkles and even a little golden coating on some of them. And here are the sweet results:

Is it bad that I didn’t know there was such a thing as “edible color mist?” I only used it on a few of them, because I was afraid I wouldn’t like it, but it seemed to work pretty well. I believe you are supposed to use it on icing (like for cupcakes or cookies) but it worked on candy coating as well!

The yellow cake center was a success as well. It wasn’t as rich as my chocolate cakes, but it was still quite sweet, particularly for those folks who don’t love chocolate (yes, they exist).

All in all, another cake success!

Baby Shower Bunting

Tags

baby shower, bunting, crafting monday, fabric, sewing

This weekend, I had the honor of co-hosting a baby shower for my boyfriend’s sister. Little Jack is due in July, and they’ve already set up a beautiful little nursery for him with a sweet little farm theme. So we decided to go with the farm theme for the shower!

In keeping with the spirit, I decided to make a little bunting out of cowboy-esque colors and patterns. I bought very inexpensive fabric from Walmart, and I’d say they turned out pretty darn cute:

What you will need:

2 yards of fabric (pick out complimenting patterns! I used 5 fabrics)
fabric scissors
sewing machine (or lots of free time to hand-stitch)
matching/neutral thread
pins
ruler
iron and board

Here are the basic steps I took, if you want to make these yourself!

1. Cut out a triangle pattern from a piece of paper – mine measured 6 inches across the bottom and 7 3/4 inches for each side length. I then used this template to cut out a whole lot of triangles. You can do as many as you’d like, but I believe I cut about 30.

2. Next, I took my triangles and pinned them (right sides together) to the uncut fabric, trying to make the best use of space that I could. I sewed the lengths of each triangle, but left the bottoms unsewn. Basically, rather than cutting out 60 triangles and sewing them together in twos, I took this short cut to make it a little quicker. This picture shows which parts are sewn and which are not:

3. Next, you cut them out. Once you cut them out, you can flip them inside out, which is why you left the bottom unsewn. When you flip them, you should have the right side facing out on both sides of your triangle. Now, you get to iron them flat and you have pretty little triangles!

4. Now, to string them all together, I cut long strips of my left over fabric. I folded each strip in half (right sides out) and ironed the crease. Then I folded the rough edges in, and ironed that as well, so they looked like this on the inside:

and this from the outside:

5. The easiest part is next! I laid out each strip and tucked my triangles into the fold. I put two pins on each flag, pins pointing down so they would be easy to sew over.

6. Last, I sewed a simple straight line across the whole thing, tacking each flag in place. You could sew these together to make longer buntings, but I left them short (five strings of six flags each) so we could hang them all around.

When I chose my fabric, I picked three darker patterns, and two that were light and fun. I planned to use more of the light ones in order to break up the patterns. That said, you can obviously choose patterns and colors however you like. Since I planned to use more of the lighter fabrics, I bought 1/2 yard of each of those (two patterns), and 1/3 yard of the others (three patterns). That is how I came to the conclusion of 2 yards of fabric for 30 flags worth of bunting!

Bed Time Crafting

Tags

baby shower, bunting, craft, crafting monday, project

Some people have a habit of eating in bed. I, however, like to craft in bed. Nothing beats making a cup of tea, nestling down into a blanket, and working on your latest project. Right now, I’m working on a sweet little bunting for a baby farm-themed baby shower I am hosting next week. And here is what that project looks like at the moment:

More to come next week when I finish!

Giant Cake Bite Experiment

Tags

cake balls, cake bites, food, recpie, tasty tuesday

So these aren’t really cake bites…they are more like five-to-six-bite-cakes. I did a little recipe experimenting this weekend, and wanted to see how these babies would work out. And they were DELICIOUS, totally from scratch. However I made them far too large…like HUGE. So lesson learned there.

But in spite of their enormousness, I did shoot a few little pictures for you. Can you taste them from where you’re sitting? I sure can!

I even practiced my music notes, since I’ll be making oh, like, a few hundred of these puppies for the upcoming Songs for Sound event. If you have never made cake balls/bites/pops, I highly encourage you to try! Here are some basic instructions for you.