Baking, Baking, and more Baking!!

It's been too long since I have written a blog entry, but our baking has continued! We made peanut butter chocolate cupcakes for Shawna's birthday, and s'mores "cupcakes" well, because Mommy just wanted some chocolate! I think both were a big hit!

All this home cooking and baking from scratch reminds Mommy a lot of her Grammy Charlene. We haven't really told you too much about her yet, but as you get older I'm sure you will hear lots of stories. Your middle name actually comes from her.."Taylor" which was Grammy Charlene's maiden name. Unfortunately she passed away a couple of years before you were born, but she would have loved to have met you! I know she is watching you grow from heaven and smiling down on us. One thing I know she would really have loved was all this baking we have been doing. She was quite the baker and having 5 children of her own she knew how to cook things from scratch and work with what she had. I wish I had taken a lot more of her knowledge of cooking and sewing with me, and shown a little more interest in those things when I should have. There are days when I wish I could call her and ask her for her homemade chocolate cookie recipe, or how do I know if my bread is rising properly? Now that I have you, I would love to ask her to teach me to sew! She would say it is ridiculous that they charge 30 dollars for a pillowcase dress that she could probably have whipped up in an hour with 5 dollars worth of cloth!

She was one of the hardest workers I have ever met. When she set out to do something she did it, and she did it right. She always completed what she started. She raised 5 children including your Grandpa, and we think he turned out pretty good! Days before Grammy Charlene passed away she was out gardening. She would never think of not tending to the garden, or taking care of her family and home because she wasn't feeling well. Everyone else always came first. I will always admire that about her, and hope that I can always remember whats really important just the way she did.

More rain....

means more baking! Today we spent the day making homemade bread. When I say spent the day I mean spent the whole day....it came out delicious but I'm not so sure I will do that too often. Its a lot of work for a loaf of bread, but just like the cupcakes the taste difference was huge! The smell of this bread traveled throughout the entire house and if you ever feel like you need to "taste" fall you just need a slice of this! This recipe was also from that great blog I was telling you about, annies-eats.com She is amazing and has amazing recipes. Tomorrow begins Mommy's work week, so the baking business will be on hold until Monday when we make Shawna a birthday treat! Peanut butter cupcakes.

Christmas in October!

or Christmas pictures at least. Today we spent the afternoon in Newburyport with Daddy trying to get a Christmas picture of you for our holiday cards this year. 56 degrees, rainy, and windy wasn't the perfect conditions for our family outing but we did alright considering! It was so nice for all three of us to get to spend the day together since it doesn't happen often with Mommy and Daddy's opposite schedules. One things for sure though, there is nothing that brings us a greater joy than being with you!

Here is sneak peak at some of the pictures we took today. Of course I will not include the ones we picked for the Christmas cards since those are a suprise!

Rainy days lead to baking days!

This week has rain in the forecast for everyday up until Thursday, so what better to do then stay in PJ's all day and bake! That's just what we did....throw in some Mickey Mouse clubhouse and The Wiggles and we had a pretty perfect day! Not to mention the fact that you decided it was a good idea to skip your nap...AGAIN....so you are sound asleep at 6:40 pm which is a pretty good deal for Mommy since she can blog, clean, and catch up on things that need to get done around the house.

I'm not so sure you were really into the whole baking thing, you enjoyed smashing the pots and pans together and being the taste tester, so we made a good team! We brought our baked goods over to Grammy and Grandpas house, Sue next door, and Auntie and Uncle Derek's. I think they were a huge hit!

So what did we make??? Homemade apple pie cupcakes! Everything was made from scratch, the cupcake batter and frosting! This was a first for Mommy since she normally buys the boxed stuff. I found an awesome blog called annies-eats.com She made everything look so easy to make homemade and the taste difference was huge! If the time allows for it Mommy will continue to make our baked goods from scratch. I also have a list a mile long of recipes from Annie's blog that we just have to try! Looks like baking will be our new thing in order to put a dent in the list of goods I want to make!