2009 Holiday Tea and Cookie Exchange

This Saturday I am hosting the First Annual Ladies Holiday Tea and Cookie Exchange at my house. I have been busy getting the guest list finalized and it looks like I'm going to be hosting a group of ten gal pals! Every one is bringing 2 dozen cookies to trade so we will all end up with a good selection of Christmas cookies when all is said and done. I have purchased an array of packaging supplies so people can make some of their "trades" into gifts and transport everything home safely (and in style, of course). I will post pictures of the party next week. Above you can see the "logos" I created for the party. I will use these on some of the packaging supplies and on the take-away gifts for the guests. I am attaching a link to the gift tags I created for the party. Feel free to download them and use them for your own holiday treat gifts! Download the gift tags here

Unexpected places people buy cupcakes...

GARAGE SALES! Made up a big batch of Halloween cupcakes for Bret's garage sale yesterday. I made chocolate with cream cheese frosting, white with cream cheese frosting and white with (orange dyed) vanilla frosting. My lack of Halloween cupcake decorations led me to also make tiny pumpkins picks. I was hoping lots of kids would come but it turned out most of my sales were to adults. The cupcakes left over from the garage sale went to trick or treaters when I ran out of candy. I had over 100 kids come by! My mother never would have let me take a cupcake from a complete stranger for fear that I would ingest a razor blade.

Halloween Tasty Treats

I hosted my 3rd Annual Pumpkin Carving Party this past Tuesday. One of my favorite things about throwing this party every year is that it gives me an excuse to search out fun Halloween recipes. This year I went above and beyond what I normally do and whipped up 4 different Halloween desserts. 

(Furter got to wear his new costume for the party!)

Witch fingers: chocolate dipped pretzel sticks with almond "fingernails", Butterscotch Haystacks
Skull cupcakes and Nutter Butter Ghost cookies. Any great dessert ideas I can file away for next year?

14 Carrot GOLD

I harvested 2 carrots today. Behold:

Lindsay and Martha

I saw "Julie and Julia" a few weeks back and absolutely LOVED it. The movie is based on 2 stories- Julia Child's (Meryl Streep) story of the start of her career and Julie Powell's (Amy Adams) story of working her way through Julia Child's first cookbook in 365 days. So I have this crazy idea. What if I try to work my way through Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts? I am thinking I will set up an etsy shop to sell what I make and I'll use the earnings from sales to offset the cost of the projects. ALSO, to encourage people to keep me in check, comment leaving readers will have a chance to win a version of each craft I make. So here's the deal: 200ish crafts. *536 days. What do you think?

*536 is the number of recipes Julie Powell completed from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Tony Danza turns 27!

Tonight was the first night of a multi week birthday celebration in honor of my good friend Bret. We went bowling so I made the birthday boy a special hat for the evening. He acquired the nickname of "Tony Danza" at a bowling tournament a few years ago. Long story. The hat was a hit and Bret had a great night!Furter modelling alongside the hat.

First (edible) tomato!

I came home for lunch today. It rained this morning so Furter and I went to check up on the plants in the backyard to see if they needed any additional water. Much to our surprise, we found this ripe 'lil beaut hanging off one of the tomato plants. This is a victorious day as this is the FIRST tomato I have successfully produced. I had one turn red about a week ago but it had a nice big hole on the side which I am thinking indicated that a lovely little worm made itself right at home. (If I were small enough to live inside of a tomato, I'd probably do the same.) I took a picture of it so I will always remember it. Now I am going to feast on it!