Happy Birthday to me!

See that chocolate cake I'm holding? Yep, Justin made that for me! I was so excited! I love the little things in life. It even tasted good. It was way better than any store-bought cake. It was a low key birthday, which if I had my way, would be like that every year. It started out with us skipping church. But don't you worry! We will be back next week.. I actually hate skipping church. It makes me feel like the last week never ended and the following week goes SO slow! And I always feel like I can handle life better if I have gone to church. So we stayed home and in our PJ's all day, gave Punk a bath, almost adopted him a twin brother, cleaned our apartment and made seven layer dip and guacamole. Yum! Oh, and we played the Black Eyed Peas Experience on the Wii. Which is really hard! I think we will stick to Just Dance 3 for now. So after all that, my in-laws came to celebrate, and to help us pick up a grill. Now Justin can finally use HIS birthday presents. He is planning on entering an amateur grilling competition this summer, so he is hoping to start practicing soon. If anybody has good grilling recipes, let us know! So after that we did all the usual. Opened presents, had cake and ice cream and played Apples to Apples. It was a perfect day. Now I just feel old. It feels weird being twenty four! And I definitely feel like I should be smarter by now. LOL Here is a few pictures of how our day went.   

And here are some of my favorite memories of being 23. Goodbye 23!

Pineapple Upside Down {Cup}cakes

 So Sunday is my birthday. Awhile back Justin and I decided we would take the Friday before my birthday off, but our scheduler forgot to schedule him off(BOOO). So only I got it off. We decided we would just keep the hours and take home more money. So I decided I was going to do one of my favorite things and cook a really good dinner. Dinner was sooo good but it was dessert that really got us. I found these Pineapple upside-down cupcakes this morning while looking through some of my favorite blogs. darlingdoodles.blogspot.com These are so simple to put together! On Darling Doodles she uses a yellow cake mix. I fully intended on doing this. We got a ton of cake mixes for our wedding, but I went and looked in our cupboard and ALL of them were chocolate! Well Martha came to the rescue, because a second trip to Wal-Mart was not going to happen! I was a little nervous because I have only used, like, one recipe out of her cupcake cookbook. These were so good though. Next time I make these I will definately ditch the cake mix again and go this route. So to start out you will need your cupcake batter.


White Cupcakes adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes 


 3 cups cake flour 
 1 1/2 Tablespoons baking powder 
 1/4 teaspoon salt 
 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 
 1 cup plus 2 T milk (instead of 2 T milk I put in 2 T pineapple juice from my drained pineapple) 
 1/2 cup plus 6 T butter, room temp. 
 1 3/4 cup sugar 
 5 large egg whites, room temp.


Start by mixing together your flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, on medium speed, cream butter until smooth. Gradually add sugar and continue mixing until pale and fluffy. Add in vanilla. Now you are going to turn your mixer to low and alternate adding your milk and flour mixture, three times. In another bowl, with electric mixer on medium speed, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold in one third of egg whites into batter and continue doing so, until all of it is folded in. Set aside.


Now here is what you are going to need for the Pineapple upside-down Cupcakes


1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 can of pineapple tid bits


In a bowl melt the butter and brown sugar, stirring to incorporate. Now go spray your cupcake pans and put  a spoonful of the butter/brown sugar into each little cup. Throw on a spoonful of pineapple; then you'll put two to three Tablespoons of your cake batter into each cup. These made about 24 cupcakes. Bake at 350 for 18 to 20 minutes or until a fork inserted comes out clean. After you pull them out of the oven invert them onto a cooling rack, and try not to lick the counter.... not that I had that problem...These are so so good! Thanks Martha and Darling Doodles!x

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I hope yours was as fantastic as ours was. We started off by going to church. Today was our first day in our new calling in our wards nursery. We really enjoyed it! It was great to play with all the kids and teach them about Easter. After church we headed to Blackfoot to spend the day with Justin's family. We had a barbecue, played basketball, went on a family walk, and of course the Easter bunny came to visit us and left us with a bunch of candy and one of our favorite movies "The pursuit of Happyness". We had such a great time. 

1st Blog Post

Welcome to our blog! I decided to make this blog just for fun and keeping family and friends updated on what we are up to. Hopefully I won't bore you all to death. I also may or may not post recipes and crafts. We'll just see where it goes.