birthday girl

My sweet little pumpkin is 1 year old today! She is funny, spunky, loving and determined. She has brought so much laughter and happiness to our already happy home and I can't believe how quickly the year flew by! I love my cookie monster... with her messy, cookie crumb kisses and her giggly snorts of laughter. The way she runs and squeals with delight every time we open the front door, and the joy on her face when she spies cupcakes (especially if she thinks they're for her). That's our Zoe :) How did I get so lucky to have such a wonderful little person like her in my life?

Happy Birthday Zoe bean! We love you baby :) xoxo

{embrace} the camera friday

So I know it's not Thursday today, but yesterday was just one of those days (believe me, I don't think anyone would've wanted to see a picture of us). So we're embracing the camera today, dribbly milky mouth and all :) Better late than never, right?

This week is 'Share the Love Week' over at Emily's blog. Her family is in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia, and they're trying to raise funds to bring their little lady home. If you'd like to help this wonderful family out, you can find out all the details here.

yummy cupcakes + cake

I know, I know, you're probably sick of seeing these by now, but yesterday was the mini papercut's 1st birthday party and all of those pesky little monarch butterflies were finally completed, and happily consumed by all our family and friends.























I have to say, they looked pretty good, and the cupcakes were super yummy (read SWEET!!). Everyone really loved those chocolate butterflies, especially all the kids, which made it completely worth the time and effort.























So did the mini papercut like them?























The expression on her face kind of summed up the whole day for her. Umm...yeah, not impressed at all. The only time she even smiled was while she was eating her cake, and when we got home. Gotta love her! But that's what you get for waking up a sleeping baby, even if it is for her own party. At least everyone else got to enjoy the yummy cupcakes :)

gobble gobble

Just wanted to wish all my fellow Canucks a very Happy Thanksgiving! We're having a very quiet day today. Just me the Mr. and the minis. Us :) Hope you all have a wonderful day!

recipe for disaster

Recipes don't like me. You would think that as long as you follow the recipe, the end result shouldn't be too bad, right? For me, not so. I have yet to meet a recipe that ever turns out the way it's supposed to. After several tries I'm still unable to make an edible risotto.
















Today was our big baking day for the mini papercut's birthday party on Sunday. 140 vanilla cupcakes + vanilla buttercream + extra frosting for the cake my grandmother was baking for the special occasion. Now this isn't the first time I've used this recipe, but I haven't made it in over 2 years, so I figured better follow every step exactly to ensure no mess-ups. WOW, what a mistake that was! Let's just say the first batch of 24 cupcakes ended up in pieces and eventually in the garbage. Yup, that's right 2 dozen cupcakes completely wasted. Thankfully the recipe was also wrong in how much it actually makes (it was supposed to make 48 mini cupcakes and we ended up with 60 after you take into account the ruined ones) and I only needed to repeat the recipe 1 more time.
















In the end we had roughly 150 perfect vanilla cupcakes, after I stopped following the instructions:) But I don't think the mini papercut minded all the wasted cupcakes at all!

a bucket full of loot

We are in full on party-prep mode here at the Little Papercuts house. With the mini set to celebrate her 1st birthday party this weekend (her actual birthday isn't until next Friday), we've got tons to do and very little time. So today we're getting all the loot bag stuff organized. With Halloween around the corner, we're taking advantage of all the trick or treat goodies. We have about 18 kids total, but they range in age from 1 year old to 10 years old, so we had to do 3 varieties of loot bags for each age group ( baby, toddler and kids age 5 and up).

I always try to fill the bags with items that are age appropriate while still being fun and somewhat useful. On several occasions we've gone to parties where the kids have received a 'bag full of junk', meaning a lot of cheap plastic toys, candy and stuff that ends up in the garbage. But don't get me wrong, we've also been lucky enough to bring home bags that seemed to be tailored specifically towards my kids' interests. Our goodies are probably somewhere in between, running roughly $5 per bag, which I think is pretty reasonable. I know we can't please everyone, but for me it really is a way to say how thankful we are for all the gifts we receive from friends and family :) Fingers crossed that the kids like their loot!

{embrace} the camera thursday

This past weekend we took the kids to Chudleigh's to pick apples. As you can see it was pretty cold, but no one seemed to mind:)
























October's off to a great start for us, how about y'all? Remember to hop over to Emily's blog and link up! Happy Thursday everyone!!!!

practice makes perfect

Okay maybe not perfect, but much better than the first batch. Remember these? Ya, not pretty, but after making nearly 100 pairs of wings I'd say that my technique definitely improved. I still have about 30 more to make, and they still all need to be assembled, but things are going swimmingly so far.
















I do have to admit that I was kicking myself a few times for not just making something along the lines of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. Oh well, I'm off to melt more chocolate:)