Pinewood Derby

I told my mom I was going to post this last week, but I kept running out of time so here it is. For those of you who don't know, Ben and I are the cub scout den leaders in our ward and have been since the first week we were married. One of the highlights of cubscouting is the Pinewood Derby! Last year we didn't do a derby, we did a Raingutter Regatta, which is basically the same thing but with boats (We made a boat that we painted with whiteout and named the Monkey King...it was a little last minute.) But this year we got to a do a derby and I was soooooooooo excited!!! We only had one car and so Ben said it could be all mine to design! We asked Jason, our brother-in-law, to help make it because he is basically the best pinewood derby car maker in the entire world! After two hours of Ben standing out in the cold in the workroom and my sitting nice and warm inside at a pampered chef party... The Pink Lady was born. Isn't she beautiful??

So the Derby went great and Ben and I got to judge our boys cars for awards, which was super fun!! And The Pink Lady did great! I was obviously the only girl in the competition and needless to say, I won every single one of my races (well expect for the one where I sent my car down backwards..I was starting to feel bad for beating the boys every time.) Here are a couple pictures of me and my car! I'm actually pretty excited to do it again when Ben and I have little boys in cubbies!!

Jason had one of Ben's old cars from when he was a scout and we decided to race...I won. :)

Classic scout, car, award picture! How adorbs!

CUPPINCAKES!

So, I cannot remember if I explained on here my goal I set for myself at the beginning of Fall semester last year. I had gotten the Martha Stewart Cupcake book when Ben and I got married and because I LOVE baking and LOVE cupcakes especially I decided to bake my through it (you know, a la Julie and Julia.) There have been a couple of mishaps but all in all, I've made some darn good cupcakes and I just thought I'd share with you all my creations. The pictures aren't great, but let me just tell you they all tasted SUPER delicious!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes (minus the jelly on top) These cupcakes ended up tasting really dry, so I was a little disappointed. BUT the peanut butter frosting was EXCELLENT!

These were chocolate chip cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting and HOLY MOLEY.. they were soooo rich and amazing. My favorite part (and the part Ben teases me about the most...)the frosting called for 4 sticks of butter, yup 4!)

These were probably Ben's favorite. There were a Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Brown Butter Glaze. They were rich and moist and wonderful! And Ben doesn't even really like cupcakes!

Snickerdoodle cupcakes! I've made these twice now and although the meringue frosting is a little bit of a beast to make, they are super cute and tasty!

Red Velvet Cupcakes! THESE ARE MY FAVORITE! In fact, I want to make them everyday! The cream cheese frosting was to-die-for! Also, I decorated them for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

A little montage of cupcakes! I've been really into mini cupcakes if you can tell!

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes (minus the vanilla frosting) I made these for a Cub Scout outing and the boys LOVED them. Although everything was from scratch, the batter tased EXACTLY like boxed cake mix...but better!

Mini-Raspberry Marble Cheesecakes. I kind of drool just typing that. Oh man, these were good. I took them to a family Christmas party and they were gone in about 30 seconds! (They were eaten so fast, I didn't have time to get my own picture)

I'm pretty proud of myself for working through this cupcake book! I always thought baking some things from scratch were too hard! But it so isn't, and then you get to feel all accomplished afterwards! Tomorrow I'm going to make Roasted Banana Cupcakes with a Cinnamon Honey Frosting. Holy cow! I can't wait for tomorrow to get here!!!

Rainy and Wet Christmas!

So, as many married couples do, who have families that live in different states, we switch off for the holidays whose family we will spend them with. This year, it was our turn to go to California and spend a week with my famiyl for Christmas! We were so excited to get to go to Disneyland and I was super ready for some warm weather! What I was not prepared for was 5 days of pouring rain and flooding!! It was crazy! But luckily, the rain stopped by Christmas Eve and we had a couple seriously BEAUTIFUL california winter days, i.e. sunshine, green grass, temps in the 60's and 70's! It was Ben's first non-white Christmas, but he seemed to do just fine with it! We only took a couple pictures at Disneyland and none the rest of the trip cause as usual we were just having WAY too much fun! By the way... don't mind the raindrops all over the pictures! Haha!



Also, we took some family pictures while we were down there and Ben and I took a couple with just he and I! Soo... if we like any of them and decide to get them, I'll make sure to post them on here!