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!

We had a craving for some carving!

PUMPKIN CARVING! So, last year Ben and I did not carve pumpkins for some reason, so I had to make absolutely sure that we would this year. So we went to the pumpking patch with Forrest and Melissa and picked out the very best pumpkins. And I mean, the very best. Just like Christmas trees, I am SUPER picky about pumpkins! This have to be the perfect shape and color, and have a good stem. It was super fun picking them all out! But it was pretty cold..

Forrest made friends with a goat.

And his pumpkin...

And then the carving went down! We all decided to be fancy and use pumpkin templates..which yes, did give us some pretty cool looking pumpkins. But man did it take long! I'll let you guess which pumpkin we didn't use a template on.

You didn't know I was crafty..did you?

Well, in actuality. I'm not but for some reason, I've been in a crafty mood recently! So, I realized I didn't have any cute Halloween/Fall decorations really, and I needed some. I saw this cute idea in one of my magazines and thought, "Hey, that's just easy enough for a un-crafty person like me!" All you need is some jars in different sizes, tissue paper, and Mod Podge. And with that you can make these:

For Fall!

P.s. I HATE my Give Thanks jar. But oh well...

Meh.. School...meh...

I decided that my first day of school did not warrant a "real" post cause really..school? yuck. (Plus I didn't get the quintessential standing in news school clothes with backpack on picture) So really, what's the point!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!!!

Ok, so looking over The Plan, I realized I didn't really take pictures of some of those...so I may not post about them. But here goes...

IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY! Like a hundred years ago, in August. Haha. Well for my birthday Ben and I took a trip out to California and we went to Disneyland! Over the 2 1/2 years Ben and I have known eachother, we have already gone to Disneyland 6 times! For not living in California, that's pretty good! And.. while we were there, we decided to buy Season passes! So we plan to go quite a few more times in the next year or so. We already have one maybe two days planned for Christmas time! (Which, in case you don't know, is the ABSOLUTE best time to go to Disneyland. Anywho, so we went for two days and it was perfect! The first day was super super hot so we spent to things like Turtle Time with Crush and the Aladdin show.. inside and nice and cold! Here's a couple pictures from that trip... P.s. There's not too many because we were just having way too much fun to be worried about pictures!

Ben and I always try to think of new things to do for the pictures!

Ben's very first funnel cake!

We must have been on a a little bit of a sugar high!

We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou (the restaurant in Pirates of the Caribbean) and I had a kids meal which was basically just smaller portions of the adult meal, but for like half the price! And.. I got carrot sticks!!!!!

And, of course, MY FAVORITE RIDE! But apparently, it's everyone else's favorite ride too, cause for some reason it always has the longest line!

I just absolutely love Disneyland and I love Ben for taking me there and I love that he and I have season passes now, I've always wanted one. The one thing I don't love about that trip... is my season pass picture... SO BAD! But oh well, it's worth it!

Also... if you are reading this and thinking, "Man, I love Disneyland! I remember when..." Then you should post a comment and tell me (and the world) what your favorite Disneyland memory is!