Jeanine's Shower

Jeanine and Kevin

Most of the girls in the wedding party
(Theresa, Katie, Tara, Tiana, Emme, Jeanine, Michelle, Selma, Hallie, Lynn and Leanne)
Missing from photo Kate, Donna and Erin

Shower cupcakes!

Cupcake piggy!

Piggy loves her mama's cupcakes!

Jeanine's shower was today and it was awesome. She got lots of nice gifts and so many friends and family members were able to celebrate with her. Some of the boys even got to partake in the fun. Emme showed no shame in chowing down on the entire banana creme cupcake and all the fondant on it plus a large slice of cannoli cake.

Musical Cupcakes

Every year my class and my mom's class do the Dance Festival together. We have to choose a song and choreograph a dance for the kids to perform in front of the entire school. Every class has to participate and I HATE IT! I dislike it so much because I cannot dance and I feel so stupid. My mom can't dance either. So this year I asked our music teacher who is awesome to help us with the dance. She was amazing and our dance came out super. The pressure was completely lifted. I have no problem following along once the moves are created. So we would have a mini lesson once a week learning the moves and then the other 3 practices I would drill the kids while my mom taped them or yelled at them to get where they needed to go. Not an easy feat with 42 4th graders and 1st graders but they worked it out and it was awesome. We did the song "Rock This Town." And to celebrate we threw a surprise thank you party for our fabulous music/dance festival teacher Ms. Mickelson. I made cupcakes and drew the music notes for the chorus of Rock This Town on them. I figured out where to download the music from and then created the cupcakes. Not easy either when I know zero about reading music but I just tried to copy exactly how the notes were. In the end they were delicious!

Happy Birthday Paul

For Paul's birthday he had to play pool on one of his teams so I made some pool ball cupcakes and surprised him at the pool hall. I think he was a little embarrassed but his teammates surely didn't mind. Billy ate three, Rich had four and Ellen had a couple. Paul ate the lucky 8 ball but unfortunately the baby did not make its debut on his birthday. That is what he really wanted. Since my camera and USB plug are packed for the hospital pics will have to come later.

My Last Project Before Giving Birth

When my colleague asked me if I could make a cake for her neighbor's first birthday I said sure. Then she told me it needed to be done for January 3rd. Hmm cutting it kind of close to my due date especially since I never made a Winnie the Pooh cake and am a much better cupcake maker than cake maker. She was pretty cool and said it had to be Winnie themed but do whatever I wanted. I like those kinds of parameters because it lets me be creative. I had to check with my sister in law Keri to make sure she wouldn't mind making it in case Baby Quinn made an early entrance. I told her I would give her the cake fee and be forever in debt. But luckily Baby Quinn waited and I am so glad because I had so much fun making this cake. I hope the little girl it is for (even though she is only one :) will like it. It is a two layered chocolate with butter cream and fondant accents. Now I am free to have this baby!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I was lazy and didn't take out my camera. We spent the morning at my mom's reinstalling the kitchen light that my dad decided needed a new light bulb. He dismantled the entire light and ripped it from the ceiling leaving exposed wires in his attempt to replace the bulb. He "forgot" the instructions Paul gave him when Paul put the new light in. So my mom had been without a kitchen light for several weeks. It took Paul standing on a stepstool, Jeanine standing on the counter trying to guide the screws of the fixture into the ceiling and me all 32 weeks of baby and all on a chair holding a flashlight as my mom sat with her eyes closed at the table. Perfect picture moment. We managed to get the light to stay up, work properly and no one fell or got electrocuted. Needless to say Paul volunteered to stop by any time the bulb needs to be changed in the future! We left Tom and Jerry at my mom and dad's and went to Paul's parents for Thanksgiving.

It was great to see my father in law home and enjoying himself. He is on the mend and getting stonger everyday. We ate lots of delicious food and I ended up cutting out fondant flowers for the bridal shower cupcake order I had to be finished with the next day. The night ended with MURDEROUS heartburn. So bad I swore birth could not be worse but I am sure I am mistaken.

Here is a sample of the bridal shower cupcakes.

More Baby Shower Cupcakes

Yes we had another baby shower at work. It's amazing we are all not severely obese from all the cakes, bagels and goodies we consume on a weekly basis! This baby shower was for a colleague Luz who is due to have a boy in three more weeks!

Happy Valentine's Day

Here are some yummy Valentine's cupcakes that I made for the kiddies at school and the "people" at dog class.

Cuter Baby Cakes

They may be cuter than the last ones but what a ton of work! These were made for Marianne's work shower and it didn't help that the day before I spent an hour looking for the little square that is used to easily cut out the squares for the quilt. So unfortunately it then took hours to measure 480 1/2 sq inch square patches for the quilts. I think I am just going to buy another set of square cutters. These were a ton of fun to make even though they took a long time. (almost 8 hours for 25 cupcakes but that includes the 1 hour search party for the square cutter!) They are totally edible and made from fondant. One girl from work took one home and refused to share with anyone. She said it was too cute to eat!

Happy Birthday Paul, Jeanine and Jerry!!!

And the celebrations keep on going...

This month Paul (Jan 11), Jeanine (Jan 20) and Jerry (Jan 27) all celebrate a birthday so we had a little party to help them feel better about getting old(er). It was supposed to be a Simpsons theme party but they don't sell Simpsons party goods here in the U.S. and to have them shipped would have cost around $30-$50 on top of what they cost. So they had to settle for my "Homer" cake and some Simpsons decorated cookies I found.

Holiday Cupckaes

I was pretty busy and I got kind of lazy the week before Christmas but I still had to make cupcakes for my class. This is all I could muster but they still look cute.

Happy Turkey Day

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We had a pretty quiet day. Paul and Paul Jr worked out in the yard trying to tackle the never ending piles of leaves for most of the morning while I wrestled the turkey in the kitchen! I definitely got the better end of the bargain because they also had to entertain Tom and Jerry and the never ending game of ball.. ball.. ball.. ball.. You get the picture. My parents and sister came for dinner and Kevin- Jeanine's boyfriend came over for pie and cheesecake later on while the girls sat around the store circulars plotting our "Black Friday" escapade. As for the famous "Michelle" cheesecake which is only famous because Jeanine and I eat almost the whole thing ourselves every holiday and have to start the day off with a ceremonial slice as soon as we both arrive at the location of the celebration. It has become a sisterly bonding tradition that our thighs could not be without or at least our stomach doesn't think so or is it our mouths?? It was delicious as was everything else and I am not saying that because I am the chef! And yes even the dogs ate some too but no turkey only the veggies and potatoes.

As for the holiday shopping my mom and I are just about done. Maybe one or two little items left to get and that's it. We conquered Black Friday!

Marianne' s Breakfast & Babycakes

Us girls at work decided to throw Marianne a little surprise congratulations breakfast now that she has officially announced to everyone that she is having a baby. Claire and Yvonne organized. Sandy decorated the teacher's room in the brightest of yellow and everyone came to celebrate. We were all probably late to get our kids too! eek! I wanted to make Marianne something very cute so I decided on the baby cupcakes. When I saw the picture it looked very cute especially all the different expressions the babies had- smiling babies, sleeping babies, cooing babies, crying babies... Well I kept it simple just sleeping and smiling ones, and hopefully that's what she will be blessed with a lot of- sleep and smiles.

Happy Winter Birthdays!

On top of Christmas, we celebrated some very special birthdays to make the holidays even FULLER! There were many parties and so, so much food. Four down and two to go and then we go on hiatus for a few months.

Happy Birthday to :

Paul Jr- December 20th

Paul's Mom Chris- December 25th

Paul- January 11th

Michelle's sister Jeanine- January 20th

And in the next few weeks- Happy Birthday to Elissa and Happy Birthday to Michelle's dad Mike