Birthday Fun!

Growing up I always requested strawberry cake with strawberry icing!  I have not eaten this type of cake since I was a kid.  So I decided to make it for myself (in cupcake form) using fresh home made ingredients, no cake mixes or jell-o.  This was a unique mixing technique for me, where you add the butter AFTER you mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.  I've always creamed the butter and sugar together, but not this time.  The cake mixture is then crumbly.  You then add the pureed strawberries. 

After baking them I decided to take some of the pureed strawberries, mix with a little of the icing (which also had pureed strawberries in it) and pipe that into the center of the cupcakes. 

THEN I iced them!  :)  I made a cream cheese frosting flavored with the pureed strawberries. 

 I thought something fun to do would be to go bowling as a family.  We had so much fun, including Lia.

 We mostly used the ramp for Lia's balls.

But we did try to just push the ball down the lane. 

 Frank's a pretty good bowler!  He is definitely better than me, altho I am not such a great bowler.  I think I need to ask my Dad for some lessons when we go to Sarasota!

 But....I got the most strikes!  ;)

We came home, had Bonefish carry-out (yum!), champagne (even Lia had a tiny glass) and then ate the cupcakes!  They were absolutely delicious!  I shared one with a co-worker who's birthday was a couple days after mine and she honestly said that she thought that the cupcake was the best tasting one she ever had!  :)  What a nice compliment.

Fried Okra Patties!

Love okra?  These are delish!  I have okra in my freezer from the summer when I grew it and was trying to figure out something different to make with it.  Well, I found it!  These are best served with my home-canned hot style chili sauce!  :)

Patti's Safari Camera Game!

Say "cheeseeee"!

Thanks Aunt Patti!  We LOVE this game, it incorporates counting, animals, fine motor skills (you should see Lia opperate the camera), memory & matching!  So much fun for 1 game!  :)

Night with friend Vicki

Vicki came over tonight while Frank was visiting his mom and we had girl's night!  We read books, played the Safari Camera game and had dinner together.  It was a great night for us all!  :)

Gingerbread cookies

Here's a sample of some of the gingerbread cookies Lia and I made together with the left over gingerbread dough that I made for the house.  I was so excited to find a little reindeer that I forgot I had gotten this past fall.  I also had a lot more pictures of Lia decorating the cookies but don't have them b/c Frank lost the memory card to my camera.  :(  I was going to point out that the very biggest cookie (a gingerbread Mommy as Lia called it) was the very first cookie she wanted to eat.  There was only 1 and it was, again the BIGGEST cookie.  She ate the whole thing no problem!  :)