March 5, 2025 Gotta Make the Cupcakes
Cupcakes are my go to baked good to make for any event – birthdays, holidays, bake sales, teacher treats, you name it. We recently had friends over who had never been to the house and she said, “I kind of expected that you would probably have a shelf full of sprinkles in your kitchen”. I have mason jars full of them. All different colors, shapes, assortments, and holiday mixes. I pick them up where ever I see them, because they just make me (and other people) happy!
Now that it is winter, I’m baking up a storm. Keeping busy but also keeping that oven on and keeping the house smelling good 🙂
Tell me what your go to baked good is?
Tags: desserts, kid friendly
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March 3, 2025 How Old Are You Now? Birthday Cake “OLD AF”
Sometimes, after you reach a certain point, you just stop counting birthdays. My husband hit that point years ago 🙂
So this year, for his birthday, we decided not to even put a number on his cake. The “OLD” was made with melting chocolate in a silicone alphabet mold, nonpareils on the bottom. Just a fun little way to brighten up the cake.
The cake itself was requested to be vanilla with vanilla frosting. Piped with white and shades of green. Overall, a big hit for the big birthday!
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February 24, 2025 Ultimate Cake Off – Store Cake vs. Mom Cake
In our house we have a tradition where we get the kids a “fancy” store bought cake and then I make them a homemade “mom” cake. It helps make the birthday celebration last a little longer! I have to admit, with all the things that I bake, cakes are not my jam. I can never get the frosting smooth and I’m not a great decorator (even if the frosting tastes delicious). But it is the thought that counts, right? So here is the final result. I printed and cut out a number 5 and traced it out on the cake with a knife and then piped on flowers inside in shades of blues and greens.
What are your birthday traditions?
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February 21, 2025 Is it Cake? Take A Bite of a Shark Attack Birthday
We had a moment when we went through a very serious shark phase. We took out every single book from the library about sharks, I could tell you every shark’s name and some fun cocktail party fact about them. This came right after our dinosaur phase. My friends made us this incredible cake for the big day.
I think that he loved the Swedish fish the best.
I picked up these pinatas from Target and attached them to the wall for a fun shark themed photo backdrop.
The shark balloon was from Party City and the blue stars were from the Dollar Store. The Dollar Store is the best deal in town if you are looking for balloons. The number balloons are in the $5 neighborhood, but simple ones, like these stars are so affordable!
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February 19, 2025 Unicorns and Mermaids: A Magical 6th Birthday
What do you do when you can’t decide what you want your birthday theme to be, unicorns or mermaids? You have them both of course. They go together right? Well, when you’re friend is a super talented cake designed, she sure makes them look like they belong together! My little was beyond over the moon for this birthday cake.
So when it came down to the mom made cake, I didn’t even want to try to ‘compete’. We did strawberry frosted donuts with candles, which was equally as special, and she thought it was even better than cake!
Here is a little sneak peek into the goody bags. We picked up some fun goodies from Target and the Dollar Store. A fun bubble wand, some flower shaped sunnies, bubbles, glow bracelets, a beach ball, and unicorn scratch paper, all loaded into a fun sand bucket shaped like a sand castle.
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February 17, 2025 Misi New York: A Birthday Lunch…
Make sure to find yourself a friend who says, let me take you out for lunch for your birthday…in Brooklyn (when you live in Massachusetts).
We finally made a date and took the Amtrak Northeast Regional one drizzly morning down to Penn Station. Two days before, I get a text saying, “My plan is to catch up on the train, sleep a little, read a little, have lunch, come home.” I wrote back, “do I even get to sit next to each other, or should I walk past you and pretend like we don’t know each other?” Good friends send messages like that, and understand each other. We can say hello, catch up for 10 minutes, and then, let’s just relax and unwind and not feel like we have to talk the whole time. And that is exactly what we did. It was perfect. Although I did get mocked for the actual size of the book that I brought with me…
So approximately four hours later, and two subway transfers, and a fifteen minute walk, we were there, Misi. It did not disappoint. Worth every calorie (which I am pretty sure we burned off walking to the subway anyway). We sat at the counter and had a front row seat to the open kitchen, fascinated by just how much citrus they use.
Hard to not order one of everything on the menu, but here is what we chose:
trumpet mushrooms sott’olio, whipped ricotta crostini
sheep’s milk ricotta filled occhi, bottarga, lemon
strangozze, pork sugo, nutmeg, parmigiano
pistachio and amaretti cookie gelato
After we rolled ourselves out, we headed to sister restaurant Misi Pasta for some take home pasta. My backpack cooler was just big enough to bring home some mafaldini, two dozen ricotta raviolis, and 2lbs of rigatoni. And of course I had to bring home some pork sugo and some whipped ricotta. I was only disappointed that I wasn’t able to bring home a tray of tiramisu and some gelato, but probably for the best! Thank goodness that our train home was running late, or we would have just missed it, or would have had to sprint for it (like I said, we would have missed it!)
A perfect afternoon out with a friend, highly recommend lunch in another state if you get the chance!
Misi is located at 329 Kent Ave Brooklyn, NY https://www.misinewyork.com/
MisiPasta is located at 46 Grand Street Brooklyn, NY https://www.misipasta.com/ They ship nationwide
Tags: lunch, new york, pasta, restaurant
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February 14, 2025 Valentine Fun: Food, Crafts and Lots of Love
We love Valentine’s Day. Our favorite holiday after Halloween. Growing up, I loved making Valentines for friends at school and looking at all the ones my friends made for me. When I had kids of my own, I renewed my love for Valentines – but last year, our school stopped allowing them to be exchanged at school. We still manage to have a lot of fun at home, and find ways to celebrate with friends. I found these cute Valentine doughnuts at Rocco’s for the kids as a fun surprise treat.
We do fun manicures at home with hearts on our nails!
We made these fun crafts for teachers last year. Pick up some paper mache heart ornaments from your local craft store and paint on a thin layer of mod podge. Add tissue paper squares and cover with another layer of mod podge for a shiny clear coat. This was for our visual arts teacher, so we hot glued some letter beads onto it spelling out “in my art era”. Cute as a Valentine, can double as a Christmas ornament.
We found these super cute conversation heart beads on Amazon and used them to make our own headbands. We bought plain headbands on Amazon, although you could certainly use ones you had laying around the house.
Add a little hot glue onto the headband to secure the beads.
How cute are these?
Another fun gift idea would be these Valentine Stanley cup tags. They’re so cute for teens and tweens. You can have them personalized with a name too! They’re available for 30oz. and 40oz. tumblers. Made by SHRH designs.
I saw Amber make these Valentine boxes and thought they were so adorable. After watching, we made our own version – check them out on my Instagram below.
Our signature snack for Valentines are chocolate covered pretzels. We make them in all colors and with all different kinds of sprinkles, how cute are these ones with the word ‘love’?
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February 12, 2025 Snackle Box: Love Valentine Edition
I love the snackle box trend, and think the Valentine snackle box is super cute. We found these at Target and they come in a few different designs. The “LOVE” and the “XOXO” styles were my personal favorite. We filled ours up with some colorful candy, but the sky is the limit on what you could add in here. Other ideas would be: pony and alphabet beads to make a friendship bracelet box, a container os slime on the side and fun sensory mix ins, or for that beauty product teen/tween you could fill the letters with those sample products that come in the flat pouches.
Tie everything up with a cute little bow – we picked this conversation heart ribbon right at our local Dollar Tree – and add a fun gift tag. Cute for kids, friends, teens/tweens and even teachers (make sure to throw a little gift card in too – punch a hole in the corner and tie it on to the bow!)
What would you fill your snackle box with?
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February 10, 2025 Valentine’s Day Ideas
Valentine’s Day is coming up quickly. I wanted to show you some cute baskets that I put together for the kids last year to give you inspiration as you shop this year. The wire baskets are from Target, and I use them for a bunch of things year round. The acrylic tags were personalized with the kid’s names and I found them on Etsy. The seller is on a break, but I am sure that you could find something similar. I love these Kid Made Modern heart water color sets. You can find other brands on Amazon. The heart goggles aren’t available, but the same brand offers a heart style here. I picked up a fun note pad from TJ Maxx and one of those light spinners that my kid’s love. The big hit here was the unicorn chapstick and the jelly beans!
The boys are always a little harder to shop for, but I found these cute shirts at J.Crew saying “Heartbreaker”. They don’t have the same baseball shirt style this year, but here is a similar shirt. I love the Rey to Z hats, you can get them with lots of different things on them: letters, big bro, little bro, auntie, etc. You can’t have any gift basket in this house without Pokemon cards, and of course a little chocolate (and only the best, Gräem for the win!)
For the littlest, we picked up a fun art kit that the big kids could help her with, a hat – because we are into backwards hats these days, but also a few hair bows and clips that we had been saving for a while (we went though a period of not wanting to put anything in our hair) and are just getting into fun stuff now! Throw in some delicious chocolate from Gräem, a simple heart tee from target, and a fun necklace and she is one happy kid!
Are dessert boards a thing anymore? Asking for a friend. Either way, I still love them. Added in all of my favorite things and if they aren’t in anymore…well more for me I guess 🙂 Homemade chocolate covered pretzel rods, macarons (and these days you can pick them up at Whole Foods if you’re in a pinch), my favorite cookies from Bisous Sweet (it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day for me to get these, frankly, any day that ends with a ‘y’ will do!) and some red candies to fill in the empty spaces.
Don’t forget to show your gal pals the love this Valentine’s day. I love single serve bottles of bubbly. Pop on a cute tag (these are my favorite – Little Notes from E. Frances Paper) and drop off as a little reminder of how fabulous you think they are!
One of my favorite bakeries made these cookies years ago and I had to reshare them because they are so cute! They have closed their doors for walk in retail, but you can still order cakes online!
Make sure to check out Love And Flour, their cakes are beautiful.
I love a good m&m cookie on Valentine’s Day, they make a bold pop of color!
I love a good sheet pan meal, pancakes are no exception. Use your favorite pancake recipe but make on a baking sheet. Cook at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. They come out light and fluffy and you can cut them out into cute shapes with cookie cutters – and everyone gets warm pancakes at the same time!
Don’t want to make sheet pan pancakes, try making them in muffin tins. My second favorite way to make quick meals for the whole family – and everyone gets to eat a hot meal at the same time! My kids think that eating anything with a toothpick is more fun, so we found these cute heart food picks to use and we let them dip them in whipped cream and sprinkles! What is your favorite pancake topping?
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February 7, 2025 Design Your Own Valentine Tote
We always dream up new Valentine crafts for our friends. We picked up some inexpensive totes from our local craft store and used our Cricut to outline friend’s names on the bags. We threw in some Crayola fabric markers and it was up to each friend’s imagination to create the bag of their dreams. Perfect for snow gear for school!
For a school craft, we had all of these left over ceramic yogurt cups we were looking to reuse. We decided to make a heart flower bouquet. You will need ceramic yogurt cups, pipe cleaners, cut out hearts, paper shred and play dough.
First step, cut out five of the same size heart shapes. We used a heart shaped cutter, you could use a Cricut or trace hearts and use a scissor. Fold hearts in half. You make multiple flowers in different sizes or colors, use 5 hearts per flower.
Add glue to one half of the heart and stick to one half of a second heart.
When you get to the last heart, secure around pipe cleaner to make the “flower”. Add a ball of play dough in the bottom of the yogurt container to secure the flowers. Push pipe cleaner flowers into play dough to allow to stand up straight. Add as many stems as you’d like.
Share in the comments how you use your left over yogurt containers!
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- Posted under Crafts
