Simply Cupcakes Soothes My Sweet Tooth

(Photo: Simply Cupcakes' Facebook Fanpage, Key Lime.)

I recently discovered a little slice of heaven for my (sickeningly-sweet) sweet tooth in Warner Robins. My friend Tyler mentioned that there's a new cupcakery in town, and later I read an article in the Houston County edition of the 11th Hour featuring this new haven for cupcake enthusiasts in middle Georgia, Simply Cupcakes.

Despite having baked a poundcake over the weekend that I have been hacking slices off of for the past few days, I was not tired of cake in the least bit and simply had to have a Simply Cupcake...or three.

One of my favorite people where I work had a birthday this week so I had a very valid excuse to indulge. Simply Cupcakes makes each of the day's cupcakes that morning. Once they have sold all of a particular flavor of cupcakes for the day, there are no more. Unfortunately, I made a mid-afternoon trip and every variety of chocolate or caramel was sold. These were the two main flavors my co-workers had picked out.

Fortunately, they still had their fruity flavored cupcakes on display which made me happy, as I tend to prefer fruit flavored desserts anyway. Though there were no peach cobbler cupcakes which I had read are a top seller, the key lime cupcake was still available and was absolutely delicious. It was extremely moist and had a small dollop of key lime pie baked into the center of the cupcake...mmm, mmm, mmm.

I also tried the Raspberry Waltz and the Simply Lemon. My co-workers beat me to the Red Velvet and Pink Caddy and everyone raved about how fresh, moist and tasty their cupcake sampling was. The website (linked above in kelly green font) promotes 50 flavors and provides descriptions of their most popular varieties.

I see another cupcake stop in the near future.

Finally, I am mostly settled into the new place. I do not plan to move again anytime in the near future. That was enough work and chaos, piled on top of everything else going on in my life, to hold me for quite some time.

Most people are probably thinking, "Oh, you're just one person with a handful of odds and ends. What's the big deal?" Not even.

I have my great grandmother Eva's bedroom suit that borders on antique, an oversized microsuede sofa (in spa blue that is my favorite piece of furniture), a leather chair with matching ottoman (a great LL Bean hand-me-down from my Aunt Linda), an antique secretary (another hand-me-down from my dad's side of the family), a faux leather armchair (a steal from Target online), a coffee table that's been floating around in the family since I was a little tyke, a fabulous end table that was granny's, a fabric tufted bench that conveniently stores all of my arts and crafts paraphernalia, a massive TV and TV/DVD hutch (compliments of the brother when he upgraded to an overpriced, flat screen last year), a giant bookcase (that was also granny's), a smaller wooden bookcase (an exact Pottery Barn replica from Target about 6 years ago), a small wrought iron bar cart that's about to be on the receiving end of a makeover, a square dark-wood pub table with 4 tall chairs (scored the entire set for $99 which will hold me til I can utilize my broke-down Duncan Phfye table again one day - which I had also been storing in the guest bedroom for the last 6 months and had to be relocated to storage - but that's another story) ... along with the furnishings I have plenty of kitchen items, linens, clothing/shoes, pictures, mirrors, lamps, decorating accessories and all of the odds and ends accumulated over the years. I did pair down these items substantially and participated in a group yard sale at the end of July down there - yet I still had lots of stuff to get a handle on.

Additionally, we had to move my brother's washing machine. Santa brought him a set of fancy front loaders in fire engine red last December that he requested and picked out - go figure since he hates doing laundry but that is what he wanted for Christmas. Fortunately, my parents had the vision to keep his perfectly good washer in storage. His other dryer was discarded as it had died in the Fall and was the catalyst for his Christmas present request. They purchased a new dryer which my dad installed Saturday as a housewarming, early birthday gift. :)

But back to moving: Let's just say that I envy folks who move and their employers provide all of the arrangements for the packing and heavy lifting and transportation and unloading and unpacking, all the while picking up the tab at the end (which seems to be 1/2 the people I know). I guess the one trade-off is burning a bunch of calories in the process. Being a single head of household makes it even more taxing, but it is always a great thing to have family and friends who volunteer to just pitch in and help you make it happen. For them, I am extremely grateful and appreciative. And at least, they got a good story to tell about renting a U-haul moving truck from the guy who invented the internet in the 1970s at a very dysfunctional storage center in Effingham County! Though It was not in the least bit amusing at the time!

I was spretty overwhelmed for the first couple weeks following the physical move. I worked a few weeks, moved over the weekend, worked the whole week, spent the next weekend having a yard sale and cleaning the old place from top to bottom, worked the whole week...and finally had a couple weekends to focus on making sense of my new home.

I felt like I was doing nothing but sleeping in my bed and digging through boxes and bags to find stuff every day. There were many things I wanted to tackle but could not because I was either out the door to work or had a queue of assignments (papers, projects, exams, etc.) screaming at me from an 8 week online summer class (condensed down from the norm of 16 weeks). I hate to say it, but I really did not learn much of anything in the class! I was simply trying to keep my head above water by reading and researching the minimum to accomplish each of the assigned tasks.

Luckily my mom hadn't yet started back teaching, so she spent an entire Saturday helping me and got the ball rolling for the whole "settling in" process. I've spent the last couple weeks working on a few projects to spruce up some of my accessory items that had become old and tired to me. It's been fun making things fresh again. For instance, I had a plain, carved wooden lamp that was stained a chocolate color. I used a really shiny, high gloss red spray paint to give it a new look and found some inexpensive rope ribbon to tie around the shade which gives it a nautical look. I want to have a coastal theme in my living room and it is gradually coming together the way I envisioned it. Maybe I will be able to post some pics down the road.

This week's goal is to secure cable. It's been nothing but a huge fiasco filled with technical difficulties that I won't even go into on here. I'll spare everyone the details but if it isn't resolved by this week, I will be moving on to another provider. No HGTV, TLC or baseball games is making me insanely cranky!