(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!
I have not updated in a long while, because as usual life gets in the way of blogging. I stop by other people's blogs when doing a quick search for a coupon deal or a recipe or to find some other random piece of info for work or class. I am afraid that is the way it will be for the at least the rest of this year.
April was an unusually stressful and trying month -- 3 funerals, 2 sinus infections, 2 20-page papers, a project and finals -- quite a lot to take in during one 30-day time period.
My graduate program starts a week earlier than everyone else on campus (which can be annoying with work stuff that first week) but is definitely nice at the end because my finals week is the week before everyone else. I finished up all of my work last Monday night. A good thing because we're always deluged with students with unfinished business before heading out in different directions for their summer.
I received a nice note from one of my construction management advisees today. His management class had an end of the semester assignment pertaining to how to demonstrate appreciation in an organization when it is not monetarily feasible to do so. This obviously is a realistic exercise for future managers in this economy. Their assignment was to chose someone on campus who has positively impacted their university experience and express their appreciation. The professor attached the note to the assignment and sent them to each individual. What a lovely activity for a management class in the world of furlough days and pay cuts.
Sadly there is nothing domestically or creatively noteworthy to report, unless you count couponing success. I love finding a deal or finagling a free product. I am not ashamed to admit that I have 5 Colgate toothpastes under my bathroom sink that cost less then 50 cents a tube. I hope toothpaste is on everyone's Christmas list this year! Otherwise I've more or less been a total MIA nerd, battling sinus infections and trying to stay afloat with school and work stuff...and the occasional baseball game...
I am taking a quick moment to update this afternoon before I head out the door and start the weekend, if you can call it a weekend. I am downloading Photostory as I type, so that it will be ready to go tonight and tomorrow. I spent last Friday night and all day Saturday on a 25-page paper -- as in I got up Saturday about 10:00 AM, ate something, took a shower and planted myself on the sofa from Noon to Midnight. But at 12:15 I made myself save my work, shut off my laptop and get some sleep. It can feel very isolating, because I cannot work well with the TV or any other distractions. I have to get in my quiet place and focus. This weekend I have my second big assignment due in my other class. (I'm taking two Spring semester. I will only have two remaining and a practicum. It's a good feeling to see the light at the end of the tunnel.) This assignment is not a paper but a collaborative media project where I am having to integrate 30 photos with text and audio in a video-like format. My finished project will play like a video and take viewers on a virtual tour of the Sonny Carter Media Center (or library for those who are confused). I actually will pay a visit to my parents this weekend, so that my mom can assist me in making sure I correctly identify everything in the pictures (i.e. the nonfiction, fiction sections). She had to take the photos for me, because my working hours clash with the school day hours. She did a very good job playing photographer since she so rarely touches a camera.Unfortunately no creative projects for decorating the house or for eating are on the books right now...just focusing on the text books at the moment and going to work everyday. It's quite the fun cycle...not!I've also been learning how "to coupon," with the help of www.southernsavers.com. But that is a whole other post in itself.I do have one adventure coming up though. My friend Sarah (the Hilton Head Island bride) and I signed up for the Disney Princess 5K at Disney World. We will be going to Orlando the last weekend of the month for it. She can run rings around me. She also signed up for the Half-Marathon, so she will be conquering two races in one weekend.
Following an extremely hectic week of baking and decorating cupcakes, Libby Lane Cakes held our first booth at The Festival of Trees at GSU, a good way to get our feet wet at a smaller venue. We were both running on fumes by Saturday morning but were troopers.We want to start out slowly and keep everything manageable for now. I am still not 100% sure how I will be able to juggle all of this with working full-time and the two grad classes in January either. Never a dull moment that's for sure!Last week, I literally walked through my front door every evening (except the one night I had to work late) and engaged in fest preparations, using every medium from sugar and the Kitchenaid to paintbrush and canvas.My friend and first co-worker in my old office Marie is finishing up a business logo for us. Since we're just starting out at this and are having to rely on funds from our own limited pockets, I made the two signs for us to display so that we'd have some some signage at the table. I used a large piece of foamboard for the one that set outside our table and a smaller paint canvas for the one that set on our tabletop. I used paint, scraps of scrapbooking paper and a few little embellishments for the smaller one. For the larger one, I dug out the Mr. Sketch markers and found some cute cupcake stickers at the store. (Mr. Sketch is the best quality, longest-lasting markers for posters and other projects -- plus smell good so no marker stench headache.)I also stole a cute idea from this blog: http://www.howdoesshe.com/cupcake-liner-pom-poms. I made this same cupcake pom pom using cupcake liners that have a cupcake pattern all over the sleeves.And I totally forgot to take any good photos of our signage or of the table put together with my actual camera, and all I have to rely on are a few camera phone shots that are not the best quality.
This is our little table top sign.It's dark, because it's a phone pic.
At the table -- again, a phone pic.
Red Velvet Cupcakes
Owl Cupcakes
Snowflake Cupcakes
Football Cupcakes
There is an upcoming holiday event in the 'Boro, The 3rd Annual Festival of Trees. November 15-20, 2010. (I am still processing that it's already mid-November and that Thanksgiving is days away.)I will be at The Festival of Trees Saturday, November 20th with some cake samples, but my Aunt Linda and I also decorated wreaths that we donated for the Christmas tree and wreath raffle. Raffle tickets are only $1 each. Each tree and wreath has its own raffle box so that you can choose which ones you wish to spread your chances. My Aunt made three wreaths, and I made one. I called my theme "Braves Country" since it is Braves on a more rustic, grapevine wreath. This could be pulled off for any sports team. I bought 3 star-shaped ceramic ornaments for 49¢ at Hobby Lobby. I printed off 3 pictures that I liked and cut them to fit on the front side of the ornament. I used some Mod Pod that I had in my crafting box, coated it very heavily with a sponge over the pictures on the ornaments and let it air dry over night. I wrapped a shiny blue ribbon around the wreath. I decorated it with red and silver foliage (found at Hobby Lobby) with just a touch of greenery (as not to detract from the team colors). I hot-glued blue glass Christmas balls along with red and silver stars from a garland I cut up. The glass baseball ornaments I found were much too overpriced, so I took a plain white glass ball, and while looking at a baseball, drew the stitching on with a red sharpie. I made the huge red bow and added it as the final touch.So if you are in the area, stop by and buy a $1 raffle ticket for my wreath. All of the proceeds go to a couple of local charities that provide Christmas for families in need.
Ceramic star ornaments - after I used the
Mod Pod to adhere the pictures to it.
The CE ladies snapped my pic when I delivered it.
My wreath (above) and one of my Aunt's
wreath (below) on display, ready for next week.
(Photo: Simply Cupcakes' Facebook Fanpage, Key Lime.)
