I was on All Things Cupcake's Blog!!!

I received a convo from a fello etsy-er on my online craft shop! She is a contributor for ALL THINGS CUPCAKE blog, which I love, by the way. She said they posted an item from my shop on their blog!

They feature, well, all things cupcake! From jewelry, to clothing, to food, to anything related to cupcakes!

Check out the blog, and see one of my cuppy designs featured there!!!

All Things Cupcake

While you are there, if you love cupcakes, check out all the fabulous cupcake items they have listed! The possibilities are endless!

Reason #83 Why Hawaii Ain't All That...NO RHUBARB

I was so excited to see rhubarb in this week's recipe for TWD, because I love love love it! My mom has rhubarb in her garden and when I was younger, she was always making rhubarb pie, strawberry rhubarb pie, and my ultimate favorite, rhubarb coffee cake.

BUT.....i was devistated when I couldn't find any in the grocery stores here. And...I don't think substituting Poi would work too well. *sniff sniff*

Now I am really wishing I would have smuggled back a whole stash of rhubarb in our cooler full of Iowa beef and pork when we came back home this past month.

So instead of making a yummy rhubarb dessert, I focused on making my own baby food for my 7 month old daughter. I bought a hand mixer (Hamilton Beach $12 at Wal-Mart) and pureed sweet potatoes, carrots and green beans. I had some pears I wanted to make as well, but they will have to ripen a couple more days before they are ready! Had I known how easy this was to make my own baby food, I would have started a little earlier, AND would have made it for my son when he was younger!

Here is a great resource my friends and I use. They have EXCELLENT tips and recipes for all kinds of fruits and vegetable! Oh, and even teething biscuits, which I will hopefully be attempting next week!

WHOLESOME BABY FOOD

I love shopping online!

I'm earning cash back for shopping online and you can too!

Living in Hawaii, as wonderful as it may be, I still miss a lot of certain stores that aren't available here....mostly, Target! Also being in Hawaii, a lot of stores raise their prices higher than those on the mainland to make up for the shipping costs they have to pay to get their products out here.

So I do a lot of online shopping. Baking supplies, clothes, specialty items, etc.

This site I joined for FREE has tons of stores you can shop in, that give you a percentage back on what you spend!!!

You also have access to special online sales, as well as games to play with cash prizes, and other great products you can win.

It's called:
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Some of the stores are:
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Macy's 4.4%
JCPenney 4.4%
Overstock.com 5.5%
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If you shop online, why not start earning cash back on what you spend anyways!

Chocolate Pudding from Scratch

Finally back in the swing of things with TWD! It's been quite a few weeks away after vacations, and an unexpected renovation!

I followed the recipe to a T this week...only had a mild spill over with my boiling milk....I've had worse. And then forgot to melt my bittersweet chocolate chips before adding them to the hot pudding, but a majority of them melted due to the heat anyways..... I just had a few chocolate bit surprises in a bite or two of my pudding!

I thought the pudding was really rich and can I just tell you that the SKIN is my ultimate favorite part of this or any pudding. I intentionally left off the saran wrap so I would have some pudding skin! Yummy! I think this pudding is great, but can't see my kids eating this...too rich. They are more of the JELL-O chocolate pudding fans, I think. Oh well, more for me!

This was a great quick recipe to do to help get me back into baking!

I haven't forgotten...

I was on vacation for 3 weeks to go to my brother's wedding, baptize my baby girl in our home town, and join in on my husband's fabulous family reunion. We had a great time and enjoyed spending time with our family again. My husband hadn't been back home for over 2 years as he was busy with training and deployed to Iraq last year.

Upon returning home, we were shocked to open our doors to a flooded house.

A few days (or more) before we arrived back home, a water line busted in our hall bathroom and flooded our entire main level of our house. So imagine, returning home at 9:30PM, exhausted after 12 hours of flying, with cranky children, and walking into that mess.

We spent the next 3 days camped out in our upstairs bedroom, which luckily, had not been damaged at all, or we would have had to stay in a hotel while a restoration company brought in 30+ fans and 4 giant dehumidifiers to help dry out our drenched house....and this was after they tore out ALL the wood flooring we had installed ourselves just over a year ago.

My house has been in shambles ever since. Piles of stuff here, furniture shoved over in this corner, etc, etc. My husband had a 4 day weekend and we finally got our flooring installed...again. We opted to do it ourselves, so that we wouldn't have to wait for a company to do it....everyone was too busy to get it done as soon as we would have liked.

So, after 4 long grueling days, my wonderful husband has completely re-floored our house! I love him....now I am trying to get my house put back together.

I have been dying to bake, and hated not being able to participate in TWD, but have had to put that on the back burner. I will do my best to get back into the swing of things this week!

Stay tuned for some crazy baking! I am going through withdrawals, and it's going to be wild!