Thursday, June 30, 2011

Lemonade Cupcakes!

So Big K and the Tattooed Mama came through big time on the Strawberry Lemonade party.
 The food was awesome. Steak and Cilantro Lime Shrimp Fajita's with corn on the cob, grilled potatoes and fresh Pico de Gallo. I starved myself all day and it was worth waiting for.
 I was a fail at getting pics of the actual strawberry lemonade cupcake stand. I hope Big K did,  but I can't wait for her to send me pics, I'll be waiting forever...
Anyway, this is kind of what it looked like. See that big giant cupcake in the middle? That was all mine! 

I will be posting the Strawberry Lemonade cupcake recipe next week. Big K made up her own recipe so I will have to get that from her. They were absolutely delicious! 

So later the twins both cornered her and privately begged her to make their birthday cake for their party this weekend. I am supposed to be figuring out a theme for the cake. I thought it would be fun to do twin silhouettes, but K wants to do a tiered cake with pillars so I am stuck for now. Guess I'll go Google for twin cakes.

  

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Strawberry Lemonade Jello Shots


It's my birthday! I am not usually a Birthday Girl kind of girl. The Tattooed Mama is the Birthday Should Be a National Holiday kind of girl and believe me we have never missed  her birthday. But mine is usually only in the back of my mind, 'til I realize one day that it's my birthday.


But,  a couple of weeks ago I saw these awesome cupcakes on The Tomkat Studio blog and I was just all twitterpated about having Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes and I wanted a full blown pretty pink fluffy strawberry lemonade party. It just screams summer and my birthday is actually on the first official FULL day of summer. And summer is the only season that is worth talking about in my books anyway. So we have to pack as much fun into it as is humanly possible, Right??
 So pretty! Don't you just want to call and order a batch of these right now?
So I texted Big K and said I want this!!!! And who wouldn't? Right?


Actually I don't know if I am going to get those delicious cupcakes or not because they have my party planned for this coming Saturday. But in the meantime I figured we might need some Jello shots too. We have a serious Jello shot situation here.


Ever since the Tattoed Mama showed me the Jelly Shot Test Kitchen I can't stop fooling around with these jiggly cocktail concoctions for every occasion. They are too much fun, and everybody loves them.


So today I whipped up a test recipe for Strawberry Lemonade shots for a little poolside party. I will be making more for the party on Saturday. The Tattooed Mama kind of insisted on keeping the leftovers today :-)


I used the larger 2 oz Solo cups for these because you can get them at Wal-Mart. They also sell smaller 1 1/4 ounce cups at the party store if you want to get more shots from a batch. I like those because they are clear and look prettier.  Keep in mind that this is about a 30% mix of alcohol so portion accordingly. This recipe makes about 35 shots in the big cups.


For serving you can get some cute buckets and bins from the Target Dollar Spot of course!


Strawberry Lemonade Jello Shots


6 oz box of strawberry Jello
3 oz box of lemon jello
1 1/4 cup vodka
1/2 cup Limoncello Liqueur
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups ice (crushed is nice)
about 8-10 ripe strawberries sliced into thin rounds


Heat 2 cups water in microwave to boiling in large glass bowl. Dissolve strawberry Jello. Stir in 1 cup of ice to cool before adding liquor. Add 3/4 cup vodka and 1/4 cup Limoncello. Lay your cups out on a baking sheet and fill about 2/3 full. Place in freezer or refrigerator to soft set.
While strawberry layer is setting heat 1 cup of water in microwave to boiling, add lemon Jello to dissolve. Cool with 1/2 cup ice, add remaining 1/4 cup vodka and 1/4 cup Limoncello.
When Strawberry layer is slightly firm to touch lay a strawberry slice on top.



Pour a layer of lemon mixture over the strawberry layer. Return to freezer or 'frig until fully set.


You can put the lids on after you do the lemon layer.
If you are packing these off to the beach or the pool don't forget to fill your bucket with ice to keep them chilled!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

A Start on A Mid-Summer Dream

Last summer while we were trying to survive the transition of Big K and kids moving in we were so broke, we were depressed about the breakup and the kids were pretty much a wreck. At some point we decided that we had to do something besides sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. We needed a beach day. Our beach was 2000 miles away and a thing of the past. So we promised the kids a big fun-day and headed to our new "beach" at Cherry Creek Reservoir. I'm not kidding when I say we had to actually scrounge to come up with the means to do this, $8.00 for parking and a couple cans of tuna, a loaf of bread and some juice packs, probably a 1/2 package of Oreos and we were good to go. While we were unloading our car we spotted a really cool van in the parking lot, all painted up with a Pacifico Beer logo.
This isn't exactly the one we saw, but I found out that Pacifico had done an ad campaign a few years ago where they commissioned some artists to design artwork for 18 restored VW vans. 


I started talking about how cool it would be to have a funky old van to pack the kids in and go traveling, camping and beaching our way through the summer. Big K was down for that, but she figured that we would have to change the name to "Pathetico" because we were so pathetic and penniless. So that became our theme for the summer. We laughed at ourselves as we planned our "Pathetico" trips. If we had $8.00 and a dozen eggs we were off to Cherry Creek with a bowl of egg salad and a loaf of bread. We had a blast and the kids did too. They never had a clue that life was anything but grand and carefree.


At night when we were sitting out on the deck we would talk about how cool it would be if we had some money to fix things up and decorate a cozy little outdoor room to hang out in. 
Maybe something like this would be a stretch for us...
But something like this from Apartment Therapy would be nice.

Then summer faded and we never  really did anything. I started talking it up again as soon as the weather started getting warm this year. But I still couldn't see where I was going to get $$ to buy furniture and rugs and curtains to do everything I envisioned. Until... last weekend I stopped by one of my favorite blogs in the whole wide blogosphere and Donna at Funky Junk Interiors (bless her heart) sent my head spinning with possibilities from just rounding up all the funky junk and fabrics and pillows and wicker chairs I have laying about already. 

I started babbling on about floor cloths and drop cloths and how I was going to turn that ginormous coffee table into an outdoor bed. And I went shopping in the garage to find a few things that I recalled owning but haven't laid eyes on for quite some time. Like these:

I got these from my mother-in-law years ago. I didn't know what they were or where she got them, but they are very heavy and are made of oak. Mr. Rainbowcreek had to hammer them back together because they were falling apart, and then he proceeded to stain them and used them to store odd stuff in, like tools and a case full of refillable beer "growler" jugs. 

We made a good bit of progress on arranging things today. Too bad no one has responded to my "wanted" plea on CL for a twin bed size futon mattress :( I really need one of those for my day bed. 

So in the meantime, while I am waiting for that mattress, Big K and I hit on the idea of using the crates and some painted old fence pickets to make this awesome sidetable/bookcase. 




 Notice my sad mattressless day bed in the corner? I can't wait to add a stack of magazines to my bookcase and spend some lazy afternoons lounging on my outdoor bed looking at pretty pictures. Big K will probably prefer to hang out with her laptop there, but she'll have to beat me to it.
So there is our little side table, mostly put together with some zip ties in case I ever decide to repurpose the pickets and crates someday. Now if you all would just send up some prayers for someone to answer my ad for a futon mattress... Until it arrives I have plenty of painting and floor cloths and drop cloth curtains to keep me busy. 


I am linking this post to:

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

My Free Crap-a-Thon

Success. Well at least on one front of the battle anyway. I got a ton of decluttering done yesterday and was feeling quite satisfied with myself. (patting myself on the back) There was about 6 tons of stuff that went into the trash and that was just from cleaning out 2 cabinets and the beverage frig in the kitchen. 


Mr. Rainbowcreek was busy in the garage all day yesterday and informed me that he had managed to make some space. He was putting some finishing touches on the cleanup today before he left for work when I showed up to inspect the progress. That is actually not true. I went out there to look for an old 20 gallon aquarium that I had spotted yesterday on one of my trips to the trash can. BECAUSE... last night I found this... 





Awesome Mini-Outdoor Fireplace tutorial at The Art of Doing Stuff.


 I so want to make one of these for my outdoor living room. And I happened to think that the aquarium might do the trick rather than tracking down all the parts to put this together. I'll let you know how that turns out sometime soon. I don't actually have an outdoor living room really. I just have big plans for one. But I can't start that until I get some of the mess cleaned up and make room for working on new projects. 


So after I located the aquarium and placed it on the workbench I noticed that the garage was just chock full of crap and I started digging through it and piling it up in the middle of the garage. Mr. Rainbowcreek became alarmed, here he had spent a whole day neatly stacking and organizing this crap and I was just dragging it out and undoing everything. I told him to get on his way to work and I would have this taken care of before he got home. It was time for a Craigs List FREE Crap-a-Thon! So I kept adding to the pile, call me RUTHLESS! I kept digging for more goodies to sweeten the pot, to draw the hoards of hoarders to race to the finish line to claim all my treasures. I took pictures and posted the ad.




 Some of the crap wasn't even in the garage, I rounded it up from the junk pile outside.


And I found all this in the closet in our office.


I sat back and waited about 30 seconds for my phone to start ringing off the hook. 


By the time Big K got home from work I was taking names for the frig, snowblower, gas grill and lawn mower, one guy was on his way to pick up anything I had left and another guy called and said he thought he could beat him here. They both showed up at the same time and a good time was had by all. They divvied up the goods between them and a couple of other stragglers.  Then they came inside and gave me a bid for some tile work I need done, checked out a couple of sewing machines I have for sale and one made on offer on our broken down van that has been sitting in the driveway for 3 years. Nature girl Annie even got in on the social networking and sold a couple of her fuzzy puff ball bunnies to one of the ladies. 


When Mr. Rainbowcreek left for work he warned me to make sure there was enough room to put the Harley back in there by the time he got home. He had a lot of room to spare. Oh how I love Craigs List. I might have another FREE Crap-a-Thon next week, just cause it's so much fun.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Let's Try This Again

Arrrggghh! This is not going to be my FAIL post. I just haven't decided if I should pick up where I left off and act like nothing happened or do some mea culpa's with explanations for my long absence and try to make a new start. I am ready to blog again so I guess I will just forge ahead. 'nuff said, huh? Yup, I thought you would agree with me.


So I have 1 new grandson since my last post. Here he is... Lucas Tyler
That's about all he does so far.
 But he sure is a cute little froggie, isn't he?
And his big brother has taken a real shine to him.


I was holding Luke when we were getting ready to leave and David made darn sure that I returned him to Mommy before we could go. He seemed quite concerned that we might try to take him home with us. David still has a little bit to learn about Grandma's and Grandpa's. We just like to come and play but we are soooo over feeding and bathing and changing diapers, we are quite happy to leave that part to mommy and daddy.

 
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