They're gonna be Legen.... wait for it.... dary!

Oh me my... margarita cupcakes rock my world!!

Friday's batch were made from MANGO margarita mix, topped with the same "house margarita" icing I used on the strawberry ones. Sigh, just sooo good.

As a strong supporter of balance, I sipped on this baby to keep my fingers out of the icing bowl too too much ; )
Kidz Superfood! Momma like!

Friday night the boy and I had concert plans to see Taking Back Sunday. HE's the fan, not me so he wanted to get there early so there wasn't much time for eating... just beer. Look what I found at the store

Kona Brewing Co. is actually in association with Red Hook Brewery whiiiiich is located in Portsmouth and thus, this awesome Hawaiian beer is actually brewed 2 miles away from me! I more prefer the Longboard Lager but this was pretty tasty!
I also snacked on this and some cheese and crackers.
So fresh and so green, green!


Saturday, I finally made my way to the Portsmouth Farmer's Market for my first time. It's only a 10 minute walk from my house... I totally forgot about this when I bought a ton of produce at Hannaford on Thursday so I didn't buy anything, but ohhh it looked gooooood.


There were several stands selling fresh meats too - chicken, pork, beef, lamb. Very excited to try some organic, local meat sometime!

Some views around my little city : )


One of these days, I'm going to bring my camera along on my harbor run, talk about GORGEOUS and motivating!

Sunday, I headed to my old college town to help my sister out (aww, she followed in my foot steps) and so this was my Sunday night

No worry that it was pouring and didn't feel anything like summer, but gosh was it ever delicious!
To balance it out, this was the quickie brunch I put together at the grocery store

Plusssss a small handful of my sister's Reese's PB Puffs. They definitely added something special to my yogurt! I never did get around to the clif bar though.

I was about to throw together some big, quickie salad for dinner when I saw zuchinni and chicken that needed tending to... it had been awhile since I'd made some "Zughetti" soooooooooooo




I don't have a mandolin, I just diligently sliced a medium zuke into thin strands. Sauteed them in EVOO with lots of chopped garlic and red pepper flakes. Tossed them with spinach, tomato and baked chicken breast.
Paired with two glasses of this guy...

My tum was mighty content!
I was very comfy eating this while watching How I Met Your Mother - gotta love Lifetime on Demand. My "Dear Santa" flannel PJ bottoms might have helped too... it's raining and like 50 degrees in JUNE but they still seemed wildly appropriate


While cleaning up the kitchen, I saw that my roommate had bought some of these!


Whoaaaaa, throwback! I helped myself to two, oh my, I felt like I was 10 again!


A CRUISE brochure came in the mail yesterday, so I'm going to peruse that before bed and hopefully have some sunny, tropical dreams... while rain pitter patters outside my window ; )

Keepin' my glass half full

So I was on the verge of getting very bummed out last night. I couldn't make it home in time to register for the Healthy Living Blog Summit in August and it was already sold out by the time I tried at 8:45. Yeahhhh, bummer!

FORTUNATELY, as I decided to walk away from the computer and take a moment, I discovered I received a package. Holllaaaaa, my Amazing Grass arrived.

I had taken advantage of the sweet deal on Jenna's blog and ordered some goodies for myself. I didn't try any last night, but just the thought gave me the extra oomph to hit the gym (weird?).

Actually I was still on a high from my first beach volleyball game! I somehow wound up as one of the captains (hence why I couldn't skip and be home at 8 PM!) and my team is kind of a hodge podge of people plus like 3 I do know. Ahhh sooo fun!!! ESPecially since the freakin SUN decided to come out for once. First sunny afternoon in 2 weeks and we were having fun on the beach - and in Newcastle no less (Portsmouth's shoulder - a very wealthy, beautiful and quaint shoulder).
I also came home to the news about Michael Jackson. "Rock with You" is definitely one of my favorite songs of all time and I have spent other amazing times listening to his music and I know that one of my other favorite artists, Justin Timberlake would not be who he is without the influence of MJ either (among many others!).

I headed down to the gym and ellipticaled while watching the MTV coverage and countless MJ music videos... soooooo good.

Fast forward to this morning when I could finally break out some Amazing Grass!
I wasn't really sure what I wanted so I just threw some things in my blender and hoped it would come out okay.

This ended up being a scoop of Chocolate Amazing Meal, a banana, a handful of kale leaves, peeled fresh ginger, a dash of milk, water and some ice cubes.
UM YUM!
I wanted to keep it a little on the light side as today is FRIDAY which means I need to get to baking some MARGARITA cupcakes STAT (I am a crazy batter sampler, ugh), a concert tonight = beer/drinks and then BEACH tomorrow if it doesn't rain.

OH and how crazy is this?

I know, right!
One of my first stops after moving here was Bed, Bath & Beyond of course and it happened to be a brand new store. WELL this location has a fully stocked beauty aisle and when I say fully stocked, I mean FULLY stocked. ANY kind of shampoo, style aid, lotion, make up is there. Anything I have ever thought to be "hard to find" is there. Plus nobody knows about it so some recently discontinued items are still there... I had a friend come visit who was complaining about not being able to find a certain concealer, face cream and hair glaze... so we went to BB&B and they had everything she was looking for PLUS cheaper. You don't even know how much I love this store. The other day I was checking out the goods when I saw they were selling LARABARS for 68 freakin cents!!! Whaaaaatttttttttt. Definitely will be my go-to store for bars now (they have WCMN clif too, drool)

It's looking pretty delightful outside right now so I'm gonna do the cupcake hustle and then get the heck outside before thunderstorms roll in.
PEACE

The year ALL my friends get married

In an attempt to get better about posting, I've decided to write about one of my projects today!

Right now, it's still in the hobby/special events phase.... but I see it getting bigger (and maybe at some point profitable!).

I enjoy baking and I've always loved baking special treats for my family, friends, coworkers, etc on their birthdays or other fun events.
Um, I also like alcohol.
So as 2009 finally rolled around and I was filling my weekends with bachelorette parties, I was trying to think of what I could contribute that would be different, fun and of course, delicious!

My first attempt was in March, where I decided to make the Irish Carbomb Cupcakes I saw on Smitten Kitchen. I almost followed this recipe exactly - except I used 2x the whiskey and baileys in both the ganache and frosting. I just kept on adding until I could actually taste the liquor - I'm sorry, but 2 Tbl is 2 little for me!

I decorated half the batch for my friend Tricia's bachelorette party and the second half I brought out to the bars for St. Patrick's Day (I was that girl that brought tupperware to the pub!). These were delicious and suuuuch a hit! My friends that got married are both proud of their Irish roots and actually honeymooned in Dublin so this flavor really was fitting for them (not just the holiday right around the corner!)




Oh right, I also made the bachelorette ones "minis" so they were more like cupcake shots!





Thennn when I was planning my best friend's bachelorette party as her MOH, I wanted to make sure I blew her away with some awesome boozy cupcakes. Knowing that she loves fruity drinks (but not coconut!) and white wine... I made two flavors.
Blue Hawaiian and White Wine Sangria cupcakes!



I made both of these recipes up and kind of just played around while in the midst of everything, so I'm still working on writing up the final recipe. But one of them was a riesling mango cupcake, with a riesling-soaked peach filling and peach schnapps frosting.

The Blue Hawaiians were a pineapple dark rum cupcake with a pineapple rum curd filling and blue curacao frosting! These were a little too sweet for me - def could not have more than 1. I also love the riesling cupcakes - just the cake part. They were really refreshing!

Just this past weekend, I had another blette (they don't stop!). My friend Candice is your typical hyper, crazy and over-caffeinated high school spanish teacher. She is NUTS. I know my Senorita Brown loves margaritas so that's what I went for. It also gave me an excuse to restock some tequila...


Mmmy Strawberry Margarita cupcakes. OHMYGOD. This frosting was TAHHH DIE FORRRR. I got V. tipsy sampling it ; )

I actually used a box mix as my cupcake base (strawberry cake mix + jose cuervo strawberry margarita mix + jose cuervo tequila... and some eggs, veggie oil, blah blah) and the frosting was your typical creamy mixture of butter and confectioner sugar plus LOTS of tequila, and for these babies also lime juice and lime zest. YUM. I played around with my roommate's samples with some salt on top which wasn't bad. But I kept it sweet for Candice's supply. But I think rock salt would be worth looking into.
I'm putting a batch together for one of my roomie's this weekend as she is heading to a Jimmy Buffett concert and we both agreed, these are absolutely necessary for tailgating Parrot-head style!!

If you live in the Northeast and want to order some deliciouso Boozy Cupcakes, let me know! I'm open to any style cocktail...

After all this sugar consumption, I've got some veggies to tend to now...