Cupcake Bouquet

How fun is this? A friend found this on Pinterest one day and asked if I would make it for her grandmother's birthday. It takes some time, but the results are SO worth it!

Start with cupcakes that have been decorated using a middle-to-outside swirl so that they resemble a flower. 

Insert a Styrofoam ball into a flower pot. There are several different sizes so I suggest taking your pot with you to test out which size works best. 

Insert toothpicks into the ball wherever you want the cupcakes to go. Here is a tip: leave your toothpicks pretty high. If you insert them too far, they will be too short and the cupcakes will slowly fall off. For some of the cupcakes I used three toothpicks.

Close up view of how the toothpicks should stand.

Once you have the cupcakes secure, cut strips of green tissue paper...

...then fold them accordion style at one end and insert between the cupcakes.

After the tissue paper was between all the cupcakes and all empty spaces were filled,  I then used a glue gun to secure some pieces around the outside edges to hide any of the ball that might be showing. Then I glued a white ribbon around the base of the ball in order to have a clean edge.  (I apologize I did not get any action or close up shots of this.)

What's better than flowers and cake? Both! This cupcake bouquet is sure to make anyone's day over-the-top special.

Can't Do Without...

This is the Tervis Tumbler. It is something I absolutely cannot do without, especially during these hot summer days. There are several great things about these cups. First, they keep cold things cold longer than regular glasses or plastic cups. The ice melts incredibly slow in the Tervis Tumbler. And I love that I can use a Tervis lid so that I can take my morning smoothie on the drive to work and drink it with a straw. It keeps the smoothie from melting and I don't spill it all over myself or the car, which I am notorious for.

Second, it keeps hot drinks hot. During the winter, I use the Tervis Tumbler as my travel coffee mug. (They also make a coffee lid.) I have left the cup in my car while I went into the doctor's office and an hour later my coffee is still as warm as when I left it. 

Third, and my favorite characteristic about the Tervis Tumbler, is that it produces NO condensation since it's double walled. That makes me one happy mama. My furniture does not get ruined and I don't have to keep up with coasters. In fact, since the Tervis Tumbler is the only cup we use around my house, I don't own any coasters! I made the mistake of using a glass one day last week (haven't done that in a long time) and I ended up with a puddle on my end table within just a few minutes. It made me realize even more just how much I love these tumblers. 

I even have a large 24 ounce Tervis Tumbler with a lid and straw that I keep at work. I refill it a few times a day. No condensation and my water stays cold!

The Tervis Tumbler is definitely something I can't do without!

Best Ever Banana Bread

Ever heard of Nurse Maid's Elbow? We found out about it the hard way yesterday. It sounds all simple and insignificant. "Nurse Maid's Elbow. Aw. That sweet little nurse maid has a tired elbow." Ha! Hardly. Basically it's a dislocation of the elbow in children. It's super common and it happened to Mini Mac yesterday. It scared the bejeezus out of me. 

See, this pigeon has been showing up in our backyard this week while I have been on vacation. We're talking huge, fat, blue-headed, downtown pigeon that should be perched on top of the courthouse. NOT in my neighborhood. (For some reason my yard is a favorite hangout for all types of wildlife. Pretty fun for us and Mini Mac.) The first day it appeared, it flew off before I could get Mini Mac to lay eyes on it. Yesterday, I called her to the back porch quickly and she came running. As I held her hand, she stepped off the back stoop and began to lose her footing. I lightly lifted her by the hand to keep her from hitting the ground. Immediately she started crying and holding her arm to her body. Last year one of the bloggers I follow posted about her 1 year old dislocating his elbow and I automatically knew that was what had happened. Off to the ER we went. She was not hysterical but crying and in pain.

Now, those who know me and the men in my family, know that we have "trick knees." They dislocate without warning and for no reason at all. (In fact, it just happened to one of my brothers a few days ago.) I am never doing anything cool like snowboarding or mountain climbing. I am usually just reaching for a paper towel or getting groceries out of the car. This has happened many times and I have made a few ER trips to get it popped back into place. Not fun. Not pretty. NOT a good sound when they pop it back into place. Needless to say, all I could think of was how uncomfortable and in pan Mini Mac was.
 

We got to the emergency room and luckily were the only ones there. Mini Mac was not happy about the triage activities that took place even though it was just temperature taking and heart rate checking. The nurse tried to tell her the electrode was just like a band aid and I had to interrupt her quickly to tell her Mini Mac is the only child in the state who does NOT like band aids. We called it a sticker instead. 

Once Mr. Mac got there, he held Mini Mac at her request for her daddy and the doctor came in to check her out. I talked with the registrant about payment for about a minute and by the time we were done the doctor had put her elbow back into place. She didn't even make a peep. And right away she was moving her arm like a champ. She thanked the doctor for making it "Aww betta" and told me later in the day she wanted to go back to see him. 

The tricky thing here is that apparently she is now predisposed to Nurse Maid's Elbow. It can happen again. I have had friends on Facebook tell me they know people who have been to the ER 4 times in 2 years. Fantastic. I CONSTANTLY walk around aware of my knees and their odd and totally useless superpower of taking on characteristics of Optimus Prime and now I have to do the same for my daughter's elbow. Fingers and toes crossed that we get blessed and never have to go through this again. 

Needless to say, the morning was so exhausting we both napped for 3 hours in the afternoon. When we woke, I had a hankering for the best banana bread you will ever eat so I participated in some baking therapy. 

Seriously, this banana bread will knock your socks off. The addition of sour cream or yogurt just amps up the flavor and keeps the bread very moist. And it's also super simple. 

Best Ever Banana Bread  (Recipe Credit: Martha Stewart)

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup (1 stick) room temperature butter, plus more for pan

1 Cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 & 1/2 Cup unbleached flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 Cup very ripe mashed bananas

1/2 Cup sour cream (or plain yogurt)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 Cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Directions:

~Preheat oven to 350 and butter a 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat to incorporate. 

~In a medium bowl, whisk flour, salt and baking soda together. Add to butter and sugar mixture and beat until combined. Add bananas, sour cream and vanilla again beating until combined. Add nuts and pour into prepared pan. 

~Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, about 30-40 minutes. Let rest in pan for about 10 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack. 

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Here are some variations:

-Add a cup of fresh blueberries with the nuts.

-Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners to make an easy grab-and-go breakfast muffin.

-Remember the banana cake I made a while back? I used this recipe for the cake the other day and it was SO much more flavorful. I will do this from now on.