No Sleep = Weekend Disaster

Finally napping

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope your weekend is going better than mine so far. This week has been tiresome enough with Fionn's pneumonia and all then Friday night was a complete and utter horror. My mom and I decided to have a movie night so we packed up and prepared for a sleepover at Grandma's house, dogs and all. We had a lovely homemade diner and the dogs were behaving and Fionn went to sleep very well. We watched our movie(Sex and the City2, my mom hadn't seen it yet) and then we went off to bed. Fionn did not want to sleep in the toddler bed but rather in 'mommies' bed so I said why not. That night was the first night we gave him his new asthma medicine, singulair, and I'm not sure if it was from that or just not being at home or whatever but he woke up when I was getting into bed at around 11:30pm and he would not go back to sleep until around 4:30am!! I was dead on my feet all day. It gave me a rotten head and neck ache too. And to top it off, it was blizzarding and the rental car my mom has (since the accident) is not equipped with snow tires (why the hell not!?) so we were stuck staying another night. Oh and I didn't bring enough dog food for more than one day so my sister picked some up for us, along with icing sugar. More on that in a second.

And of course, since I wasn't already having a bad day, my sister asked me at 11am to make her some cupcakes for a going away party she was invited to, that night, at 6:30pm. Normally that wouldn't be so much of a problem, other then being annoying because of the last minute thing, but I was at my mom's place and don't have my mixer, cupcake liners, piping bags, etc, etc. So I had to improvise. Do something with what we had on hand. I made cupcake liners out of parchment paper and found a good recipe that did not require a whole lot of vigorous mixing (I was able to do it all by hand with a whisk, old school). So now, along with the dog food, I said sent her to pick up the icing sugar. That's all we were missing.

So I turned to old faithful Martha Stewart for a last minute recipe and found this one, which turned out to be very good. In fact I would use it again, and I will.

Buttermilk-Vanilla Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

Makes 4 dozen mini cupcakes. (I got 14 regular sized cupcakes, or maybe a tad bigger then normal)

• 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini-muffin tins with paper liners.
2. Sift flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a mixer bowl. Transfer bowl to mixer, and add egg, yolk, water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla. Beat on low speed until mixture is well combined and smooth, about 3 minutes.
3. Divide batter among liners, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden brown and a tester inserted into centers comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks for 30 minutes. Invert cupcakes onto racks, and let cool completely. (Cupcakes can be stored for up to 3 days.)

So today we went to costco and I got two new books. If you know me, you know how much I love new books! I mean LOVE! The way they feel, the way they smell, the cool, crisp, freshness it has from being never touched and read by someone else. Yeah, that's how I feel. Anyways I've been toying around with the idea of making some cake pops and I just got Bakerella's book to make 'em. Exciting! And then since I'm not already reading 100 books at once(no really, I must have a dozen on the go, I get bored and switch) my mom pointed out 'The Happiness Project' by Gretchen Rubin. Not sure if that was a hidden message saying I'm not happy enough. Oh well, you can never be too happy right? So now I've got a ton of good reading material to last me a life time, or at least until I come across another good looking book.

I start my new job tomorrow. Now I have to wake up earlier to look pretty. The nice thing about bakers is you're in the back and no one has to look at you. But a banker on the other hand, has to look presentable. So that means dress pants and clean crisp tops. Yes,I went shopping, which was fun. I'm not complaining really, just nagging on loosing a bit of sleep. But this is a good thing. It's another step in the right direction for me, and Fionn by association. Let the 9 to 5(5:30 really) commence.

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" - Robert Louis Stevenson