Are you ready for some football?!

We are in preparation mode for our Super Bowl party tomorrow.

Tonight, I made a cookie cake and decorated it for the occasion:

Once again, I used the Thick & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe and just baked it in a pizza pan instead of making the cookies. Decorated with Wilton buttercream, and there you have it. I have a serious weakness for cookie cake, so I can't wait to dig into this thing tomorrow.

My writing could still use some work, but I found that this time worked out better than last time. I have to keep practicing.

I was super paranoid about freehanding the "Steelers" part of the logo, but I did it and I was actually happy with it. Shocking.

Who are you rooting for?

Read more...

New Nephew (A Furry One)

Meet Miller!

He's not ours (Tessa is enough for us, thankyouverymuch)--he's my brother and Marie's. He is a 9-week-old beagle/labrador mix that they adopted from a shelter earlier this week.

Last night, we went over to meet him and introduce him to Tessa. Tyler and Marie will be taking care of Tessa for us when we go to Vegas next weekend, so we were worried about how the pups would get along.

Marie's sister (who currently lives with her and my brother) also has a new kitten, so we had quite the collection of animals running around last night.

The kitten, Molly, and Miller have already had a few days to get acquainted. Also, they are around the same age (both still in that playful stage), so they really enjoy each other. They were wrestling around, which was pretty funny to see:

As for Tessa and Miller, it was OK. We have tried to socialize Tess with other dogs since she was little, but she just doesn't get to see/play with other dogs often enough to be truly good with other dogs. Also, since she's small, she has what we like to call "little man syndrome" and is always a bit defensive since most dogs she's around are always bigger than her (and I sorta can't blame her for that!).

For now, Miller is close to her size, and since he's a baby, we hoped she'd be good with him. For the most part, she was. She did put him in his place a couple of times, though. Miller kept trying to nip at Tessa (to play, of course), and there was one time where she rolled him onto his back and pinned him down! It was actually pretty funny because I think he got the point. But a little while later, he became brave again and tried again. Once again, Tessa chased him off.

I think that, given time, Tessa will get used to him. The problem is that Miller is going to keep growing and get bigger and bigger, so we'll see what happens with time. We're hoping that now that we have another dog in the family full-time, Tessa will have more of an opportunity to "socialize."

This is Tessa vying for my brother's attention. Hey! Hey, remember me? Ignore that puppy, look at meeeee! Look how cute I am, I'm rolling over. Belly rubs, belly rubs! I want belly rubs!

It worked.

Miller is so cute, but man do I not miss the puppy days! Of course, I always look back at them with a little bit of nostalgia. Tessa was adorable, less than 4 lbs., and the little puppy things they do can be pretty cute as well. But the peeing in the house, the constant trips outside, the puppy ENERGY? It's all exhausting and it's nice to be past it. :)

But just look at that little face!

In this photo, he had just come in from a potty break outside. He had snow on his nose.

Miller with his proud adoptive daddy.

Little guy tuckered himself out.

Receiving loving from mommy.

So cute! It should be interesting to hear how they do together next weekend. Hopefully Tessa won't ruin her chances of ever getting to stay with Tyler and Marie again!

Read more...

Down for the Count

As if I wasn't already a slacker blogger this week... (I'm sorry.)

Our laptop died tonight. Or rather, it got very sick.

When I got home from work, I turned on the computer as normal. Had a couple of Internet Explorer windows open, just doin' my thang. And then, it froze up. I couldn't get it to do anything, so I had no choice but to do a hard restart (pressing and holding down the power button).

I tried to reboot it to no avail. We kept getting some error screen about how it couldn't restart properly, and we were asked to do a bunch of "repair scans" and such. No luck with those, either.

Called technical support, and I'll spare you all the details (it was such a pain in the ass), but the bottom line is: We have to send in our computer for repair. Apparently, our model is one of a few that were made with defective motherboards. The technical supervisor guy told us that the problems we're experiencing are most certainly a motherboard issue. LOVELY.

Oh, AND... when we send the computer in to get the motherboard replaced? Well, we're going to lose everything we have loaded on the computer. Programs, files, everything.

I'm feeling a pain in my ass, and its name is HEWLETT PACKARD.

Thankfully, though, HP is fixing it for free, so I am trying not to whine too much. Also, we've been pretty good about backing up our files to our external hard drive and DVDs, so losing all the files and stuff? Not the end of the world. Plus, Michael is going to take the laptop into work tomorrow and have his IT guys help transfer the files off of the hard drive before we send it in.

My biggest complaint is the obvious: We're going to be without our laptop for ~2 weeks. So this begs the question: What the hell am I going to do with myself? Luckily, I'm going to be pretty busy these next couple of weeks. But still!

I'm in mourning. Or withdrawls.

Or worse--mourning AND withdrawls.

Read more...

Baking Gals Update

Following up to my post back in December about Operation Baking Gals...

We will have two Heather Drive teams. Our soldiers have been selected, and I'm working on getting our teams set up within the system. I should be posting in the next couple of days with more information for you all to sign up. Shipping dates are going to be between February 7 and February 21, so get yourselves ready! :)

I will keep you guys updated and let you all know when and how to register. So stay tuned!

Read more...

Flourless Chocolate Cake

For dinner with our friends last night, I wanted to make a nice dessert.

The challenge is that one of our friends, Kristin, has a gluten allergy and, well, most desserts contain gluten. Earlier this week, I asked for gluten-free dessert recommendations on a message board I frequent, and someone said that this was the best flourless chocolate cake she had ever had. That was a pretty great review, so I decided to give it a go.




I've only ever had flourless chocolate cake a couple of times in my life, and those times were always at restaurants. So I wasn't really sure what it was going to come out like. The baking process itself was pretty straightforward; just like any other cake, but obviously without flour, baking soda, or baking powder.




After tasting the batter (who can resist?), I knew that this was going to be a really rich, chocolatey cake. I suppose I should have guessed that before--there is a lot of chocolate in this cake.

The person who gave me the recipe told me she had baked this cake in a springform pan with success, so I thought I'd give that a try, too. I always like the look of cakes turned out of their pans--it makes for better presentation. Also, I had a brand new set of springform pans that I had never used before, and was eager to put them to good use.


Flourless Chocolate Cake
(Source: Unknown)

Ingredients:
- 1 lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 8 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa
- 6 large eggs
- 1/4 cup cassis or orange juice

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9x2 inch cake pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. Make sure it lies flat.

2. Melt 16 tbsp. (2 sticks) butter and 8 oz chocolate together over simmer water. Stir until very smooth. Set aside to cool.

3. Mix the sugar, cocoa, and eggs just until well combined. Do not overbeat. Add the cool chocolate and butter mixture and again, only mix until combined. You do not want to beat air into the mixture. Stir in the cassis or orange juice.

4. Pour batter into the prepared cake pan, place the pan in a larger pan and pour about 1 inch of hot water around the cake pan (I skipped the larger pan/water thing since I was using a springform pan). Bake until the top of the cake is firm to the touch, about 45 minutes. Cool on a rack to room temp. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.

Notes: After about 10 minutes of cooling time, I removed the sides of the springform pan. I then inverted the cake onto a serving platter and removed the bottom of the pan as well. Once cool, I wrapped the whole thing in plastic and refrigerated, as the recipe says. However, be sure to remove the cake from the refrigerator at least 3-4 hours before you want to serve. When I first took it out of the fridge, it was really hard. We let it come back to room temperature before eating it. Also, because it is so rich, we served it with french vanilla ice cream. Bon appetit!

Read more...

Cute Overload

Tonight, we had dinner with our friends (two couples) and their babies. It was nice to catch up over some takeout Chinese food and wine. We just relaxed around their house, chatted, and held babies!

We got our new external flash last week (have you noticed a difference in my pictures?), so I couldn't resist bringing along my camera to capture the little ones. I was eager to see how the flash would improve portraits since I've really only used it for food and Tessa so far. Let's just say... I'm impressed. I love these photos.

Meet Emma, who is three months old:

And Rowan, who is 4.5 months old:

Aren't they the cutest? They are only six weeks apart, so hopefully they will make great playmates one day. Tonight, they really didn't seem to have much interest in each other.

Rowan is at that age where he is starting to really interact. He is becoming really expressive, and it's absolutely adorable. It wasn't difficult to make him smile (and giggle, too!). While I was playing with him, Michael was able to get several photos of him mid-grin. Here are a few of my favorites:

I took more than 80 photos tonight, just of Emma & Rowan. I usually take more than 100 every time we see Brendan.

I'm predicting that someday, our children will be the most photographed kids on the planet.

Read more...