The Adventures of a German Girl

      Couple weeks ago I came up with a motto with a colleague of mine. "Gym is the new sugar". I had this draft saved for weeks now to show off my amazing work out results at some point, but of course never got to it. We are pretty busy at work right now and for some reason, the sugar craving gets worse if you have tons to do. SO we decided on working out everyday instead of not working out and eating 3 cupcakes a day. I was doing really well, went to the gym at least ones a day (Monday-Friday) for three weeks. I still ate tons of sugar, but didnt feel bad about it anymore. :) And then... we adopted 2 little dogs, and life has changed since. Yesterday I froze my gym membership for the next two months. I feel kinda sad about it, but haven't had that much excercise as I do right now, in months. I still need to get used to getting up before 7am every morning, but the walk with Steele is so refreshing and clearing out my mind, I ...

Brian and I were talking about having a dog now for several months. Brian wanted a Pitbull, I would rather move out, than live with a Pitbull.  I'm sure that they are loving dogs, but I'm just afraid of them.    NO ON PITBULLS!! I told him, that if we ever have a dog (after the babies) we can have Labs. Then a couple weeks ago he received an email from a colleague regarding fostering/adopting pure breed labs. Some of them recovering from heart worms and some others little tiny 10 week old puppies! Of course they put pictures in that email and that was it. I was in love. After a catalog of questions on the website, a phone interview from the foster care to one of our friends and a home visit, we got approved to become foster parents. It seems like a lot of check-ups, but they just want to make sure that the dogs have a nice place to stay and be treated as part of the family. The organisation is amazing. They have lots of very nice people working for...

    After messing up the last two tries making cupcakes, I had to make sure this time it is working out. I used a white cake mix and included some vanilla extract and baked them for about 18min at 350F.   L et them cool completely While they were on the cooling rack I made icing from scratch   Ingredients: 2 cups confectioners' sugar 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, soft 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 to 4 tablespoons milk couple drops of red food color           After filling my decoration tube with the icing, I started from the outside and worked my way in.                                                          ...

Here is my first failure in baking cupcakes. It started with my new cupcake recipe book and using self rising flour. The plan was to bake vanilla cupcakes with shades of pink frosting. I put mixed berries in the batting and folded them in. I put the cupcakes in for 18min at 350F. While in the oven, they overfloaded the cup, and when almost done, they completely fell together. I was about to cry - they were pretty much going into the trash right there. Brian said, just call them muffins and be done with it. But I couldn't leave them as ugly as they were and crumbled all of the 12 cupcakes into a bowl.  I then mixed some strawberry frosting under, I had cake pops in mind! But it was so not going to stay in any kind of shape. Next idea, I put all of it into my decoration tube and pressed little round shapes onto a cookie sheet. Placed them into the fridge overnight and hoped they will become hard. Not happening either. SO I heated...

One more pillow for the week, which already found a new home.  I love purple, and I wish I could keep all the pillows I'm making, but our house kinda overflows with pillows. So time to just make pillows for others. It turned out very nicely, remembering I'm just using the fabric swatches I got free from our textile tradeshow in New York.