Congratulations Ryan and Loryn!

Ryan and Loryn are engaged!!!!! This happened on July 23, 2010, but sorry - I am just now taking a picture of them together and posting.

They plan to get married September 10, 2011, that's 9/10/11 - pretty cool! The wedding and recpetion are going to be at the Williamsburg Winery (this is my later post about that).

We are excited for them! Congrats Ryan and Loryn!

Massanutten

This past week I was lucky enough to spend a few days in beautiful Massanutten with family. We had a great time playing mini golf, tubing, touring a winery, shopping, looking for bears (ok, that was mostly just me), and looking at the gorgeous views from the mountaintop. It's a beautiful place to go...maybe we will go back in the winter...??

Here are some pics from the week.

We rode the chairlift to the top of the mountain to feed the goats....but the goats weren't there when we got to the top (apparently they were moved because they were being mean) but we saw some awesome views anyways!

The waters got "rough" - actually the water level was a little low, so we had some close encounters with rocks.

Thanks mom and Mike for inviting me!!

Milky Way Cake

My good friend K.B. made this and brought it to school two years ago, but I recently stumbled upon the recipe she sent out and couldn't wait to make it! Milky Ways are good, cake is good, so how could this not be good? Well, if my memory serves me correctly, this is absolutely amazing!!

Here are the ingredients:

Please don't take note of how much butter is in this, however if you are like me and Paula Deen, and measure a recipes "goodness" on the amount of butter, then this is proof of how amazing this cake is.

Step 1: Melt 4 milky ways and 1 stick of butter in a double boiler

Step 2: cream together 2 cups of sugar and 1 stick of butter

Step 3: add 4 eggs, 1 cup of buttermilk**, 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 tsp of baking soda, and 2 tsp vanilla to the sugar/butter mixture.

Step 4: Add milky way mixture.

Step 5: grease bundt pan and bake on 325 for about 1 hour

Let cool about 10-15 minutes in pan, then invert and cool completely

Step 6: FROSTING

Melt 2 milky way bars and 1/2 stick of butter in double boiler. Add 2 tbsp of milk and 1 1/3 cup of powdered sugar. Mix well and pour over cake.

ENJOY!! Thanks K.B.!!



**Buttermilk - if you don't have any, you can make it with 1 tablespoon of white vinegar and a little less than 1 cup of milk. Let it sit for 5 minutes before using.

Chelsea's World Famous Garlic Knots

Ok...maybe not world famous (that's just a joke me and TJ have) but they are amazing and easy.

I buy a bag of frozen dinner rolls (Rhodes) and then only thaw out as many as I need. Spray the cookie sheet and also the plastic wrap. Plan ahead! You can set the frozen dough out in the morning and by the time you get home, this is what they will look like...

Huge! Then what I do, is pull each of these rolls apart and tie the dough in a knot. They are small again.

Put the plastic wrap back over them and leave them for maybe an hour....

And once again, they rise! I bake them on 375 for about 10 minutes. Then dip them in melted garlic butter and sprinkle some parsely and parmesan cheese on top.

They are light and airy when you bite into them...and delicious!

Watermelon Carriage!!

I saw this picture online and just had to make it for my friends baby shower!

We Painted the Laundry Room ORANGE!!!

Yes, we did! I really wanted to paint the laundry room a color I would never paint any other room in the house....and that's exactly what I did. Orange is a warm, fall color, and so are the other colors in the house, so it's not that far off.....

Before...

After.....

What do you think??  (I LOVE IT - but it won't hurt my feelings if you don't)

I Went to the Cake Boss Bakery!!!

I love watching Cake Boss on TLC. The cakes Buddy makes are awesome! The show gives me big hopes and dreams of being able to make awesome cakes, but I have yet to experiment with fondant, modeling chocolate and all that good stuff. But anyways, I always thought that the Bake Shop was in New York, I mean you hear their accents....New York right??? So, I looked it up and guess what - the Bake Shop is in New Jersey, and where was I last week? New Jersey! So of course I mapquested and found that it was less than an hour from my aunt's house, so off me, my mom, my aunt, and two cousins went....

Hoboken, New Jersey....I just love saying Hoboken, haha.

Once we got there, and found parking(which was difficult) this is what the line looked like. By the way, the corner you see in the picture isn't the Bake Shop.....the line continues across the street! We waited about an hour and a half.

waiting...

Devin and Nicole waiting patiently.

Once inside, it was soooo worth the wait! What a cool experience. We walked in the door and got a number, and within seconds, someone was calling our number to take our order. the only problem was that this is what it looked like inside....

I didn't get to see everything in all the cases because there were too many people, but the girl that helped me was wonderful. She was so patient while I tried to fight through the crowd to pick out the goodies I wanted....she also gave me suggestions on popular treats. I ended up getting 2 cupcakes, an eclair, cookie, and some other thing that I don't know the name of. My mom got a cannoli and lobster claw. Everything we had was delicious!

Here is a picture of some of the cakes they had for sale. They were only $45........We really wanted one, but got a t-shirt instead - it will last longer! This was such a cool experience, so if you are ever near Hoboken, New Jersey, I recommend a visit to Carlo's Bake Shop!

**FYI** Buddy wasn't there - they were filming in Italy, but I did see one of his sister's...

Buster's New Trick

Cheesecake

Cheesecake is something that is not at the top of my "To Make" list. It's expensive, disappointing, and time consuming. However, my brother wants a cheesecake for his birthday, so I made not one...but two...Just for some variety. These two recipes are very different to me. The first one is very complicated and it literally took me HOURS to make, but it is beautiful and I hope it tastes as good as it looks. The second one was MUCH easier to make, but once again (this is my second attempt at this cheesecake) looks like an earthquake hit.

Cheesecake 1 (I like to call this Caitlin's Cheesecake, because she passed on the recipe to me, but it is from Food Network)

Here is the recipe

Cheesecake 2:

Here is the recipe

Salsa....fresh from the garden!

Now this is what I have been waiting for. And, I am choosing to be happy about it, even though this will be the only batch of salsa my garden will produce this year. Anyways, these are the tomatoes I got (not too bad)

And this is my salsa...

Yum!! Tomatoes, onion, jalepeno pepper, salt, pepper, cilantro, and lime juice.