4th of July Cake Pops

Well, it's August & I'm blogging about July. (Kind of like the time I blogged about Pi Day in July) I'm alway behind on my holidays. Oops! But that doesn't make these any less cute!!! My husband's family is quickly growing and this past 4th of July marks the first time we've all been together in over a year. Between the birth of my nieces and my youngest sibling in-laws being away at college, we weren't able to all be together on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter of this past year. 

So July 4th marked a reunion of sorts. It was a great day. My sister-in-law & I ran the Ephrata 5 Mile Fire Cracker. It was her first post-triplets race. I especially enjoyed it because I got to push 2 of my nieces in a stroller. Annabelle & Grace were quite the hit and I felt like a rock star for running all 5 miles while pushing a double-wide stroller. We squeezed in a family photo, some dutch blitiz, and had a great dinner. I put myself in charge of dessert where I made a vanilla pudding trifle dish dessert and these awesome mint oreo ball American flag. I make these oreo balls, just like I would cake pop balls, but instead of cake & frosting I use oreo (or mint oreo) and cream cheese. I had to melt 3 different colors to dip these into. You have to use a spoon to scoop them out of the chocolate, then place them on wax paper to dry. I also had special colored sprinkles & paper liners to match. It was a lot of work to make, but worth it. Did I mention I LOVE mint oreo???

 If you are not up for making 42 cake balls, here is a simpler design you can do.

What a good looking group!

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Pi Day Cake Pops

I feel incredibly guilty that I'm waiting until now to post about these awesome cake pops I made back in March! Every good math teacher should know what March 14th is. Pi Day! Get it? 3.14? When I ask my students what pi is they automatically answer 3.14. That's not actually the truth. Pi is the ratio of circumference to diameter of all circles. 3.14 isn't what pi is, it's an approximation of what pi is. It's an irrational number that goes on forever and blah blah blah. (It's summer, I don't want to talk about school anymore). To make pi day fun us math teachers do are part. Here are the awesome pi-inspired cake pops that I made. YUMMY!!!

My co-worker, Nicole, who helped me make all the cake pops also made these awesome pi  shaped cookies. I have a nice pi cookie cutter. So fun! Our students loved all the treats!

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

More Baby Shower Fun

If you want some great baby shower ideas, then you've come to the right place!


I recently shared about my sister-in-law's belated Baby Shower. But I also helped throw a baby shower for my friend Jessie last month. Such a great shower! Her mom, Kelly Steadman, owner of All Things Beautiful, was my fabulous wedding florist 5 years ago, and let me tell you, she knows how to throw a party! 


This was an owl-themed baby shower for baby Trevor. 


For food we did a slider bar as the main meal.

But we also had fruit kabobs, cups of pasta salad, veggies & dip.

But I just loved these mini twice-baked potatoes. So cute!

All the food was great, but dessert was even better! We had a dessert bar. We had owl cookies. Kelly made these delightful sugar cookies with blue fondant and chocolate icing. The noses are chocolate covered sesame seeds. The mouths are candy necklace pieces. 

There were chocolate cigars in honor of Baby Boy Smoker. 

The best part was the Make-Your-Own S'more Bar

Besides the traditional ingredients that you use to make a s'more, we also included Reese's Peanut Butter Cups & Peppermint Patties. So good! And everyone could make their own on the fire pit. 

And of course, no party would be complete without cake pops! We did owl cake pops as favors and baby boy cake pops that were ready to eat. Check out that sweet cake pop stand!

These two were a highlight for a lot of the guests at the shower!

HOW CUTE IS THIS!?!??!

Isn't it nice to have a florist in the family???

My very own mother helped out with this shower by making this poster using her cricut. We all signed a leaf with a word of encouragement for baby Trevor. Then the leaves will get attached to the branches and it will be hung for him in the nursery. So stinkin' cute!

This post is so long I will need to stop here. But another fantastic part of the day, besides the great weather, was the baby shower games. Instead of doing traditional games, my friend Ashley found lots of Minute-To-Win-It games with a baby-theme to them. They were a riot! Stay tuned for a later post on that. 

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Baby Shower Fun

Two and a half years ago I became an Aunt for the first time. My niece Maddie is a lot o fun and so stinking adorable. Fast forward to this past September where I became an Aunt again, but I went to having one niece to having FIVE. Yes, Five! My niece Halle was born September 2nd and my triplet nieces were born on September 11th; Annabelle, Clare, & Grace. The triplets came 3 months early so we ran out of time to throw my sister-in-law a baby shower. So we threw a belated drop-in meet-and-greet baby shower party this past April when the girls were 7 months old. It was a blast! 


On the menu was meatballs, spinach dip, and crab dip. We had bread & cucumber slices to use for the dips and the cutest part was the fruit kabobs.

Special thanks to my sister-in-law's sister, Julie, for opening up her home and doing a great job with decor. I loved what she did with the chalkboards!

I got this for my mother-in-law for her birthday this year since I know she's always hosting meals for large groups of people. 

Pink Lemonade, so appropriate!

And of course, CAKE POPS!!! (As the favor.) Pink & Silver to go with the baby shower theme. Complete with a note from the girls! :-)

I was also blessed to throw another bay shower this year for my friend Jessie, this past June. It was soooooooo cute! Stay tuned for a future post on that coming soon!

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Diet Soda Cake :-)

One time I was trying to make cake pops and I ran out of eggs. But with a little help from google I learned how to solve the problem of making no-eggs cake. The secret is a can of soda! For real! 


If you are using a regular cake box mix you use the same amount of oil and mix. But do NOT add the water specified by the box. Instead replace with one can of soda for the eggs. 


You will have to cook the cake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes past what the box directions say. It will come out more moist than a regular cake and will be perfect for cake pops (even though it will make creating the cake pops extra messy). 


Use a light colored-soda for a light cake and a dark soda, like coke, for chocolate cake. This also helps eliminate calories if you use diet soda instead of eggs.


Those who know me well know I have a strong addiction to Diet Coke. So if there is a way to incorporate it into any of my recipes I'm all for it. ENJOY!


What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)