Pineapple Flower Cupcakes

    Yesterday I spent the bulk of my energy on making some beautiful cupcakes. I love doing domestic things-especially if cake is involved-and I enjoy taking on a challenge from time to time. There was also a Relief Society garden party happening last night, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give this particular little project a whirl.
   I got my project from Martha Stewart.  I think that Martha Stewart is amazing, not only in her own abilities, but also in her knack for collecting other talented people who come up with fantastic ideas. She's a super savvy businesswoman, and despite the 5-month prison stay, has come out on top and possibly stronger than ever. I used to subscribe to the Martha Stewart Living magazine, but after a year I realized that twelve issues of MSL had more ideas than I could tackle in 3-5 years, so I decided to wait until I had tried everything I could from those twelve issues before I got more. I love looking through her magazines at all of the beautiful things she has compiled, and I often get the urge to make some of those things for myself. It can be hard to choose because the things she and her colleagues create often require an expert level of sewing, baking, and papercrafting skills that I haven't yet attained. Some can also be very time-consuming and expensive, which make them restrictive in a different way.  So basically I have to choose carefully when I decide to tackle a Martha Stewart project. There's been one in particular that I've wanted to do for over a year now, and yesterday I finally tackled it: Pineapple Flower Cupcakes. In her book, Martha Stewart Cupcakes, they're called "Mother's Day Hummingbird Cupcakes", but since the only thing I used from that recipe was the pineapple flowers, I thought "I'll call 'em whatever I want-how about Pineapple Flower Cupcakes?"

   Anyway, the first thing I did was cut the rind off of the pineapple and slice it really thinly with the mandoline Jeff got me for my birthday last year. Then I baked them in the oven at 225 degrees for about 30 minutes on each side until they looked dry and a little brownish around the edges.

   After their time in the oven I put them in muffin pans to give them the flower shape that I wanted them to have.

    According to the directions, I was just supposed to let them sit in the muffin cups for a little while until they dried out completely. I left them drying on the counter for about an hour before I noticed that they weren't getting any drier; I then took them outside and set them on top of my car to get the sun involved. They ended up having to sun-dry for about 2 hours before they were able to hold their flower-y shape, and even then, there were still a few that didn't want to stay curved!

   After letting them sit for as long as I could, I took them out and stuck them in a small dish while I baked cupcakes in the muffin pan. Since I was already putting so much effort into the pineapple flowers, I didn't feel like going to the extra effort of making an untested type of cupcake or frosting, so I just stuck with my tried and true chocolate cupcake recipe (which is absolutely delicious, by the way-I'll give it to you at the end of this post) and a basic cream cheese frosting recipe. Also, since the pineapple flowers took so stinkin' long, I didn't get the cupcakes done and ready to go until long after the garden party started. But at least they ended up looking pretty nice! I even mixed some granulated sugar with some red food coloring to stick in the middle-just in case it wasn't obvious that they were supposed to be flowers.

  Anyway, here's what they looked like after I was done:

Part-way through the red sugar process.

   .....and I just realized that I didn't take a picture of all of them with their red sugar centers. Oh, Kimberly. Well, you still get the effect, right? I hope so.

   So I showed up 30 minutes late to the garden party, but everyone really appreciated how pretty the cupcakes looked, so I don't think anyone was upset. I got lots of nice compliments on them, and they were snatched up really quickly (I don't even know if everyone got one), so I feel like all in all it was a success. In the future, I don't think that I'd dry them with this method because it was so time-consuming. I'll probably borrow my friend Jenny's dehydrator (if that's cool, Jenny) and then form them into flowers. But-I'm glad I tried it out and that it was a success!

And the recipe I promised:

Chocolate Cupcakes (I cut the original recipe into thirds and made some slight alterations. It makes about 12-15 cupcakes)

1/4 c. butter (at room temperature)
2/3 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla

2/3 c. flour
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1/3 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/6 tsp. salt

1/2 c. milk (I use almond milk and it works out really well)
aprox. 1/3 c. sour cream (I just spoon out a huge dollop and call it good)

1-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2-In a medium mixing bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside. 
3-In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Gradually add in sugar, beating on medium speed until well combined. Add the egg and vanilla; beat well.
4-Alternately add flour mixture and milk to the sugar/egg mixture, beating on low speed until combined after each addition. Add in sour cream and beat until well combined. 
5-Spoon the batter into cupcake liners and bake for about 20 minutes.

I hope that if you try the cupcakes, you like them a lot! I've made tons of these cupcakes and small, round cakes for various birthdays. Everyone I've given it to has really liked it, so I think you will, too!
So what do you think? Did the pineapples look like flowers? What projects would be worth several hours of your time?

Getting Ready For Henry

  There have been lots of things that we've needed to do to get ready for Henry's arrival. We've gotten the nursery ready, redone a dresser, but there were still several things left to do, like packing the bag for the hospital, clearing out the crib, and putting the car seat in the car. Clearing out the crib was pretty easy, the bag is still in the process of being packed, but the car seat/stroller combo proved to be the most difficult task to tackle. We had to decide which side of the backseat we should stick it in, (after the middle didn't work out) which was pretty tricky because of how far out the car seat sticks out. It makes it necessary to push whichever seat is in front of it pretty far forward, which would leave Jeff getting squished if he's the one sitting in that seat. So since I drive the majority of the time, and need to sit further forward anyway, we eventually decided to put the car seat on the driver's side. And even though it was frustrating to get it to sit right in the seat, we eventually got it figured out.

There's the car seat and stroller combo in its box.

Jeff's getting the car all vacuumed and ready for the car seat.

I wanted to have at least one picture of a clean, pristine car seat before baby Henry spends lots of time in it.

    Less than 3 weeks 'til the due date, and we're getting more and more excited! Little Man, we can't wait to meet you!

National Picnic Day!

  The other day my friend Amy suggested that we have a picnic, so we totally did! Jeff made my favorite picnic food, ceviche, and the rest of the food was an exciting hodgepodge of other foods contributed by Amy and Josh and Nicole and Dan. It wasn't until later that Nicole told us that it was National Picnic Day, so I thought that we should take pictures to document us observing a holiday we didn't even realize we were observing until after the fact!

Also, I should warn you that I look terrible in these pictures, too. I just don't think I'm going to get any good pictures until after Henry's born.

Dan and Nicole, looking adorable.

I think this is a great picture of Josh and Amy, but Amy said she didn't think so.

I just suddenly forgot how to look photogenic...

...but at least Jeff looks good. :)

Just having a great picnic. Also, it wouldn't be a picnic without Ruffles and ranch dip. :)

Cute pregnant ladies with a cute picnic basket on National Picnic Day :)

  It was such a great picnic with our friends, and it made it that much cooler that it was spontaneously thrown together on National Picnic Day!

Golfing with Jeff and Nate

  The other day we had the chance to go golfing with our friend Nate. Jeff and Nate had previously golfed the mountain course at Cascade and had told me all about how beautiful it was. So even though I didn't do any golfing myself (I've golfed once in the past 14 years, and I was terrible, so I decided to drive the cart, watch and read a book), I still wanted to tag along. Turns out, the course is really difficult, but it's absolutely gorgeous! The views are incredible-you can see the windmills at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon all the way to Point of the Mountain and everything in between. I don't think that either of them were too happy about how his round of golf went, but we all still had a lot of fun being out in the mountains. The weather was great, the views were beautiful, and we even saw a pair of small, red foxes (we called them "Firefoxes" of course)! Anyway, here are some of the pictures:

Nate taking his first shot.

Jeff's first shot.

Look how close we were to Mt. Timpanogos!

A portion of the view from the course.

Look how close to the mountains we were!

This is my favorite shot. I just wish the power lines weren't in the way.

There's Timp again. So beautiful!

Not only are the mountains extremely beautiful in this pic, but Jeff is really adorable too.

Yay! Proof that I was there, too!

  So if any of you are golfers, I would recommend this course because of how beautiful it is, but also warn you that it's very difficult and you're likely to lose several balls before the 9 holes are over. If you don't golf, then you can just look at my pictures...or go for a hike. Yeah, hiking would probably be the best thing you could do.

 What adventures have you been having lately?

Father's Day!

  This was Jeff's first Father's Day as a Father (pre-borns totally count)! I wanted it to be special for him, so I listened carefully to the things he was expressing an interest in and snatched up some great gifts that would allow him to pursue those interests.

Our coffee table was a bit messy, but his gifts are the two boxes from Amazon and the big box under the pink blanket.

Jeff is possessive of his gifts apparently

Jeff's first gift was eye protection, the second was ear protection...

...and Voila!

a Compound Mitre Saw! You can see how excited Jeff is by that awesome gift!

  So now Jeff is going to try his hand at furniture building! He recently came across this website that gives really detailed directions for how to build various pieces of furniture yourself, and he's extremely excited about getting started. Given the tools that we already have, it seemed like the one that we don't have that would be the most useful to him at this point would be the compound mitre saw. He'll be able to make all his own cuts with minimal effort and without having to ask the peeps at Home Depot to do it for him. I'm pretty excited too, since I like helping Jeff with projects, and DIY in general. I even bought two pairs of eye protection so I could work right alongside my manly husband as he builds us cool stuff.

 Happy Father's Day, sweetheart! You're going to be a fantastic dad in a few weeks!

Mini-Reunion

   Last Saturday we had the chance to see some of my uncles and aunts that we don't see very often. They were down in Park City, which made it much easier for us to go and see them, and even gave us a chance to hit up the outlets (which we do at every available opportunity)! We were a little bit pressed for time, since we had plans to go to a Salt Lake Bees game (Jeff's parents gave him tickets for his birthday) at around 7, but we were still able to spend a few minutes with Gramma Sue, JD and DeAnn, Jodie, Jaylene and Greg, and my parents. Even though the pictures that my dad took make me look a lot bigger than I actually am, here they are:

 Yeah....so me being so close to the camera automatically makes me look really big, then the flash catching me so closely just adds to the overall effect. I'm going to take a picture today to show you a much more accurate view of how big I'm not. Anyway, I love my family and it was great to see them!

  When we got down to the Bees game, it was insanity! I didn't know that people actually attended those games, but we saw that they most definitely do! We couldn't find parking anywhere, and my feet were already super swollen, so we decided to skip out on the game and go see "Moonrise Kingdom" at the Broadway Theatre instead. So, there's something you should know about me and Jeff Beatty. We're not the type of people who will make ourselves miserable doing something because we feel like we have to. The Bees game is a good example. We had already given up doing a couple of things we wanted to do so we could use the gifted tickets, and we had gone out of the way to drive to Salt Lake, but once we got there and saw how far away we would have to park, how far I would have to walk on sore, swollen feet, we decided to cut our losses and do something that would make us happy instead of force ourselves to do something that would almost certainly make us irritable and unhappy. We know when to throw in the towel, so to speak. Also, I have been looking forward to seeing "Moonrise Kingdom" for several months now. I even put it on our "Baby Bucket List" to be sure we went and saw it before Baby Henry comes along.
  We got to the theatre early enough to snag some good seats, which was helpful because the movie sold out and I had easy access to the door so I could hurry to the bathroom every time I needed to. I really liked the movie, too. In case you haven't heard of it, here's the poster:

 

    Not the best resolution...sorry. Anyway, it's a Wes Anderson movie (some of his films include "The Royal Tenenbaums", "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou",  and "The Darjeeling Limited"), which usually means a very subtle, deadpan humor and an "R" rating. Not this time! "Moonrise Kingdom" was PG-13, so I was stoked to be able to go and see it! I really enjoyed the story, the deadpan humor, and every single actor's performances. I'm glad we opted to see a movie instead of walking all over creation to get to the Bees stadium, just to walk some more to get to our seats and have to deal with hordes of people. The only unfortunate thing was that by the time the movie was over, my feet and ankles had swollen even more.

   I was definitely "Cankles McGee" the whole drive home. It was even difficult to walk on them to get to the car, but luckily we caught an elevator to the 4th level of the parking garage instead of shuffling up four flights of stairs. Once we got home I was able to put my feet up and Jeff helped me "ice" them. I put "ice" in quotation marks because we had to get a bit creative with the ice pack situation...

   Jeff has the one legitimate ice pack we own on my right foot, and yep-you guessed it...

 ...Otter Pops on my left foot. Don't worry, there's a paper towel between the Pops and my foot, so they're totally still edible. It was just much more convenient to use Otter Pops because they draped themselves around my foot, so Jeff didn't have to hold both cold things in place over my feet simultaneously. My poor feet have had a rough time lately. I blame the combination of pregnancy and excruciating heat. So does my OB, incidentally. I'm really looking forward to not being swollen anymore for a few reasons: 1-I can wear shoes instead of always wearing flip-flops, which aren't super comfortable to walk in for long distances, 2-it won't hurt so stinkin' much to walk everywhere and 3-I'll be able to wear my wedding ring again!

  That was our Saturday adventure! Seeing family was fantastic, and I'm glad we got out to see our movie so hopefully we won't have to travel up to Salt Lake again any time soon :)

Hypnobirthing

   Alright. There are probably many of you who didn't know, and should try not to be too shocked when I tell you, but.... I'm kind of a hippie. I know it might not be evident because I shave, shower, wear deodorant, eat meat, and many other things that hippies don't typically do, but trust me-I'm definitely on the spectrum.
    I say this because I do, think, and believe a lot of "odd", outside-the-mainstream things. For example: I believe in treating sicknesses with herbs, and have every scripture in the LDS standard works referring to herbal medicine memorized; I don't wear antiperspirant, because I believe that our bodies need to sweat (and keeping them from doing so is unhealthy), so I just wear natural deodorant from Whole Foods; I've participated in the process of allergy removal, wherein the body is reconditioned to respond properly to a substance (or emotion) that has previously stressed it abnormally; I'm learning how to muscle test; I believe that the shapes, colors, and patterns in our irises can tell us what is going on inside the body; and I believe that cancer cells can be shrunken and eliminated in the body by eating a whole foods diet and using specific herbal supplements.

  Those are just a few of my outside-the-norm ideas, to give you an idea of the kind of hippie that I am. So hopefully you're prepared to hear about my newest hippie belief: Hypnobirthing.

   I heard about Hypnobirthing from my friend, and fellow hippie, Mary. The philosophy behind Hypnobirthing is that a pregnant woman's body knows how to labor and give birth instinctively, without medical intervention and-here's the hard to believe part-without pain. I'm sure that many of you will immediately dismiss this idea as "hippie nonsense", but stay with me for a minute. Have you ever heard of African women who simply lean against a tree and-without a fuss- bring their own babies into the world? Or maybe Asian women working in the rice paddies who squat, birth their babies, then strap them to their backs and continue working? This sounds completely unbelievable to the North American woman whose picture of childbirth seems to invariably be accompanied by screaming, excruciating pain, and the (very stereotypical) yelling something to the effect of "YOU DID THIS TO ME" at the helpless husband as he attempts to comfort her.
  Why? Are North American women's bodies built differently from Asian or African women's bodies? No. Are those other women smarter or more educated than we are? I believe that intelligence is the same across the world, but North American women tend to be more educated than women in rural areas of 2nd and 3rd world countries. So what's the deal? 
   The bulk of the problem is cultural expectation. Our culture dictates that childbirth is a medical crisis deserving of all the drama we'd expect from an episode of E.R., and most women respond accordingly. Most of us grow up being taught to fear childbirth. We're fed terrifying depictions of childbirth in movies and TV, along with the graphic, detailed war stories of other moms we come in contact with from a young age. In my experience, the war stories intensify dramatically in frequency and detail once we ourselves become pregnant, which only serves to frighten and traumatize us, the pregnant women, even more. And it's not as if those scared pregnant women can later point back to those stories as actually being helpful, and think "wow, I'm so glad Susie told me how horrific her birthing was." Hearing those scary stories can't really help the pregnant woman somehow prepare to avoid her own scary experiences. Those stories actually do much more damage than good, yet many women in our culture can't seem to stop spreading them- like viruses. This is actually another large part of the problem: fear.
   As I've said before, our bodies know what they're doing during labor and birth, but when we're racked with fear (stemming from any number of sources), our bodies go into fight/flight/freeze mode and we tense up our muscles-including the muscles that are in charge of birth. This makes everything our body is wanting to naturally take care of suddenly very difficult and painful. The muscles in the cervix that are in charge of keeping the baby inside the womb until the right time, but then relax and let go during birth, don't let go like they're supposed to, so a battle begins between the top uterine muscles and the cervix muscles. Eventually the uterine muscles win the battle (since the baby eventually comes out), but not without causing considerable pain to the losing muscle group. So basically, when the mother is experiencing fear, she becomes tense. When her body is tense, the natural process is hijacked and instead of childbirth occurring the way it should, it becomes a painful and traumatic experience.
   So in my Hypnobirthing classes, and in the book by Marie F. Mongan, a huge part of what we learn is how to keep ourselves calm and relaxed, to release the fear we've been harboring, perhaps since childhood, and to establish new expectations for how our own birthing is going to play out. And don't worry, we also learn the normal prenatal class stuff concerning the anatomy and terminology of labor and delivery, but the things we practice and think about every day are the relaxation exercises. The method of self-relaxation and fear release taught in Hypnobirthing is guided imagery, or self-hypnosis. Hypnosis often gets a bad rap because of the stage hypnotists that "make" people do crazy, silly things onstage, or the guy from "Office Space" who gets put under by a hypnotherapist who proceeds to have a heart attack and dies before he can bring the guy out of hypnosis, so he stays hypnotized for the rest of his life.
    Try for a second to put those images out of your mind, as hard as that might be, because it's really important to understand first of all that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. The "hypnotizee" is completely in control of their own hypnotic state, and can become more or less aware or relaxed at will. In my experience, it takes a lot of practice to keep myself relaxed and focused for longer than a few minutes at a time, and if there are any suggestions I hear while in that state that don't jive with what I already know or believe-or seem unpleasant, my instinct is to come out of the hypnosis right away and be fully aware again. I'm completely in charge.
   It's because of the negative stigma attached to self-hypnosis that I usually use the term "guided imagery" when describing the relaxation exercises that I do every day to prepare for labor. It's interesting too, because I'm already familiar with guided imagery since I've used it over the past few years to cope with anxiety. I'll admit though, that I'm much more committed and consistent with the birthing guided imagery than I've previously been with the coping-with-anxiety guided imagery. Practicing being calm and relaxed every day has been pretty great, as I'm sure you can imagine, and focusing that relaxation and positivity on childbirth has helped me to look forward to the big day with joy and anticipation instead of dread, fear, and anxiety. In fact, after last week's Hypnobirthing class I felt so calm and confident that I was ready for Henry to come that same day!
  Just in case any of you mothers out there are thinking to yourselves, "yeah, that's all well and good for you, but just you wait..." or "you don't know how hard it is and shouldn't judge me for the way I gave birth..." I want to be sure you understand a couple of things: 1- I'm in no way judging or looking down on you! I'm not writing this blog post to make any of you feel upset or guilty, or anything negative about how you birthed your baby/babies. I haven't experienced what you have, nor have I experienced giving birth (yet), and  2- You're right, it may seem like it's all well and good for me to write about how great Hypnobirthing is without having proven it for myself, and maybe when it really comes down to it I'll be singing a different tune. I don't know- it's possible. I can't see the future. My birthing experience could go one of a thousand different ways. I could end up doing things very differently than I've been anticipating, and no one but God knows how that's gonna go down. Even if it is the case that things don't go according to plan and medical interventions are necessary, I think I'll still be really grateful for what I've learned in my Hypnobirthing classes. Instead of feeling increasingly terrified as the due date gets closer (which is exactly what happened before our classes), I'm actually looking forward to the big event. I've talked excitedly with Jeff (and Baby Henry) about how great it's going to be to have our baby in our arms so we can hold him and kiss him and just look at him, and the love that we have for each other and Baby Henry has increased as we've had those fun conversations. It feels so great to be happy and excited about the impending birth, instead of completely full of dread. I believe that Little Man picks up on how I'm feeling, and it's nice for him to feel so welcome and loved instead of dreaded and feared.
   Additionally, I feel like if unpleasant things are going to happen to me, they're going to happen to me-whether or not I've lost sleep constantly worrying about them. In fact, I believe that worrying about them only makes them worse, because not only has that unpleasant thing happened to me, but by the time it has, I've spent so much time being miserable about it that I haven't enjoyed my life! So I learn what I can, I keep myself informed (since I don't believe that keeping myself ignorant will help anything), but I don't worry about things going awry. So for the next 4-ish weeks, I'll prepare for and expect the best, and if that's not how it goes, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
   So there you go. Even if you're not a hippie like me, I think that Hypnobirthing is worth looking at. I especially think that guided imagery/self-hypnosis is worth looking at for dealing with the stresses/problems of everyday life. A lady named Belleruth Naparstek (rad name, right?) does a whole series of guided imagery CDs that you can find on amazon that cover everything from PTSD to Helping With Anger and Forgiveness to  Increasing Self-Confidence. She's pretty great and has helped me to cope with stress and anxiety over the past 2-ish years. I highly recommend her work.
  
 Are there any other hippies like me out there? Or am I the hippiest of all of my friends? :)

4-Year Anniversary

    Jeff and I celebrated our 4th anniversary yesterday! Wahoo! Jeff had this fantastic (and really romantic) idea of incorporating different family traditions from his Swedish ancestry and my German ancestry to make this anniversary really special. It's not technically a milestone year, but for us it's most definitely a milestone because it's our last anniversary without children! I know, we really already have a baby, but a baby in-utero isn't the same as a baby in our arms. Anyway, Jeff wrote a really great blog post about the whole anniversary, including details about the family traditions, so instead of re-writing it all here, you should definitely go over to Jeff's blog and read it for yourselves!
  The only thing missing from Jeff's post, however, is my perspective, so here you go: I thought that it was our best anniversary so far, and one that I'll remember for the rest of my life. It was beautiful, intimate, and romantic. It's hard to describe it beyond that, so that's the best I can do. :) I absolutely adore that Jeff Beatty and am really grateful that we found each other.
   Since I feel like putting the actual newspaper I made for Jeff on my blog wouldn't quite be right, I'll just post some of the pictures that I included instead:

Our first picture together, October 2007. Doesn't Jeff look so little and young?

He liked it so he put a ring on it! (March 2008)

This was taken at some point during our engagement. (March or April 2008)

My first trip to Jeff's hometown of Rawlins, Wyoming. We're 4-wheeling in this shot. (May 2008)

Our first Halloween party-both dressed as Michael Jackson. (October 2009)

Our most recent Halloween party, where we're obviously Spartan Cheerleaders. "Who's that Spartan in my teepee?" (October 2011)

Holi Festival, 2010

Jeff's graduation, 2010.

The Sirsi-Dynix Christmas party at La Caille (not as great as it's purported to be, by the way), December 2010.

Family pictures in St. George, October 2010.

Our "Calvin and Hobbes" Snowmen that we made with the Reschkes, December, 2010.

 

Me decorating our Christmas tree in my PJs, even though it's like 7pm, because I was 2 1/2 months pregnant and super sick. (December 2011)

Jeff about to open up his keyboard! December 2010.

Pregnant!!! November 2nd, 2011.

Oakland A's Game, April 2012.

Harvest Restaurant, Valentine's Day 2012.

 And of course, some of our beautiful family pictures from last September:

   It has been the best 4 years of my life for sure, and I expect that the next however-many years will keep getting better and better.