Mother's Day Weekend Recap

I had a great Mother's Day weekend! Here's a little recap!

First thing Saturday morning, Mom, Emma, and I went to Honey Grove to visit my mom's parents, my Grandma and Grandpa. We visited with them a little while, then came back home in time to go to lunch with my MIL, Sherri. After lunch, Sherri took Emma home with her while I finished up the cupcakes and cake balls that I posted about earlier.

Later that day, we headed to Cuthand! We had a family get together to welcome Chance home! He's officially out of the Marines!

Kendra and Chance

Nakota showed out for the camera!

The Old Folks

Memaw (Peggy), Aunt Shirley, Uncle Don, and Aunt Sis (Valerie)

Emma playing with Aunt TeeTee.

Sunday was Mother's Day. It was so great! Clinton gave me the day "off". He took care of Emma and the house for me all day. I didn't change a diaper, fix a sippy cup, clean anything, or cook! I just relaxed and spent time with Emma and Clinton.

Mother's Day Gifts

I know Mother's Day is tomorrow, but both my mom and mom-in-law have already received their gifts, so I can post about it. I am doing it today because I am planning to take tomorrow OFF and don't want to do it then! :)

I went crafty this year with the gifts.

They are only a teeny bit different... hand prints are going in opposite directions and one picture is cropped in a little more, I didn't mean to print two different ones, but I figured it didn't make enough difference to waste the ink to print another.

Here's a close up of one of them...

The corner says "Mother's Day 2011"

I, also, had a mini brag books made for each of them. I titled it "See How I've Grown" and it has pictures of Emma from the past year. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I got it on SeeHere.com. I used a coupon code deal they had going on for Mother's Day and got both for $5 and free shipping!

I think both of our moms enjoyed their gifts. Emma made them a drawing, too! We just wanted to show our moms that we love and appreciate them!

Baking

My post from FB last night: 
"I love to cook, and everything I cook doesn't always turn out perfect, or even good at all, but I gotta say my homemade red velvet cake is AH-mazing!"


A friend of mine asked for the recipe, so I decided to post it here for anyone who wants it!

 Red Velvet Cake (originally from an old Pastor Wives Cookbook!)

1 ½  c. sugar

2 eggs

½  c. butter flavored cooking oil (I just use veg. oil)

1 c. butter, softened

1 1-oz. bottle of red food coloring plus 1 bottle of buttermilk or water

1 tsp. vanilla

2 ½ c. AP flour

2 tsp. cocoa

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. soda

1 c. buttermilk

Cream sugar and eggs. Add oil and butter, mix. Add red food coloring and fill bottle with buttermilk or water and add to above mixture with vanilla. Mix well. Sift flour, cocoa, salt, and soda together. Add alternately with buttermilk to above mixture. Pour into greased and floured pans, bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 mins. Cool and top with cream cheese frosting!

NOTE: Really watch and take out of oven as soon as it is done, because it can dry out quick! 

The first part of my FB post mentioned things not turning out so good...

Before I made the red velvet cupcakes, I made some box mix yellow cupcakes. Well, I burned them. Sometimes, if I don't watch it, things on the bottom rack in my oven will burn. So I had several cupcakes with black/brown bottoms. Clinton suggested I turn them into cake balls, but I didn't have any chocolate to dip them in. I thought about it and remembered that I had some peanut butter chips in the pantry. I dug them out and looked up a peanut butter glaze recipe. So I made some cake balls using yellow cake, chocolate frosting, and peanut butter glaze. This was my first time making cake balls, so I'm not sure I even did it right, but I do know one thing...

THEY AREN'T PRETTY!

I ran out of glaze on these!

Daddy's Little Helper

Mower got too close here!

It's always really cute to see them together, but honestly, I was just relieved she was shadowing someone else for a while!