we did it!

Over 500 cupcakes walked out of my parents’ door yesterday!  We even had anxious customers arrive early, carting them off by the dozens.  It was a wonderfully busy and crazy day.  And we were all ready for bed at about 7, including some cranky kiddos.  When I finally fell into bed last night I was filled to the brim with warm fuzzies over making our goal.  And over all the sweet souls who came for the sake of my little Chinos and their water buffalo.  Thank you so much everyone who came and to those who donated from afar!  You have made our Christmas and then some!

My sister, mother and sister-in-law also all worked themselves to the bone, icing cupcakes all day long, mixing, washing, serving hot chocolate and packaging up cupcakes in beautifully tied boxes, confirming once again that I have the best family ever!  Thanks so much for always being willing to be roped in to my projects!

cupcakes cupcakes

Just in case you aren’t planning on coming,

here’s a little more enticement to attend our cupcake sale tomorrow!

chocolate peppermint and very dark chocolate

chocolate peppermint and very dark chocolate

baking just for you

one of many little helpers

Oh, and if you ordered a large number of cupcakes, we would love for you to bring your cake pan, cookie sheet or tray to carry them away, but if you would like them wrapped up in a box instead, we would be happy to do that for $2.

pretty christmas cupcake box

cupcakes for sale

photo by Whitney Loibner

Monday December 22nd

3-5pm

at the Loibner House

Vanilla Buttercream

Red Velvet

Chocolate Vanilla

Chocolate Peppermint

Very Dark Chocolate

Cupcakes will be $2 each

Hot Cocoa or Juice 50 cents

Special Orders for large quantities gladly accepted.  Email me ahead of time so we can be certain to accommodate your cupcake needs.

photo by Whitney Loibner

All proceeds from the sale will be going towards the purchase of water buffalo for the Heifer Project.

We are trying to raise enough money to buy one water buffalo per Chino child, and there are four of those buggers, so that makes one thousand dollars!

Our family is also making this a part of our give away weekend for our church, since we will be baking over the weekend.

If you do not live in the area or for other reasons cannot attend our cupcake sale, you can still participate!

You can donate any amount of money to the Heifer Chino House account, and then email me to let me know that you did so, and I will happily send you the recipes for the cupcakes!

Then you can make your own!

Or join our team and have your own sale because everyone should have a water buffalo.

Merry Christmas!

not in my dna

I don’t really like big fancy Christmas parties.  Or any parties that involve dressing up, wearing cute (read: skimpy) clothes in winter weather, talking to people I don’t know very well or leaving my house at night.  I realize that admitting this lack of party girl attitude makes me seem old and not very fun, which are both true to a certain extent.  However, it’s not that I lack Christmas spirit.  I asked if I could please stay home and let the babysitter go with Taido so I could read Christmas stories and make cocoa and cookies with all the children, of which there would be about 10.

Since Taido wasn’t excited about that plan, I resolved to get my grumpy self ready for a party.  This involved figuring out what to wear, a process that usually consists of picking up my jeans, icebreakers and wool socks off of the floor.  And while icebreakers are quite practical for winter nights, they don’t really qualify for evening wear.

Earlier that same week I had remembered that somewhere in a tub in the garage I had a dressy sort of sweater I bought in Venice when Taido and I were there for our anniversary several years ago (sigh).  I also remembered that it was gray.  I think it was packed away because a) I had trouble figuring out what to wear with it and b) I never dress up.  So when I went to Target to buy whole grain Goldfish crackers (they are the only store in town that carries them in the big box…just so you know), I put it on my list to look around for a black skirt.  Well, I found a gray wool skirt at Target that was 75% off  and in my haste over finding a dressy skirt for only $5, I snatched it up and completely missed that all of a sudden I was going to be trying to match gray with, um, another gray.

I only realized that this was a problem when I started trying to get dressed for the party.  I dug out my Italy sweater and put it on the bed with the skirt.  Gray and another entirely different gray.  Really?  And right here is the explanation for why I usually just let Whitney buy all my clothes, except for camping gear, of course, which the gearhead handles.

Unfortunately for me, Whitney was really busy taking lots of pictures and does not (my assumption) have time for my little fashion challenges.  So, I dug around in the tub and found yet another sweater just like the gray one, but it was pink.  Why did I buy two identical sweaters in Venice?  Friends, I do not even know.  Something about it being the end of our vacation and trying to get enough gifts to go around and really I just have no idea but now I am thinking How about that pink sweater with the gray skirt?  Can you even wear pink with dreads? I thought a long time about the dreadlocks before I actually got them, but one detail I overlooked is that they are sort of a permanent accessory with which not everything goes.  At this point I decided to just go ahead and try the whole outfit on, and so I started to look for my black tights. I bought not one but TWO pairs of black tights in October because I can never find any and I wanted to be SURE to have some this year when the weather turned cold.  Yes I did.  I bought those black tights and then I came home and promptly HID THEM FROM MYSELF.  At least that is what I was thinking when I was dumping everything out of the tubs in my closet looking for them.  They were not in either of the shoe boxes nicely labeled tights.

Of course, this is the moment that I should have called Whitney regardless of her busy schedule and the fact that even at that very moment she was taking pictures somewhere.  If I had interrupted her photo shoot, she would have at the very least said to me, Alison, whatever you do, do NOT put on your pajamas. Which is exactly what I did do.  In the pile of clothing in my room, my soft pajama pants were entirely too inviting.  We will wrap you up and comfort you, they said.  So of course, I put them on and then I walked straight out of that bedroom with the exploding closet and put on the tea kettle, which was downstairs far far away from the messy reminders that a party was looming over my head.

inspired christmas

I’ve been fighting the crazy Christmas machine this week.  Not the one that jumps out of advertisements.  The one that lives inside my head.  It tells me that I’ll never ever get away from being in bondage to the Christmas frenzy, no matter what I do.  If I’m not full on caving into the pressure, Your children are going to hate you one day for this…just give in.  Everyone is asking what they want Santa to bring them, even the dental hygienist, for crying out loud.  You can just put that on your credit card, then I’m enslaved by my self-righteous position of fighting the Christmas machine, Shopping is of the devil. I’m surrounded by materialism and greed. It’s all out. of. control.

From either side of the Christmas curve (or as I’m swinging back and forth), I’m learning that the Christmas season is just hard on mamas, even this mama, which is not easy for me to admit.  My own dear mama spent a lot of my Christmas seasons in a bit of a funk (read: in bed with the covers pulled over her head), a state which we always chocked up to her being a grinch.  Which just isn’t fair.  Now that I experience Christmas as a mama, I know that it is a whole lot harder than the songs make it seem to strike that perfect balance at Christmas.  The balance between Christmas joy and Christmas restraint. The balance between enjoying the moment and feeling frazzled, or between trying to survive the moment and feeling guilty for not enjoying it (middle school Christmas band concerts come to mind).

My current effort towards landing somewhere close to joy (and sanity) this Christmas is to keep focusing back on our church’s give away weekend next week.  There is so much beautiful-ness going on at our church right now that I cannot even begin to express it here, but everyone has been encouraged to take part and every story I hear is another reminder to me of how much I really do want to celebrate Christmas…the kind that is all about sacrifice and singing and eating and blessing others with my minute presence on this planet.

So here’s our little part.

Cole, Mary Polly and Ben have decided on a water buffalo for Christmas.  Maybe even more than one.  I attribute this choice solely to Larry the Cucumber, even though they are too cool to watch him anymore.

We’re going to make cupcakes to raise money for our water buffalo.  Not just any cupcakes.  Really wonderful, homemade-from-secret-recipes-from-my-brilliant-baker-sister cupcakes.  Even better, I think that my sister will even be here to assist in the cupcake sale, which will mean that our cupcakes will not just be yummy, they will also be pretty.  Details coming soon on when and where you can both do and eat goodness at the same time.

Also, a friend wrote me and told me that someone else is doing what we’re doing for Christmas.  That makes me so happy.  And it helps me feel just a little weensy bit less crazy.  Always a good thing.  She was inspired by this video.  If you haven’t already seen it, maybe you will be too.

cinnamon muffins

I made these muffins for Taido to take to work this week and I have had several requests for the recipe, so here it is!  You probably have everything you need to make these for breakfast tomorrow!  Enjoy!

Cinnamon Muffins

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

Combine 1/2 the sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and baking powder. In a small bowl, combine 6 tablespoons butter, remaining 1/2 cup sugar, buttermilk and egg. Whisk and fold into flour mixture. Stir until just combined.

Pour batter into greased muffin tins. Bake 8 minutes for mini muffins and 15 minutes for regular muffins at 375 degrees. Allow to cool slightly. Then dip muffin tops in remaining melted butter, then in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Makes 24 mini muffins or 12 regular muffins

gingered carrot cookies

I made these a few weeks ago, and I think they just look like autumn.  Plus they remind me of carrot cake, which I like a lot.  They are from Dorie Greenspan’s monstrous cookbook on baking, which has proved to be a very delectable purchase.  My love for ginger is pretty much second only to my love for garlic, so I ended up trying these because I was searching the index of this book for the answer to a ginger craving.  Now that I have made these, I can give my full attention to my chocolate craving…

Ginger Carrot Cookies

from Baking by Dorie Greenspan

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks) at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar – packed
1 large egg
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 cup golden raisins*
½ cup roughly chopped walnuts*

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat and set aside.

Whisk together flour, nutmeg, ginger, salt and baking powder. Beat butter on medium speed until creamy. Add both sugars and beat till smooth. I used a stand mixer for this and the whole thing comes together very quickly. Add one egg to the butter and sugar mixture and beat for another 2 minutes.

Reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add in the dry ingredients ( in three stages) and vanilla. Once the mixture comes together, add in shredded carrots , nuts, coconut and raisins. Dough will be thick.

Place tablespoons of dough on the baking sheet, leave about one inch between each cookie. I used a regular sized ice cream scoop for the job instead of a tablespoon and I like the uniform sized cookies. ( and it bakes evenly too).

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the tops are brown. Cool cookies completely on a rack before storing.

*I don’t really like raisins so I used 1 ½ cups walnuts instead.

thankful for my summer

…especially right about now, because it is cold outside.  It is the kind of cold that makes me want to stay in bed for a very long time, and read all about my wonderful summer with my family.  Around thanksgiving, people often ask you to share what you are thankful for this year and when I actually hear myself saying out loud that I got to take off for three whole months and travel to Canada, camping all over with my precious family, I realize how incredibly fortunate I am, even if I wasn’t voicing that gratitude for every minute of those three months.  Especially those minutes when it was raining, and there were a lot of those.  But still.  The gift of that time, that trip, that great adventure is one we will all remember for years and years, and now in the midst of December crazy, I am loving remembering those slow, simple days of summer.

Here are a few of my favorites.

the grand tetons

abbotsford farms

wild oregon cherries

shakespeare festival

blog hijacker

thankful for him

photo by Whitney Loibner

Ben says of Taido that he is a pirate, a spy, a superhero and a ninja.

I think he’s just really cute.  Although he can do that magical thing on the computer where he sends my documents through space from my laptop to the printer.  That’s kinda superhero-ish.

thankful for a little down time

…in a beautiful place.

I realize that Thanksgiving was last week, but I had more thankfulness to share.  I was just too busy doing absolutely NOTHING in a place far far away from the internet.   I am having a little trouble jumping back in now that my body has adjusted to sitting in my pajamas in front of a wood stove with a book until about noon, but I figure by Wednesday or so I will catch back up.  In the meantime, expect more gratefulness.  Because who doesn’t need a little thankful with the holidays breathing down our necks?