Laugh. Love. Learn.

My friend Nikki takes pictures.

Sweet baby Jaxson.
More to come…

i’ve actually gotten a lot done lately.
one thing i’d been wanting to do was paint a polar bear for my youngest Tech volunteer, Landon Jones. Landon’s room is khaki & blue with white bears. i finally found an adult polar bear i liked, and freehanded him into a little polar bear cub. it turned out pretty cool; check it out.

teeny tiny cookies for teeny tiny babies…
(as compared to a mini-reese’s cup, ‘cause i couldn’t find a quarter. there are 88 cookies on that tray; they’re about quarter-sized.)

so pretty. then i made big stars for the babies’ grown-ups!
(and my new personal favorite: the star with the star cut-out.)

our nails are ready.
what are you doing tomorrow?
i think you should go visit my friend Shawn at Classy Nails & Tan, Braselton. (beside the Ninja Steakhouse on 211.) mmmhmmm. pretty.

i made some rockstar teacher gifts.

i’ve seriously decided baking and cooking meals for people is my love language
so…if you get this, it means i think you’re the bomb.

(chocolate covered pretzels, millionaries (a.k.a. turtles…pecans and caramel), white chocolate covered ritz crackers with peanut butter, homemade reese’s cups, toasted slivered almonds in white chocolate, and white chocolate covered christmas oreos (the ones with the red icing!))

i got to hang out with my mama, and we ordered special guittard chocolates online that contain no hydrogenated oils. oooh yeah. fun times.

***UPDATE***
Want to make candy? Here are the recipes.

why i lived 27 years without knowing these existed, but now that i know…i’m going to have to exercise some serious self-control. they involve the almighty pecan!

here’s the recipe.

and here’s a link to the most rockstar breakfast item ever.
the pictures will make you drool.
mmmmmm

It’s my month for “teacher appreciation” snacks for Tanner’s teachers. Her teachers are SO awesome; I seriously don’t know what I’d do without them. Obviously I’d rather be at home with her, but at least it’s bearable knowing she’s being well taken care of. I guarantee you they’re the hardest workers in the entire system, too. Wow. Can you imgaine having five Tanner’s in a room? Quints? I can’t. So — since I speak cake — I gave it my best shot. It’s pretty cool…thin dark chocolate cakes from scratch with orange icing in between the layers. Think massive halloween oreo…but cake.

which reminds me…Halloween Oreos are far superior to regular Oreos. Holy yumminess. I love them! (Hence the inspiration.)

holy goodness. this is IT. i accidentally discovered a revolution in southern cuisine. hot pecan pie. cold sharp cheddar cheese. seriously, if i ever had a restaurant, it would become my signature dish.

the combination of flavors, textures, and temperatures is astounding.

i’m betting heather would like it…homegirl used to love her some shredded cheese.
i remember her eating it for dinner when we went to FCA camp. every night. good times.

look at this stuff; isn’t it neat? i spent the weekend implementing the Little Mermaid theme for my favorite 4-year-old’s birthday party. the cake:

check out the piping…i saw Duff do pretty swirls and thought i’d try it…

cupcakes, anyone? with edible purple glitter, of course.

introducing Sebastian the Lobster and his Flounder-esque cookie friends…
(mmm okay. so i didn’t have time to make fish. but they’re the right color and they’ve got stripes…)

did you know how difficult it is to find a lobster cookie cutter? let’s go with impossible. i called 11 stores and then Danielle went to 10…and she finally found a copper lobster mold. which i promptly filled with red rice krispie treats. to the right you see the “under the sea” jello environments…complete with sand (crushed shortbread cookies,) umbrellas, swedish fish swimming in the berry blue jello ocean, and fish washed up on shore.

the island that ariel lives on. (bahahaha)

we need to walk and run and play all day in the sun to work off all those desserts. goodness. and that, my friends, is how we got our mermaid on.

this week has been unusually busy as i attempt to get my ducks in a row to go back to teach fulltime, but we did enjoy celebrating Nick’s 27th birthday! he’s finally as old as i am…old man. he wanted a chocolate cheesecake with an oreo crust, and i saved about a cup of batter without the chocolate, put it in a pastry bag, and wrote happy birthday in the batter…because cheesecake and icing just seems awkward. so…can that be creative chaos? probably not. but it’s all i got this week. holla.

what a hottie