Cupcakes.

When your three year old digs the muffin tins out of the cupboard, brings them to you, and asks you to make "brown cupcakes" with "candy spinkles," what choice do you have?

My hands were tied.

After I had dug the double boiler out of the back of the cupboard and started melting chocolate, Joe suddenly changed his mind and decided he wanted "white cupcakes" instead. Luckily, he came to his senses when I passed him the whisk from the buttercream frosting. Believe me, child, when it comes to cupcakes, "brown" is so much better than "white"! Disaster averted!

Then we decorated the cupcakes. Joe helped apply the frosting and of course, the "spinkles." Some of the spinkles did not make it onto the cupcakes, as you can see. We're not going to get any awards for presentation for these, but we had fun!

I used the "Dark Chocolate Cupcake" recipe from Cooks Illustrated (you need a subscription to view their recipes, but I gotta say, we get our money's worth from our Cooks Illustrated online subscription and I heartily recommend it) and topped these with dark chocolate buttercream frosting made using their "Easy Chocolate Buttercream" recipe. They turned out very dark chocolate-y, as promised, and delicious!

Joe insisted on putting candles on his cupcake. Three blue candles. Because he's three, of course! So we all sang "A Very Merry Unbirthday To You!," he blew out his candles, and then he tucked into his cupcake and pronounced it "nummy nummy!"

One month!

Bloggy friends rock.

A couple months ago, fellow blogger Laura posted this awesome First 12 Month Baby Vest Set on her sewing/crafting/baking blog, Craftstorming. I loved this idea, but not having a digital cutter (or even a decent computer printer!) it probably wasn't going to happen at my house. So you can imagine how pleased I was when the super generous Laura made me my own set of iron-on transfers and sent it all the way from England (in the middle of the Olympics, no less)! She also sent detailed instructions on how to successfully iron on the transfers, which made the process easy, fast, and foolproof (especially important given that I am stuck under a baby most of the time and can only work in very short bursts during Maggie naps).

And so I present the first installment in a twelve month photo set* ... 

Month 1 is paired with yellow polkadot Knit Newborn Pants. Maggie has finally grown into her handmade newborn pants! (Well, I still have to fold up the bottoms a little bit.) And yes, that's Christine's quilt again. What can I say? It's my favorite backdrop for baby photos!

Yay! Thank you Laura!

* I know. I can't believe she's one month old already!

Summertime.

Things have been pretty quiet around here. While the rest of the nation suffers through terrible heat waves, we're just pleased to have a bit more sun than usual. I haven't sewed a lot, but I've been cooking up a storm trying to keep up with our garden produce. The summer squash season isn't over yet, and the tomato and cucumber seasons have just begun! Frankly, I'm a bit overwhelmed right now. One of these days, I'll come home and I'll have to machete back tomato plants to get to my front door.

I grew all of this!

Meanwhile, baby Maggie is just growing and growing. Check out her chin(s)!

I made the bloomers.

The first couple times Joe held Maggie, we ran for the camera and asked him to pose for a photo. So now Joe first asks to hold Maggie, and then insists that we "take a picture!" Ha.

Yeah, I made Joe's t-shirt and my dress/nightie. Maggie is in her "Cancer" PJs.

It's hard to believe (and definitely a little bittersweet), but Maggie is almost a month old, and weighs well over nine pounds now! I keep hinting that, really, she doesn't need to grow that fast, but she's not listening. It is fun to watch her grow relative to the hexagrams in the beautiful quilt Christine made for her.

Christine made that quilt, and I made Maggie's pants.

Whoever said that newborns don't smile hasn't met Margaret Joy. She comes by her middle name honestly.

Hey, I made that adorable little girl! :-)

And she's still mullet-tastic (I think it's even growing!).