"would you like a sample tray?"................!?!?!?

spent most of the day baking...which is always fun.  piper's been quite sick the last few days, but today she was in much better spirits!  we skipped church, so as not to get all the other kiddos in the nursery sick and snotty, because piper really does like to share.

anywho, i stopped at a cute little place in belmont called the gourmet food barn the other day because my friend told them that i make awesome cookies (thanks!), and they said...hm, we love awesome cookies!  will you make some for us!??!  so i offered to bring them a sample tray...then i spent most of the day figuring out what exactly a PiperBellies sample tray actually is.  turns out its a pound cake cupcake or 2, vegan chocolaty chocolate cookies, coconut chocolate chip cookies, chocolate and classic shortbread, lavender heart cookies, and chocolate whoopie pies with a cream cheese filling.  YUM!  i, sadly, am vegan this month so couldn't eat thousands of spoonfuls of cream cheese filling like i wanted to...so i had 2 vegan cookies instead.  anywho, i'll be bringing the sample tray over on tuesday morning, and will be posting pictures of everything tomorrow...all of them will be available for anyone to order....going on the permanent PiperBellies menu.  if you think of anything else you think should be on a sample tray...or on the permanent menu....you should tell me.

for savannah

well, piper is sick.  she has a terrible cold, and is quite miserable.  had a hard time breathing last night, but with a lot of time sitting in the bathroom with the hot hot shower running trying to steam out some of that mucus...and saline solution.  which she hates.  who wouldn't?  she was up basically all night.  poor baby.  she's feeling a little better today, but not much.

anywho, thought i'd post real quick while she's taking a nap...finally.  aaaaaaaand as soon an i typed that i heard a little voice from upstairs.

BUT this is a cake i made for Savannah...she wanted a white cake with white frosting and pink and yellow roses...so here it is!

eternal sunshine.

Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.

life.........

so...maybe i don't have the most exciting life.  i've lived in new england for my whole life.  i don't have a million friends, but i have a handful of really great ones, i have an amazing daughter, i went to college for a while, i'm taking some classes, i have my own baking business, which i love, i live with my parents, i don't party, i do pretty much the same things all the time, but i like those things!  i like to make dinner with my friends, i like to go to portsmouth, i like to drink coffee, i like to eat burritos, i like hanging out and laughing...is this so wrong?

should i feel guilty for not traveling the world and going to the olympics and having a bunch of half friends, and eating gourmet meals, and blablabla.  i don't even know if i would like those things.  sometimes i like to be "adventurous", but not all the time...i think my life is pretty adventurous in general.  i'm a mom, for goodness sakes!  what could be more of an adventure than that?  i love my piper, i love my friends, i love my family, i love to bake...i think these things are exciting and they are what i love.  i don't think we should have to feel sub-par or mediocre for doing what we love.

and that is what i think. 

all you need is love...?

i've been thinking a lot about love and whatnot today for some reason.  has anyone noticed that the theme of most love movies (chick flicks, mostly), goes like this.....fall in love!  oh no...don't fall in love because it hurts and it sucks and its hard....and then....aaawwww, everything is okay because we're in L.O.V.E.  which generally annoys me because this is not how real life works, and sometimes the person you want to be with doesn't want to be with you and someone you don't want to be with does want to be with you, or sometimes you want to be with each other, but there's just no way it could work, or maybe you want to be with each other but the timing is off, or...blablabla!  life is not a chick flick.  obviously.  and this is okay.  its just that we live in this culture that promotes that these movies are reality, so when you're not in a perfect relationship with an abercrombie model and you don't wake up looking like you've just been airbrushed, you feel like there's something wrong with you!  well, there is not.  the fact is that you are just a real person...not living in a movie.

the good news is that there are real love stories.  people do fall in love, and live happily ever after.  we should not give up hope, just because we aren't a 16 year old disney princess with long flowing hair and a 12 inch waist being kissed by prince charming while forest animals sweep the floors and do the dishes.  this is the real world, but maybe there can be unrealistically happy endings here too.  gosh i hope so.

phew!

so, good news.  i went to burrito me today (tracy and i drove 40 minutes just to get a burrito....so worth it.), and when we walked in the door, low and behold, there was my basket of cookies WITH ONLY ONE LEFT!  ohmygosh i was so nervous that no one was going to buy them, but you did!!!  thank you thank you thank you!  i hope you enjoyed them eating them even more than i enjoyed making them!  so, needless to say that they ordered more, and i've just spent some time baking in the kitchen ( i have to bake out of the commercial kitchen at the camp that i live at...they are so nice to let me use it...but i have to wait till they're done with it, so i can't start to bake until like 8:30 pm.), and i am now waiting for my cookies to cool so i can package them for a delivery tomorrow!  gosh i love doing this.

in other news...piper is a crazy person!  she is crawling all over the place, and thinking everything is funny, and being really stubborn, and just...wow.  her personality just keeps growing and growing.  i love her so much.  she had a little cold, but is being quite a trooper.  i had to work today and my mom is in virginia with my brothers, so auntie tracy babysat for me all morning/afternoon.  piper was thrilled.

anywho....my cookies could be cooled now, so i'm off to package them!

p.s. every time i am able to sit down and watch the olympics, male figure skating is on.  EVERY TIME.  where is the snowboarding and downhill and speed skating and manliness?!?!?!   i just have bad timing.  no offense to all you male figure skaters reading my blog.

tofutti.

being vegan for a month isn't just about eating nothing but tofutti ice cream sandwiches....but this is a major perk.

will someone please BURRITO ME?

SO...i get this email the other day from the person who is opening a new burrito shop in laconia called burrito me, and he says...hey, we'd really like to sell your baked goods.  what do you think??  well, i think that is fantastic!  so we met, he ate some cookies, loved them, and now tomorrow they will be selling PiperBellies on their opening day, just in case anyone wants some dessert to wash down their delicious burrito!  i'm quite excited about this.  people are SO psyched about the opening of burrito me, and i'm really blessed to be part of it!  tomorrow they will be getting vegan chocolaty chocolate cookies and coconut chocolate chip cookies.  if this goes well and is something that they want to continue, i will be experimenting with some more mexican flavors, such as lime, spicy chocolate, and chocolate orange.  its gonna be great!

if you happen to go to burrito me in the next few days, this is the display of PiperBellies baked goods that you  will see!   OH and also the new business cards!

i'm working on getting some stickers and whatnot to make this process easier and more pleasing to the eye.  this all happened on such short notice...but i'm still REALLY excited.

in other news, i have decided to be vegan for a month.  i feel like i need sort of a system cleanse and to lose some weight.  i will miss butter the most.  cheese second.  eggs third.  after the month, i'll probably just try to keep dairy out of my diet because i think that is whats giving me migraines.  hm.  we'll see.  today was my first vegan day, and i survived, and actually quite enjoyed myself....though it was quite a test of self control to NOT eat any of the coconut chocolate chip cookie dough.  luckily, i was also making vegan cookies.  coincidence?  probably not.

lovely.

ugh valentines day.  in the days building up to it, i usually dread it and think its going to be the worst day ever.  which it sometimes is, because either there's tons of pressure for the significant other to pull of something fantastic, or at least something that you actually like, which he never does, or because your sulking because of loneliness or whatever.  BUT...turns out when you're single, its way fun!  friends came over, we made vegan pizza and cake and ate candy...and did what we usually do...hung out and did nothing because we're awesome. 

today was piper's last first holiday!  i attempted to make her a crocheted heart, but it turned out looking like a devil mouse...so i didn't finish it.  shoulda just bought her something.  oh well.  sometimes it really is the thought that counts.  went to church, went on a date with tracy, made my last valentine's day piperbellies deliveries, had another date with tracy...oh and josh.  and lindsay even came!  we had quite the bash.  wore some red, piper wore lots of pink.  ya know.  we're festive.

overall it was a pretty fun day.  full of love.  the way its supposed to be.  no pressure or boring dinner dates or getting dressed up and listening to love songs and why do you still not know that i don't like this kind of thing....and BLABLABLA.

just friends, family, baby, and food.  love love love love love and love.

hope your valentines day was just as LOVEly.

11:56

i have 4 minutes to make this blog for friday...quick recap.

i went to lunch with a friend, which was way fun.  went to coffee with a friend at starbucks....and my sweater still smells like coffee...as most of my clothes do permanently.  piper is still crawling and making a funny new noise with her tongue.  watch twilight because we thought it was the right thing to do while eating pizza...turns out it was not...did someone really think it would be a good idea to make a movie out of such a terrible book?  not that i've read the book, but really...it was bad.  and hilarious.  talked about how our lives should be different and we should do what we want and never have to work anymore unless its at something we want to do.

that is it...pretty much.  have to work in the am, so...goodnight!

ooooooooooooooooh no.

oh no its been 2 weeks since i've blogged.  this should not be this hard.

SO.  update on my very exciting life.  piper turned 11 months old this week and FINALLY figured out how to crawl yesterday!  this was quite the event.  she would have gotten more crawling in if she didn't have to stop and sit so that she could clap every time we said "yay!", which was often.  the thing that finally made her crawl was the giant corduroy book i was reading her from across the room...she crawled to it and gave corduroy a kiss!  oh man.  is she amazing or what?

i got my business cards!!  they are way cute and i want to give them to every person i see...which i pretty much have.  a few people even asked if i had business cards...and i said...AS A MATTER OF FACT, I DO!  pretty soon i'll start leaving them with random boys at bars...helloooo...i am single AND i bake things.  here's my card.  smooth.  k, maybe not.

as some of you may know, sunday is valentines day...so people have been ordering things and i have been baking them!  the shortbread was the number one seller.....everyone loved them.  i shipped some things, and discovered that the lavender cookies are too fragile to ship....but still taste good as crumbs.  my mom group at my church ordered the red velvet cupcakes for our valentines meeting on wednesday morning...they looked great and tasted even better, if i do say so myself!  people raved and asked for business cards, and i even got 2 orders for birthday cakes from it!  gosh i would love to only bake and work on my PiperBellies all the time.  someday, someday.

i have been trying to work out after work in the afternoon while my mom is watching piper because i am fat from all this baking.  luckily there's a cute boy that works there who is pretty much the only reason that i go.  well, him and my love handles.

cake decorating class is way fun.  made a VERY chocolate cake last week with roses all over it.  it was kind of pretty, but kind of messy.  no pictures because i'm embarrassed...but it was DELISH.

i can't think of anything else exciting that has happened....not that all of these things are particularly exciting...but, ya know.  such is life.

i will be posting again SOON.  if i don't...call me and yell at me.  tell me to go to the gym, while you're at it.

brownie fail...again.

it seems that i have an enemy in making brownies.  first, it took me like a million tries to find a brownie recipe that i liked, and THEN i burn a batch of brownie cupcakes...gosh.  amateur move.  i just set the timer for the wrong time.  TWICE.  what was going on while i was doing this??  oh well.  now, as i wait for my second batch of brownies, which will not be burnt to come out of the oven...i have time to blog about a cake that i made for an order today.

it was a chocolate cake (my gramma's recipe....its perfect.), with chocolate ganache frosting...which is just chocolate ganache cooled and then whipped into oblivion until it become a fluffy, rich, chocolaty beauty.  THEN i made a simple chocolate buttercream.  THEN i sandwiched a layer of mini chocolate chips between a layer of chocolate buttercream and a layer of chocoalte ganache BETWEEN the 2 cakes 8 inch rounds.  THEN i covered the outside of that with the ganache frosting and kind of smoothed it and THEN  topped that with dollops of chocolate buttercream topped with those mini chocolate chips, and gave it a hem of the chocolate chips too.  oh man, did it look good!  it was the first cake i had made with some of my new cake decorating knowledge outside of class.  anywho.  now that i've probably bored most of you to death with a description of a CAKE....here's a few picture.  I HOPE THEY LOVED IT!!!

also....

i ordered business cards today.  woot!

extra cream cheese frosting is a gift from heaven.

SO i had some extra cream cheese frosting...and by some i mean A TON.  apparently i did some math drastically wrong.  i know...me?  do math wrong?  almost unbelievable.  anyways...so i decided that i needed to make something with them so i stopped eating spoonfulls of it when i remembered it was there.  solution?  carrot cake cupcakes.  martha stewart recipe...altered to my liking...and they were DELISH. coconut and craisins IN the cupcake...no walnuts...and toasted coconut on top of the cream cheese frosting.  yumm-o.  brought them to my friend tiffany's for a snack / after feast dessert, and THEN i ate another one to celebrate LOST with tracy.  so i ate 2 cupcakes in one day.  plus some cream cheese frosting.  totally worth it.  i took these pictures really quickly with a baby at my ankles, so ....ya know.

i'm back...and i brought cake!

helloo!  sorry for the sort of longish absence.  i could blame it on the fact that i live in the woods and haven't had internet for the past few days....but really its only been 2 days, and the real reason is that i kind of just slacked.  apparently its really hard for me to stay awake past 10 lately.  apparently not sleeping for the last year catches up to you...eventually.  and hard.

anywho.  i've been getting some valentine's day orders, thanks to you guys, which is VERY exciting for me!  i have so much fun making things for you, because i just know that you will enjoy eating them as much as i loved making them :)  "from my heart to your belly."  i think that should be my slogan.  what do you think?

anywho....i had my second cake decorating class today!  oh man, am i learning a lot already.  its going to be fabulous.  these are some pictures of my first cake in class!  its a white cake with Italian meringue buttercream frosting and apricot preserves.  its tasty, though i am not a HUGE fan of the frosting...it is very rich and tastes like butter.  which now that i type it, sounds DELICIOUS.  but...eh.  sure looks super pretty though, and is really great to work with...very smooth...see?

 

sorry about the lazy photography...these are my, "i get home from class at 10:30 and am sleepy..." pictures.