Random goings on!

We bought a Christmas cactus in honor of family and friends living in warmer climates where these beautiful plants thrive!! =)We love and miss you all!!

I'm always looking for different things to feed Averie for lunch...we seem to get in a rut of pasta many days. Our pediatrician reccomends waiting until at least 2years if not 3 to introduce peanut butter. So, on our weekly trip to Trader Joe's we found this great alternative...Sunflower Seed butter! Averie seems to like it - she can eat it on one piece of bread in strips(if she doesn't take a too big bite that gets stuck and then spit out of her mouth! haha) I've been pretty excited about it - nice to have another choice! =)

Dave's treasury group had a 'holiday food fest' day with their whole 41st floor so I was going to make him this awesome Ho Ho cake-yummy chocolate cake w/a whipped cream filling and a chocolate ganache frosting. So, early Monday morning I got to work, making three layers of chocolate cake from scratch - pretty easy just time consuming. Amazingly our oven seemed to even cook them ok-sometimes it runs hot so I was really worried anyway. But then after taking them out and setting them on the stove to cool one of them had a 'dent'! I figured I could hide that in the middle somewhere...but then....following the recipe directions to let the cakes cool for 10min.....yep, half the cake stuck to the pans when I tried to release them..not happy! I talked to Dave and a factor that we hadn't even considered was that it would need to be refrigerated and that was not an option at all! Aaarrgghh!! So much for that cake - but thankfully it eliminated my stress over it =). I put the ruined cakes in the freezer for a future trifle - maybe that will work out ok! I ended up making cream filled cupcakes which he said were a hit...

Love this 'Christmas Cutie' shirt...apparently the flash on our camera is too bright - we get a lot of closed eyes in our shots!!