Spring time means tulips, and it’s definitely spring, so I thought tulip cupcakes would be in order. Lucky for me, I have a wonderful friend Gloria who is also the talent behind The Art of Cake.

I won’t give you a tutorial on how to make and ice the perfect cupcake. This is about the decorative touches only –> The Tulip!

Tools:

Rolling pin
Shaping tool with a round ball on the end
Oval cutter (about 1″ wide and 1.25″ long approx.)
non-stick vegetable spray
cupcake pan

Ingredients:

1/2 cup total of modeling chocolate in the colours of your tulips, plus green for the leaves*
Chocolate melts (about 1/4 cup)

*If you prefer you could use gum-paste or fondant. Modeling chocolate is easy to work with and tastes great. Here are a couple of easy recipes:

recipe 1
recipe 2

12 frosted cupcakes in the flavour of your choice. I had a mix of vanilla/vanilla and strawberry/strawberry. Mmm…

Roll out the modeling chocolate on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar. You may need to work it in your hands for a minute until it is soft and easy to work with. About the consistency of play-dough.

Using the oval cutter, cut out 5 ovals for each tulip. That means you will need 60 for your dozen cup cakes. I’d cut out a few extra just in case you damage one or two. (trust me… )

The roll out your green modeling chocolate and using a sharp knife cut out long thin leaf-shapes by hand. You could buy a cutter for this, but why waste the money. You can do it, it’s easy. You’ll need 24 leaves.

Now for the only tricky part. Shaping the tulip petals… Using the round ball tool (if you don’t have one use the edge of a spoon or even your hands), you need to flatten out just one edge of each tulip petal. Just to it thins out and starts to slightly curl. Don’t be intimidated, just take your time. You can always roll out a few more ovals, if you need some extra practice. Remember, that the odd minute tear won’t be noticed. Go easy on yourself.

Now thin out the edges of the leaves as well.

Next you’ll want to spray the cupcake pan with non-stick vegetable spray.

Now melt your chocolate melts and put a small circle of chocolate in the bottom three or four cups of the cupcake tray (about 1″ round). Don’t do the whole tray or the chocolate will melt before you get a chance to get your petals into the chocolate. Slightly bend one end of the oval and set it into the chocolate, do that four more times for each tulip, each time keeping the ‘thinned-edge’ to the same side. slightly overlap each petal. There you have a tulip! Easy right?

Repeat this process 11 more times. Put the cupcake tray with your tulips in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Once hardened, gently remove from the cupcake tray. They should pop-out easily. Be gentle!

Now press one tulip into each frosted cupcake. Set leaves on either side of tulip, just push into the frosting and gently bend the tips outward.

Tulip cupcakes! WOW, right?

These cupcakes would make a lovely Mother’s Day treat or how about for a bridal shower?

I’d love to know what you think?

Kim

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You can’t plan far enough ahead. I’m already looking forward to next Valentines Day. If you’re like @MarthaStewart and Me, you’ll plant your cherry trees now!

Fine! You got me… I made these for this past Valentine’s Day (it was only a week ago!), but I wouldn’t want to post them on-time. That would just be smart, organised and all together too on-the-ball for me. I’m Mommyknows not Mommysorganised.

Let’s get on with it shall we? If you want to say, “I love you!” with a cherry pie, then this post is for you.

Ingredients:

Pie Crust
Cherry Pie Filling
2 TBSP of milk
1-2 tsp of sugar

I bought the Pillsbury Pie crusts, they come in a box in butter/eggs section of your grocers. They taste great and they’re easy to work with. As the grand-daughter of two prize-winning-pie-makers, I ought to know. If you prefer to make your own pie crust or filling for that matter, well then, knock yourself out! I just want to say, “I love you!”, not “Will you marry me and give me babies?”.

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 f.

Roll out pie crusts and cut into heart shapes (you’ll need pairs of course).

Put a dollop of pie filling in the center, of just half of the hearts. Try to stay in the middle of the heart, you don’t want a leaky, sticky mess (we’re being loving folks!).

Cover with extra hearts, and seal edges using a fork.

Brush each heart with a touch of milk and sprinkle with sugar. I then cut an ‘x’ shaped vent in the top of each. Like a wee kiss!

Bake for 20 minutes (this time is for 1.5″ hearts), if you use a different sized cut-out you may need to adjust the cooking time. No worries, just keep and eye on them!

Enjoy!

MK xo

Disclaimer: I am a Life Made Delicious blogger. They compensate me to write for them at LifeMadeDelicious.ca.

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BIG NEWS this week for Sears Canada, they are announcing the arrival of Carter’s and OshKosh!

Two fabulous, quality brands we’re all familiar with, use, love! From my Hayley to my our wee baby Brian, we’ve used and loved both brands. Their newest lines are absolutely adorable, soft, comfy, affordable! Wow!

Georgia is a Carter’s Pajama enthusiast, so she was so thrilled to get a bunch of new ‘jammies this week.

This cute little polka-dot penguin nightie was my favourite, but Georgia was in love with these footie zebra jammies! She said, “it’s like having stuffies on my feet!” So easy to please. Size 7 … who knew?

She was home sick in this picture, so forgive her not-so-happy expression.

Brian received a sweet new wardrobe, of course he didn’t care, but mommy was happy!

You can win a Carter’s / OshKosh Gift Basket too! How? Just comment below, telling me your favourite Oshkosh or Carters product and you’ll be entered to win. You may earn extra entries by sharing on Facebook and / or Twitter and letting me know in the comments below.

Giveaway closes Friday, February 22 at 10 pm MST. I will then pick a random winner (the old fashioned way). Winner must reply to winning email by February 24th or new winner will be drawn. Open to Canadian residents.

Good Luck :)

MK xo

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This month Sears the Baby’s Room challenge was to create a ‘Baby Registry’. Something I have mostly fond memories of creating in the past. I do LOVE baby stuff!

With our baby Brian just celebrating his 1st birthday in January, it’s been a while since I’ve had to think about Baby Registries. With temps hitting -42 Celsius this past few weeks and 3 super busy older children, the thought of going into the city and creating a registry was just too much for this busy mom.

Internet to the rescue! Did you know you could create your Sears Baby Registry Online in just a few minutes! It’s easy, you’ll stay warm and the coffee pot is always handy.

Make your way to: Sears Baby Registry page

Follow the simple instructions and prompts:

Step 5 is where you are going to decide whether to in-store, online or by catalog #.

I decided to add items to my registry, while shopping through the online store. If you’d like to do the same, click the ‘add items from Sears.ca’ text that I’ve circled in red in the image above.

Shop the Sears.ca site, locating the items you’d like. Choose options like colour, size and quantity and then click the ‘add to registry’ text as circled in the image below.

If you’ve added the item correctly, you’ll see a pop-up like the one below. You can choose to either view your registry or continue to shop.

HOW EASY WAS THAT? All from the comfort of home.

Once you’ve created your registry, don’t forget about ‘The Waiting Game Contest‘.

Sears Canada’s Baby Registry also has the unique “Waiting Game” contest. If you haven’t heard of this awesome contest, it’s an amazing opportunity to win the value of everything on your registry! Parents need to create a registry and register for items, and then correctly guess their baby’s arrival date! The date can be changed up to two times, at least 60 days prior to the “guesstimated” original date. If the baby does indeed arrive on the guessed date, the winners will be awarded coupons equivalent to the net amount of items purchased off of the registry.

MK xo

Disclosure: I am part of the Sears – The Baby’s RoomAmbassador program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

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This is undoubtedly one of the easiest projects, I’ve attempted. It’s also one of the most delicious and makes a wonderful gift to give away during the holiday season. I made the vanilla extract in October for gift-giving in December. My intention was to blog about it in early November, giving you plenty of time to make yours for Christmas giveaways (or any other holiday). I’m just a wee bit behind schedule. So what?

Better late than never, that’s what I’m telling myself (get over it).

You’ll need just two ingredients:

Vanilla beans
Vodka, although it was suggested to me that bourbon would be nice, and I totally agree, but I’m cheap and went with vodka.

You’ll also need some glass bottles. I saved a bunch of glass olive oil bottles and used those recycled bottles to make vanilla for myself. For gift giving, however, I bought some cute little 4oz Boston rounds from Specialty Bottle. This would also be the time to tell you that this project was inspired entirely by The Italian Dish, right down to the cute little bottles, so it is to her, that you must give the praise.

I went all rogue and instead of buying my vanilla beans from Beanilla like everyone else, I ordered mine on eBay. I thought they were coming straight from Africa. They arrived quickly, smelled heavenly and were fat and moist. I wanted to hide them in all the crevices of my home, just for the lovely smell. I must note, however, that they were postmarked: France. I have nothing against France, so I was pleased with the purchase. They were very inexpensive.

If we’re talking cheap, so was the vodka. It kills me as a non-drinker to buy booze, so I went cheap and bought the best bargain vodka I could find.

Directions:

For each 1/2 cup or 4 oz of vodka you’ll need about two and a half beans. Therefore, if you are using 8 oz bottles use five beans, and so on.

Using scissors cut the beans in half and then using a very sharp knife slice the beans open from end to end, lengthwise. Put the needed amount of beans in each container and add vodka. A funnel really helps.

Note: this is not a recipe, where you want to be tasting the wares. Especially, before the school pickup!

Set your bottles aside for about 6 weeks to allow the vanilla to steep. Every so often you can give them a wee shake.

I had intended to make lovely labels and giveaway as gifts. Instead I handed out bare-assed bottles around the dinner table after Christmas dinner. I’m fancy like that.

I know it kind of looks like tequila worms, but in all seriousness, the vanilla extract is wonderful! Your whipped cream will never be the same without it.

Enjoy!

MK xo

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When life is busy, it’s so hard to find time to blog. Then again, when life isn’t busy, there doesn’t seem to be anything to blog about. Maybe I’m just getting my fix of the internets on Twitter and Facebook (please follow me).

I’m miles behind in posting. I’ve put on a ton of ski miles. Those miles include actually-skiing, packing for skiing, watching skiing, taking photos of skiing, tweeting about skiing, cheering on my ski racers and wishing I weren’t skiing.

That’s my favourite man, Mr. MK and my Georgia enjoying a truly ‘blue-bird’ day at SunPeaks Resort near Kamloops, BC. What a great few days.

I have all kinds of great posts planned for the next month or so, please come back :)

In the mean time, please share your latest blog post in the comments. I’ll stop by for a visit.

See you soon!

MK xo

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Contest Closed: Winner is Deanna #2

The Sears Wish Book is 60 years old! Remember when…

My sister and I loved the Sears Wish Book. LOVED it! She even more than I. The catalog was so popular, we’d have to sit side by side on the couch and go through each and every page. She had a game that she like to play, it was sort of a ‘pick your favourite’ kind of game. She’d choose her absolute favourite on the page and then I’d choose mine. If I didn’t put enough effort into it or sound convincing, she’d be annoyed. Sometimes it wasn’t just about the favourite product, but ‘who’s the prettiest?, who has the best hair?, who would you marry?’. Mostly I just wanted to get to the camping section and pick out just the right gear for my next adventure. Guess which one of us was a tom-boy!

I remember this 1978 catalog! Sheesh … I’m really getting up there!

I had one of these! You can order it in this year’s Sears Wish Book!

My children are just as excited about the catalog as we were, especially Georgia who is just seven. Christmas is still full of magic for her, and I’ve been putting off her requests for new toys (since her birthday in June), with the old standby, “maybe Santa will bring it for Christmas!” The Sears Toy Catalog has been her reading entertainment for several days now. She has dozens of toys circled and may possibly have narrowed it down to her absolute favourite 56 (or so).

Elizabeth is 13 and I thought she might be too old for toys, but OH NO! Guess what I found circled for Santa!

To shop, I used: Order Online from your Sears Catalog

It was so easy! I just sat with the catalog on my lap and punch in the item #’s. A few more clicks and the items were ordered and on the way. Surprisingly, all three items I ordered arrived within 3 days. What a relief, no toy store craziness for me this year.

AND

If you are lover of APPS –> Sears has two that you’ll want to check out.

Sears Toy Chest App that includes 3 fun and brain-teasing games for your little one to enjoy.
Wish Book App which is fully transactional allowing you to zoom in, create lists and purchase through Sears.ca.

If you are shopping for other people’s children you may want to try out: The Toy Finder

It’s your very own personal shopping assistant. Gender, Age Price –> the perfect selection of toys. MommyKnows a good thing when she sees it!
Details:

Sears also has some great deals on right now to make your holiday shopping even easier!

o $10 off a purchase of $100 or more on regular priced toys. This ends on December 24th, so get shopping! Coupon code: 941 612 203

o FREE shipping with a purchase of more than $75 until December 20th! Check out: http://www.sears.ca/custom-content/holiday-2012?intid=hp_novwk32012_Marquee_HolidayLanding

Now for the fun part –> The GIVEAWAY!

How You Can Enter to Win ONE of the following Toys from the Sears Wish Book:

Play-Doh® ‘Candy Cyclone’ Play Set

KRE-O® Alien Strike Building Set

Hasbro® Game of Life zAPPed Game

To enter: comment below mandatory, additional entries for tweeting (let me know), sharing on FB (let me know) and pinning on Pinterest (let me know).

To be eligible you must reside in Canada and be 18 years or older. You can enter across multiple blogs (follow the hashtag #SearsBabysRoom on Twitter to find the other participating blogs) but you can only win on one blog. The winner will be randomly chosen by ME in a random drawing on December 11th. I will notify you by email, and you must respond within 48 hours. After 48 hours a new winner will be chosen.

Happy Holidays Peeps!

MK xo

Disclosure: I am part of the Sears Canada The Baby’s Room Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

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If you followed my blog for awhile you’ll know that I always lament about NEVER sending out holiday cards. Mostly because I never get the photos done, or never take quite the right photo. You see I am a fairly decent photographer, but I am beginning to realize that I like head-shots, and I hate shooting groups. They’re never good enough.

Imagine my surprise when Sears the Baby’s Room mission for November, was to shop for holiday finery (Woohoo! This I can do) and have a family portrait done. As my precious grandson is the star of my Sear’s the Baby’s Room gig, I decided to get his portraits done for his mom and dad and then have my three younger kids hop in a few too.

Portrait Tip #1: May I strongly suggest you book your Sears Portrait Studio appointment online. It’s super easy, quick and alternative times and locations can be seen in the click of a mouse.

The next step was to get all the kids great coordinating outfits from Sears. That was the easy part…

Well as soon as I managed to pull myself away from the really cute infant girls outfits.

Okay, so it may have taken more than one try. As I get older, I get a bit more forgetful.

I settled on fabulous red dress for Georgia. She looks good in red! Sweaters and dress shirts for the boys. Elizabeth had her own version of Georgia’s dress in a royal blue. Within 20 minutes I had coordinating outfits for the whole bunch. The bill come in under $100. The sweaters for the boys were under $15. WOW! As you’ll see from the photos below, they all looked pretty spiffy.

Georgia has earmarked her dress as a must wear to this year’s school Christmas concert. If you hurry you can pick out a formal dress for girls on sale until December 6th, 2012 (on select styles).

Sam was handsome in his blue dress shirt, and sweater combo … I do believe the two were under $35.

Georgia said, “you look nice Sam. Just like Jefferson Cooper!” We all had a giggle, because she meant Anderson Cooper and I had no idea she was aware of his dressing style. Kids they’re always surprising you.

Sam aka Jefferson Anderson Cooper!

I booked our portrait session for early evening. It gave us time to get home from school and get beautiful. Georgia wore hot rollers. She looked lovely for about 30 minutes. Then the curl disappeared and we put her hair up in a messy bun at the last minute.

Portrait tip #2: Bring alone hair supplies (brush, comb, elastics, bobby-pins). You’ll need them!

Baby Brian was an angel. Happy as can be. He dressed similar to his Uncle Sam, and coordinated with the girls.

The portrait session was painless! Our photographer was friendly. The kids were all happy. The mom’s (my oldest daughter and I) were pleased with the results.

Here is just a little preview of the finished product. The hard part was choosing what to order and of who and how many. It took way longer than the portrait session.

It’s not too late to shop Sears for your families holiday wear or schedule a holiday portrait session!

Disclosure: I am part of the Sears – The Baby’s Room Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

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She’s is growing up. It’s very cliche, but the time seems to be moving ever so quickly. My baby is not a baby.

I know that it’s so, I have the proof, a big gaping hole in her lovely smile. Each and every time, she gives me a grin, I remember that she’s not a baby, just my baby.

A baby who made dessert tonight, by herself. It was just Jello, but she filled the kettle, boiled the water, measured, poured, stirred and waited patiently for it to set. Patiently! She is definitely not a baby.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!

How are you all? How are your babies? Tell me please.

MK xo

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I’m a Sears The Baby’s Room Ambassador! I have no baby of mine own, but I have something WAY better: a sweet grandson to love-up and then give-back.

Our Brian is just 9 months old and already washing dishes! As this MommyKnows love of standing at the sink doesn’t last long, so enjoy it while you can.

I am a baby lover and a lover of all things baby, so much so, I once owned my very own baby shop. Those days are over, but I still really enjoy having a peek through the baby section of any store, so this Sears Canada The Baby’s Room gig is right up my alley.

The Baby’s Room at Sears was impressive with 5 distinctive sections:

Nursery section:

With beautifully set-up baby nurseries (beds, change tables, décor etc.).

I just loved this baby girl room! The owls, the white flower decals and the lovely furniture. I loved it all.

This jungle room is adorable too, but I’m still a bit hung up on the owls and flower decals.

Travel section:

With all sorts of strollers and car seats for all kinds of budgets.

Speaking of traveling, check out these super cute snack bags to take on-the-road. To heck with the baby, I’m getting one of these for my purse. Every mom needs one – Mommyknows!

It was these sorts of super cute novelty items that really surprised me. I wasn’t expecting them at Sears. I liked it!

Feeding Section:

I expected the great selection of high-chairs, from the classic to the modern but once again it was the fun-funky bibs that caught my eye!

Bath & Accessories Section:

There was a tub for every baby, but every household needs a Boon Frog Bath Toy Scoop, Drain and Storage.

Gifting Section:

A huge selection of layette items from nightgowns to receiving blankets and of course all sorts of toys and rattles too.

My sales associate Mary, is a 30+ year veteran in the baby department at Sears Canada. She knew her stuff, for new parents just starting out I can’t think of a better place to setup a baby registry!

If you have or will have a baby in your life soon, and you haven’t checked The Baby’s Room at Sears. You should! Really –> MommyKnows ;)

Enjoy!

MK xo

“Disclosure: I am part of the Sears – The Baby’s Room Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.”

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