A couple years ago, I found out about a local cupcake shop called Main Street Cupcakes.  I discovered them not long after they opened their Rocky River location which was their second shop.  They now have 3 shops total: Hudson, Rocky River, and Medina.  The first time I got a cupcake from them it was the Sugar Cookie flavor, and ever since then I was hooked!

I have visited Main Street Cupcakes many times, and bought cupcakes for myself and Jeff and my family.  Everyone loves them!

Recently I found out a new cupcake shop opened right in Fairview Park, named Simply Sweet Cupcakes.  Of course I had to try them!  But of course, I immediately compared them to my long time favorite, Main Street Cupcakes.

Location: Simply Sweet is on Lorain Road in Fairview Park.  Main Street is on Detroit Road in Rocky River.  Both are about 5 minutes from my house and easy to drive to, so this one is a tie.

Price: A 4 pack of cupcakes from Simply Sweet cost $5.85.  That is about $1.46 per cupcake.  Main Street charges $2.50 per cupcake.  At over one dollar cheaper per cupcake, Simply Sweet is the winner here!

Varieties: The day we visited Simply Sweet, they had five different types of cupcakes to choose from.  Main Street has from 12 to 20 different types available everyday.  The clear winner is Main Street! (FYI – both places post their daily menus on Facebook)

Packaging: All the Simply Sweet cupcakes are packaged in plastic clamshell packages, which even though they are recyclable, seem a little wasteful.  At Main Street, the cupcakes are in a glass case and when you buy them they are put into either a paper bag or a box.  Below is the Main Street Cupcakes display.

The packaging winner is Main Street!

Frosting: I have always loved the frosting on the Main Street cupcakes, but sometimes it seems like too much frosting!  (is that possible??)  Simply Sweet cupcakes definitely had less frosting on theirs, and it was lighter.  Winner: depends on the day and your preference.

Overall taste: My peppermint cupcake from Simply Sweet tasted slightly dry.  The peppermint flavor was good and not too strong.  Every cupcake I’ve had from Main Street is always moist and delicious!  After just one bite of the Simply Sweet cupcake, I knew that Main Street was better.  Winner: Main Street.  Below is a picture of the peppermint cupcake pack from Simply Sweet.

After comparing the two cupcake shops, my favorite is Main Street Cupcakes.  If you have never been there, I highly recommend them!  Check out this page to see all the different flavors they have!  I will leave you to drool over this image of some delicious Main Street Cupcakes. 

Despite the lack of privacy of my fear of bugs, Jeff and I finally decided we have a patio so we are going to use it! We went to Lowe’s and picked up these two chairs. I thought getting two different colors was more fun than having them match. These chairs were $20 each.

We are also probably going to buy a small table to put out on the patio, but we haven’t picked one out yet. I saw one at Target that I liked, but I was already buying a lot when I was there, so I decided I would look more at the tables another time.

Jeff is already enjoying the new chairs!

I thought I would take a look back on what improvements we did to our home in 2011, which was the second year we lived in this house. To start off 2011, we got the living room painted. The bland white room was transformed into a warm room with a red accent wall. To complete our living room makeover we put up a new curtain rod, new curtains, and various decorations to match the color scheme including art work, candles, a rug, and a clock. The final addition to the living room was a new sectional which we bought in May of 2011. The sectional is so comfortable! Jeff and I both have our own side where we can lay down and stretch out when we watch a movie.

Another new furniture item we got in 2011 was a futon for the spare bedroom. It’s been used several times for overnight guests, but I think it’s been used more by Jeff when he takes a nap! I am glad to have something available for guests to sleep on, instead of just an air mattress.

In January we also had to replace the water heater and in June we had to replace the sump pump. Not very exciting, but we had to do it.

I never posted about this on the blog, but we got new vinyl flooring and a new toilet in the half bathroom. The half bathroom was really in need of an update. I still want to get a new light fixture in that room, but it’s not a huge priority since that bathroom isn’t used a lot.

Another home improvement we did was getting part of the basement waterproofed. The basement already had an “interior system” done back in 1999 which was clearly not working right due to the efflorescence and crumbling block in one corner of the basement. The interior system is basically where they open the floor next to the outside walls, and drain tile is installed and a sump pump is put in. The company we hired, Ace Basement Waterproofing believes in treating the outside of the house in order to keep water out. Their process is explained on their website here. The waterproofing work took about 3 days and was completed in October. The work was expensive but I am glad we got it done.

Not exactly a home “improvement”, but an addition to our home in 2011 was a cat who we named Cookie. We adopted her from the Cleveland APL and she is very sweet and loveable. She is always waiting at the door for us when we come home. She follows us all around when we are home too. If I take laundry to the basement, Cookie comes down with me. If we are watching a movie, Cookie lays on the couch too. And when we eat dinner, Cookie sits on her post that we put right by the dining room table! She’s a real pal.

Looking ahead for this year, we don’t have too many home improvements planned. I think we have spent enough money on the house for a while! Jeff and I are planning to get a new faucet in the kitchen and get the air ducts cleaned. Right now I want to focus on getting rid of items that we no longer need and donating them to Goodwill. I already have a stack of clothes ready to go. What home improvements do you all have planned this year? Here’s to a great 2012!

I did some research and found that they had electric snow throwers that were less expensive than gas. We’ve also got an electric lawn mower and weed trimmer but they’re not Greenworks brand. I saw good reviews for the Greenworks brand and the price was relatively cheap compared to others. The one I bought was the Greenworks 26032 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Snow Thrower.

I also purchased a 50 foot cold weather extension cord because this version you have to plug in. Amazon shipped it for free and it arrived a few days later. I opened it up and put the thing together in about 20 minutes. There was not much assembly to do.

A few weeks later we had our first snowfall and it was about 2-3 inches I’d say. It was time to test the snow thrower out! It took a little time to get used to how to adjust the chute and get the snow blowing in the direction I wanted. But once I did I felt like it worked great! I think that my chute wasn’t tight enough because I would adjust it and the force of the snow caused it to shoot more up than out. I need to tighten next time.

My biggest gripe was probably getting used to moving the extension cord all around. I haven’t quite got the hang of that yet, but I’m sure it’s one of those things I’ll get used to. It took me probably 30-40 minutes to do the driveway this time, but I chalk that up to being a first time user and trying to figure things out.

Hopefully we do not see any more mice in the basement. Jeff and I bought a couple traps just in case. We got the “no kill” type that just trap the mouse and you can release it outside. We’ll see if it works. I haven’t seen any more mice since that one day though.

I am still curious to know how the mouse got inside. Since they are so small, they can fit into very tiny holes that we would never notice!

It is the most comfortable couch ever! Quite an improvement over the old black hand me down ones we had. Our old couch and love seat have made their way down to the basement now. The day I got home and saw the sectional in the living room, my first thought was – “It is way too big!” It is a lot taller and wider than what we previously had and it didn’t look right to me for a while. I am accustomed to the size now and I think it fits the room well.

Now of course after getting the new furniture, I do not like the look of our old coffee table with it. Several years ago we bought that coffee table and it is pretty big because it has storage space and also you can lift up the top of it. I think we will eventually get a new coffee table about half the size of our current one. We just need something more simple in the room. If you are in the market for a coffee table, let me know, I will consider selling it!

You may have noticed the cool new tray on the coffee table too. It was purchased at Pier 1 just this past weekend. It works really well with our color scheme! Jeff and I have a lot more home improvements we are working on this summer including a living room photo wall and updates to our half bathroom, so look for those posts soon!

Jeff and I recently bought a futon for our spare bedroom. Before this, the only furniture in the spare bedroom was a craft desk that I use for wrapping gifts, scrapbooking, and framing photos. This futon will be great for overnight guests. The previous option for an overnight guest was either the couch or the air mattress. The futon is a lot more comfortable! We bought it at Sleep Source in Cleveland Heights. The nice thing with that store is that you can choose any combination of frame and mattress. There were so many to choose from! We ended up spending $600 after the delivery charges. You can definitely get a futon cheaper than that, but the quality will not be as good. Here is the new futon!

We also decided it would be a good idea to buy a cover for the mattress in order to protect it. Luckily Sleep Source had a deal where if you buy your futon there, you can get 50% off a cover. We picked a nice colorful one!

I am happy that we finally have some furniture in the spare bedroom instead of just boxes! I would actually consider the room to be a multi purpose room rather than your average guest room. Since we don’t have guests very frequently, it makes sense to keep the craft desk in there so we can get more use out of the space.

Before

After

Here are the pics of the accent wall before and after.
Before

After

The red wall color you see in the photo above is more accurate to how it actually looks, since I took that in the daylight with no flash. The red doesn’t look quite right in the earlier photo where you can see the whole living room.

I first posted on here in October about doing the living room makeover. I would say it’s 85% complete at the moment. The final remaining piece is a new couch and new love seat, and possibly an accent chair. I will wait to get the new couch and love seat and see if there is space for a chair too. We plan to get the furniture in a dark brown color.

For Christmas, my sister got us a nice dark red throw, which is shown here on our couch.  It is really warm and cozy!

We got this nice lamp on sale at JCPenney.  I think it will really look good in front of the new curtains, which will be put up after the painting is done.

Speaking of painting, we still aren’t quite sure when it will be done.  Jeff talked with the company who did some painting for us in the past and they worked out a trade.  Jeff would create a website for them and we would get some rooms painted in exchange.  Unfortunately the process has been pretty slow.  The owner of the company is not very computer savvy and couldn’t figure out how to view the website proofs that Jeff emailed him.  Without much feedback, Jeff couldn’t go on creating the rest of the website so things were at a standstill.  At this point, I think Jeff and the owner of that company are planning to meet in person.  This way Jeff can explain the website design and get his feedback, and we can find out when we can get the living room painted.  I am very excited about it and hope it can be done soon!

Another new item we got to go with the living room color scheme is this rug from JCPenney.  We have it by the front door to put shoes on. (good thing to do so your carpet doesn’t get dirty and wet!)

This rug was a great find as it has all the colors in it that we’ll be using in the room. I was hoping to find a bigger size of this same rug, so we could put it under our dining room table. It was supposed to be available on the JCPenney website, but so far I have had no luck finding it. Stay tuned for the before and after living room photos, once the painting is done and new curtains hung!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 47 posts.

The busiest day of the year was March 11th with 178 views. The most popular post that day was New Toilet.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, gomedia.us, mail.yahoo.com, and jeffandkimwedding.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for turquoise bathroom, stanley steemer, turquoise tile bathroom, glidden arctic stone, and bathroom color schemes.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

New Toilet March 2010
3 comments

Our turquoise bathroom: before and after January 2010
3 comments

Waiting to hear back May 2009
1 comment

Bedroom Closet Remodel December 2009
3 comments

About March 2009

Thanks for reading everyone! Here’s to a great 2011!