Cake Pops...and metal breakdowns

So, this weekend, I decided to try making a new tasty treat called cake pops. My friend Amy had made some for Kate's baby shower and I finally decided that it would be a good time to make my own attempt. It was the perfect time to make them since we were seeing Casey's Grandma Williams for her birthday out in Grand Saline and stopping by to visit his Grandpa Alvis as well. Plus, he's been staying with 3 grown boys who love to eat! Prior to Friday, I had already gone to the grocery store and Michael's and was ready to start baking! Friday when I got home from work I immediately began baking. I baked 2 strawberry cakes and began mixing the cake with icing and had all of my little cake balls in the fridge. When Casey got to my place, I started the dipping process. Now, I thought that this would be the easy part since I had the melting of the candy coating down since I've done it plenty of times before when I make the ghost poop/turkey treats. However, it seemed a lot heavier and thicker when I was trying to dip cake balls. Here is where my mental breakdown began. I couldn't get the cake pops coated right, sprinkles were going everywhere and the candy coating was dripping all over everything since it was too heavy on the pops. Casey tried to tell me some random fact about the lottery and I lost it (sorry Casey!) He was an amazing boyfriend though because he just quietly got off the computer, turned off the TV, came into the kitchen and said "how can I help?" My hero! Together we dipped and coated in sprinkles. I quickly realized that there was not enough candy coating so Casey drove me to the grocery store. Unfortunately, this would not be our last trip to the store. We got everything coated and sprinkled and then it was time to wrap the pops in the treat bags I had bought. Second glitch of the night...the treat bags were too small. Back to the store we went! Finally, around midnight, we were done. Of course, my kitchen looked like an explosion of rainbow sprinkes and icing. To prove my point that Casey is an amazing boyfriend once again...he cleaned the kitchen for me as I finished wrapping the pops. So, 7 hours, 2 trips to the store, and one mental breakdown later...we had cake pops! Luckily, they tasted amazing! See the process below...and check out what professional cake pops can look like at bakerella's site.

Mamma Mia!

Last night I had another date night with my friend Alyssa. We went to eat sushi where we caught up on each other’s lives and then followed it up with a little Mamma Mia! I was really glad to have Alyssa with me since she is a big Mamma Mia fan. She had seen it in London and at Bass Hall. I guess you can say that we had high expectations after Alyssa watching it in London and me seeing it on Broadway, but we had our M&M’s in hand and the ABBA lyrics in our heads…we were ready! Donna’s friends and the dad candidates stole the show for sure. The two main characters, Donna and Sophie were not strong singers at all. The mom, Donna, sand kind of like the cowardly lion or like she had peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth. It was very bizarre but Alyssa and I got a lot of laughs out of it. Overall, I enjoyed the show but seeing all of these touring shows gets be seriously craving a true Broadway show. Trip to New York anyone?

Tasty Little Treat

For those of you who know me, you might know that my favorite Girl Scout cookie is the “oh so amazing”, Tagalong. Well, the geniuses over at Dairy Queen have come up with the most brilliant idea since the DVR, the Tagalong Blizzard. The TV has been taunting with these commercials advertising this tasty treat. Yesterday, my will to resist crumbled and I found myself in the Dairy Queen drive thru…and it was totally worth it.

Neoma

This weekend I got to meet more of Casey’s extended family. Casey’s grandmother fell and broke her hip so we went to visit her in the hospital (please pray for a good recovery). When we went to visit her, I got to meet her sister, Neoma, who is a complete character. She is 89 and hilarious! She was talking about her garden and about how her neighbors had bird houses and she said “I put out a birdhouse, but they just didn’t want to rent from me. So…I just took it down!” Then my next favorite Neoma story was about how she was driving to Dallas and looked down and saw she was going 90mph and wanted to see if she could hit 100mph but decided on to stay on the safer side. That was followed by, “I like to go fast, but I try not to go that fast when I have people in the car with me. I try to stay at least go the speed limit.” How great is that?!

Weekend with Mom

I had a WONDERFUL last few days! Why you ask? Because my mom was in town! We had some great girl time and had the perfect combination of activities and relaxing. We had dinner with Bob, Ellen, and Clay, lunch with Nana, happy hour with The Hailey girls, and then a big lunch with the whole Hailey family (minus Caleb). We had a girl’s night on the town when we went to dinner at Rise no. 1 in Dallas for some fancy soufflés and then off to the theater to see Legally Blonde the Musical and it was GREAT! I also got to have my sushi fix and have a nice dinner on the patio of Brio which I think ranks as my mom and my favorite restaurant here. We also had a couple game nights with Casey. Casey taught us Pounce and Shang Hi and we played well past midnight one night. The competition was thick as we are all three very competitive people. We each won a game so it was all tied up so of course we had to have a tie-breaker and guess who won? Me! Of course I would have left the story off at we all won a game had I not won, haha! Overall, we had a great time!