Orange creamsicle cupcakes.

Typically I'm not a fan of orange flavored things. Fruit, candy, drinks, or desserts. But my mother in law asked for orange creamsicle cupcakes for her birthday so I obliged and baked away. I baked away for about 2 hours on those darn cupcakes. I did try them after baking them and I loved them. Everyone seemed to love them. I will definately be adding these into the mix of cupcakes to bake regularly. I kind of followed the Better Homes and Garden recipe that she found on Facebook. I did do a couple of things differently though.

Here's the recipe copied from Better Homes and Garden (with my additions):

Cupcake Recipe

Ingredients

3 ounce package orange-flavor gelatin

Box of white cake mix

3 ounce cheesecake instant pudding and pie filling mix

1/4 cups orange juice

4 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 tablespoons of fresh squeezed orange juice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with foil bake cups. Set aside 2 teaspoons of the gelatin for frosting. In a mixing bowl beat the remaining gelatin, the cake mix, pudding mix, orange juice, eggs, oil, and vanilla.

2. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each about two-thirds full. .

3. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in muffin cups on wire racks for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from muffin cups. Cool completely on wire racks.

4. Once cupcakes cool, brush with orange juice to seal in flavor.

Frosting Recipe

Ingredients:

8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla

5 1/2 - 6 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon orange zest

1-2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

Couple of drops of Wilton Orange Icing Colors

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar to reach spreading consistency. Add the orange juice as needed to thin icing out. Add the reserved orange jello from the cupcakes and the orange zest. Add in the drops of orange coloring. Beat to combine.

I decorated my cupcakes with some sugar sprinkles and one white pearl on the tip of each cupcake!

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Treats for Father's Day!

For Father's Day, I decided to treat my husband to some delicious treats! This week I made three pretty delicious items. I'm so excited about them that I've taken photos of them. Enjoy!

Homemade snicker bars. Ok, these were delicious and were very easy to make. Yes, it took some time because you must let the layers cool before continuing but they were well worth it. And yes, the second photo is awful because my husband took it at work and put it on a cardboard box, and let them melt before taking a picture. I guess that's what I get for asking him to do it. Plus, I even used all store brand ingredients and they were delicious while saving a few dollars. I found the recipe from How Sweet It Is, please follow the link and make these.

Next I made peanut butter chocolate chip bacon cookies from Food Network and I was worried about these because I don't even like bacon for breakfast, but they were good. Iggy said they were pretty good and Logan loved them (huge deal since he doesn't even like peanut butter or peanuts). I am also not a good cookie baker. Honestly, I'm terrible at it. Just awful really. I didn't burn them and they had a good flavor.

And last was breakfast on Father's Day morning. I made some cinnamon rolls, goetta (since we didn't make it to Goettafest) and then these breakfast muffins. They were store bought biscuits that were rolled flat and stuff with cheese, scrambled eggs and bacon. They were more filling than I had expected because we would have been fine if I didn't make anything else. They even reheat and still taste great. I plan to make these in the morning as an on the go breakfast snack!Pin It Now!

Happy Fathers Day.

Happy fathers day to the best dad that I know! You are an amazing dad and Logan and I are very thankful every day to have you in our lives! We love you so much!

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The Disney budget. What we actually spent.

Remember that post awhile ago where I was planning our Disney World budget? Well, I never followed through on making a budget. Oops, those things happen. Instead, we went to Disney World with no budget in hand and managed to not do so awful. I'm saying that now as I'm adding things up but when we were there I just kept thinking how it was more and more money we were spending!

Here's how it all breaks down for the Disney Trip!

• $90-Hotel stay in Tifton, Georgia on the drive down. It was 2 AM and my husband was sleepy.
• $149-4 days and 3 nights at the Downtown Disney Hilton Hotel. I wouldn't have changed that for anything in the world. We were honestly less than 5 minutes walking distance to all of the fun that Downtown Disney offered, free transportation to and from the parks, and were able to take advantage of the extra magic hours. We got this amazing deal on the hotel from an offer from Hilton for being Hilton Rewards members. We never would have gone to Disney World without this deal.
• $20-random toiletries that I forgot to pack and a disposable camera for Logan to use while on vacation. Turned out to be on the of best purchases because he loved it.
• $325-gas for driving to and from. We filled up 5 times and the gas was right around that price, give or take a few dollars. It ended up being fine to drive since Iggy had just purchased a new car a few weeks before going.
• $366-Magic Your Way Park Hopper Tickets. They are expensive, yes. And that's only for 1 day. ONE DAY! Gosh.
• $54-Valet parking. It was only about $5 more than self parking. It was vacation. We figured we should just do it.
• $65-Dinner at T-Rex. It was such a cute restaurant with a meteor shower every 20 minutes and  animatronic dinosaurs.

• $18-Logan had to stop at the Build A Bear/Build A Dino shop. He's obsessed with building his own animals. But his dinosaur is just adorable and well worth it.
• $45-Snacks while in the park. We had probably too much to eat, but at Disney World, the food has no calories, 0 calories, none! We had a giant turkey leg, a Mickey Mouse ice cream, a giant Mickey shaped rice krispie treat covered in M&M's, an assortment of treats from Japan, and some soda.
• $140-on souvenirs. That's amazing since I was worried about how much we would end up spending! That includes the souvenirs for all three of us. We ended up with a lot and for some reason, Logan was not interested in getting much at all so that helped with not spending so much more than we did.
• $40-Dinner at Cosmic Rays. It was just a burgers place but the food we pretty good. And it was nice to get to rest our legs!
• $18-Ice cream at Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop in Downtown Disney. Best. Sundae. Ever.

• $5-parking at Coco Beach. Thankfully we had some change to keep putting in the parking meters.
• $35-lunch at Boston Beef & Seafood. I have the best roast beef sandwich in my life. I want to make it a point to go back!

So total for our 4 day/3 night Disney World/Florida vacation was $1370. Of course that's not the exact amount since I didn't save the receipts to tally up our totals, but it's just about as accurate as it can be.
I'm pretty sure that's an affordable vacation considering the fun we had. We now know though to have more fun, we need to spend more time in the parks and not just one day. And yes, I've already started saving for our Disney World trip for the future! Pin It Now!