i'd rather be baking

Today’s our third anniversary! We spent it very romantically…running errands and packing, basically.

And with that happy photo, we’re headed home for the holidays. Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you next year.

If this does not look like a bowl of holiday cheer to you, I’d like to tell you that you’re mistaken. Can I say that?

This week I’m wrapping up Christmas preparations before having friends in town and then traveling home for the holidays. Along with wrapping many a present, cleaning house, and packing, I feel like I should be eating a lot of vegetables. I’m pretty sure there won’t be a lot of vegetables in our lives next week…so I’m eating them now. Which makes sense, right?

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We’re on an English muffin kick. I’d call it a rut, except that I don’t want it to end (ever). I don’t even know when I started to like English muffins, but here I am buying one of those little sleeves of six every week (sometimes twice a week!) without fail. One night I sent Ryan to the store for something and he came home with a giant sleeve of TWELVE English muffins. Did you know they make such a thing? Glorious. Clearly we are not afraid of carbs.

I made these little beauties on Sunday afternoon and I’ll be honest — they took awhile! But for a day when I had lots of chores to do around the house and could stop sporadically, they worked out perfectly. And I couldn’t believe how well they turned out! Oh man.

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I bought these candy cane kisses before we even got our Christmas tree. Have you seen these things? They taste like Christmas-flavored rainbows and unicorns! Magical.

I’ve had these little beauties stashed in the freezer since Thanksgiving, and have been slowly sneaking them one at a time for a little bite of Christmas. I am obsessed. I didn’t love white chocolate…until now. It just needed a pepperminty best friend.

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This time last year, I was spending many hours a week decorating cupcakes. I miss the frosting! I’ve had a hankering for cupcakes for awhile now, and at this point piping frosting is such a familiar task that it’s kind of therapeutic. So yesterday I put on my apron and made some cupcakes.

Foodbuzz recently provided me with some cake mix coupons and I finally put one of them to good use. Although I usually bake from scratch, a good cake mix is always handy and comes together so quickly. And this one looked so fancy — I was excited to try it!

They basically had me at caramel. I decided to add some fresh apple and cream cheese frosting because, well, it just seemed like a good idea. I stirred up the cupcakes, unloaded the dishwasher while they baked, and went for a quick run while they cooled. There’s nothing quite so fun as coming home from a run to fresh cupcakes. I’m just saying.

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