The Sprinkle on Top

Our ward auction fundraiser was this last week and I was asked to help bring cupcakes for dessert. I've always loved flipping through cupcake cookbooks, pinning new flavors of cupcakes to my Pinterest board (completely dedicated TO cupcakes!), and eating other people's yummy cupcake creations. I've never been able to make cupcakes on my own. At least not ones that don't look like a two-year-old decorated them. But I decided that was all about to change as I made four dozen cupcakes for our ward auction. I pulled out my cupcake cookbooks-- Your Cup of Cake --and set to work. In my defense, they tasted amazing... But for the life of me, I could not get my buttercream frosting to work. It just kept melting on my completely cooled cupcakes. I feel like you'd have to try hard to get them to turn out the way I did. I researched all over the place to a solution for my problem--add less liquid so the frosting's not as thin, add more powdered sugar to th...

NOTE: I no longer breastfeed my baby girl due to a dairy and soy allergy, but I feel like I tried it all! I hope some of this advice might help others learning to breastfeed. The hardest part of my recovery from Evie's birth besides the raging hormones trying to balance themselves out was learning alongside my baby the art of breastfeeding. The lack of confidence in what I was doing mixed with the physical pain of nursing made those first few weeks of feedings a nightmare. I sought advice from anyone and everyone: online forums, my doctor, multiple nurses at the hospital, the on call lactation specialist, my mom and siblings…  I received some fantastic advice, but everyone had their own opinion on what would work and that added a level of frustration when I'd try it and come up against another wall. I'm sure other new moms have their own unique struggles to overcome when it comes to nursing a brand new baby so I wanted t...