HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Here's to a celebratory post in honor of the ghoulish holiday!

So as you all know in my earlier posts, I wanted to make some really special and festive cupcakes for Halloween.  I really like getting into the holidays, so I tried to make this one REALLY fun!

I finally made a decision on which cupcakes to make for the occasion and they turned out to be the Jack Skellington cupcakes.  I started with a fairly simple semi-homemade recipe for my favorite cupcakes: Chocolate Velvet.  It's a recipe that I found months ago on the Betty Crocker website, and I just can not stop making them!  They are so moist, and chocolatey and delicious that everytime I make them, I can't stop eating them! (Bad habit, I know.)

The recipe starts out with a box of Betty Crocker Devil's Food cake mix that I got at Wal-Mart.

Once all of your ingredients are in (except the chocolate chips) mix them together on high.  It should look like this...

Next mix in the chocolate chips.  Make sure to stir them in not beat them in with the mixer.  I used Hershey's Semi-sweet Chocolate chips, available at Wal-Mart or any other grocer:

Divide them [as] evenly [as you can get them] into the baking cups:

Now bake...and wait...

and wait....

and wait........

but only for 24 mins though!

Ready..... DONE!

Now for the frosting...

The frosting is a homemade white chocolate frosting.  I found the recipe on Cook's.com  I added way more powdered sugar than the recipe called for (approx. 24 oz. instead of 1 cup) because the frosting kept tasting too buttery and wouldn't stiffen or fluff up.  I found the Baker's chocolate on sale at Wal-Mart and it comes in 6-1 oz. blocks so it was perfect for the recipe (I really don't like left over ingredients).

It comes in little squares and you need to chop it up for this recipe.

Then frost the cupcakes:

Pre-face:

Face added!

YUMMY IN THE TUMMY!!!

What can $2, a stick of butter, and an egg get you?

Answer: A happy husband!


Yesterday was another day of semi-homemade laziness.  I wanted to do something nice for the hubby but I was feeling a little lazy.

I looked in the cabinet and noticed a big bag of Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie mix.


I thought to myself, ”He might enjoy some of those tonight!”   And at $1.94 from Wal-Mart, why not!

They were AWESOME!!! And they're pretty much all gone now! :)

What's your favorite semi-homemade lazy day dish?

Semi-Homemade Living

I'm a semi-homemade diva! I mean, I like making things from scratch, but semi-homemade is my go-to in my diva to domestic transition thanks to Sandra Lee.

I began watching Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee about 3 or 4 years ago when I wanted to make something special for my husband (then boyfriend), but I didn't want to kill him! Lol!  So I took a few cues from Sandra Lee.  Well, it turned out horribly!  Needless to say, I didn't serve it to him!  Nope, it went to file 13 (that's the garbage for those of you that don't know)!

So then I went to Betty Crocker and decided that I love cupcakes and I wanted to try to put my own spin on them.  Betty Crocker has tons of recipes that can become your own!

Today though I was being a little lazy and wanted something quick.  I had a hankering for chocolate that just wouldn't go away and since my husband is a junk food junkie, it was only fitting that I made some brownies!  Not just any brownies though...Pillsbury Cheesecake Swirl Brownies that we got at Wal-Mart.

There was a recipe on the back of the box for Almond brownies that I wanted to make but I didn't have almonds or chocolate chips and if you remember from earlier, I was being lazy today.  So going to the store was NOT an option!

So I decided just to make the brownies in the cupcake baking cups for a lot less clean-up (again cause I was being lazy.) ;-)

They turned out amazing! My hubby likes them, and best of all I wiped out that cupcake pan and chilled out!

What's your favorite semi-homemade recipe?

Stain, stain, go away...

Have you guys met Codee? 

She's my pup.  She is the cutest terroist I've ever seen in my entire life.  She loves on mommy and daddy.  She'll lay and cuddle.  But when she's mad, she's MAD!  And she takes her revenge out on you by peeing/pooping on the carpet, biting at your face or any other body part, for that matter, that she can get her teeth on, eating your stuff (cords, shoes, remote, etc.) or barking in your face while you're sleeping.  There is the occasional pimp-slap at 5:00 in the morning if she needs to go out and you're not awake yet. Yep. I love my little terrorist. 

I don't, however, love the stains.  Like I said, when she gets mad, she pees/poops after she runs around like a crazed animal!  I've tried so many things short of bleaching my tan carpet or getting my carpet in my entire house shampooed!  My usual go to is Fabuloso cleaner--lavendar scent and Glade Carpet & Room Tough Odor Solutions.  But I decided to try something new and see if that worked.  I tried this cleaner that I found at Wal-Mart called Out! Oxy-Fast Stain & Odor Remover.  I'm not really seeing any results though.  It seemed to be working at first, but now, I'm not so sure.

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to get the stains out AND keep my house fresh?! HELP!!

Love,
A desperate pet parent

Jack Skellington...

Of course everyone knows who Jack Skellington is, right?  Oh, you don't?  Let me give you a refresher course...

Tall, slinky, skeletal man.
Charming and charismatic.
Dead.

Oh, just forget it! You'll know him if you see him.  But you don't really want to see him...not in real life anyway.

Well what better way to celebrate Halloween with one of the scariest looking faces in TV?!  Jack Skellington is probably one of the easiest and most fun designs to make on a cupcake!  It's a no brainer! =)

I found cute ones on Pintrest and I just had to click through to see where I could find a recipe.

This recipe is BORING! (no offense to the persons that made this cupcake recipe) But I mean, seriously?  Who wants same old, boring old, chocolate cupcakes with white buttercream?!  I know it's an oldie but goodie but let's be serious here...This is Halloween!  We need to spice it up a little!  I was thinking a dark chocolate or devil's food cupcake with a white chocolate frosting.

What are your favorite black/white cupcake combos?