Pink! Pink! Pink! October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

October is breast cancer awareness month, which hits very close to home for me as my grandmother is a breast cancer survivor! I'm loving this year's "Fight Like a Girl" theme I'm seeing everywhere. So in honor of her strength, courage and never-ending love, I'm dedicating this very pink blog post to my grandmother, Eva.

January 30, 2010 as a part of my friend Maggie's bachlorette night and thanks to my newly engaged adictions to Bridal shows on Lifetime, I decided to treat her to a "Candy Buffett." I found most of the decor at the local dollarstore and got a local bakery to make chocolate lips on sticks- they were great for photo-ops.

Champagne glasses for the toast! (Found these at WalMart)

Artificial rose petals sprinkled around added a little color

The candy bar!

I used wine glasses to display the candies in. I also found the litte place card photo frames at the

Dollar Store and used them as display cards for what kind of candy each wine glass contained.

Chocolate lip suckers

I sat candles on small mirror plates and lit them during the festivities

And ta-da! Candy-bar bachlorette party! Simple and pink!

Fall Mum Cupcakes

One of my first unplanned ventures in PA was a little town called Voliant. It's in a largely Amish community and has all sorts of crafts and specialities shops. When my parents first came up to visit, we toured through Voliant's Fall pumpkin festival and this past weekend we returned with Noah's parents. There is an amazing little kitchen shop there where I decided to sign up for some cooking classes at and while there I spotted the cutest flower cupcakes so I decided to recreate my own version of them. So in honor of the beautiful fall weather and colors up here in PA, here is my how-to on my "Mum" cupcakes:

You'll need:  Cupcakes, icing, marshmallows, a knife, sprinkles or icing color spray.

While cupcakes are baking, cut marshmallows diagonally in two.

I baked Duncan Hines confetti cupcakes

Ice cupcakes as usual, I mixed in sprinkles with my icing (just because I love sprinkles)

After cupcakes are iced, begin placing the marshmallow halves along the outer edges

Then begin moving inward and placing the marshmallows till the whole cupcake is filled

Ta-da! The cupcake should now resemble a flower

I used a color mist spray for the first mum to get the orange dye color

Instead of dye you can also use sprinkles, which stick well to the exposed sticky marshmallow

And since presentation is everything, I bought a cute fall box at Wal-Mart to sit the cupcakes in

I made one box of mums and one box with just regular cupcakes

(incase someone doesn't like marshmallows)

I used cute little pumpkin toothpicks to top those off

Those are my mum cupcakes! Hope you enjoyed!

Home Is Where the Heart Is

I love to travel. In fact, in the past 8 years I've lived in one dorm, one sorority house, two houses, three apartments and one cabin. I've moved from Ohio to West Virginia, back to Ohio and have now set up home in Pennsylvania.

Our first home together in Ohio, the cabin we built <3

I'm always on the move. My fiance' jokes that "all activities, all day" is my motto. He's probably right. But as I always reply, "Who needs sleep anyway?" Sleep is what we do between activities, or- as it is more often than not in my case- in the car on the way to said activity :-)
I'm blessed to have a wonderful and super supportive fiance' (Noah), who, thanks to him, has given me the courage and support to start doing something that I have always wanted- writing books! Although I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to write about or even who my target audience will be (that's my journalism background peeking through), I figure the best place to start is writing about what I love and that is to travel!
I'm going to use this blog to keep everyone updated on where I'm traveling to now, how the book is going and just some neat things I'm seeing/doing/learning along the way.

So, may the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face and may the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.  (Johnny Deep's famouse line from the film "Blow")