Rustic Stand on the Frontier of Craftiness

Who likes my title?  I thought it was pretty clever and thought about it during my most genius-idea producing time...the shower of course!  You may be wondering why it is so clever and lucky for you I am about to tell you.

A few weeks back I was contacted by Charley Cooke of Cooke's Frontier (ah, there is the key to my awesome title) to do a review and giveaway of our cupcake stand from our Etsy shop.  I was super excited because I had always seen bloggers doing giveaways and I always wondered how they teamed up with these people to give away the items, and lo and behold it was happening to me!

Charley did a great review of our cupcake stand and came up with so many cool ideas for alternative ways to use the stand - fairy themed parties anyone??  She also did a really awesome mockup for Halloween, go check it out HERE to see more pictures and some other super cool ideas.  And duh, if any of you out there want to win this stand for free don't miss the super easy opportunity over on her blog when you are visiting.

Thanks for stopping by!

Erin

Happy Birthday to Michael!

Today is Michael's birthday, my best friend and new husband!  I was lucky enough to get the day off but he was not :( This morning I made him breakfast in bed, made his lunch, AND gave him his first birthday present before work - I am such an awesome wife! But seriously, I had a great time today surprising him by cleaning out the storage closet like he has wanted and cooking him an awesome meal of imitation Chick-Fil-A nuggets (and sauce!) and homemade potato chips!  The chips were from Paula Dean and were super simple and A-mazing, check out this two step recipe, here.  The nuggets were also great but I had a little too much breading to chicken ratio because I forgot to cut down the recipe for just two chicken breasts, whoops!  I found this recipe over on Table for Two.  The only thing I changed was that I marinated the chicken in pickle juice beforehand, something I had read somewhere else and it really did make them taste more authentic!  For the big finale, aka dessert, I made chocolate peanut butter Reeses cupcakes.  I actually made these yesterday because Michael wanted to bring them in to work, and they were a big hit!  The recipe was adapted from Chef in Training - I just love her recipe index!

The big thing I did differently was that I crushed up some Reeses cups and put them in the cupcake batter before baking - mmm :)

Check out the deliciousness in action!

Only put a little bit of batter in the bottom.

Smash up some Reeses

Add the Reeses to the batter and pour more batter on top.

Now on to my most favorite kitchen gadget!

 Homemade PB frosting = awesomeness.

I don't have a frosting piper so I improvised with some advice from my Mom. 

Messy but it worked! 

Perfect birthday cupcake!

Enjoy!!