Chocolate surprise cupcakes

Okay so I know, I know it's been a while and I promised to get better at this. I apologize, and unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances (and the fact that I suck) I haven't been able to keep up with the daily challenge. I didn't realize how much time baking/selling would take out of my day and with that and school and trying to actually get my friend to come out of his cave to do something other than watch Adventure Time and Austin and Ally I've been kind of swamped.

And here soon I'll be working on SAT, skateboarding, and a college application. But! I'm going to start reminding myself to try to actually blog. I know it's pretty bad and if I ever actually had an audience (however small) I probably lost it by my sucky posting. So it goes. 

But back to the point of this post! I've been doing a whole lot of baking lately and before this, I never really realized just how exhausting baking can be. I don't know what it is about it, but it can really wear you out. But it is fun and business is going well, so I can't really complain. Yeahhh... So again, back to the point! My mom and I decided that we wanted to do some baking just for ourselves because I have eaten a grand total of one of my own muffins and we bought a giant muffin tin that we've been dying to use. 

So we had some Snickers around that had been bought on impulse a few weeks ago, and I thought why not? We looked up a super delicious chocolate cupcake recipe on allshecooks.com and decided to trade the Hershey's kisses for chunks of Snickers. Now, with them being jumbo and chocolate the baking time was a little harder to guess and they did turn out a little dry. But they are still certainly worth it and I have to say its definitely a keeper! The way we did it, it made 8 cupcakes (6 jumbo and 2 regular), but if you're making just normal cupcakes I think it would make about 15-16 cupcakes more or less. Or 7 jumbo. And as not to steal her thunder because she did such a lovely job, I'm just putting up the ingredients so you can waltz over to her lovely site and check out how to make these scrumptious cupcakes. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick)
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa (we used just a tad bit less and it still turned out wonderfully chocolatey)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 snickers bar, cut in slices. (if you are making the full recipe but in small cupcakes then you will need at least 2 Snickers or smaller slices)

As you are pouring them into the cupcake tin only fill about half then drop in the Snickers slice and then fill the rest of the way. 

Clothespin photo line

While I was staying with my future sister-in-law and my cousin in their dorm room this last October, I saw something really cool in the hall of their dorm. To display some of the art done by the girls that were in that hall, they had hot glued clothespins up on the wall and used twine to make it look connected. Then they hung the pictures on the wall with the clothespins. This is a cute and easy way to change out your decorations if you get bored with it. So a few months ago before I even began thinking of doing a blog, I had decided to try this out as the hot glue does not peel the paint if you are careful about taking it down (not pulling at an angle or sharply, otherwise I accidentally found out that it will rip it.). Well, my first try at it went somewhat successfully until two of the three clothespins I had put up fell off while I was away for a bit. After several months of trying to convince myself to stop being lazy and get out the ladder to put them back up, I finally decided that this would be a good tutorial and got about putting it back up. Unfortunately due to my poor coordination and lack of assistance in this, I could not take step by step pictures, so hopefully this makes enough sense that the end result pictures should be enough.

Before you begin, I do need to warn you to be extremely careful with the hot glue gun. I had an unfortunate incident with the hot glue gun when a huge glob of it dripped off the string onto my finger. Which you can see the lovely results here. This caused a bad blister and a lot of pain, so please use extreme caution when you use the gun!
Note: When gluing the string for the middle clothespins, do not place the glue directly onto it as the glue does not stay on! Place it directly onto the clothespin.

Okay so onto business!

Step 1: Measure out the length of twine or string (ribbon would work as well I believe) that you are wanting to use. I used about 2 feet of string to hang up three pictures, but it's up to you on that one.

Step 2: Once you have your string measured and cut and your hot glue gun is ready, carefully glue the back of the clothespin. I have found that it is best to liberally glue the back of it for added strength. Put it up quickly, and press very hard to ensure your clothespin will hold tight.

Step 3: After your clothespin is dry, open your clothespin and place a spot of glue just below where it opens then put your string in.

Step 4: Continue this with the rest of your clothespins.

Step 5: Once all of your clothespins are up and the glue has dried, place your pictures inside of the clothespins. This can be used for several different styles of pictures and papers, so be creative! I used this to place pictures I bought on the street in NYC and even in the plastic baggies, they still stay up quite nicely.

If anyone does this, or any of my other tutorials, I would love to hear suggestions or see what you've done!

Four strand braid

Well, this post was going to be put up a lot earlier today, but my internet has been down most of the day and then went down yet again just as I was about to start focusing on this.

Anyways, for today's post I decided to do another braid I figured out how to do last night and dragged my poor guinea pig into it. This is another one of those braids that looks harder to do than it is, which is coming from someone who can barely do a normal braid without disastrous results. Today's braid is a four-strand or a four-piece braid, whatever you know it as. I, yet again, learned from a video which I'll put at the bottom in case anyone wants to see that way as well.

Step 1: Brush out your hair and separate into four equal(-ish) sections.

To make things easier, I'm going to number the sections 

Step 2: Take strand 1 and place it over strand 2

Step 3: Take this strand under strand 3

Step 4: Now take strand 4 and go under strand 3 and just repeat what you did the first time: Go over strand 2, bring strand 1 under 2, over 3. Bring strand 4 under 3, over 2. Repeat this until it is at the desired length.

Step 5: Tie off with a clear elastic or hair tie.

Step 6: (optional) For a looser, somewhat messy look tug on the strands gently. 

And now for the video I watched. For this I did the first version, but sometime I might try out the second one as well. 

Fishtail braid

So here is my make up post for being so lame last week. Recently I've been looking at different braids for when I actually get hair (hopefully not too far in the future) and a friend of mine showed me how to do one on her daughter. Well, naturally I was intrigued, so while I was browsing Pinterest, I happened to find the same braid! Turns out it was a fishtail braid. Though hers, unlike the kind I do, was very tight and controlled.

So I managed to nab my poor hair guinea pig (Andrea) and use her in my braiding experiment tonight. As she has such nice, long, thick hair, I asked if I could try some out on her and the poor sap agreed without realizing what she was getting into. By the end of Disney's Brave and two episodes of Supernatural we were both pretty sore and tired of trying to get several different styles down. The first, and probably easiest for me, was the fishtail!

One thing that is fabulous about this braid is that it looks so much more complicated than it is, giving you the look of someone who spent a long time on it when really you could probably do it with some practice in about 5 minutes more or less (depending on your hair length and thickness). I watched a video (which I'll post) on how to do it to yourself, so that will be a nice reference if you get confused.

Step 1: Brush out your hair. It's easier to get a nice smooth finish if it's brushed out, but if you like it messy then leave it unbrushed.

Step 2: Put it up in a loose ponytail with a rubber hair band (I have heard you can buy them at a dollar store or a general store very cheaply) or a regular hair tie. 

Step 3: Separate your ponytail into 2 sections 

Step 4: Begin by taking a section from the outer part of your left side and going over the left side and under your right.

Step 5: Do the same from the right side. Take a section and go over the right, under the left. 

Step 6: Continue going back and forth like so.

Here are some photos to give you a general idea of how it should be looking:

Step 7: Once you are getting towards the end (with about less than an inch or so, depending on the style you are going for) tie it off like you would any other braid. I saw with either one of the clear rubber hair bands or with a regular ponytail. 

Step 8: Carefully remove the top ponytail or cut the rubber hair band if you used one. 

Step 9: (optional) If you would like, fluff it out and tug it some to get a loose somewhat messy look. 

And you're done! Yay! Now, seeing as this is my first successful braid ever if I can do it, I know plenty of you can out there. So give it a shot, and with some practice you'll get it down, I'm sure. 

And here's the video I watched to learn in case you would like to see a video instead or want to know how to do it on yourself easier: