Mini Chocolate Layer Cake with Chocolate Mousse and Chocolate Ganache

This Mini Chocolate Layer Cake with Chocolate Mousse Filling and Chocolate Ganache is the perfect birthday surprise for a friend. It's super moist and full of rich chocolate flavor. Although it looks fancy, it's a simple recipe with simple ingredients that you probably have in your pantry right now. 

"What's For Dinner?" - Zucchini and Ground Beef Skillet with No Knead Bread

What's for dinner? Honestly, I am terrible at meal planning. It's just not how I roll. Sure, I plan if I am having people over and I might think of something a day ahead, but generally,  I am the kind of person who comes up with a dinner plan a couple of hours before it's time to serve dinner. So, I thought it would be fun to share some of the dinners I come up with from time to time.

Tonight, I had a craving for some homemade bread. And what better to go with bread than a veggie centered meal? It's nearing the end of our garden harvest and I happened to have two large zucchini and generous handful of cherry tomatoes to use. Whenever I have fresh zucchini from the garden, my go-to meal is Zucchini and Ground Beef Skillet. It's basically a zucchini boat, but less labor intensive and certainly faster to make. It's light, and summery, and delicious. 

Brown Butter Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

My grandma was a wonderful baker. Her house always smelled like fresh baked bread. When you visited grandma, you could count on her having a cookie jar full of a variety of her homemade cookies. You never knew what kind of cookie you would pull out of the cookie jar, but it didn't matter because they were all good. These brown butter oatmeal raisin remind me of Grandma's chewy oatmeal raisin cookies, I think that's why I like them so much. I hope you will too! 

Alex's Minion Birthday Party

My Nephew Alex turned six recently.  His family was busy preparing to move, so my mom and I thought we would help out by throwing him a minion birthday party. It was so much fun!  Here's what we did....(Fair warning, there are *a lot* of pictures)

This our main table

The Girlfriend Clutch

Here's what I've been slowly working on in my spare time over the last week. Thanks Blue Susan Makes for the pattern!!!

The 100 Year Flood

 

Well, it's finally here.  The 100 year flood, that has supposed to be coming through Boulder for several years now, arrived last night. There are roads that have washed away, hundreds have been evacuated and there's been a lot of damage. Being east of Boulder, it has not been as bad out here, but we did have some problems last night. We walked into one of the basement bedrooms and found that the carpet was wet. Ben came over and helped move all the furniture out of the room. Once that was out, we discovered that there is a crack in the wall that goes from the window to the floor that had water flowing out of it. It literally was like a little water fall running down the wall.

A Quilt for Nikki

My friend Wendy and I like to make quilts for people in our group of  friends. We have made at least 5 quilts together (that I can remember...there could be more) for our close friends.  Our latest was for our dear friend Nikki. Nikki is...well...in a word....AWESOME!  She is a compassionate, kind, funny, smart, and wonderful person.  And, she happens to like yellow - which we all know is a super happy color...how can you not like yellow?  Anyway, I picked up an assortment of Jelly rolls and fat quarter bundles a couple of years ago to make this happy quilt for Nikki. So, I thought I should document it. Wendy and I started working on the quilt back in February.  We worked on it here and there and then the quilt top went missing in my house for about a month (which was not a proud moment over here, but thankfully, much to Wendy's relief, it turned up!) And then....and I am embarrassed to admit it, as we were trimming the quilt top in preparation to spray baste and machine quilt it, I did the unthinkable....I accidentally cut into the finished quilt top! Yes! That's right, for the first time in my life, I totally chopped in to a finished quilt top! Not the edge....of course not! No, I cut into the black border! It was awful and required some seriously tricky patching, but it all worked out in the end. Thank you Wendy for being patient and for working with me to make this beautiful quilt.