Business as Usual

Daddy left early this morning to go on a short trip up to Boston. He has a few meetings he has to go to. He will be back home with us tomorrow night. While he's there he managed to fit in a trip to a Cupcake place for me. Lulu's also just happened to be across the street from another bakery he wanted to go to. The last time Joe and I were in Boston was in 2003. I was pregnant with Jacob and we found a really good place to get really good Italian cookies. He went across the street to Mike's, I believe that's what it's called and picked us up some cookies. I can't wait for him to get home. Not just cause he's bringing us goodies, but because we miss him. He did manage to send me this picture of inside Lulu's Bakery from earlier today. It was taken with his cell phone camera, that's why it's a little fuzzy.

While Daddy was in meetings today, Nana and I and the kids headed to the Hagerstown Outlet Mall. I was in need of some good deals for some fall clothes for the kids. We also needed to find some shoes for the kids. We didn't do too bad, I found two pairs of shoes for Jenna, one at the Stride Right Outlet and one at Children's Place. I found one pair for Jacob also at the Stride Right Outlet, they all turned out to be reasonably good prices. We made out the best by far at The Children's Place Outlet. I got Jacob three shirts and Jenna three shirts. Most of which were 50% off the already reduced price. My best deal though was the jeans. They had girls jeans on sale for $2.99. I bought Jenna five pairs of jeans, off those shelves. Three pairs for the coming months and two pairs in 3T for hopefully next year. Did I also mention that I had a coupon for 15% off my entire purchase. The $2.99 jeans actually ended up being $2.55 a pair before tax. I don't know about you, but I have never purchased jeans for that cheap. Needless to say I was very happy with the purchases that I made today at CP. Those of you who have little ones should definitely go check it out, it's worth the drive. The Gap Kids Outlet also had a good deal of stuff on sale, no $2.99 jeans but also some good stuff. I also managed to find myself two new shirts for work for when it gets a little cooler. We didn't get to look everywhere we wanted to, cause I had to get home to go to work, but we still did really well for the amount of time we spent there, at the mall.

More Cupcakes!

Yesterday, Joe decided he would stop by Hello Cupcakes on the way home for me as on Thursdays they have a few flavors I was interested in. When he arrived there we (I was on the phone) discovered that Hello Cupcakes is apparently not open yet. It says on their website opening Summer 2008, and I know that somewhere on the web I read it was open. Anyway it's not. So Joe decided to venture over to Baked and Wired as we were both now in the mood for some good cupcakes. Now let me first say that Baked and Wired does not just sell cupcakes, they sell a variety of baked goods. They are more expensive than Georgetown Cupcakes, but the cupcakes are also much larger than GT. They are also a much better cupcake. Not only are they bigger but the cake was definitely more moist. The frosting was not cream cheese at least on the cupcakes I tried. When Joe got there he said that the woman behind the counter said they usually have more flavors but had sold out of a lot of them for that day. He got two of their strawberry cupcakes, a carrot cake cupcake and three chocolate cupcakes. I tried a bite of both the carrot cake cupcake and the strawberry cupcake. The carrot cake one was pretty good. I'm not really a carrot cake person but Joe enjoyed it. The strawberry one was pretty good. I enjoyed the cake it was white with strawberries in it. The frosting was a strawberry butter creme. It was a little sweet, so I could only eat so much of it. The chocolate cupcake was also really good and the frosting was a vanilla butter creme. Jenna really enjoyed this frosting and she even ate a little bit of cake, too. I have one more chocolate cupcake to eat and I think I'll have it after lunch today. Have a great Friday and enjoy the weekend.

Is it just us?

Okay so I've always has a small obsession with cupcakes. I really do love them. But on my daily blog rounds lately I have been checking out a lot of Melis B's links to cupcake blogs. This has really had me in the mood for some good cupcakes. Now don't get me wrong I think I am pretty good at making cupcakes, but I am just not in the mood to bake. I would rather have someone else do the baking. In my travels at The Cupcake takes the Cake blog they have a rather extensive list of Cupcakeries around the U.S. I have been checking out several in the D.C area, just cause well maybe they're convenient enough for Joe to stop at on his way home. And so he did just that for me on Tuesday. He stopped at Georgetown Cupcake, he brought home 6 cupcakes. We had a Chocolate & Vanilla, Vanilla2, Lava Fudge, Coconut, and 2 of the Red Velvets as this is their signature cupcake. Today on CTC blog they have a snippet of this article, this food critic liked these GT cupcakes? Joe and I did not. The cake was dry and well if you like cream cheese frosting you might like them. All of the cupcakes had cream cheese frosting. Don't get me wrong they looked really yummy but looks aren't everything right? I tried a bite of all of them with the exception of the coconut one. I don't really care for coconut so I opted not to try it. Of all of the cupcakes the vanilla2 was the best. Joe and I agreed that it was the best out of all of them. And well saying it was the best isn't really saying much. I did not eat any of that frosting because at that point I couldn't take any more of the frosting.

Before going to that bakery we had discussed going to a different one, Hello Cupcakes! We decided to try GT first since it was closer to Joe's work and he read lots of good reviews about it. Now in reading the comments after the article I linked above it seems a lot of people feel the same way about GT that Joe and I do. With that being said I am now really ready to try Hello Cupcakes. They look like they have lots of yummy flavors and a few people did say they we're good. This shop did just open not that long ago, so we will see. I am also looking forward to trying Baked and Wired they too got lots of good reviews. In the comments of the above article lots of people said that they were much better than GT cupcakes. So we will see just where I can get my hubby to go to next for me for my cupcake craziness. I will then let you know what I think of those cupcakes. Because you know that you all want to know : ) he,he! About a month or so ago we did try some cupcakes from a bakery in Maryland that a friend brought to us as she lives near it. Those were some pretty good cupcakes but unfortunately I can't remember the name of the bakery right now. I am sorry if I am making anyone hungry because I know every time I am reading about cupcakes it makes me hungry. Like now just writing about them and it's midnight, I am getting hungry.

Here's a picture of the cupcakes sorry about the lighting. Unlike myself Jenna did enjoy the frosting. And my Jacob of course wanted nothing to do with them : ) Hopefully our next venture to a new place will turn out to be better with better cupcakes.