Productive weekend!

Last Friday, I made a short list of some things I wanted to accomplish over the weekend. A list in addition to my usual cleaning and clothes washing. I'm happy to say I got through almost the whole list! One thing I didn't get to was to try a recipe (like mashed potatoes) using no milk or the almond milk I bought Friday. I ran out of time before supper Saturday night, and we ate out last night. But its still on my list for this week to try. I've been watchin DH and C eat mashed potatoes for the past 2 weeks, and I want some!

Another thing on my list was to bake something sweet and dairy free. Mission accomplished! I found a great recipe for vegan cupcakes. Apparently, its hard to find straight dairy free recipes; most of them are totally vegan, which eliminates all animal products. So my cupcakes didn't have eggs, either. I found this recipe on yummly.com. Next time I'll add cocoa powder to make them chocolate!

Here's the recipe, copied from the yummly website:
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar                    1 1/2 cups almond milk                       2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white sugar                                 2 tsps baking powder                           1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt                           1/2 cup coconut oil (I used vegetable oil)            1 1/4 tsps vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake pan with baking cups.
Measure apple cider vinegar into a 2 cup measuring cup. Fill with almond milk to make 1 1/2 cups. Let stand until curdled, about 5 minutes. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the almond milk mixture, oil, and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups and bake until the tops spring back when lightly pressed, 15-20 minutes. (It took mine just a hair over 20 minutes.) Cool in pan on a wire rack.

Pretty simple! I'm not a great cook, but I've always been a decent baker (though my desserts don't always come out looking pretty!). And I enjoy baking. These vegan cupcakes were delicious! I'll probably play around with the recipe a bit, but its a good base.

Then I decided I needed some chocolate icing to go on the cupcakes. I found several recipes that sounded good. They all called for dairy-free margarine, though. I had a brain lapse and forgot that all normal margarine contains whey, so I used what we had. Only a 1/2 stick, but still. I did get some dairy in me this weekend. (Okay, a lot, since I ate about 6 of these babies...haha!) We looked at the grocery store last night and they don't carry dairy-free margarine, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about future recipes. But this icing was delicious!!

This one came from about.com:
2 cups powdered sugar                     1/4 cup (1/2 stick) dairy-free soy margarine, softened
1/4 cup plain unsweetened almond milk or soy milk               3/4 cup unsweetened pure cocoa powder
1/2 t. vanilla

Cream the powdered sugar and soy margarine with a hand mixer until its thick but well combined. (This took much longer than I anticipated.) Add the almond milk, cocoa powder, and vanilla, and continue to mix until smooth.

DH wasn't impressed with the chocolate icing, but I sure was! Probably because I've been deprived for almost 2 weeks. C enjoyed it, too. ( :

Also on my list was to dye C's new "big girl panties" so they're prettier. We began potty training her a few months ago, but we've been taking it very slow. We don't want to rush her, since she's not even 2 years old yet. Lately, she's been very into it. She wears big girl panties at her grandma's every day, and doesn't have many accidents. I did a bunch of research a while back on cloth training pants (obviously, I knew we weren't going the Pull-Up route) and purchased a couple different ones - the Best Bottoms training pants and one from Bummis. I've already talked about the BB one, didn't like it. The Bummis one is okay, but its super bulky and...billowy. It just looks ridiculous. Plus the outside is this shiny, slick fabric that pretty much looks like a diaper. My mother-in-law went to WalMart and bought some of the Gerber training pants. Much cheaper than the ones I was looking at! They're just underwear with extra padding in the middle, so they absorb a little pee. They're great!

The problem with them is its hard to find them in C's size - 2T. I guess most kids don't potty train until they fit in 3Ts. MIL lucked up and found a couple packs with girlie prints on them, but all I can ever find is white ones. C's not crazy about the white ones, and I figure we should do whatever we can to make her not want to pee in them! So I got some Rit dye and a fabric pen and went to work...

Here's what we started with:

And here's the end result! (They're not really this washed-out-looking, I think my camera did somethin funky.) :

Pretty, right? C loves them! I've got another 3-pack of undies and some yellow Rit dye. I intended to work on that yesterday but decided I needed a day of rest instead. ( :

The only other thing on my list was to create a shadow box for C's room using the outfit she came home from the hospital in. I've put away all her clothes as she's outgrown them, but I've left that dress hanging in her closet. I knew I wanted to do something with it, but until recently I wasn't sure what. I purchased a shadow box from Michael's (on sale!) and I have some good ideas as to what should go in there. When I showed it to my mother, though, she said the dress needed to be washed first. She volunteered to do it since it needs hand washing, and she hasn't given it back to me yet. As soon as she does, I'm going to get to work!

I accomplished some things that weren't on my list this weekend, too, but I'll save that for another post. ( :  For now, enjoy this beautiful rainbow that we were blessed with yesterday!