Homemade funfetti cupcakes!

I always volunteer to make birthday cakes for my husband's family. I love baking and cake decorating and I appreciate the opportunity to work on my mad skillzzzzz. This time though, since I haven't been feeling the greatest, I knew I didn't want to take on a whole cake or anything complicated, so I went with cupcakes!

I still wanted to try something new, and I remembered my sister-in-law mentioning that she likes the kind of cake with sprinkles in it. I've never made that from scratch, I've only ever made it from a box. So I set out to find a recipe. I picked one that used ingredients I already had in the house. I found this one on What Katie's Baking. The only thing I substituted was 5% cream instead of whole milk. I took a couple of in progress shots using Instagram :)

I cheated a little. The icing on these cupcakes was from a can, *gasp*!! I found a can in my cupboard and the convenience just really appealed to me. I did spruce it up a bit by whipping it with some extra icing sugar using my hand mixer. This makes the can stuff a little stiffer so that it can be piped on the cupcakes! I haven't been able to make homemade chocolate icing that's as good as the stuff in the can.

The cupcakes turned out alright, they were a little denser than I would have liked, I feel like they should have been light and fluffy, and moist. They were tasty but kind of dry. I probably wouldn't make this exact recipe again, but I will definitely try homemade funfetti cake again!

33 Weeks!!

This week marks 33 weeks pregnant! I'm starting to get pretty uncomfortable, I can really feel all of the extra weight I've been carrying around, and I can feel my skin stretching. Fortunately, some days are better than others. I'm sure pretty soon I will be uncomfortable all day long every day...

I've been having awful Braxton Hicks contractions every time I do any sort of exercise, which is unpleasant. I can't even walk around the block without this happening. It makes it kind of hard to stay in any kind of decent shape, even though I know BH are harmless, it still completely freaks me out.

Next week I am starting biweekly midwife appointments! At 38 weeks I will go every week. That really makes the end seem so much closer. If I go to 42 weeks (furthest I'll go before being induced) then I will have only have 7 more appointments!

32 weeks!

I'm about a week behind, 32 weeks came and went, and I am little late writing about it. There isn't too much of note. We are really trying to relax and we're slowly getting everything crossed off the to-do list. The nursery is *so close* to ready to be shared. My mom is coming up in a couple of weeks and she's bringing a couple of finishing touches with her. After that you can definitely look forward to some pictures on here :)

I have started to feel uncomfortable, especially at work after sitting in my desk chair all day. It feels like there is a ton of extra weight on me... oh wait, there is! Well now it all makes sense ;)

Here I am, 32 weeks!

Our mini-babymoon!

Two weeks ago we drove about an hour and a half from our house to spend two nights at a bed and breakfast (Islandview Inn) in the little touristy town called Gananoque. Since it was winter, there wasn't much to do, but that was exactly what we had in mind anyway. It was a fabulously quiet weekend.

I finished reading The Happiness Project, and started and finished an excellent book called The Birth House. Both were great reads and I definitely recommend them! Since we spent most of our time in the room, those are the only pictures I have... oops. At least the room was beautiful :) I didn't even take any photos of us! Or the town! Or the food we ate, although outside of the amazing breakfast we were served both morning, there wasn't much to rave about on the food front.

If you're ever in the 1000 Islands area I definitely recommend the Islandview Inn! It was gorgeous, close to everything, which would have been a bigger deal in the summer, and the owner Lisa was so friendly, and such an amazing cook! All in all it was such a great break from my to-do lists and nursery preparation!

Have you been on any mini-vacations lately?

The 3rd trimester so far...

I have been gone a while, I know, and I'm sorry! Things are just a bit busy and it's hard to make time to blog. I've also been extremely tired again, like I was in the first trimester! It makes sense since I am carrying around a lot of extra weight these days. I would say I had a few days last week where I was really uncomfortable. Fortunately it's not every day... yet.

My third trimester has been going well so far, aside from a few hiccups. I had a little bit of spotting that sent me in to the midwife about 2 weeks ago, completely freaked out. It turned out to probably be related to a low-lying placenta. I had an ultrasound a couple of days ago, and the low-lying placenta they found at 19 weeks is still low. Apparently this can cause spotting. The good news? Baby girl looks completely healthy and happy! I have to go back in a few weeks to see if the placenta has moved up at all. If it doesn't move up I am looking at a c-section delivery, so please send your awesome placenta moving up thoughts my way :)

The nursery is pretty much completed. All we have left to do is hang a shelf that my grandfather made, we've been putting it off because it involves using a stud finder and a drill, and neither of us is particularly handy. I mean, we'll get it done, but it's not something we're keen to do. After we get the shelf hung I will definitely take a bunch of photos and have a reveal here on the blog!

For now, here's a recap of my growing bump! I definitely noticed a HUGE increase from 29 to 30 weeks. Holy cow!