Fantabulous Friday: Kitchen Experiments and Candles

But Amelia, you say, it's only Thursday!  You are right.  However, my weekend technically begins tomorrow, so you get Friday's post a day early.  We are actually going to take a teeny-weeny vacation to watch our mutual friend Justin galavant around a stage pretending to be Jack Worthing.  Not only will that be an amusing experience, but Steve and I will get to hang with old friends and (most importantly) with each other.  We've been living in different schedules for nearly two weeks without a break and so this extended weekend is greatly anticipated.

While making cupcakes is easiest with prepackaged frosting and mixes, I really don't like using them.  Today was the perfect time to experiment with some homemade recipes.  Behold, Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Fluffy Seven-Minute Frosting:

Wow, can I just say that Mrs. Joy's Seven-Minute Frosting recipe is the new love of my life?  It's light and fluffy, wonderful to manage and grease-free (thus making cleaning up a breeze).  This was my first attempt at a boiled frosting...I'm never going back.  And the taste?  Scrummy homemade meringue.  

See that candle in the background of this picture?  I have been (sort-of) participating in Making Your Home a Haven over at Women Living Well, and the first day of the challenge was to buy a candle and light it every day in my home.  (This was perfect because my house usually smells like diapers and dog.)  Aha, thought I, there is an enormous candle in the Grown-Up drawer in the bedroom.  I can participate in the challenge and not spend any money!  I am Super-Homemaker!  Out came the candle, sizzle went the match and I was off to a haven-ly home.

Did you know that candles can go bad?  Apparently.  This enormous candle was given to me at my highschool graduation six years ago...and six years is too long for a candle to be sitting around.  Instead of rich Hazelnut Coffee this candle smelled more like cold PMS tea.  Yuck.

Not wanting to give up on the candle-lighting challenge, I purchased a yummy Cinnamon Roll candle on a niftly-glifty sale.  It makes the house smell so good that Steve even remembers to light it when I forget.  And sometimes Steve remembers to light it and we both forget to blow it out...like a few nights ago when he went to work and I went to slumber party it up at the parents' house.  Brilliant.  Visions of a toasted dachshund danced through my head as I prayed that the candle would just burn out.

It did.  My home was still a haven and not a Hades.

(This week's Making Your Home a Haven challenge of playing music every day is a trifle less stinky...and dangerous.)

Have a good weekend, everybody!  I'm off to actually see the man I'm married to....