Chocolate Peppermint cupcakes

The ten day forecast is looking good, knock on wood! We're probably going to get showers a couple days before, but come Monday it should just be partly cloudy or mostly sunny. We're not nervous, no....

om nom nom nom

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These are not on the menu- I put a little peppermint schnapps into the frosting. These were for the bachelorette party. Not too bad...

Weird things happen here.

Grand Canyon Fire Department hasn't lost a foundation yet!

I kinda felt like a jackass taking pictures of this, but how often do you get to see something catch on fire? I was doing crowd control on this one,people didn't seem to think that an rv filled with a tank of gasoline and a propane tank could possibly harm them. By the way, no one was harmed, just an RV and everything that was in it, a couple of trees next to the rv, and a trash can. This happened a week or two ago. Day before yesterday a guy fell off the rim and was located 200 feet below (It's being investigated as a suicide). The day before that 6 people got hit by lightning, one died. On the bright side, we don't really have water falls that sweep people to their doom, or grizzly bears, or avalanches.

I didn't think I would ever miss cloudy days, but they really put the drama out there. I believe that this is the thundercell that killed the German woman. I was about 25 miles away when I took this and could hear thunder. It was a scary storm.

In other news, it's almost wedding time!!!! We are some busy bees and can't wait to see everyone! Happy happy happy happy!

There's a National Park Unit 5 minutes from my home that I had no idea existed.

My overall impression of Ohio: green.

This place is approximately 5 minutes from where I grew up. I had no idea. The rangers there were kinda jerks. Oh well. Probably wouldn't work there. Dayton Aviation Heritage.

I didn't take a lot of photos in Ohio...

I feel like this is a typical dad gesture....

Even the icecream is scarlet and gray. Awesome.

We were taking a quick drive around campus, and noticed that the gates were open at the Horseshoe, and that we could just walk right in. So we did. I think there was an incoming student rally of some sort fixin to occur, but we took advantage.
Tim said it was smaller than he'd expected. I haven't really been in a lot of other football stadiums, so it's hard for me to say.

A couple of after photos

an array of herbs and flowers

My tomatoes are a little bit bigger now, and my sunflowers finally sprouted! I'm hoping to have sunflowers by August 29th...
I don't know if you noticed the green hose running under the fence, but the only water spigot for the apartment complex is in my neighbor's backyard. So we threw a y connector on it, and now there's a little doggy door between our backyards. Thanks Tim! and Dremel!

We get paid in sunsets.

I think these look like paintings

the haze made these super soft.

I was the one giving the sunset, so far I've gotten the nicest sunset of the summer. I might be biased, but it's been my favorite.

Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes

Well, these were an experiment. The cupcakes were vegan but the recipe for the frosting was not, and I wanted to make them vegan. I don't think I would again. The frosting has strawberry puree in it, and is delicious. The lemony cupcake isn't too lemony or overwhelming. It has coconut milk in it, but you can't really taste that.

This frosting didn't get stiff at all, didn't keep any sort of shape, and would not work with a piping bag. Bummer. Some other sort of frosting will have to be used. I think a lemon curd center would have been delicious, but there wasn't any lemon curd to be had in the park's grocery stores.

I definitely gravitate towards the citrus and fruit in these. I think they'd be a good counterpart to the double coconut cupcakes.