Valentine's Day

 Cupcakes I made completely from scratch for the Valentine's party at AWANA.

I told you I am trying to trim my grocery budget and one of the ways I am accomplishing that goal is to not buy box mixes and packets of pre-made food items.

It was really very easy to mix up the cake batter from scratch. I already had all the needed ingredients on hand. The part that took so long was gathering everything together (as opposed to opening a box mix and dumping it into the bowl).

And if you'd prefer to have everything already mixed (the dry ingredients), you can can gather your ingredients and store them in a container of some sort and then when baking a cake strikes your fancy, all you have to do is open that container and dump everything into a mixing bowl.

Here's a recipe for that.

 

Topped with made from scratch cream cheese frosting.

 

This was super easy too - it only has 4 ingredients...

1 bar of cream cheese, 1 small container of cool whip, 1/2 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup powdered sugar.

 

I added red food coloring to make my frosting pink.

Roses and balloon we delivered to Kate at school

 

I had planned to make a Valentine's Day dinner for my family, incorporating into the meal different foods that they each love. But since I was feeling too poorly to cook, my sweet husband took our family out for Chinese.

 

And this was in my fortune cookie. Ha, this one was definitely for me. I am not a patient person, to be sure. But...

 

"He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and jupiter and mars. How loving and patient He must be, He's still working on me."

 

*Update: I have felt convicted (by God) that I should not be posting things like that little fortune cookie strip above. I do not read the horoscope and I put no stock whatsoever in those things. My hope is in God and in Him alone. What I perceived to be something done in innocent fun (reading the fortune in fortune cookies), God has shown me is not innocent in His eyes at all. Fortune-telling is one of the practices that He calls abominable. See Deuteronomy 18:9-14, Leviticus 20:6, Leviticus 19:26-28, 31. Even though I have perceived this as harmless fun, and I don't actively seek out my horoscope, etc., I feel that God has made it clear that these kinds of things have no place in a believer's life.

 

"Abstain from all appearances of evil." 1 Thessalonians 5:22

 

So, that is the last of the fortune cookie fortunes for me. God holds my future in His hands and that's all I need to know about it.