5. Make so many cupcakes and find my specialty

I need to take a second and do some bragging. I have some wonderful people in my life who are doing awesome things, and since my blog is almost as popular as Perez Hilton's, I thought I'd share with the world.

1. My sister, Kaylee: My baby sister just had her first day of junior year today (yay!) AND she had a huge article published in the Iowa State Daily. Check it out here. It's pretty great and so is she!

2. This is kind of old news, but needed to be mentioned anyway. Ria's husband, Dave (not his real name...just what I call him), just got a kick-ass new job that he has really been wanting! I am so excited for the both of them and all the good things this will bring to their lives. (Including a trip to Iowa...right?!)

3. My friends, Elizabeth and Tyler, are in the process of becoming owners of their own insurance company. I'm so excited for them! If you're looking for an insurance agent or looking to switch, let me know and I will refer you! (I swear, not being paid to promote...I just have no problem shamelessly plugging for awesome people.)

4. My other Tyler just got a brand-spanking-new job today! I'm extra excited because it means he'll be working my dance recitals every year. (Which I'm sure he is super pumped about too.)

Ok, now that I've done my fair share of bragging about other people, I'm going to do it about myself. I did four things on my list in the past week. FOUR. THINGS. Yeah, bitches. That means four blog posts this week. It also means that I'm about halfway through my list. Eff yeah.

So, cupcakes. Like most things on the list, there is a story behind this. I've been trying to think about what I want to do post-teaching. I know that I can't do this job forever and when the day comes when I need a walker from hip-hopping too hard, I want to have a plan. I also want to have a realistic one, because as much as I'd love to become Mrs. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and get paid to ride rollercoasters all day, I know that I can't count on it, no matter how likely it is. (Pretty freaking likely, Joe. Call me.)  So, I set out to find what I wanted to do with no luck. But one day, my prayers were answered in the form of Katherine Heigl. I got "Life as We Know It" on Netflix and settled in with low expectations. I mean, I love a good chick flick, but I figured it wouldn't be life-changing. However, it turned out to be an awesome movie and it made me decide I wanted to open a cupcake shop. (For those of you who haven't seen the movie, K-Heigl owns her own little bakery-cafe.) I figured it would be one of those things I'd want to do for a week and then I'd move on, but I didn't. I should probably tell you that at that point, I'd never made a batch of cupcakes from scratch in my life. Seriously. But, I was convinced that my cupcake shop was going to happen. Now, I know what you're thinking, skeptical folks: I don't know what I'm doing, I don't even know if I CAN bake, and cupcake shops are super trendy so even if I did make it work, there's no guarantee I could stay in business. And yes, all those things could be true, but how will I know unless I try? And besides, this is something that will most likely not happen for years. YEARS. But, I figured the cupcake baking needed to commence now...you know, so I knew if I could actually bake decent cupcakes.

Now, I've made a few batches before, but this is the first batch I'm going to blog about. I don't want you to have high expectations...this batch of cupcakes sucked. Like, sucked so bad I threw them out, and I NEVER throw out cupcakes.  For my first post, I decided to go with a vanilla bean cupcake with cocoa buttercream frosting. Delicious, right? I was doomed before I even started. Turns out, vanilla beans are freaking expensive. Normally, I would have just sucked it up, but I'm on a tight budget this month, so I did some research and decided to just substitute vanilla extract. That was really my only mistake. The suggested conversion from beans to extract was B.S.  I couldn't even taste the vanilla.  I followed the rest of the recipe to a T. I was a little concerned with the final batter product because it was really runny, but the recipe did say that the batter would be extremely wet so I figured it was fine. I baked the cupcakes for the allotted amount of time, let them cool, and then bit into one. I think it would be easier (and faster) to list the things not wrong with them, but that't not as fun, so here we go:

1) Spongy. The most sponge-tastic cupcakes ever. I could have wiped the counters with them.
2) Dry. What the hell?
3) They were shiny. Ok, so I know appearance shouldn't matter at the moment, but when your dessert looks like a Pro-Active before picture, I think you should be concerned.

At first, I thought maybe frosting could save them. But after a bit of overly-dramatic gagging, I decided not to waste my time. I'm blaming the recipe. After I go grocery shopping, I'm hoping to make peanut butter-filled chocolate cupcakes, which I've made before, with the cocoa buttercream. But in the mean time, you'll get to hear about the other three things I'm working on. Get excited, folks.