a peek inside the fishbowl

I love cupcakes. Scratch that. I love a small, delicious, perfectly decorated cupcake. And now I have a source.

Today’s SavvyMom is about a very sweet local cupcake-making business called The Ottawa Cupcakery. Lucky me, I was able to sample their wares for the article. And I was not disappointed.

Check this out:

It’s cupcake art! (Which I stuck in an egg cup so you could get a better idea of the size.)

This is one of the Cupcakery’s mini cupcakes (a cupcakelet!) called “Fairy Princess.” It was the most popular flavour around here.

The Cupcakery ladies (Elizabeth, Julie, and Kerry) believe that cupcakes should taste great but also be pretty – truly food for the eye. I couldn’t agree more.

I really liked these cupcakes. I liked them a lot. In fact, I was CONVERTED. One of the cupcakes I taste-tested was a chocolate one, topped with a generous swirl of peanut-butter icing. If you know me you know that I’m not generally a fan of chocolate-flavoured goods. In fact, I’m a little funny about it. (Fudge? Yes. Chocolate cake? No. Brownies? Yes. Chocolate ice cream? No.) I wasn’t prepared to love their peanut-butter chocolate cupcakes as much as I did. They were delicious.

At the moment, cupcakery cupcakes are only available in two places:

• Place large-ish orders (i.e. a dozen or more) from their Etsy shop. I recommend you go this route if you’re having a party or are planning to give them away as gifts.
• If you only want a couple, or taste-test first, The Candy Store in Westboro is the only place you can get them in person. BUT, as I mentioned in the article, they are a special item. They are delivered Saturday mornings (look for a couple of big glass domes at the front counter) and disappear quickly. It seems as if the latte-drinking-yoga-wearing-masses of Westboro like their cupcakes … a lot.  (I count myself as one of the latte-swilling masses.)

I believe in the power of cupcakes. I believe! If you try one for yourself I’m sure you will too.

The actual advent activity for the ninth was to go and buy a gift for Toy Mountain but we got snowed in and had to postpone. The girls finally finished their letters to Santa and we worked on our Christmas cards some more too.

After dinner we settled down to watch an episode of Nature that Mark had recorded while I painted Emma and Sarah’s toenails – same as we did last year. Sarah got pink (with glitter) and Emma got blue (with glitter).

Day ten (today) we braved the snow and the crowds and bought our gifts for Toy Mountain. Emma chose a Mary Poppin’s-style Barbie. Sarah picked a Play-Doh ice cream shop. I could tell she reeeealllly liked it. She looked at it rather wistfully, but I’m glad she picked out something she liked to give away to someone in need. It made it more meaningful.

After dinner we hightailed it to Ikea to pick out our tree.  We considered going to a farm but it’s been a hectic couple of days and we took the easy route. It’s been that kind of week.

And after THAT I got to meet J from Please Pick Up Your Socks as she and A. dropped off the mouse house. I have promised her a coffee and I’m looking forward to it already.
p.s. this is part of my 25 days of Christmas challenge. It’s never too late to play along. And do consider joining our Flickr group too.

It’s Christmas! And Christmas means company. And company means that we have to get our homes in tip top shape, right? (Work with me here!)

I have a thing about chemical air fresheners, as in, I kind of hate them. In fact, we have very very few artificial-smelling products here at casa Fishbowl. “Clean” does not equal a chemical mashup of fakefresh-evergreen-and-apple smell. A clean home doesn’t need to have any smell at all. Yet at the same time I do understand how nice it is to have a nice-smelling house.

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