I'm in business!

I was finally able to find some time to devote to getting my business website up & running. As a result, I decide I should probably order some business cards to help promote my business!

As a mother of a 2 year old, usually "Moo" is the answer I get to what sound a cow makes, but Moo is also a great printing company! The best part of ordering from Moo is the flexibility you can get with the images on your cards. You can use as many different images as you would like. I settled on 6 different images for the front of my cards, and then did a custom design for the information side. They even come in a great holder!








So if you need business cards (or greeting cards, postcards, stickers, etc) check out http://www.moo.com. Oh, and don't forget to check out my new site for EKC Photography!

Innocence

Halloween Revisited

Although both Los & I swore that Halloween would not be as last minute as it was last year (got Miss A's costume the night before Halloween!), it didn't quite work out that way! It did end up being rather last minute, but between a good friend loaning us an adorable costume for Miss M and making a quick trip to Target to find something for Miss A, we ended up with 2 very cute costumed girls!





Since Miss A is now 2 we decided that we would take her trick-or-treating just around our circle of about 12 homes. She understood that she was supposed to knock on the door and say "Treat Please!" - unfortunately she now thinks that works all of the time!



Even though they only went to a handful of houses, she still ended up with a pumpkin full of treats!

Do You See What I See?

My little girl has 4 teeth now... and she's pretty happy about it!



Where oh where does the time go?

And one more photo, just because....





P.S. More photos to come to explain my long absence from blogging!

The Ohio State Fair

A few weeks ago, the family & I drove out to Columbus to go to the Ohio State Fair. Having never been to a State Fair, we weren't really sure what to expect. There were of course all the standards of rides, carnival food, and crowds, but also agriculture displays, art displays (that somehow we missed!) and lots of different performers and commercial displays. It ended up being a long day but also a lot of fun.

It was also the first time that Miss A actually enjoyed a carnival ride! (I still need to post our photos from Miss A's first attempt at a carousel...)




And a few more artsy shots of the fair...







More to come another day!

Rain Rain Go Away

Today our afternoon plans were washed away by a large thunderstorm that rolled through, but as a result I captured a photo of Miss A that is a new favorite of mine.



Maybe the rain wasn't so bad...I think I might have to get this printed on a canvas for the living room!

A New Prop

As I've slowly been starting up EKC Photography, I've been acquiring props here & there for photo shoots. I did a quick shoot with Miss M and I can easily see this becoming one of my favorite items to use during a shoot! Can you tell what the prop is?





Miss A also joined in for a few photos. I can see these 2 playing together in the near future!

Already?!

Hard to believe that it's already been 6 months!

Buttermilk Cupcakes with Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Last weekend I felt the urge to bake again so I pulled out a new cupcake book to try a recipe. I recently picked up Martha Stewart's Cupcakes - It's a great cookbook with tons of photos and creative design ideas for cupcakes! The first recipe I decided to try was for Buttermilk cupcakes - a fairly basic cake, but I already had buttermilk in the fridge that I didn't want to waste so this was a perfect use for it.

One downside to the recipes in the Cupcakes is they are written for 36 cupcakes - too many for this household! Because the quantities in the recipe aren't easily spilt, I had to slightly modify the recipe to only make 16.

1.5 cups cake flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/8 cup sugar
2 whole eggs, plus 2 yolks, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. On medium-high speed, cream butter & sugar until pale & fluffy. Reduce speed to medium. Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until eggs are incorporated. Add yolks, and beat until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, and beating until combined after each. Beat in vanilla.

3. Divide batter among cups - filling each 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes.


Top the finished cupcake with whatever frosting you'd like - the joy of buttermilk cupcakes is that it's a great base to be creative with! I opted to use a chocolate swiss meringue and also to fill half the cupcakes with melted chocolate.







Enjoy!!

Rubber Ducky Revisited

About 18 months ago I took a series of photos of Miss A with her rubber ducky.



Since I had some time with just Miss M today and because she recently learned how to sit up, I decided it was time for a similar photo shoot.





But the best photo of the night did not feature the duck at all...



This photo has kept me laughing all night and I hope it does the same for you!

Little Toes

Today I had the opportunity to photograph teeny-tiny Baby I who was born only 10 short days ago! I couldn't wait to edit some of the photos from the session, so I thought I would post a sneak peak for her Mom & Dad to see! :)

Summer Fun

We spent a lot of time during June traveling across the country from Boston to Texas. Not only did we cover A LOT of miles in the car, we got to see many family & friends and the girls had a blast! I'm still working on editing photos from our trips, but here are just a few.

Anna had to wear her hat for most of our time in Texas due to the intense heat & strong texas sun! The high temp on the saturday was 105, to be followed by a "cool snap" of only 95 on sunday!


This was actually taken here in Dayton during a promotion party for 2 guys in Carlos's squadron. Maya spent most of the afternoon relaxing on her new blanket.


And finally, I grabbed this photo during one of the only 2 sunny days in Boston when Anna was able to play in the paddling pool that my mum picked up for her. Anna had a blast in the water... now if only that would translate to a regular pool!

A Summer Salad

Not much is better than fresh berries on a hot summer day...



Unless the berries are served with a side of Lemon Cream Cupcakes!

A Boston Visit

I've been a little MIA from my blog this week because Los, the girls & I made a trip up to Boston because my wonderful grandmother made the long trip over from England to see all of us. Granny had the opportunity to meet Ms. M



And we got to enjoy a wonderful BBQ with my sister & brother-in-law. I of course used the afternoon to photograph some of the beautiful flowers in their garden.







And Just one more beautiful Flower!

A New Photographer!

My wonderful husband always comments that because I"m always behind the camera, I have very few photos of me with the girls so during this trip, he made sure to grab the camera from me occasionally. I'm so glad he did!

Photos are a wonderful thing

I know there are many reasons why having lots of photographs around is a good idea, but I was reminded of a very important one tonight. We decided to move Miss M into Miss A's room tonight as Miss A has been out of her crib for a few weeks now and Miss M was rapidly reaching the limits of her bassinet. Well, 3 hours later I finally got both girls settled. During those 3 hours, it was difficult to see my children as anything other than screaming, wailing, and throwing all out temper tantrums, however once I looked at my computer and a handful of photos I took of Miss M right before bedtime started, those thoughts quickly vanished and were replaced by the sweet faces that are normally seen!





It's hard to believe that this sweet little face could scream so loudly!

And who would think that Miss A could be anything other than a little Angel :)

Hot Chocolate with Baileys

Lately I've been in a cupcake baking kick yet I don't really want to bake the standard chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting so I've started to branch out more. An idea came to me to try to recreate a classic drink, Hot Chocolate with Baileys, in cupcake form - I figured that if the flavor combination works for a drink, then it definitely should work for cake! I took inspiration for the recipe from a new cookbook that I picked up at Williams-Sonoma recently called Cupcakes.

Here is the basic recipe that I used:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup Baileys
1/2 cup coffee, at room temp
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
1/2 cup granular sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temp

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. In a small bowl, combine Baileys and coffee. In the stand mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter & sugars until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Add the egg and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the Baileys mixture in 2 parts, beating on low speed until just combined.
Fill the cups about 3/4 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out cleanly, 22-24 minutes.

This recipe made 13 cupcakes for me, although had I not overfilled a few of the cups, it most likely would have made 14.

Now during the process of making the cupcakes, I faced the difficult decision of what sort of frosting I should use. Although the cupcakes have a chocolate base to them, the Baileys is definitely the dominating flavor so really it came down to 2 choices. I could stick with the chocolate buttercream - thus recreating the Hot Chocolate w/ Baileys idea - or I could switch it up and do a coffee buttercream and have the flavors of Coffee w/ Baileys. I opted to do half & half! I also tried out a new (to me!) buttercream recipe from the cookbook and although skeptical, it ended up being a delicious change from my normal recipe! It wasn't as sweet as my typical buttercream which complimented the cupcakes well, although the consistency of the coffee buttercream didn't seem quite right, but may have had something to do with me halving the recipe.

Here are the finished products!






For any cupcake fans out there, I highly recommend Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski. It has some great ideas and fabulous photos to provide inspiration!