Baking with Bella

Last week's posts were taken up with Valentine's Week items, so I didn't want to let too much more time pass without sharing something fun from the weekend before, when Alex and I had the pleasure of staying with grandkids Bella and Owen overnight while their parents were out of town. Bella has become quite the baking queen, and she wanted to make strawberry cupcakes, so I decided we would do the cake part from a boxed mix but make the cream cheese icing from scratch. And the photo at right, just for fun, is showing Bella's reaction when she read a newspaper column Alex wrote about her. Bella was concerned, shall we say, when she discovered Alex had recently written a column mentioning her brother, Owen, but not her, so of course Alex had to write one about her too. I think she liked it!

And while I frosted one of these Valentine cupcakes, and I couldn't by any means tell you which one, Bella did the rest of them herself using the new Wilton decorating kit we got her for Christmas. Aren't these lovely? (They tasted great too, I am here to tell you, and I enjoyed two of them with copious quantities of the family's tea!)

Bella also loves animals, including her poodle Luke (miniature poodle Gracie didn't make it into the photo). She is thinking she might like to one day open a restaurant where both human and animal diners can eat, complete with food cooked especially for the pets too. I can see that idea taking off, can't you?

And while the boys stayed out of our way during the baking, here's Owen with a Fortnite toy that Luke tried to run off with.

As soon as I walked into the kitchen on the day of our visit, I spotted this artwork Bella had created and hung on the refrigerator, and I was so delighted to find out she had made it for me. (Note the image of Luke on the tea mug.) You can probably imagine how very happy this made me!