Happy Wednesday_­ Folks!

Last week we celebrated the first birthday of our sweet Samuel. It was a small and delightful family gathering watched closely by Samuel’s great-grandparents and other Portuguese relatives via Skype. At some points we felt as part of a reality TV show as they sat on the couch watching us eat, blow the candles and open the gifts. But then, we sang together Happy Birthday in Portuguese and it was like they were physically there with us and my heart was joyful.

The food was pretty excellent and ended Samuel’s hunger strike after a week of painful teething – I have never been so glad to still be nursing. My mother-in-law made a tasty chilli with abundant chunks of moose, Chris baked butter-melting cornbread, and I did the cake. The cake was adapted from the book Cakes for Kids and it was composed of 27 mini-cupcakes forming the shape of a moose (can you see the theme, here?). I used the yellow cupcake recipe from Little Red Chicken and her vanilla buttercream icing for the cupcakes that formed the antlers. For the brown icing there was a delicious chocolate mousse from Post-Punk Kitchen. Even though a breakdown almost occurred when I noticed that the yellow icing was not setting (too much milk, perhaps?), the cake turned out pretty fine and Samuel seemed to truly enjoy it as well. The chocolate mousse was SO good that the extra was quickly eaten through the week on ice cream, cookies (don’t ask) and many spoon fulls.

We also celebrated the future arrival of a baby of a very talented friend. As a thank-you to the baby-shower attendees, she made heart shaped seed paper which is such a cool and beautiful idea that I might use it for a future get-together. I can’t wait for the spring and see the flowers my heart will bring.

And then on Sunday was the Superbowl where moose made again an appearance, in this case in a homemade slow-smoked form. If it wasn’t a Weekly Snaps edition, the post would likely be entitled “From moose to mousse to moose”.

Have a wonderful week! Make it count.

PS- Today is the last day of our GIVEAWAY! Can’t wait to see where the goodies will go.