It’s Sunday afternoon. This weekend went so fast. My mother just wrote on my wall on Facebook. Weeeird.

Anyway, let’s see… I haven’t posted since Thursday or Friday. I’m going to skip most of my meals and just show you what I’ve been doing.

NF picked me up from work Friday and we drove back to my house then to Wal-Mart because she had to get things like big bags of candy and two tarps… then we came back to my house so that I could pick up my car and follow her back to her house. I’ve driven there once but SUCK at directions.

We saw a rainbow while sitting in traffic and simultaneously texted each other about it. I stuck my camera out the window and took a picture for you. Finally something good comes from traffic on 28.

Ohhh by the way, since New Friend is not really a new friend anymore but a…regular friend, I’m going to start using her actual name. Blog meet Sarah (stirring pasta sauce):

Sarah somehow got herself into cooking dinner for like 20 people Saturday night so I helped her prepare Friday night. By helped, I mean I mostly watched, taste tested a bit, and hovered with my camera.

The sauce turned out well!

We also ate some frozen pizza. I had three little slices. It came pre-cut. Weirrrd.

After hanging with Sarah until about 10:30 or so, I made it home around 11 and got to bed by midnight maybe. I told Sarah I’d bake a dessert for her dinner so I got up early Saturday morning and was out the door to make cupcakes!

I used a blueberry bundt cake recipe which ended up making 21 cupcakes. I made the regular cake over here if you recall. Perfect! I ate one and delivered 20 to Sarah.

Here’s the recipe from the Williams-Sonoma Cakes, Cupcakes and Cheesecakes cookbook:

The batter is very thick so I put a spoonful into the cupcake liners, added frozen blueberries, another spoonful of batter and then more frozen blueberries on top. Frozen blueberries are generally better to use in baking because they don’t make the batter completely blue. Had I known I was going to find pints of fresh blueberries for $1(!) after already purchasing frozen ones, I probably just would have gone the fresh route and frozen them myself. Ohh well. I bought 3 pints anyway…for my own consumption.

Batter layer one with some blueberries:

Batter layer two ready to go into the oven:

I preheated the oven to 350 and had two trays of cupcakes in for a total of 22 minutes.

Out of the oven:

Annnnd done with blueberry buttercream:

I made my normal confectionery sugar buttercream but mashed some blueberries and added that for some color and some blueberry …speckles….or something.

Here’s a closeup for you with a fresh blueberry on top:

I hope the frosting held up for her dinner party because it was a little thinner than I would have liked. Hopefully she refrigerated….

Check it out:

I finally got to use the cupcake box dividers that I ordered a while ago. This things are awesome! I felt like a professional.

I even tied the boxes with cupcake ribbon because I am ALL ABOUT food aesthetics.

So I was planning to do my long run while the cupcakes were cooling but I didn’t end up having time so I made a new plan — drop off cupcakes with Sarah in Millvale and then head to North Park to run. It rained a little on the way but then stopped by the time I got to the park. YES! It was perfect running weather too. It was like 68 degrees and overcast.

The plan was 6 miles… That would be the longest I’ve EVER run. I felt pretty good about it. That’s only half a mile more than last weekend. I parked my car and set off. At North Park, you are running around a lake on a little walking lane. I wondered if there were some — you most go clockwise around the lake — rules or something. Plus I thought maybe one way would be more uphill than the other way and I DID NOT WANT THAT. I walked a little until I found a runner that I decided to follow…

I followed this girl (going clockwise) for about a half mile (uphill) then passed her but kept going clockwise. It was almost all slightly uphill. AH. I think maybe I went the wrong (and by wrong I mean hard) way. So it’s a little over 5 miles around the lake. My plan was to go all the way around and then some to get to 6. After running 3 miles without any downhill, I decided to change the plan. At 3 miles, I turned around and ran back. This was great! (read slightly downhill…)

The run went so well! There are a few reasons for this I think.