Strawberry Pick'n & Weekend Fun

Last weekend, we went to a local farm and picked our own strawberries.  We went with our friends Jonathan and Candace and had a fun time! We look forward to next year when Bean can actually participate in the process!

(We did our Strawberry picking at Suter's Farm.  They supplied the buckets, and we got to fill them with delicious strawberries for $7.50! We were confused at first as to which lanes we were told to pick in.  We figured it out and got to work.)

(We weren't sure how it was going to work with Bean, so we just brought her big stroller since it shades her the best.  We parked her nearby and would check on her as we picked.  We could hear her babbling from our row and she had a good time just watching all the people.)

(Hi Bean!)

(Don't let the minimal amount of strawberries in the bucket fool you, we left with a full gallon bucket! We were probably out there 30 minutes or so.  The weather was beautiful!)

So what did I do with all those strawberries??  About half of them were sliced, sugared, and frozen.  The other half was eaten throughout the week and used to make strawberry shortcake cupcakes! My very good friend Sara has her own cupcake business (Sara's Sweets) and I was nervous to make cupcakes for a gathering with our friends, but I did it anyway! Steve loved the cupcakes.  I thought they were good, but I'd tweak the recipe a little bit for next time.

(I had to make the batter, pour half in the cups, then put in strawberries, then the other half of the batter on top.  The batter was really thick and didn't pour over the strawberries like I had hoped - something I'd tweak for next time!)

(Yum-o!  I sent this picture to my cupcake friend before bringing them to the gathering.  She said I needed to work on the icing, haha - I  cheated and just used redi-whip in the can.  I told her I couldn't make a perfect cupcake, then I'd steal her business!)

Bonus Photos:

(I brought the cupcakes to our small group picnic.  While there, Sara wanted to go down the slide and used Bean as a rouse to go down it.)

(Bean's first slide experience!  No tears means it was a success!  I thought the slide looked super tall, so Sara is just going to have to take Bean to the park and slide so I don't have to freak out over its height.)