To Get Me Through to Spring Training

Baseball is over for another season and I miss it terribly. I never realize how much I enjoy relaxing with the game until the season ends and there is no baseball on.

To get me through this winter, Dad got me a history of baseball DVD box set. It is over 25 hours long so it should get me though at least part of the winter. I'm sure I will learn a lot too.

Chocolate Cupcake Toppers (Blue Jays Design)

I first got excited about chocolate cupcake toppers while reading Sugar Swings, and seeing her amazing superhero toppers. With the Blue Jays winning the American League East, I was encouraged to try making some of my own, choosing the Jays logo (and their maple leaf logo) as my toppers.

Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio has an amazing tutorial on how to pipe chocolate (candy melts) onto a design for cupcake toppers and watching this video gave me the confidence to go for it.

When piping chocolate designs, make sure you have an image that looks the same when reversed, or make sure you reverse your image so the design is backwards. You want the design backwards because the finished topper is flipped over, as the flip side is flat and looks a lot nicer than the piped chocolate side. I previously made numbers for a birthday cake, and you can see that example here. For the Blue Jays logo, I googled an image of it and then flipped it horizontally before printing it out. The maple leaf logo looks the same on the reverse side, so I didn't need to flip it.

To start, I printed out a number of pages of designs and taped them to the table.

Then I covered the pages with parchment paper and taped it to the table too.

Using piping bags filled with the four colours of the logo, I piped one colour at a time, waiting about ten minutes for each colour to dry. First I did the white outline of the logo, then the red maple leaf, then the light blue, and finally the dark blue. I didn't take photos of the process, because I always forget to capture what I'm doing while I'm doing it. #bloggerproblems

Here are all the chocolate colours piped onto the design.

Next, I very gently flipped them to the reverse, flat side.

Finally I piped some buttercream onto cooled cupcakes and placed my toppers on top.

Go Jays Go!

Blue Jays Cupcakes!

As a Toronto Blue Jays fan, this has been quite the season to watch. They won the American League East title, and are now playing in the postseason for a chance at the American League Championship. It's been stressful, fun, heartbreaking, and exciting to watch. No matter how far they make it in the postseason, I love this team. Go Jays Go!

To celebrate the Jays making it to the playoffs for the first time in 22 years, I decided to make some cupcakes. I have wanted to try making chocolate cupcake toppers using candy melts, and making a Blue Jays logo seemed like a good way to try them out. As is often the case with my baking projects, I started with something really challenging (a design that used four colours and had a maple leaf in it!), instead of perhaps practicing with something a little simpler. It all worked out and the toppers look as good as I hoped, but I'm going to try and remember that baby steps can be a welcome part of the process.

I will do a follow up post showing how I made the cupcake toppers, but for today I am showcasing pretty photos of cupcakes. I also made baseball themed cupcakes, for which there is a great tutorial on the Worth Pinning blog.

Let's Go Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays are having quite the season, and win or lose they are always fun to watch. They are currently involved in a pennant race, and are set to play the second place Yankees tonight for a three game series. I have a feeling that watching this match up is going to be like watching an early world series. Both these teams want it bad and the Toronto fans will be cheering like mad at the Skydome.

Toronto fans have made some viral Blue Jays videos over the past month, which I thought I would share. The first is a brilliant parody of Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space'.

The second is a home run super cut, up until the last week of August set to Johnny Cash's 'God's Gonna Cut You Down'. Super fun to watch.

Let's Go Blue Jays!

I got pretty interested in Major League Baseball this year. My hometown team is The Toronto Blue Jays and I had a lot of fun watching them this season. Even though they didn't make the playoffs, they had a lot of great games and moments and I was happy to be watching. I also got into live-tweeting games (which I'm still doing for the postseason), as it adds an extra element of fun and community to the game.

My awesome friend Bryan is also really into baseball and he recently found some Blue Jays items in his closet that he thought would fit me. It was such a wonderful surprise and I absolutely love them.

Bryan awesomely gave me two jerseys:

And two t-shirts:

Even though the Jays season is over, I'm going to be wearing these all winter long. I already had some Jays talk with a nice old man in a waiting room last week, who looked at my jersey and said "I like your shirt - but what happened?" Our conversation ended with hopes that 2015 will be a postseason year.

A million thanks to Bryan for these awesome additions to my wardrobe!

Tweeting with Kelly Gruber

A few weeks ago I had a fun experience on Twitter with 1992 World Series Champion and Blue Jays alumnus Kelly Gruber.

The Official Blue Jays Twitter feed participated in something they called #ChirpChairs. Basically, selected people (some former players and broadcasters) took over the Blue Jays twitter feed for about 20 minutes each, answering fans tweeted questions. I didn't pay too much attention to the other guest tweeters, as all my excitement was focused on tweeting with Kelly Gruber.

Kelly Gruber was my favourite Blue Jay as a kid. I had two different Kelly Gruber posters (not including the 1992 World Series team poster). He was on a t-shirt I wore frequently, and he was my favourite player to watch when I watched Blue Jays baseball with my Dad. He was so much my favourite, that when I played little league, my Dad always announced my trips to the plate with an enthusiastic: "Kelly....Gruuuuuber!" So I was super excited to send him a tweet to say hello and I really hoped he would see it.

Kelly Gruber doesn't actually have his own Twitter account, so this may have been his first time tweeting, which could explain how our interaction went.

Here is a picture of Kelly Gruber tweeting. Spoiler Alert: he is tweeting at me!

Thanks to @BlueJays alumnus Kelly Gruber for taking part in tonight's #ChirpChairs! pic.twitter.com/tsmlpzVm3u
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

When it was Gruber's turn to tweet, Blue Jays Official announced he was there and I sent him a welcome/you are the best tweet:

@BlueJays Welcome Kelly Gruber! You were my favourite player when I was a kid. Had two posters on my wall! All the best! #chirpchairs
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

To my complete joy and surprise he tweeted back to me. Ten year old me was over the moon that I got a response.

@myadorableblog thats cool, thank you
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

But then I got another tweet from him - and I knew instantly that it wasn't meant for me.

@myadorableblog he definantly is right now. too old right now. lol
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

And then another one came. Again, not for me. Twitter is tricky and it was his first time, so instead of replying to the fans who asked the questions, he kept replying to my twitter handle. I didn't mind.

@myadorableblog i have and made him admit it. hes a great sport
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

It was a lot of fun, actually, and a reminder of how magic Twitter can be. But I felt bad that the other fans weren't getting their responses so I tried to let him know what was up.

@BlueJays I love getting all these tweets from Kelly Gruber, but I think these replies are for other people. Just so you know. :)
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

But I got one more tweet, which is actually my favourite one from him, and it seems to go with my original tweet, so me (and ten year old me) think this was the tweet that was actually meant for me.

@myadorableblog thank you sweetie. im honored. go jays!
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

Isn't that the best?

I summed up my Kelly Gruber encounter that night with the following tweet, which is still how I feel about the whole experience:

Kelly Gruber tweeted me on purpose and then maybe by accident a few times and it was the BEST. THING. EVER! @BlueJays #LoveThisTeam
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

There is Just Something About Baseball

This spring/summer I've been pretty excited about baseball. I started following the Toronto Blue Jays at the start of the season and have had a fun time learning about all the players, MLB rules, and watching the team hit a tonne of home runs (see: Edwin Encarnacion in May).

I haven't been this into baseball since I was a kid and played Oro Minor Softball during the summers. My dad had two boys who weren't interested in baseball (they liked farming and computers respectively), but his baby daughter loved baseball. I can't say I was great at it, but I loved playing and there's a trophy on my shelf that says my team won First Place in 1991, so we must have been pretty good.

Thinking about my childhood baseball days always makes me think of Peter, Paul, and Mary singing "Right Field". Not only did Dad get me interested in baseball, but great music too. Adult me can't get to the end of this song without tearing up (just like I can't get to end of Field of Dreams without tears in my eyes...). There is just something about baseball.

It's Consistently Above Zero

I haven't been online too much over the past few days. The snow has been melting, the sun came out, and the temperatures have not only been endurable but enjoyable too. Monday we got up to 23°C (73°F) and I didn't wear a coat or a sweater outside. Yesterday was cloudy and only 9°C (48°F), but it was still a treat to be out of doors.

I spend most of my outside time walking around or reading, but recently I found some old baseball equipment and have been having solo batting practice and some games of catch with John. If I'm playing ball in the backyard, it has to be spring now, right? Even if I sometimes have to rescue the ball from the (slowly melting) snow pile.