baby announcement Archives - 2 Sisters 2 Cities

Posted by Meaghan Barry on July 3, 2013

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front lately and just wanted to share why. Baby N decided to grace us with his presence a week before his due date! We’ve been happily adjusting to our new family of four over the past couple of weeks. We don’t normally share photos of ourselves or our family on 2 Sisters 2 Cities, but like with Baby T, I wanted to share one snugly newborn photo. This photo was taken the morning after he was born.

baby n

I think he looks pretty much just like his older brother did when he was born! N is a chill little guy and his older brother has been really great with him (for the most part anyway.)

Hope you have a great Fourth of July weekend! Just in case you were looking for any last minute recipes, here are ten 2S2C recipes perfect for your summer cookout:

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Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 24, 2013

The big day has arrived and we finally found out what the gender of baby #2 was this morning! Thank you so much to everyone who entered our Oh Baby $25 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway and left their prediction. I loved reading everyone’s comments and guesses as to whether the baby was going to be a boy or a girl. Congrats to the winner of the gift card, Krystal M.!

I wanted to announce the baby’s gender in a special way- through a cupcake recipe! I have seen so many cute ideas for gender reveals and wanted to fill a cupcake with either pink or blue frosting so you discover the baby’s gender with your first sweet bite of cupcake. I think most people have the ultrasound technician write down the gender and put it in a sealed envelope, which then goes to the baker to make the appropriately-filled cupcakes. I, however, needed to know the gender the very second it was possible for me to know. I thought it would be really fun to try making these cupcakes myself and share the recipe/tutorial on 2S2C!

Before I share the final gender reveal, I did a little number crunching from the gender prediction comments in the giveaway. 51.4% of you predicted a girl, while 49.6% predicted a boy.

OK, who’s ready for the big reveal? Is baby #2 going to be a boy or girl? Team pink or team blue?

Are you sure you are ready?

Would you like to make one final guess?

3, 2, 1…

gender reveal cupcakes

Yes, it’s going to be another crazy little boy in our household! Baby T is going to love having a little brother (I hope!) While part of me hoped the baby was going to be a girl, I pretty much knew it was going to another bouncing baby boy. Many of you mentioned with your prediction that you have to give a lot of credit to mother’s intuition and I definitely have thought that this pregnancy feels very similar to the last. With two boys, I have a feeling the next few years (or 18) will be very active ones- please feel free to send any unused Starbucks cards my way! Hopefully the two of them will be best of friends.

I put together a picture tutorial of how I made these cupcakes. I just happened to find a little tool that made a hole in the cupcakes when I was in Marshall’s the other day. It was only $2 so I picked it up, but you certainly would be able to do the same thing with a small paring knife. Here are the six steps you need to take to enjoy your gender reveal cupcakes:

Gender Reveal Cupcakes Tutorial {from 2 Sisters 2 Cities}

I opted for a vanilla bean cupcake and vanilla bean buttercream frosting so the blue would really shine through. I also just bought a huge bag of vanilla beans on-line for ice cream making and I wanted to try it with baking.

gender reveal cupcakes

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 25 mins

Total time: 1 hour 25 mins

Ingredients

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out
½ cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks), at room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 eggs, at room temperature
1 and ¼ cups buttermilk (I did not have buttermilk so I used mixed up a powder buttermilk with water)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Whipped Vanilla Buttercream

1 and ½ cups butter, plus 2 tablespoons (3 sticks, plus 3 tbsp.), at room temperature
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare two cupcakes pans by lining them with (gender neutral!) paper liners.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set flour mixture aside. Meanwhile, add the butter to the bowl of an electric mixer and scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the bow. Using the paddle attachment, beat the butter and vanilla mixture for 3 minutes on medium-high speed. Periodically scrape down the bowl.
Add the sugar to the butter mixture, one cup at a time. Beat for 1 minute after each cup. Add the eggs and continue to mix one at a time. In a liquid measuring cup, combine the buttermilk and vanilla extract. Add a bit of liquid mixture and flour mixture to the butter mixture and allow to incorporate after each addition. Continue to add the liquid and flour mixture until it all has been added to the cupcake batter.
Pour the batter into the prepared baking cup liners about ⅔rd of the way through (you may end up with extra batter.) Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick entered in the center of each cupcake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for a few minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. Let cupcakes cook completely before frosting.

Whipped Vanilla Buttercream

Place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer. With the whisk attachment, blend the butter on medium-high speed for about a minute. Add the scraped out vanilla bean seeds and salt to the butter mixture and continue to whisk for another minute. Add the heavy cream and vanilla, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and continue to whip the frosting for another 4 minutes on high speed.
To make gender reveal cupcakes, remove about ¾ of the vanilla bean frosting and add it to an icing bag. With the remaining ¼ of the frosting, add either blue or pink food coloring for the cupcakes' inner filling. Once completely blended, add blue/pink frosting to a second icing bag.
Using a cupcake corer tool or a small paring knife, cut a hole on the top center of each cupcake. Carefully remove cupcake core and fill with blue or pink frosting. Add cupcake core back to the top of the cupcake and pat it down. Frost the top of the cupcake with the white vanilla bean icing.

Source: Vanilla Bean Cupcake and Whipped Vanilla Buttercream slightly adapted from Annie’s Eats

Was your prediction correct?!?

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Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 17, 2013

oh baby giveaway

So, I have a little announcement to make on 2 Sisters 2 Cities today…I’m having another baby! And to celebrate, we are hosting a $25 Amazon Gift Card giveaway over the course of the next week! Just enter through the Wafflecopter widget below and leave a comment with your guess as to whether I’m having a boy or girl. There is also a chance to earn bonus entries by following 2S2C on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, RSS, and/or e-mail. A winner will be picked at random so you don’t have to guess correctly, but it will be fun to see which way the votes sway! We’ll be finding out the baby’s gender next Thursday and I’ll be doing a special baking-related gender reveal at that point.

Some data points to assist with your baby gender guess:

My two-year old son, Baby T, is a boy.
I’m one of four girls. My husband is an only child.
The Chinese gender calendar predicts girl.
My main pregnancy craving has been ice cream (thank goodness for the new ice cream maker K got my for Christmas!) My last pregnancy, I craved salty snacks.
My intuition says it’s going to be a boy.

My due date is in late June which puts me in pretty much the same pregnancy timeline as Kate Middleton, Jessica Simpson, and now Kim Kardashian. I think it would be really fun for my baby to share the same birthdate as the royal baby (and not so much with the latter two!)

I can’t wait to see what everyone guesses!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Rules: No entries will be accepted after January 24th, 2013 at 12:00 am, EST. Entries that do not follow the entry requirements will not be considered. One winner will be chosen at random and will be announced on January 24th, 2013. (The winner does not have to guess the gender correctly to win.) The chosen winner will then have 30 days to respond by e-mail to claim their prize. Please note that this giveaway is fully sponsored by 2 Sisters 2 Cites. Void where prohibited.

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Posted by Meaghan Barry on December 15, 2010

Well, it’s now officially been well over a month since Baby T has been born so I figured it was about time I get to blogging about it! He is such a great baby (well, maybe not so great in the evenings, but we still love him very much!) I knew having a newborn would be hard work, but I never realized how much of a time encompassing life change it would be. Time just flies by. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at the clock and am completely flabbergasted by what time it is (such as now…I’m still drinking my morning coffee at noon!)

My labor went relatively smoothly. I was in labor at home for over 24 hours starting on my due date before we headed to the hospital. Husband M took the day off work to go on walks around Castle Island and Thomas Park with me (it was a blustery cold day). I was still in labor that night, but the contractions were still 10-20 minutes apart so we held off on going to the hospital. Finally, around 5 or 6 a.m., I decided to get into the shower to start getting ready to head out. By the time we left at 7 am, the contractions were coming hard every 2-3 minutes. Once we got to the hospital, I was pretty much ready to push. I was still able to get an epidural at that point thankfully (sorry Husband M for dragging you to 2 weekends of Natural Childbirth classes…although I did get to that point naturally!) They gave me a 30 minute break to relax and then it was pushing time! Baby T came out in less than 15 minutes. It was such an amazing experience to finally meet the little being that was living inside of you for the past 9 months.

Now that we are somewhat getting into a routine (as much of a routine as you can get into with an infant), I am going to try to get back to blogging more often. On the agenda…very easy to cook dinners (my bon appetit and Julia Child cookbooks are getting pushed to the back of the bookshelf), baby stuff, holiday ideas, reviewing last year’s resolutions, and new resolutions for 2011. Thanks for sticking with us readers!

-m