Whole Wheat Chocolate Cupcakes

   Today's gloomy weather helped me decide that I needed a chocolate cupcake. After searching online for a recipe that would meet all my healthy requirements I came up with nothing. This is most often how I create my own recipes. I look at several different recipes, then I combine, alter, substitute, etc until I come up with something that is pretty "clean" and hope that it turns out. These definitely turned out delish!
  Here's my recipe for Whole Wheat/Honey Chocolate Cupcakes with yogurt/raspberry/honey icing.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients:
Wet:
3/4 C Honey
1/2 C canola oil (next time I plan to try coconut oil)
2 Eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 C organic yogurt
1/2 C Hot water (to be added at the end)
Dry:
3/4 C cocoa powder
1 1/4 C White Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t baking soda 
Directions:
preheat oven to 350
Mix wet ingredients EXCEPT the hot water.
Add dry ingredients and mix well
Slowly pour in hot water and mix until combined
pour batter into well greased muffin tin
optional: put 2-3 dark chocolate chips in each muffin tin
bake about 16-18 min or until toothpick comes out clean
once cooled frosting can be added. I would normally do honey/cream cheese, but didn't have cream cheese today, so I decided to get creative and do a yogurt/raspberry icing;
Yogurt/Raspberry Icing
Ingredients:
8 Organic Raspberries
1 C Organic Yogurt
1 T cornstarch (for thickener)
2 T Honey (some people may want it a bit sweeter than I like...)
Directions:
mash raspberries as well as you can
mix in with all other ingredients and spread on cupcakes
note: since yogurt is the main ingredient in this icing I would not leave them sitting at room temperature for long periods of time. 

Dresser and nightstand makeover

   Last week, my longtime friend Brenda came out for a visit. Thanks to her extra hands we were able to complete a few decorating projects I'd been wanting to do.
   I've been itching to give my Ikea "Aneboda" dresser and nightstands a makeover for quite a while, but most especially since I put up the Painted Door headboard. They simply did not go with the look I've been trying to achieve. Here is what it looked like:
   

Nightstand Before

   We painted the wood white and the opaque center a robins egg blue (I had the paint on hand). Then we completed the look by replacing the existing drawer hardware with more antique looking pulls (only .69 cents each!). I couldn't be happier with the finished product:

Nightstand After- a breath of fresh air

   Next time you get tired of the same old furniture, use your imagination and you may be pleasantly surprised.