Dancing my socks off

The life of an Irish dancer around St. Patrick's Day...

Sorry for the radio silence on the blog front, but I've been rehearsing non-stop for our upcoming dance performances.  The first one is tonight, and then we have about a week break to get ready for the big day and following weekend.  Some dancers from our school at performing at separate shows, so it's just been an adventure working around the different routine's and layout to fill in where dancers should be.

On top of all this, the hubby and I snuck away to Seattle last weekend for a dance competition and to stay with a good friend, Jonelle, who lives in the glorious Pacific Northwest.  It was my first time in Seattle for non-work related reasons, so I was excited to finally see the city as a tourist.

Feeling crabby?

The weather was (surprisingly) beautiful.  I think it rained in the night while we were sleeping, so we generally woke up to blue (and sometimes greyish) skies and enjoyed that for the rest of the day.

It's true... Coffee from Java Bean in Ballard

My dance competition went well.  A few hiccups on the slippery floor, but those things make you a better dancer, right?  Or at least give you scars to show off.  I won second place in a trophy special and received a really cool clover backed trophy.  I'll take any trophy but it's even more exciting when it's a design other than the typical angelic lady.

When I wasn't competing, I was tasting the delicious foods (and coffees) of Seattle with friends.  My former boss and good friend had also recently moved to Seattle, so we met up for lunch on Saturday.  We had a delicious burger and local beer at Hi-Life, then moved on to some cupcakes at Cupcake Royale.  The shop was very cute and served a mean cup of coffee as well as ridiculously cute shirts.  I really wanted the 'These Cupcakes are Taken' design, but restrained myself.  Their salted caramel cupcake was heavenly and ranked at the top of my list until...

Cupcakes from Cupcake Royale

Yellow Leaf Cupcake!  We spent Monday in the downtown Seattle doing touristy things like visiting Pike's Place Market, the first Starbuck's, and eating at Matt's at the Market.  Afterwards we swung by a cupcakery recommended by Jonelle: Yellow Leaf Cupcakes.  They were incredible!  They had amazing flavor creations like Pancakes and Bacon, Boston Cream Pie, etc.  Their menu rotates with over 100 varieties and sell out constantly.  We were in the shop around 1pm and they had already sold out of a handful of their flavors.  Lucky for me, they had a Spring cupcake available.

Spring cupcake from Yellow Leaf

Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company has a tendancy to combine flavors within their cupcakes.  The Spring cupcake was a perfect example of this.  The cupcake itself was a layer of strawberry, lavendar, and vanilla flavors (and how cute did the middle look?), and it was topped with an Italian buttercream.  It. was. AMAZING!

We had a chance to speak with one of the owners and he talked about their great concept with us.  They really are dedicated to quality cupcakes, and judging by the empty wrappers surrounding us, we were sold.  Wishing I could take a cupcake home with me was actually made possible by the fact that they made Cupcake-cotti.  They take any leftover cupcakes and bake it again turning it into a crispy biscotti like creation.  I had to take a bag home.  They also sell: cupcakes in a jar!  I didn't pick this up but was tempted.... very tempted.  I think I'll just have to plan another trip to Seattle to test this one out. Lucky for me, there seems to be a lot of Irish dance competitions going on in that area.

So that's where I've been! I'm hoping to get some craft time in this weekend, but as usual, it's filled with dance lessons and a bunch of other plans.  In my downtime I've been working on my St. Patrick's Day cross-stitch which should be done this weekend.  I'm looking forward to finishing off the Colette Spring Palette Challenge as the weather is starting to turn into the perfect opportunity to wear the creations.

Thanks for hanging in there readers and check in tomorrow for some delicious St. Patrick's Day sweet treats!