Pilgrim Cupcakes

For my high school swimmers' recent pasta dinner I made some fun Thanksgiving themed desserts! Here are the pilgrim hat cupcakes I made, inspired, of course, by Pinterest! 

I made regular cupcakes from a box and used store bought icing (I know! Can you believe it??) and then had fun with the tops! Once again, I'm here to tell you making things from a box is ok! Sometimes, that's all you have time for and all that is necessary - they're still delicious! Any ways... I used vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing and Funfetti cupcakes with yellow (vanilla flavored dyed yellow) icing. 

You need:

cake mix and ingredients to make it

can of icing

yellow icing for hat buckles

Keebler "Fudge Stripes" cookies

Reese's miniature peanut butter cups (I got a family sized bag to have enough for 4 dozen cupcakes!)

The yellow-iced cupcakes got "real" pilgrim hats - Keebler "Fudge Stripes" cookies upside-down with a Reese's peanut butter cup upside-down attached by a dab of icing! Then I used yellow icing to pipe on buckles!

Pilgrim hat cupcakes!

On the chocolate-iced cupcakes, the above cookie concoction looked silly. So I left out the cookie, and just added an upside-down peanut butter cup. 

Cute and delicious! 

For both, I used a yellow icing tube to pipe on the buckle! 

That's it! Really easy, really cute! 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

This Week's Ankle News

So this week because of the holiday I could only make it to PT once. I went bright and early yesterday morning to see Dave. My ankle is feeling a lot better after being mysteriously "compressed" on the outer side of my ankle/foot. I would say it's not at 100% like it was when I first started doing all of the crazy exercises, but much, much better than when it got compressed. So yesterday I got to walk in all four directions on the treadmill again. I didn't do any other exercises or jumps, but the treadmill felt ok. I did my stretches and had some manipulation done to my foot before icing and being hooked up to the stim machine again. As the day went on I was on my feet a lot. My foot was definitely swollen, but not more than usual. I think it's getting better!

Today I went to the gym with my sister to try going to Zumba. Dave said I could try it but that it might hurt to go side to side, which has been the biggest problem after this injury. Our biggest worry was that I would not be able to do a whole one hour class yet because I have not built my endurance back up. I decided to try the class today. And guess what? I did it!! There were definitely some moves that were hard for my ankle, and I can tell my right side is still weaker. But I was able to do almost everything in the class, and made it through a whole one hour class!! I can't even tell you how happy I am about this!!

Next week I have two more PT appointments. And this should FINALLY really be the end of physical therapy. But every time I think that, something happens... So keep your fingers crossed!!

I totally look like this girl on the left when I Zumba - I'm that good! ;)

Update: The Bad News

As you can see, my last post was written in the past tense... So things were going on wonderfully for about 2-3 weeks. I was definitely high on endorphins! And then came the bad news...

After pushing it hard for a couple weeks, high school swimming started. I spent time standing on a concrete pool deck everyday. I also joined Freedom again so I could work out before practices or swim after. About two weeks ago we had a Saturday practice where I worked out on my own (walking on the treadmill) and then I stood on the deck for over two hours. My foot hurt SO bad afterwards. And it didn't feel any better as time went on. I even noticed as I massaged my scars I could feel the outside of my ankle as if it was bruised. I couldn't massage one of the scars because of it.

I limped into PT last week and was so upset. I knew I wasn't going to be able to do any of the exercises I'd been doing. I was in pain. And I didn't know how long it would be to get better again. Dave looked at it, spent time manipulating it, and determined that I had compressed something on the outside of my ankle. It's still kind of a mystery how this happened. Basically, it should not have happened and we don't know why it did. It's an injury I got from doing these exercises, but isn't really related to my surgery. Weird. My main concern was how long this was going to take to get better. I'm tired of waiting to heal and am running very thin on patience!! I was supposed to be discharged from PT last week because I was doing so well. Instead I spent the week getting my foot massaged and manipulated (not as nice as it sounds, after an injury it hurts!),  hooked up to the stim machine and icing it down while elevated, and resting. I made an appointment for this week and the next. Yay! Not really...

Spending my time at physical therapy like this again...

Update: The Good News

Well I've been missing for a little bit - things have been absolutely crazy in my life. But here's a quick update on my ankle:

At the end of October I started to do more and more things at PT, and it was amazing. I could do it!! I walked directionally on the treadmill, did jumps, and started doing football drills for agility. I was running and grape-vining across the gym. I started jumping not only front to back, side to side, but also diagonally. It was amazing! I felt like everyday at PT I got an amazing workout in. I was on cloud nine! It felt so good to finally be working out again and to be able to do so many types of exercises after over a year of not being able to do any of these things. The only down side was, it was really telling how out of shape I've gotten in these past 19 months of activity restrictions. Oh my goodness - I was dying! But the feeling of now having the option to do some exercise, and some vigorous exercise, was amazing!!