Bewitching hour at the park

Yup.

I finally remembered to bring my trusty camera along on one our many spontaneous after-dinner trips to the park.

Oh how I adore that golden hour, when strands of red hair appear flaming copper, tree limb shadows are freakishly lengthened, little hands are outlined in gold, and these fingers of mine cannot resist snapping that shutter release button...over and over and over again.

Strolling down the bike path, framed with mighty oak, maple, ash and beech, this little guy was in his element...that is, surrounded by rocks to throw, sticks to turn into guns, and a long path along which to sprint.

Nothing, I repeat nothing, makes this little boy happier.

And nothing makes this mama happier than the times that she actually thinks ahead to lug her camera along, capturing beloved golden images of fall evening memories that will soon be buried in piles of drifting snow.

Little hands keep getting larger...legs keep getting longer...

I cherish my childhood memories of evening trips to the park with my dad, siblings and nearby friends. I hope that these boys will grow up to do the same.

I know that we are certainly cherishing these new memories we are making as parents.

Lately...and cupcakes.

We've been keeping busy around here.

Doing fun things, like playing football

Climbing slides with serious determination

Crawling everywhere, at light speed...why work on walking when you can get there much faster crawling?!

And I had a fun girls' day out doing a cupcake tour downtown.

The weather cooperated in a lovely, brisk, blue-sky, fall-ish kinda way.

We started out by getting hot coffee to warm our chilly fingers, and found ourselves subsequently sipping and marveling at our colorful bags (no, we really did spend at least a few minutes marveling).

This tour involved walking to five different bakeries or cupcake stores throughout the city. We started out here, where we were tricked into eating vegan chocolate cupcakes. Yes, I will grudgingly admit they were still quite tasty.

As we strolled through the city, with the fall breeze in our faces, warm coffee in our hands and tasty sweets in our bellies, I thoroughly enjoyed snapping photos of whatever pleased my fancy or caught my eye.

It was fun and refreshing to stroll along the urban sidewalks child-free, responsible only for my self and my camera. It was fun to feel like a tourist in my own city, to appreciate with a new eye the beauty, bustle, excitement and architecture of city life.

One thing I love about wandering aimlessly (aside from tripping on curbs and narrowly missing swerving cabbies) with my camera is that it forces me to see things with a newly critical and admiring perspective.

We made four additional stops on our tour...

Between snapping city-scape photos, and fighting to get the best cupcake flavors (joking...kindof), I didn't manage to take photos at every single stop on the tour.

This one, though, definitely had to be captured...Sprinkles, perhaps one of the first trendsetters in the cupcake-crazy community...

Yes, your eyes did not deceive you...that is a cupcake ATM. Why oh why did I not give that baby a try? (Perhaps because my stomach was already splitting trying to fit six cupcakes inside). Still, kicking myself...how many people can say they obtained a cupcake from an ATM machine?!

Our tour ended us here in this tiny little store-front pastry behemoth

This one is known for it's savory cupcakes (owner's motto was something along the lines of "if you can eat it or drink it, it can be made into a cupcake.")
Here I encountered my first savory cupcake experience.

I'll admit, it was met with a fair bit of skepticism on my part (a BLT cupcake? Really?)

but it was really quite delicious.

That's not actually frosting on top...

It seemed to be some kind of cream cheese/mascarpone topping with chives.
Cornemeal textured cake (with a very subtle sweet aftertaste) with crunchy bits of bacon throughout. Not a shabby taste bud experience.

Thanks, Groupon, for a fun cupcake adventure (that I probably would have never otherwise undertaken).