Yeah, it’s been a lOOOOOOng time. Got it.
Check out one of my absolute favorite blogs called Cake Wrecks. It is laugh out loud funny when you see what some of these professional cakes look like.
Check out the Sunday Sweets: Reading Rocks post about children’s books that came to life vis-a-vis a cake. These are amazing!!!
A little smattering of what I’ve been up to lately…
I’m anxious for Spring…winter, winter go away!
Although I can’t really complain since I do have a friends in Fargo and Bismark, ND in the midst of blizzard and flood warnings at the same time.
I’ve been putting my KitchenAid mixer to good use. What a GREAT xmas/birthday present from my hubby!
I prefer to use King Arthur Flour when baking. It is consistent and unbleached, and the company is 100% employee owned. I noticed the The Best Brownies Ever Recipe on the back of the bag tonight when I was refilling my canister and since I’ve made brownies for everyone BUT my family, I thought I would give it a try. As the baker, I feel it is my duty to test the batter. This is a GREAT brownie batter – barely sweet, very chocolatey. The brownies are currently cooling, but look at this beautiful batch.
Last Sunday, Jack and I dyed some eggs, but because we are a little ahead of the Easter schedule, we used my Great Grandma Robinson’s egg blowing technique first. I forgot about this technique completely until I saw it on Martha Stewart. We used a sewing needle to poke the ends of the eggs and used our mouth and our air to blow it out. It was a lot of fun.
We then dyed them beautiful colors. The one thing that consistently was an issue was that the eggs don’t sink when the shells are empty which means that you need to be VERY careful to drain them properly before taking them out of the dye and transferring them to the container for drying.
I’ve joined the quilt-along over at Oh Fransson. I ordered my fabric online, all from the same designer’s line since I am awful and colors. I thought I was ordering all shades of red, but most was orange hues and some were red. I was disappointed, but after some reconfiguring and a hunt through Des Moines for two more suitable fat quarters, I’m back in. These reds are my favorite combinations.
I haven’t made a true quilt before, so I’ve learned a lot. Elizabeth is doing a great job in her instructions. Among the things I have learned is that I really dislike a 16 square quilt square. Those 1/4 seams are a serious pain to iron!
I’ve got one fabric square materials that I really don’t like at all, but I am trusting the process in how it will fit within the larger quilt. I’m hoping to finish the individual squares this weekend so I can begin working on the sashing. The square in the forefront is the combination I don’t like much at all.
I’m on the soccer board now, so I’ve been spending time learning about my new role as Vice President of the U8 division…wish me luck!! Field lines, nets, teams, bent out of shape parents, oh my!
Here’s a picture of a cute little crock my sister-in-law got me when she was working for Le Creuset. It is one of a pair. I broke my coarse salt canister and this little crock seemed just perfect!
I made these fabulous homemade baked pretzels last weekend, and they will be making a repeat performance this weekend again. Yes, they were that easy and that good!
I found the recipe over at The Fresh Loaf blog. The recipe is from Alton Brown and thus in metric measurements, but The Fresh Loaf converted it to American conversions. The only change I would make is creating 10 good-sized pretzels from the dough instead of 8 gigantic pretzels. All of us loved these!
I also made my first true quilting project. I made it up so it is pretty simple. I wanted a table runner, but it turned out to be pretty gigantic for a table runner. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. I purchased a back material for it and will finish it this weekend.
I just love the mushroom trees and the I promise to keep the trees fabric (both purchased at JoAnn’s).
Jack was also busy sewing a little purse for his crush. It turned out great! Again, we made it up as we went along.
Saturday was my birthday, and I get a little selfish on my birthday.
I request a homemade cake baked and decorated by loved ones. I got this. Aaron baked my favorite cake from my younger girl days. It is called crazy chocolate cake, and I requested it every year for my birthday ages 9-16 along with the super sweet canned German chocolate frosting. This year I made the frosting because at least two people who were joining us do not like coconut. Unfortunately, I went a little overboard on the powdered sugar in the frosting because it was way too sweet for me in taste.
But it was just sweet enough in looks – this is how Jack decorated it for me!
Yeah, me, I ROCK!
He made me a lovely birthday card shaped like a valentine. (His is the only card I don’t mind getting that harkens to my valentine birthday.) The inside of the card includes this:
You tuck me in at night, and make me assume (awesome) quilts. PMS (PS) You make ricecrisby bars and chocolate chip cookie dough bars too. I love you! Yes I do.
Then, we went out to lunch with Aaron’s family and came back to the house for cake. I was treated to a special birthday dance from our neice Quinn. It was awesome and full of exciting choreography! It was the highlight of the birthday party!
Later that night we all went bowling. Troy really made some strides in his form thanks to Aaron, and it showed in an awesome score for his second game. He is thinking about joining a league which would be great for him. It is a sport that he could do his whole life and enjoy.
Speaking of bowling, a couple years ago Aaron and I watched a documentary called A League of Ordinary Gentleman about the pro-bowling circuit. It was very interesting.
Other worthwhile documentaries available on Netflix include: Word Wars about people who play Scrabble for a living, Grizzly Man is a surreal movie about a guy who moved to Alaska to live with grizzly bears and eventually gets eaten by one, Air Guitar Nation is about the world air guitar championships (yeah, who knew!), Mad Hot Ballroom is about an inner city NYC school whose students win big in the citywide ballroom dancing competition, Jesus Camp could make you furious or incredulous depending on your point of view, Spellbound is about the national spelling Bee spell-off, and Born into Brothels about kids living growing up with their parents in brothels in Calcutta, India.
Whenever I go to my camera to download pictures, I always find exciting “finds” such as these ala Jack.
I was busy last week working on a sewing project I’ve wanted to do for at least a year and a half. It is from Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing book. It is called a bed pocket and you set it between the mattress and the box spring and the pocket hangs over the edge for books and whatnot. It was my goddaughter’s birthday, so it was a good opportunity to make it. It turned out really well even if the M is a bit crooked. The bird’s wing is a funky button.
The first time I sewing the M on, it was SOOO crooked. I worked hard to remember that the seam ripper is my friend.
I couldn’t understand why the whole thing needed to be lined, so I sort of made some changes to the original pattern. It is now VERY clear to me why the lining is necessary. I won’t be making that mistake again!
What a busy weekend we had.
We started with teching in the Pinewood Derby car Friday night. It was running really well and fast, so Jack and Aaron felt confident for the morning’s race.
Unfortunately, Saturday morning everything that could go wrong went wrong. The derby race was supposed to last between 1.5 and 2 hours, but 3.5 hours later we left. It was very painful for everyone, and I think it was really unfortunate for the boys because no one could hardly tell what was going on. Additionally, it seemed as if Jack’s car had been dropped over the night and was running horribly. It was a huge downer for all, but sometimes that is just how they go. Jack and Aaron had a good time working on the car, and Jack has a great looking car as a result.
My cousin Julie and her family – Dan, Maggie and little Owen – came down for the weekend as well. We had a great time swimming and playing Wii at our house. Dan curls, and they brought a game with curling. Unfortunately for Dan, he got stuck on my team. Troy’s team beat us handily two times. Dan and Julie are both allergic to cats and dogs, but they medicated themselves well before coming and were able to stick it out for a good 5 hours before leaving!
Owen kept busy by taking kleenex’s out of the box and dusting which, of course, I encouraged.
Jack has a little crush on his cousin Maggie. Two years ago, they were in my cousin’s wedding together. Maggie took to being smitten, and Jack and Maggie were awfully comfortable in the chair together for much of the evening together.
Sunday morning, then, I made homemade pop tarts courtesy of Chez Pim. We used traditional pie crusts with combinations of the following: Nutella, raspberry jam, lingonberry jelly, chocolate chips and cream cheese. I would make them much smaller next time as a little goes a long way AND it is nice two have two different kinds of small pop tarts rather than one giant one.
Once I started cooking on Sunday, I didn’t stop as I had friends coming over for an appetizer dinner that night. We had crab rangoon (in an open wonton shell), sausage stars (in an open wonton shell), edamame, spinach artichoke dip and assorted crackers, and mini pizzas on whole wheat crusts (tomato, feta and basil was one combination and tomato, arugula and fresh mozzarella was the other combination). These pizza crusts are going to become a standard in my house…I made the boys taco pizzas with them before company came and then polished the other six over the evening. I couldn’t believe how easy they were to make and how yummy!
It was a really fun night and lots of good food! We started the evening drinking mexican hot chocolate spiked with Kaluha or Bailey’s Irish Cream and then switched to wine.
Jack and I both had the day of for the MLK holiday, so we slept in late and cracked open the Wii Fit. That was really fun…Jack is very good at the hula hooping portion. Much better than I am. We took the dog for a nice walk and even went up to Marshalltown to visit my friend Dini with her two baby boys. Jack really was a very good entertainer of the boys.
Its been more than a week, and I have survived 11 second graders making gingerbread houses, secret santa and a Mario Kart Wii shortage everywhere except for Walmart (which in case you’ve forgotten, I HATE…Walmart, not Mario Kart or Wii).
First, Saturday evening after Jack’s friend birthday party, I called my BFF and told her to remind me next year when I think it is a good idea to have a party with children at my house because it will be fun and cheaper than going someplace else. I told her to remind me that $100 is NOT too much to spend, that it is worth every single penny and that to interrupt me if I every start to talk about becoming an elementary school teacher. Since she already upholds this philosophy, it won’t be difficult for her to remind me. THANK GOD!
The kids weren’t that bad aside from all the wrestling, but 11 kids for two hours takes a lot out of you, particularly when you give them frosting bags with tips. Stupidly, I forgot that just because Jack has used a frosting bag and tip and knows that you MUST twist and hold from the top, it doesn’t mean that any other 8 year old know this technique. Thankfully, all the kids were able to make it to the sink before the frosting overflowed onto the floor.
These kids were genuinely fun, just maybe not ALL at one time while they are hopped up on candy and frosting.
Jack chose a chocolate chip cookie bar tower for his cake which saved me a lot of time and energy.
I chose to take part in Secret Santa at work because Secret Santa is fun. I like finding the right gift for my giftee. This year I’ve experienced two problems. The first is completely selfish and indulgent. I got what I asked for: mechanical pencils and Nutella. I was thinking those little packets the size of peanut butter packets at Perkins (say that 5 times fast) , but I got a regular 13 oz jar of Nutella.
Me+13 oz Nutella+a fork=6 oz of Nutella
Of course, I keep forks in a baggie in my desk drawer for my lunches. Of course, the Nutella jar was taunting me sitting there between my monitor and my keyboard. And, of course, one of my favorite things EVER is being the first person to dig into a smooth, silky mess of peanut butter or NUTELLA! Aaron once got into a little pickle because he dug into the peanut butter without offering me the opportunity, but this is not about issues that I discuss with my therapist…
The second Secret Santa problem is this…my giftee’s wish list included a .5mm z4 Bic pen, movies and Scrabble. I thought the pen should be no problem, but I was wrong. A movie ticket could not be accommodated in the $10 Secret Santa budget, so I opted for specialty popcorn from a store nearby. Scrabble was a toughie…I was hoping to find some word-ie type of fabric to sew up into something fun. Unfortunately, I could find nothing word-ie that was not babyish as well. I found fabric with dominos, bingo and crossword puzzles, but not a single Scrabble related theme.
My next thought in Jo-Ann’s was buttons! Make something and sew on buttons that would fit the theme. Nothing. Ribbon is next to the buttons. Nothing. Scrapbooking supplies surely would have something suitable. Nothing…until I found these capital letter stickers that were BROWN and SQUARE. I found a pack of 8 blank greeting cards and two pieces of fun scrapbooking paper. With my 50% off coupon for the greeting card pack, my total purchase with tax was only $4.83. What a bargain!
I was counting on Aaron for help since he is typically far more creative than I am when it comes to paper items…remind me to post about some of his handmade Christmas cards to frat buddies. I needed him to make something that could resemble a Scrabble tile rack. Just as I suspected, Aaron came up with a pop-up three dimensional tile rack, but it wouldn’t quite work given the time constraints (about 60 minutes for 8 cards). While he cut paper, I dug out Scrabble and added numbers with black ink to all the tile stickers. The previous night, I searched for good 8 letter words (7 tiles PLUS the tile on the board). So, this morning, my recipient got a pack of greeting cards with a Scrabble theme.
Secret Santa left this in the mail room…
I’ll be looking for a used Scrabble game on craigslist.com because Santa’s final gift is this…
As it turns out, Santa has completed his shopping for the boys in our house, but mom and dad have not. I have had a serious lack of inspiration for Jack’s xmas gift after getting him the BEST birthday present ever – a new snowboarding sled and a helmet. Both of these boys have their birthdays in Nov. and Dec. so that makes it that much more difficult. I did get an inspiration the other day with Mario Kart Wii only to find out that no store in all of Des Moines had the game. I went online and everyplace was out – Target.com, Amazon.com, Bestbuy.com. Ebay was asking too much. The one place it was available was Walmart.com. I searched for another hour online…craigslist, facebook, etc.
For one hour I asked myself again and again if my boycott of Walmart should “ruin” Christmas. Then I thought, good god, I volunteer with the Cub Scouts despite my well documented distate for discrimination against gays. What more do I have to do? I succumbed to the motherly urge to not ruin Christmas only to find that my hour saved me and ruined Christmas – Walmart.com was sold out.
This morning, I searched some more and my last search (before Walmart) was proved fruitful! Bestbuy.com had it in stock, but you can never be sure at Bestbuy.com because sometimes items look like they are in stock only to have the out of stock show up at checkout. It looks like I saved Christmas AND avoided Walmart! Yippee!
Here is a picture of one of Jack’s gingerbread houses from school…he cleverly made a door that opens and put a waving gingerbread boy inside. In this picture, it looks like ET. I think he sorta looks like ET in person too.
We celebrated Jack’s family birthday party yesterday. Jack selected the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake recipe that I found on the Annie’s Eats blog. Annie’s got lots of great recipes over there, but more about that later.
This was a very good cake, but the cake itself turned out a bit too dry I think because it took a lot longer to cook than the recipe indicated. The taste was very good though and the frosting was just the perfect amount of peanut butter flavor. This was definately a great cake in terms of presentation! Here is Jack with our version.
Aaron and I got Jack a new snowboard for sledding and a snowboard helmet. Him and Troy have been glued to the new Spiderman: Friend or Foe game for Wii. After he goes to bed tonight, I may be able to try out some of the old games like Dig Dug on Namco Museum Remix for Wii. His actual birthday is tomorrow, so we’ll go out to eat at his choice of restaurant.
We had another birthday party today along with Cub Scouts. Tuesday we have Cub Scouts and Troy’s band concert. And, we have to prepare for Jack’s friend birthday party on Saturday. Ugh. My step-mom is going to come down if the weather holds to help out with the 11 kids thank god! We are going to be very busy. Good thing I’m nearly done Christmas shopping.
Back to Annie’s Eats…I’ve found a lot of great recipes on her blog. I also make the white chicken chili from her this week as well which was absolutely delicious. I’m not a great fan of chili, but I will definately be making this again.
Well, tonight I attended an informational meeting on our soccer club’s board of director’s opportunities. There are plenty of opportunities there, but also a lot of good work that needs to get done so the soccer club can flourish and grow. As Jack appears to be turning into a gifted soccer player, it may be a good way to give back since I certainly canNOT coach and mowing lawns is not one of my favorite activities.
I’ll be ringing a Salvation Army bell this year with Jack, and Troy if he is here the weekend we ring. I first did this many years ago with my friend Peggy in Rochester. We froze our asses off because it was below zero if I remember correctly, but we had one person drop a $20 bill in the bucket! It was very exciting. Anyone can sign up online to spend two hours for a good cause! Even if you get cold, you feel GREAT!
I’ve been seriously considering NOT sending xmas cards this year because of the carbon footprint and waste involved. The $80 or so dollars I would normally spend on the cards and postage could be dropped into a red kettle along with taking Jack and Troy shopping for Toys for Tots. I may make an email card which I know is considered tacky and sending cards to those I don’t have email addresses for. Tacky and give to good causes or not tacky and wasteful???
Since taking a job here in Des Moines, I have reduced my carbon footprint by 90 miles x 4 days x 50 weeks!!! Now, my carbon footprint for work is 4 miles x 5 days x 50 weeks PLUS 20 miles x 5 days x 50 weeks on MASS TRANSIT! Merry Christmas Earth!
I’d like to follow up on my last post about the new pie recipes. The chocolate pecan pie was NOT better than traditional pecan pie. It was not bad, but it wasn’t better. What is more is that I always forget that baking cocoa is a killer on the caffeine (i.e. my dessert kept me up until 2:30 am Friday morning which caused me to actually consider getting dressed and going out to the mall which had opened at midnight). The apple cream pie recipe was GREAT! I cut the cream in half and upped the sliced apples to about 6 cups and it was absolutely perfect.
My mom is coming this weekend to celebrate Jack’s birthday. I remembered tonight while cooking dinner that my mom loves the Christmas task I dislike – physically setting up the Christmas tree and flaring out all the branches. I love decorating it, but detest the boring details involved in the setting up process. I am so lucky!
Normally, we wait until after Jack’s birthday party to set up the tree (his friend party is Sat. the 13th) to keep his birthday his own, but he decided this year to set the tree up before his friend party because of his birthday party theme…I will be helping ELEVEN 2nd graders build gingerbread houses from graham crackers in two hours. UGH!!! I really should have asked my mom to come for that because I am going to need a lot of help. Jack wants two things for his party – building gingerbread houses and bobbing for apples OH and he earned enough points to invite ONE friend for a sleepover that night. OH and he also thinks having a drawing dragon contest is a good idea. When I told him that all his friends may not like drawing and focusing on the competition is probably not a good idea, he thought I wasn’t quite in tune with his friends and their drawing as I should be.
Did you read the part when I said ELEVEN 2nd graders – I usually have more than I can handle with my ONE second grader. What was I thinking? I was thinking that Jack turning 8 means inviting 8 friends which means having 9 second graders at one time over. That was overwhelming enough, but at least between two tables and a counter, I could physically position them all. Well, paring down the list from 10 to 8 proved so difficult that I caved, and we are inviting 10 kids over. Imagine frosting, candy and graham crackers EVERYWHERE! UGH!
Sometimes I am a good mom!
Our old Cub Scout pack did an annual cake auction in which the boys auctioned off their own cake. Our new Cub Scout pack does an annual cake walk. We stuck to our old Derby car cake pattern since the people here haven’t seen it before. Last year’s cake did turn out better.
As it turns out, we made a good choice because we took first in the Best Cub Scout Theme cake.
Here is the cake that Jack chose from the cake walk. It is very clever. The turkey bodies are made from chocolate covered cherries. It is VERY chocolatey. Jack is wearing his prize for having brought the coolest cake.
I must say it was very exciting to see the many different cakes that were brought to the cake auction. I can’t believe I didn’t bring the camera. Next year I’ll know better.
Last night I was busy baking new pies. Two years ago was the first time I made a pecan pie which is crazy because I will forgo calories for days to eat pecan pie! I had no idea it was so easy to make! This year I tried a new recipe – chocolate pecan pie. I only had 3 of the 4 eggs, but it still congealed. Here is the before and after….I cannot wait to dig in today.
I tried a new apple pie recipe as well. I’ve been baking an award winning sour cream apple pie for years, but thought a new pie was in order. (The recipe is not my award winner.) I tried an apple cream pie this year. It looks yummy!
Now that I am looking at this picture, a few nuts would have been really good thrown in there as well.
We are heading down the road to Aaron’s parents house today. I’m going to work hard to NOT eat so many black olives before dinner to make myself sick. Once I start, I just cannot stop it seems. Actually, having them touching green olives would be enough to make me stop eating them.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is on. It is not as good as I remember as a kid. The floats are cool, but all the dialogue and stupid performances are annoying.
Jack watched the Nuwave oven infomercial this morning and is absolutely convinced that we should buy it. Why?
This past weekend we celebrated Troy’s 11th birthday.
We incorporated castle Lego’s into the cake this year. I wanted to use writing that was “medieval-esc”. I knew my hand wasn’t capable of such a feat. So, I opened Word, typed Happy 11th Birthday, Troy! and found a font that was medieval-esc. We don’t have a printer, so I increased the view to 100% and traced the words onto a sheet of paper. (Clever, I know!) I then used an exacto knife to cut out the text from the paper so I had a template. I then set the paper on wet frosting and filled in the template with red sugar. Unfortunately, the frosting had to be wet to make the sugar stick to it, but it also meant the frosting stuck to the paper as well. All in all, I think it turned out pretty well. Certainly better than my attempt at writing it with frosting.
Here is a picture of the chocolatey carmel popcorn that Jack and I made the other day. The recipe came off the bag of carmels. It was good, but Jack and I both agreed it was too much chocolate.
I ate most of this popcorn. 
I should be trimming back for the holidays, not splurging before they begin!
Here is a picture of a twenty minute meal from scratch – crepe pancakes with sauteed apples. I made it for dinner tonight. I cut up three Braeburn apples and sauteed them with butter and brown sugar. Yummy!!
