Bliss by the Bowlful

I’d like to introduce you to THE MOST AMAZING THING YOUR SWEET TOOTH HAS EVER HAD.

(and yes, those caps are completely necessary!)

Honestly, I can’t think of a single amazing dessert that I’ve ever enjoyed more than this one!
Let me set the stage for how this deliciousness came to be.

First, I’m in charge of all the activities for the women at my church.  We recently had a produce manager come and talk to us. Of course, we HAD to have super yummy fresh produce for refreshments!  And of COURSE only half of the people showed up that we were expecting. Even with giving a bunch of stuff away, I went home with almost 2 pounds of strawberries.  I had also made the BEST fruit dip for that night and had a huge bowl full left. 

Second, there was a very real possibility that Hubby would not even be home for Mother’s Day.  And even if he was, he wouldn’t have time to do anything for it. We discussed it beforehand, and decided to celebrate later.  But, it was STILL Mother’s Day, dang it! And if I was cooking, I was going to make something drool worthy.  I planned my favorite menu and just needed dessert.  So I opened up my fridge for some inspiration.  Those luscious strawberries were staring me in the face. Strawberry shortcake, of course!  I thought to myself. But what if we used that awesome dip instead of whipped cream!  And the typical angel food cake is nice, but what if we went for full fledged pound cake to make it even more tasty! LOVE this idea!

So that’s what I did.  I decided to try my hand at making my own pound cake.  Results: yummy, but oh BOY  do I need a better pan. In spite of very liberally greasing and flouring, it came out in chunks. Well, we can deal with that! It turned the whole thing into a bit more of a trifle idea, but hey, it was edible!

Ready for the recipe?

Lick Your Lips Shortcake
*Pound cake (I made mine from scratch using this recipe)
*Strawberries, de-hulled and sliced
*fruit dip (I combined these two recipes into my own )

Grab a bowl. Crumble up your pound cake. Sprinkle about 4 strawberries worth of slices on top. Dollop a great big spoonful of dip.  Eat with great enjoyment!

Fruit Dip:
*7 oz. marshmallow cream
*8 oz. cream cheese
*zest of 1 orange

Beat cream cheese until smooth and fluffy. Beat in marshmallow cream and zest.  (I added in some fresh juice too, but it made it too runny. So next time I’ll skip that part)

Crazy things my 2 year old can say

 

‘Lil’s language is finally taking off. While there is a LONG way to go, she does now talk like your normal 12 month old (only 15 months behind!).  She’s slowly learning to say things like Dada, her sister’s name, and “mil” (milk).

 

But she says crazy things too.

One of her first words? Yewow.  Really? Yellow?  We’d been working for more than a YEAR to figure out how to ask for food, and she comes up with the hardest color to say first instead?

 

I just heard her say : aye, eee, eye, ohh, YOU!

 

Really?  She can’t identify me as Mama (she usually says “Head” or “Hair” when I point to myself – thinking it’s time to go over body parts I suppose).  But she can say all the vowels. Where the heck did she even hear all the vowels in order anyway? That’s not your typical Sesame Street or Blue’s Clues lesson.

 

“Tae Too” (thank you) is one of the cutest.   Actually, for not being able to communicate, she sure is a polite little thing (when not throwing the biggest fits in the world that is).  She says “tae too” whenever you give her something, or she gives you something. “Pwee”  (please) has been her way to say yes for months now. Just this morning I heard her say “wem”, which I think was your welcome, after she said thank you.  And she’s starting to say “sow” (sorry) when something goes wrong.

 

Our biggest communication hurdle right now is figuring out just what the heck she is saying. She never EVER has finally consonants. So milk and movie sound the exact same.  So does color and cookie.  It’s still a big guessing game – but she has started to say “No mee” or “No cugh” when you hold up the wrong thing. 

 

A two word phrase – that’s HUGE people!

 

Maybe, just MAYBE by the time Jr comes in August, I’ll be able to talk to my daughter.  And oh, how that makes my heart smile!

*and yes, she is just POSTIVIE this seat is for her to eat breakfast in, not for a baby!

My Favorite party

So my last post (where I was crazy!) I talked about filling those baskets with pretties.
Here’s the follow up.

Several months ago, one of my favorite blogs threw a Favorite Things party.  It’s kind of like when Oprah would have her insane giveaways, only for normal people.

I fell in love with the idea.  I’ve had it in the back of my head ever since, just wondering how to make it work.

Then, all of a sudden, I realized I needed to do it LIKE RIGHT NOW!!! Before school gets out for the year and before I have to worry about a little baby around the house!
So I made a list (and checked it twice!).  I sent out an email invite through pingg.com (LOVE that site!).  And then I re-explained it to pretty much every single person I invited!  Here’s my quick explanation for it.
“please bring 5 of your favorite thing to share with everyone else.  I’m also putting a price cap on it of $10 each item – but if your favorite thing is costs a quarter that’s AWESOME!!!”
The idea is that we each get to find new favorite things – and actually go home with our own goodie bags!  Adults NEVER get goodie bags!

My next problem was what on earth I was going to give! I finally decided to give one of my favorite books.  I hopped on abebooks.com (another GREAT place!), and found 4 hardback copies of Wildwood Dancing (a retelling of 12 dancing princesses) for a buck each! (ok, so there was also a couple more bucks for shipping, but still!) Perfect!  I placed them all in my cart and was good to go.

That is, until I got the confirmation emails the next day.  They all said expect to ship in 7-14 days . . . except for the one that said shipping can take up to a MONTH!!!?!?!?!??!  What! I only had 9 days before the party. If it was my idea to have this thing, then I think I better have something to give everyone else!
Which is why I had to get those silly baskets made. I really do love how they turned out, but boy, talk about crazy!
Fortunately, the night before the party the books arrived. It was cutting it close, but at least they made it!
We ended up with only 4 of us there.  My favorite thing was the book. One lady brought flushable wipes (I’ve always wanted to try those!), and the other two both brought foaming hand soap – great minds think alike!

I’m for sure going to have to do this party again!

Projects that take longer than you think

I haven’t talked a lot about it, but I too love pintrest. Many months ago, I found this pin:

Love the idea, but it uses paper packing strips. I didn’t have those. I wondered if regular paper bags would work, and then didn’t do anything more about it.

 

Then I found this:

Perfect! She made adorable baskets with just paper bags!  I could do this!  And I had the perfect occasion to make them for. 

 

Now, you can look at the other tutorials for the specific instructions. I wanted SIZES here, people!  And I’ll add my tips for how to make it smoother too.  My baskets ended up approximately 8 inches cubed. 

Because I’m a crazy person, I couldn’t’ just make one. No. I had to make five at the same time.  And every SINGLE step took a ridiculous amount of time.

First: I cut off the thinner sides from each paper bag. 

Then I cut that big strip into two separate strips.  Each strip (after all the folding), was about 1.5 inches wide.  *all the cutting and folding took two full movies to get through.  And amazingly enough, it also made my biceps sore.  Yeah for multitasking!

 

Next: sew them up.

This took about 2 hours. And a TON of thread.  Surprisingly, sewing the fold side first left a smoother strip.  If your raw edges are a bit crazy, don’t worry. You can just trim them later.

Then you make your baskets.  Again, this took freakin forever!  You need to glue as you go. No matter how stupid your glue gun is and leaks like crazy – you will NOT be happy with the results if you try to glue it all at the end.

(the crazy wonky one on the right was my first attempt. It looks MUCH better if you glue each strip as you go!)

 

The inside of my baskets wasn’t quite as pretty as I’d like, so I sewed up some liners for them.  By far, this was the easiest, fastest step.  Even though each one was slightly different so I had to measure every single side and make everything one by one – it was still the easiest!

I’m totally happy with how they turned out.  It’s a good thing too!

And even better when filled with pretty goodies – I’ll write about that part next time!

The clothing chaos

One of the reasons I’ve been SO excited to know the gender of my little peanut was the opportunity to GET RID OF THE FLIPPIN CLOTHES!!!  Because we know this will be the last, I’ve been very excited to get rid of an entire gender worth of clothing.  I knew I had kid clothes all over the place, but I did not realize just how bad it was until I actually started to pull them out.

For your perusal:

Holly Heifer!  And this is me being half way done! Yesterday I spent several hours organizing all the girl stuff – including THREE boxes of tiny baby clothes to pass down to my sis!  And now I get to figure out all the boy stuff . . . .

Wish me luck. If I don’t resurface from the chaos in 12 hours, call out the search parties!

The Results are in!

Sorry I didn’t get this up last night – we were having some computer issues that are thankfully resolved!

Well, it looks like this little one:

has an overwhelming majority preference for gender from  you guys!

Out of 10 people, 9 (ish) of you said boy. And even the one naysayer (and the one person who said both!) mentioned a boy would be great!

Well, before I tell you if you were right, (hah! Love to keep you in suspense!) Let’s see who won the new book!

And who is #4?

It’s Lynn! Hooray for you!  I’ll try to get that mailed out soon.

And just so you know . . .

The majority was right!  Now I just have to see if I can convince Hubby that my boy names ROCK!!!

Last minute joy

Our house has a problem. A very small problem.  A problem that only emerges once a year.

We have a leprechaun infestation.

They first appeared when we lived in Euless.

It's amazing just what chaos those little guys can cause.

In the past, we've tried to trap them, but with no success.

This year, we forgot they were even coming.  St Patrick's Day was Saturday. I was awoken at 7:45 am by Happy Mom knocking on my door.  (I hate it when I sleep through my alarm!). Her Girly-Whirl was coming over to spend the morning.  No one else was awake.  I went downstairs and failed to notice any problems, but sat the computer to check something.  Then I realized that it was St Patrick's Day.  My children began to awaken.  I started them on some breakfast (and managed to smuggle some loot downstairs).  10 minutes later, I broke the news.  Girly-Lou was in the middle of elaborate trap ideas.   I informed her that it was too late - the infestation had already occurred.

The children followed me downstairs to look at the damage. 

The party this year was mild compared to years past.  And the leprechauns did leave a payment of chocolate coins.

There just happened to be enough for the three older kids to have the same amount, with a few left over for 'Lil.

I love having children young enough to believe in the impossible.  And I love even more that with 10 minute preparation on my part, that last minute joy can be found.