More Sweets

Had a party at church a couple weeks ago. I volunteered to make the desserts since I absolutely love baking sweet things but can't eat them. (I do sample and taste but there's no way I can have sweet things in my house....it would not go well for my diet!) So, I bake these days to give away.

For this party, I chose to make 3 kinds of cupcakes plus a candy of sorts. I made mini cupcakes and lots of them since they are so easy to pop in your mouth.

For those with basic sweet tooths, I made plain yellow cake cupcakes with white and chocolate buttercream icing. They tasted as good as they looked!

I made the same German Chocolate cupcakes I made for Cliff's party a while ago.

The recipe can be found on a link a few posts down.

A new recipe and this one was a HIT. Oreo Cupcakes. They are moist and chocolate and the icing tastes just like the cream in Oreos. Since I made mini cupcakes, I used mini Oreos on the top. The recipe is here.


A close up of those cute cupcakes!


The final recipe is a take-off of something I saw on the Martha Stewart Show. They called it a Peppermint Bark and used Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark. However, with money being what it is (tight) I adapted it to an extremely delicious, addictive, cost-friendly treat. I made pans of this for Christmas and pulled it out again for this party.



Peppermint Toffee
For one pan, you will need

1 box of Chocolate Graham Crackers

1 stick of butter (use real butter not margerine)

1 cup brown suger

2 bags of white chocolate chips

6-8 peppermints crushed into fine powdery crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350. Place a single layer of the graham crackers on a cookie sheet.

2. In a medium saucepan on medium high heat, bring the butter and sugar to a rolling boil. Once boiling, time for 3 minutes.

3. Pour the butter/suger mixture over the graham crackers and spread evenly.

4. Bake for 5 minutes @ 350.

5. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack. Pour the white chocolate chips over the graham crackers and let sit until softened (about 5 minutes)

6. Spread the white chocolate over the graham crackers and sprinkle the peppermint over the top. You can also add sprinkles. Let cool until set and break into pieces. Store covered.

It Is What It Is

I'm not sure when it happened but somewhere along the way I picked up the phrase, "It is what it is." I must say this several times a day....especially when I'm having a bit of a hard day.

I was thinking about this the other day and wondering why I say it so much. And I realized, that for me, this has become and instant reality check. It is what it is...means, these are the circumstances no matter how you got here. So, what are you going to do? It forces me to not feel sorry for myself or get stuck and deal with the situation at hand.

I was tested in this this past week...twice through both of my sons.

As most of you know, my oldest son, Joshua, went on a trip to Los Angels, CA and Denver, CO to perform live auditions for two universities for graduate school. His trip to LA was unique in that he traveled alone and was reliant on public transportation the entire 3 days he was there. Josh never expected to hear from this school. It was a long-shot that he just threw in the mix to say he applied there. To have the opportunity to audition before their music faculty was an incredible opportunity and he felt it went well. He left LA Sunday evening and flew to Denver with the audition scheduled for Monday afternoon. He woke up Monday morning with a stomach flu. He couldn't reschedule. I told him it was out of his hands. He went anyway and 45 minutes before his audition he was laying on a bathroom floor! Somehow he pulled it out of himself. When I talked to him later he said, it wasn't the audition he had planned. I said, "It is what it is, Josh and it will be what it will be." The control of the audition was totally removed from him.

The same day, I got a call around 7:30 PM. My youngest son was 30 minutes away and had an accident in my car totaling it. I knew he was so upset and didn't need me to heap more on him. I once again told myself and him, "It is what it is." Meaning, this is the situation and we will deal with whatever happens with a car and the insurance.

It is what it is. Reality check. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Look at the situation, deal with it and move on!!

Emily Lives Here

As I was straightening up around my house the other day, I kept coming across things that said, "Emily lives here." I decided to grab my camera and photograph this slice of Emily's life. I see a great scrapbook layout here.

A funny combination of boots and flip-flops!

Paint samples for a soon-to-be painted bedroom

Art Project


Purse

Piano Lesson Books


A scrapbook layout in progress using one of my favorite pictures of Emily.

Another art project....Pinterest inspired.


An ever-present supply of brushes above my kitchen sink on the windowsill.

Emily wanted to do something special for some of the older people in our church. She found a picture of an owl valentine on Pinterest. She took it way further and hand-punched and inked all these circles to give the owls dimension. They each had a Valentine pencil as a perch and a tag that said, "I'll Owlways Be Your Friend." We attached these owls (15 of them) to cellophane bags of heart-shaped sugar cookies.

I also made some treats for the team of people I have the pleasure of working with each and every Sunday morning. One of them was this popcorn mix called, "Monster Munch." I turned it into a Valentines theme by using pink candy corn and M&M's. You also stir in peanuts, popcorn, and coat it all with white chocolate. YUM!!!!!

This was a treat for my husband. His favorite peanut butter cookies dipped in leftover chocolate.

Tried and True sugar cookies for Emily's Valentines. NOT a Pinterest recipe but one we have made for years. I can't even begin to think how many thousands of these cookies I have made & frosted. I did discover a new baking tip quite by accident. For the absolutely best baked goods, open up a new can of baking powder. Makes the cookies light and fresh and melt in your mouth!!


I packaged these with the popcorn for my team. Another tried and true recipe. Peanut Butter Balls (Valentine Edition). These are just simply the best PB Balls EVER!!

This year I tried to "spread the love" (that sounds funny!!) I gave a package of cookies to our host at dinner on Sunday as well as our waitress. And today gave a package of PB Balls to the gentleman who owns one of our local restaurants. These little bits of kindness really do make people happy and its such a small thing to do. Emily loves to do this and I'm supporting her endeavors 150%. Thinking of others. What a way to live your life and what an incredible habit to develop and learn while you're still young!!!

Birthday Treats (of Fun in the Kitchen - part 1)

Emily and I has a friend who celebrated her 14th birthday a couple weeks ago. This friend also loves owls. Emily found a picture on pinterest for these cupcakes and of course we had to make them for her. Plain yellow cake cupcakes with chocolate frosting....Oreo cookies for the eyes (and as much as I wanted to get two eyes from each Oreo, it was impossible....one Oreo yielded only one eye) and M&M pupils and beak. They came out so cute!!!

Since I have been in a baking kind of a mood, I saw these little goodies on Pinterest also and decided to make them up for the adults in the Bible class on Wednesday nights. They are delicious little bites of chocolate pretzel. Cover a Snyder's pretzel snap with a Hershey Hug. Put in the oven @ 275 for 2-3 minutes and top with an M&M. Addictive little bites of deliciousness!!

Two Succesful Pinterest Recipes

A couple weeks ago I threw a birthday party for Cliff's 50th birthday. His favorite dessert of all time is German Chocolate Cake.

Now I have made him German Chocolate cake before via Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines. But when the love of your life turns 50, I felt only a cake made from scratch would do.

The cake itself is a bit semi-homemade in the fact that you do start with a boxed cake mix but add in wonderful things like buttermilk and sour cream that made for one of the lightest chocolate cakes I've ever tasted. I chose to do mini-cupcakes for portion control (which kind of backfired because mini-cupcakes usually turn out to be little one-bite wonders!)

Anyways, I wasn't too worried about the cake or the chocolate buttercream icing. The coconut-pecan icing had me a bit concerned and when I made it, I allowed myself time to go by a can of it in case mine failed. It did not and it did not dissapoint. They were DELICIOUS!!!! To make them look festive and pretty, Emily hand-crafted all the little "50" picks. She cut the "50" using my mini diecutter and embossed every one. She did an excellent job on them. The birthday boy was very, very happy!! You can find the recipe here.

Since I was in a baking mood, I decided to try another recipe I had downloaded quite a while ago. It's called Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars.

These were insane!! Once again, the recipe starts with a boxed cake mix. The chocolate layer is Eagle Brand & semi-sweet chocolate chips. I really thought these would be extremely sweet. They were very decadent but not overly sweet. I'm guessing using semi-sweet chocolate chips cuts the sweetness a bit. They were absolutely divine!! And the recipe is here.

Changing Times

From birth until kindergarten, it seems like the lives of my children changed almost daily. Then things seemed to settle down a bit and we settled into the routine of life. Then they started graduating high school and things start to dramatically change again.

This fall/winter, I have been dealing with some dramatic changes in the lives of my kids and we're not anywhere near done! I'm attempting to the best of my ability to roll with the punches but oftentimes I find myself a bit sad and a bit lonesome for my little kids.

Amy moved back home into a newly constructed room .....for about 2 months. She moved in with a friend which left us with a newly constructed empty room. Her brother was very happy to move into that room and between school and work I hardly see him. He's planning to go away to college next fall. Josh still lives 3 hours away and this month (Feb), he has two grad school auditions....I was hoping for KU (only 35 minutes away) but alas, the auditions are in COLORADO and LOS ANGELES!!!! Emily just started the second half of her somphomore year and having been down this road 3 times now, I know how very, very fast these final years of high school fly by.

So here I am, staring an empty nest in the face. Today I have something in my house I've never had before.....an EMPTY ROOM!!!! Our house has always been full to 0verflowing - until now. The upside is, I have a nice guest room and a permanent place for scrapbooking. The downside is, I will soon have another empty room - The upside is, Cliff will soon have his man cave (sorry, I really do hate that term).

I'm trying to redefine my life to a certain degree. Somedays, frankly, I just don't know what to do with myself. Somedays I'm just very sad. Somedays I'm just very lonesome. And somedays, I really do enjoy this season of life. Its a new one....unchartered territory for this mom.

Josh asked me how I would handle him going out to LA. I told him if thats the door God opens for him I'm glad to see him go through it. One of the hardest things things this mom ever has had to do was let these kids go to spread their wings and live their lives. But that's exactly what they are...their lives. I've had my opportunites and made my mistakes and learned valuable life lessons. Now its their turn to find out who they are and who God wants them to be. So part of me is sad because I miss them terribly and yet I am filled with so much peace that God is looking out for 4 of the best parts of me.