Moose

Second Star to the Right and On’Til Morning

My baby is not a baby anymore. He’s starting to put two words together, he wears a size 8 ½ shoe, he runs and jumps, an d he can even throw a tantrum or two. The time has gone so fast. As a result, we’re getting rid of our baby things slowly but surely. Three will be it. So, the items we’re not keeping for mementos or any possible grandchildren are finding their way into the donation pile. So it’s time, before his room changes too much, to document it. It’s a bit narcissistic, but what about blogging isn’t?

I planned for years for this room. The blue is my favorite color, sort of a Wedgewood blue. The stars were in a Pottery Barn catalog years ago and I kept the clipping, for just the right time. The time finally came. However, I had tremendous carpel syndrome due to my pregnancy, that my incredible friend and my mother helped me paint the fine details of the stars. My daughter helped with Big Ben and I was able to paint Peter Pan and the Darlings. The wall decal was special ordered from Just Ad Words. Luckily, the bumper and valance that my incredibly talented mother made for my first child fit wonderfully in this room. All I had to buy was the quilt for our extra bed for guests.

After all that work, the room was complete and waiting for my little baby boy.  He’s so big and just ready and willing to go find some adventures with Peter.  So, here’s the snapshot of my baby’s nursery as he’s  headed for the second star to the right and on’til morning.

Shhh…Don’t Tell Anyone

It’s not as though I don’t love my kids and love being with them, but it’s just so rare that I’m by myself for any length of time during the day.  Then there was today.  My kids, all three of them were at my mother’s, so I could go to a Doctor’s appointment downtown.  Amazingly enough I was out of the office in 30 minutes.  That never happens, any pediatric appointment takes at least two hours, I have spent literally a total of weeks in the waiting room and examining room over the last 10 1/2 years, but not today.  I didn’t even have time to flip through a magazine. 

“So what do I do now?”  I thought sitting in my car at 10:45 on an absolutely gorgeous day. I could go get my kids, but you know they’re at Grandma’s the last thing they want to see is, well, ME.  There is some Easter shopping to do, yard work, and about a million and half other things I could be doing, but you know what I had in my wallet?  A membership to the Cleveland Botanical Garden,which is about a mile away from the parking lot.  Shhh, don’t tell anyone, I went to the garden and walked around looking at the daffodils and crocuses.  I even sat down on a bench and didn’t have to answer to Mom, Mom, Mom, MOM, or chase anyone, shhh, don’t tell anyone.  Then the church clock struck 12 and I had to go…

Sometimes life just hands you gifts.

Just Plain Fun

I thought I’d share this.  My daughter is looking for ideas for her school’s talent show, so we ended up on YouTube.  This video, the Evolution of Dance, just is plain silly fun.  I thought you guys would get a kick out of it.

Wordless Wednesday

So How Does a Dairy-Free Birthday Cake Work?

My little caboose turned one!  Can you believe it?   Xander is an entire year old!  As many of you know, he has been kicked off of dairy again!  That means some of life’s greatest pleasures are withheld: cheese, milk, yogurt, sour cream, are taboo, gone, struck down, not to be had.  Oh, the agony….  I digress.

We had to restart Xander’s dairy/soy free diet again, one week before his birthday.  A few days into the diet, it hit me, his cake!  How am I going to make him a dairy free cake?  There is no way I’m going to make this little guy a birthday cake that he can’t eat, NO WAY!  I’m crazy about birthday cakes, especially first birthday cakes.  Over the years I have made some horrible, ugly, birthday cakes (see an example below), but they have been made from the heart, except for one.  It’s one of my biggest guilts (ok, I know it’s trivial) is that I bought an ice-cream cake for Daniel’s first birthday.  So, there is no way that my caboose, is not going to have a homemade first birthday cake.

The research began and I settled on a Cherrybrook chocolate cake mix.  I know it was a mix, but it was dairy and soy free.  I then tried their frosting… it was awful.  I don’t know if it was the shortening that I used, but it was too sweet and had an awful texture.   After some goggling I found this recipe, it’s essentially a meringue frosting, and super easy to make.  I whipped up three batches of frosting and decorated the cake, and I must say it looked and tasted pretty darn good.  Yippee!!!

Now, on to my confessions.  Number one, I was so focused on making a successful dairy free/soy free cake, I didn’t make enough.  So pretty much only the kids got a taste of the cake, seriously only an idiot does something like that.  My second confession is that by the time I had the last quarter of the cake to cut, it just started falling apart.  The frosting became too warm and started slipping.  I sort of suspected this might happen, while I was decorating the cake.  I had a conundrum.  I have started freezing my cakes before I frost them, because it is so much easier to decorate them.  But now I have a frozen cake, that needed to thaw, but the frosting had to stay cold….why does stuff like this always happen to me?  Someone explain, I swear, I try to think things through.  At any rate, we left the cake in the garage overnight, and we took our chances and brought it in to defrost in the morning, and the cake started falling apart.  So next time I use this frosting the cake won’t be frozen.  I will use the frosting again, because it tasted pretty good and didn’t have any of the forbidden fruit dairy.  What matters, is in the end, Xander ate his homemade dairy/soy free cake, and loved it!

Check Off The List

I love my curtains, but they have had a major flaw.  The hem was not straight.  I took them apart and now the hems are straight, whew, that was harder than you would think with a plaid pattern.  Oh, well they are corrected ironed and hung up…on to the next project.