Personal problems

Hi! Lately, my life seems like a work in progress, just like this blog.  I started to gain great momentum this month, I have a few posts, all in different stages, that I am working on.  You also might have noticed that I have added two pages to the blog.  They are both under construction and not yet finished.  Then as I say "Life happens".  What do you do when you have competing responsibilities?

Changes are happening in my life that I cannot share with you yet.  Please know that I am not teasing or trying to make you check my blog constantly for updates.  Just know that whatever it is, it is enough to get me stress out of my mind but then...A thought crossed my mind.  When has God not taken care of me?  My life is a testimony of God's generosity. He has been there for me, holding my hand at every crossroad of my life, this includes being sent to boarding school in another country, raising my brother when I was only 14 years old, taking care of the family business, deciding to come back to the US and finish my college studies, etc.    Has God ever sent anything my way that I couldn't handle?  Well, no.  Looking back I have handled everything quite elegantly.  So, I am leaving everything in God's hands.  I am also making a list of 10 things I am grateful for to help me put things into perspective (below).  Prayers would be nice too! Once again thanks for stopping by.

Photographer: Daniel St.Pierre

10 Things I am grateful in my Life

1. My life, the gift of life and the hope for salvation is the greatest gift God has given us.

2. My son.  I thought I would never be a mom.  I am so glad I was wrong!

3. My husband.  He is my home.

4. My mom and my grandmother.

5. My in-laws.  I am truly blessed to have them in my and my son's life.

6. A roof over our heads and food on our "table" (we have no dinning room table).

7. Great friends.  I don't have many, but the ones I have make up for the small numbers.

8. Having more possibilities and hope for the future than depressing thoughts and negativity.

9. Having the energy to work all day, come home and cook, clean, play with my son and stay up late to spend quality time with my husband. 

10. Having a medium like this to be able to "vent" and "share" my ups and downs.

Disaster relief for Japan

I have been looking for ways to help in any type of efforts to help Japan.  My family donated to the Red Cross and I encourage you to do so also. If your a blogger please join us too!

(copied directly from the website)

Bloggers Day of Silence:

Anyone that has a blog can help out with this one.  

The aim is just raise awareness and respect and acknowledge the devastation going on in Japan.

The guidelines are simple.
1.  This coming Friday, March 18th, no posts at all on your blog.
2.  Please post a blog post about what you will be doing this Friday whenever possible in hopes to spread the word and whoever else would like to join in.  

You all can check out what I did for mine here or Utterly Engaged's here and do it your way if you'd like.  

I'll be posting a reminder post on Thursday evening on my blog too.
3. Tweet and Re-Tweet the shiznit out of the link to http://www.forjapanwithlove.com please. 
4. Encourage your readers to contribute to donate shelter to Japan. 

Whatever anyone can contribute will be appreciated. 

 

Every little helps. 

Is forty one too old?

How do you measure age?  Chronologically?  Or by the experiences lived?  But then again, how do you measure that?

Photo by Daniel St. Pierre

Sundays have always been a conflicting day for me.  Ever since I can remember, there have been Sunday phone calls.  I guess it started with my dad calling his mom, as I was growing up.  Then it was my brother and I receiving phone calls on Sundays from our mom and dad.  Funny how history tends to repeat itself, now it's me calling my mom and grandmother.  It so very weird.  I have received and given the best news and also the worst news over the phone.  I really do not know how to explain that this is a situation that happens to immigrants all over the world.  I honestly do not know if my phone hours with my mom exceeds the physical time spent with her.  That is so weird and probably sad to some.  This mere fact also explains my love/hate relationship with phones.  Frankly, I have no use for them.  If it weren't for my mom, my husband and my job, I wouldn't have any type of phone.

This Sunday my mom after many days harassing her let it slip that she and my grandmother where coming to visit in May.  WOW! That doesn't give me much time to plan and get the house ready but you know what, I will do my best and whatever can get done will get done.

Back to age, it's funny how time passes, sometimes you notice and sometimes it just passes you by.  My life has been a world wind.  God couldn't have made it anymore interesting than it has been and so blessed.  I have traveled, lived in different cultures, spoken other languages, had money, lost it all, I have been all alone in very crowed rooms and my hand held at every crossroads.  I have hardly lived but at the same time I have lived so much!  My husband and my son are my all now and the most precious gifts my Lord has given to me.  Wow, 41... so much to do and so much accomplished!  I have written in my google chat status this:

"At the end of our lives people will only remember our hearts."

I truely believe this and I try to live by it.  How do you measure age?  Do you feel your age? I would love to know. 

Better late than never - Our family Valentine post

Hi!  I have been writing and editing and writing and editing this Valentine post.  I am suffering from a severe writers block.  Please understand, I am inferring I am a writer at all or that I can even write.  But usually I know where I want to go with my post.  I don't post often so I have time to think, edit and deliver what I want.  But not now, I am all out of desire and/or drive.  Work stress has gotten to me, terrible threes have gotten to me and just the general economic state of affairs of our country have gotten to me.  So I will just say what I have to say and post my pictures.
Chip and I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day the Saturday night before.  We rented Julia & Julie (or is it Julie & Julia?) and had this delicious treat!

The Ticket Kitchen

Trust me and follow the link, it's a cute idea and their chocolate is spectacular.

My hubby bought me perfume and I got him Netflix streaming (his dream come true).  We had a quiet and romantic night.  Little man didn't wake up in the middle of the night, also that was a plus.

That same Saturday, but in the morning hours, Carr and I enjoyed some craft and sit down time together.  For those that have three year old boy toddlers, you know how difficult that can be.

We worked with glue glitter.

 Carr decided that he didn't want to cut anything heart shaped.  Another great surprise is that he loves water colors and paint.  Thank you Melanie!  Your birthday gift has given us hours of joy for Carr and quiet for Mommy.

Ripping tissue paper was also an experiment we liked.

Mommy decided to make Valentine cupcakes for home and for work.

 Yes, if you thought they were cherries, you guessed correctly.  More pictures to follow what I call now "cupcake madness".

Stickers from Mimi and Papa!

Love that face!

Such a handsome little man!

I baked for the first time ever Red Velvet Cupcakes.  I added my own personal twist to them...cherries!

Red Velvet Cake:

2 1/2 cups (250 grams) sifted cake flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons (15 grams) regular or Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk

2 tablespoons liquid red food coloring

1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) 
2. Mix all ingredients
3. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 25 - 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean.

This was my first try at red velvet.  It turn out great!  Here is where I got the recipe from:
Read more: http://www.joyofbaking.com/RedVelvetCake.html#ixzz1FjEKr1ls

 I made yellow cake cupcakes for Chip...they're his favorite.  Yellow cake and butter cream frosting.

Yellow cake ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 2 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups milk
• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Mix all ingrediants together the pour batter into prepared pans.
2. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.

I have always done this recipe even in Argentina.  I got this recipe from a high school friend and translated to English.

We also prepared little boxes with treats.

Well, that is all the post.  Hope you enjoyed this even though I posted it so late. I am hoping I get  my mojo back to post some more soon.  Have a great weekend!

Finally...The Birthday Post - 3 years

I am a very lucky and blessed mom.  Sometimes I am luckier than I deserve.  It was the first week of January and I still had no secure place to celebrate my son's birthday.  Every time the thought of celebrating Carr's birthday at our apartment came up, I would start hyperventilating.  Wall to wall carpeting and any amount of 3 to 4 year old toddlers, do not mix.  But then that voice in your head says, you wouldn't dare not celebrate it!  I frantically started making phone calls, only to find out that many of the venues were booked 2 months in advance, even McDonald's doesn't do birthdays (yes, I was that desperate!) and that whatever place had availability was very expensive.  That said, I am glad I invested the money in this particular venue.  It is called Amazement Square.  Please visit their website, they are an incredible organization! Taken from their site, they define themselves as follows: "Amazement Square is Central Virginia's first multidisciplinary, hands-on children's museum!"

That said, I truly couldn't have pulled this all of without my husband.  He stood there while I "decorated" the cake (2am the night before).  He took care of Carr while I prepared everything and ran around at the museum.  Most importantly, he kept me calm and sane.  That, my friends is priceless.

All his little buddies were there.  Funny story:  all my son's friends, his little social circle, are children of friends of ours way back to college times.  How cool is that!  We have gone through break-ups, make-ups, weddings, pregnancies and now we face toddler mayhem together.  It was so nice looking at these photos and just reminescing how far we've come.

We have signed up to be members of the museum.  it is such a great place, I hope to take more photos and do them justice.  My son loved the farm exihibit most of all.

There is a common saying "It takes a village to bring up a child" and I believe this to be true.  I want to thank my family and my friends for helping, supporting and witnessing these important moments in my child's life.

Birthday preparations - Part two: The Cake

Simple White cake Recipe

1 cup of white sugar

1/2 butter 

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 all purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking poder

1/2 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a pan or line a muffin pan.
2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

Chocolate cake

1 box of chocolate cake mix
1 box of chocolate pudding
1 large bag of chocolate chunks
3 tablespoons of milk and 3 tablespoons of butter

Directions

1.  Mix cake according to package directions and stir in chocolate chunks. Pour into pans and bake according to package directions.(cook for 35 minutes on 350°F)

2. Let cool completely.

Decorating a cake is hard stuff.  The essential part is learning the difference between icing and frosting.  Huge!  Which I admit I didn't and that would explain why everything looks so running.  Wow, something so basic and that had a huge impact on the cake.  Another thing that I did check and totally steered me wrong was the amount of coloring that went in the frosting, two tubes and I only got this peony substitute for a grayish color.   Black is not that changing of white icing, you need lots to actually make it change.  Obviously, it is all dependant on the amount of icing and the size of the tubes.  Thankfully this is not a cooking blog and I have nowwhere said that I was an expert.  The amount of icing a big bowls worth and the tubes are the smallest size that you can buy.

I am not an expert or even an aficionado to even expect this to look like a building with a Spider man on top but somehow the mommy guardian angel came, gave me a hand a made this.  It's not great but you should have seen my son's face when he opened the refrigerator and saw the finished cake.  He actually loved it!  And that my friends was enough for me.

Maybe this is the last try at making a birthday cake but a part of me loves to do something from scratch in honor of my little man.  I might try something else next time, who knows?  I would love to hear some suggestions as to what would be good ideas for next year.

Preparations for the birthday party - part one party favors

It's been awhile since I have written a post.  We have all been sick in one way or another since Carr birthday. I've been saving all the little energy I had for my boys and work.  It's really hard to keep a house running when everyone in the household is sick.  Needless to mention, that crafts and hobbies take the back seat for a wile until the dusts settles.  Which is not the case now but heck tomorrows Valentine's Day!
 
You would think that having Carr's birthday so close to Christmas should require special planning weeks ahead, right?  Christmas and New Years leave me exhausted after all the preparations, cookie baking and crafting. I wish I could say that but for the past 3 years, I have been caught off guard and unprepared. for  Carr's Birthday.   Thankfully, I  have managed to pull it together at the last minute with help from friends, family and event planning blogs.  Here is the post I published a year ago, please look at the DIY party favors for Carr's second birthday.

This year I wanted to be more hands on, I had already decided that I didn't want to give away party favors that inevitably loaded up kids full of sugar and ended up in the trash.  I also wanted to theme his birthday cake.  Yes, I know, I am not a baker and certainly not a cake decorator!  You'll get to judge the cake yourself soon enough.  First thing is first, I want to thank Tasha @  Creation Corner for the best idea ever. Tasha's super cape idea and design are brilliant. Check out her blog, I am planning to make more of her crafts.

Well, let's get started.   I suggest you go to Creation Corner and go over Tasha's instructions.  Her directions are easy to follow.  I was unsure of the measurements, and I ultimately wanted a bigger cape so I bought a yard in each color of felt.

The only change that I made was adding a superhero symbol.  I chose oval because it was easier to draw,  folding the felt in half and sketching a crescent.  Because I was pressed for time I chose to use ironed on letters with  their first initial and spray adhesive.

*Note: do not use anywhere near a child the fumes will get you loopy.

Looking back, I realize now that I really would love to do this project again, this time enjoying it and taking my time.  This was a very easy project that actually took me two nights to get done.  Considering I would work on them from 11 pm.  Oh, I didn't sew the Velcro, I bought the self-adhesive.

Another little piece of advice, not every child has your child's interest.  You must decide early on who you want to impress.  But sincerely, who can go wrong with superhero capes!

A cape gives you super human strength and muscles.