Angel Food Cake with a Strawberry Cream Center

My childhood friend and her family were coming to visit a couple of weeks ago and her oldest son was turning nine. Which is difficult to believe but its true. It feels like it was just yesterday that his mom and I met. We met we were 12! Its so cliche to say time flies, but it does, it really does!!

Anyway, I digress. So they were going to be traveling on his birthday and arriving into town just in time to go out for a birthday dinner. She had said her son wanted strawberry shortcake so I offered to make one for him. I wanted to do a different take on it though, which could be going out on a limb. You never know with kids if they will be thrilled or disappointed that they didn't get exactly what they asked for. The one thing you do know is that they will probably tell you precisely what they are thinking about it, so I knew in a few short hours that I would find out if it was a hit or a miss.

I had looked through some recipes to get an idea. I liked a few concepts but needed to change a few things. I came up with one that worked well and was pretty simple. So if you are in the mood for a twist on a classic try this.

By the way, the birthday boy said "it was not what he was wanting, but it was better"! Whoo, saved my the second comment. :)

Ingredients:

1 Angel Food Cake (store bought works great)

6 ounces of cream cheese

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 tsp almond extract

Red food coloring

2 cups sliced strawberries (divided-1 cup filling, 1 cup for decorating)

1 (12 ounce) carton of whipping cream

gelatin (read packet for stabilizing amt and instructions)

Instructions:

• Cut a 1 inch slice off top of the cake; set aside. Make a tunnel by carefully hollowing out the bottom leaving a 1 inch shell all around. Cut or tear the removed cake into small cubes.


• Be cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in milk and lemon juice until smooth. Stir in extract and food coloring to desired pinkness. Stir in cake cubes and strawberries. Refrigerate.


• Whip your fresh cream adding the gelatin for stability ( I use electric hand beaters to whip fresh cream, just be careful that you don't overwhip. Once firm peaks begin to form, you can stop).


• Fold 1 cup of whipped cream into strawberry cream mixture.


• Fill tunnel with mixture, replace top.
  
• Spread remaining whipped topping over top and sides of cake.


• Decorate sides and top of cake with remaining sliced strawberries.


• Refrigerate overnight if possible or at least 4 hours.

Enjoy!

Pine Cone Bird Feeder

To feed wild birds in your yard try making an easy pine cone bird feeder. A fun project that makes bird watching extra fun.











What you'll need:

• Pine cone



• Twine



• Peanut Butter



• Bird Seed

Instructions:

1. Tie a knot around bottom half of pine cone or hot glue an edge to bottom area of the pine cone




2. Wrap twine around the pine cone and leave enough to hang from a branch




3. Smear pine cone in peanut butter




4. Roll in birdseed




5. Hang on a branch for birds to enjoy

Watch for birds as a family. Take the opportunity to talk about the birds that you see!

Long time, no blog

I have been m.i.a for a couple of weeks now and I have missed blogging. We had house guests for two weeks straight, which was great but busy and I finally got the time (I use that word loosely) to connect to the Internet and to my dismay it was not working.

This is a trend with our Internet connection. The phone company always says everything is fine and so we usually get no where after an hour long phone call to the repair center. This time was different, obviously, since you are reading my blog :). But not only was it different, it was pretty amusing. At least it is amusing as long as you have the ability to laugh at yourself. Which for me means not only laughing at myself but also acknowledging that I may not be very tech savvy.....surprise surprise......again laughing.

It turns out that my Internet worked just fine but for some very strange reason our home page had been switched to a page cannot be displayed error page. Odd. If this was some hackers idea of a joke to make a nice lady crazy, congrats! You did it! But now it is fixed and we can all have a good laugh....at my expense.

My point to telling you all this is to say, I'm back! I hope to have lots of fun ideas to blog about in the next few days. I have lots of recipes to share, going back to the house guests. So stay tuned.....

Refreshed and Focused

It has been a week since my last post. Last week I posted about feeling a little overwhelmed. Hey, it can happen to the best of us. I had just come home from hearing a speaker talk about organizing and though it was great to hear, it sent me into a panic! So I gave myself a week to sort through my emotions and figure out what was causing all that anxiety (could it be the stuffed to the gills closet with no idea what's inside???).

I realized that I needed a system, but a system that would not make me feel like screaming and burning my house down to avoid dealing with the hidden clutter. Some systems out there are obviously made by an extremely organized person and therefore can be suffocating to a semi organized person, like myself. My house is very clean, but it takes work! And all that cleaning leaves very little time for the word of the day....ORGANIZING.

After hearing the speaker I sought my husbands advice, which he so happily gave me if it meant he could divert my attention elsewhere so I didn't obsess on my distress. Apparently I do this?! Anyway he said simply, "take from it what you can and if you can't take anything from it, oh well. Let it go". My hubby is pretty genius when it comes to simplifying the otherwise bewildering predicaments I find myself in. That could also be because I have a rare talent of complicating the otherwise lucid situations.

So following his sound words I decided to think about the things that were said during the presentation and apply what really would work for me. I did channel a few organizing bursts and took advantage of the energy that came from them. Which made for a very productive day I must say.

Then I logged on to the organizing/cleaning mecca, marthastewart.com and found some pre-made checklists for cleaning and organizing. God bless that woman, that's all I have to say about her. So I printed out the checklists. Laminated them so that I can use a dry erase to check off what I've done. Hung them on my bulletin board. I am ready to rock! At least I have something to guide me since there are days where I feel like I have cleaned the same room (toy room/living room) about a dozen times. Oh wait....I have!

But I am excited to keep the energy up and to tackle what I can and when I can. All of this definitely comes second to playing with my son, of course. So I know it will be a learning process and might be a life changing process as well. I figure if I can at least feel like I know whats in my closet/cellar/under the bed, then that's progress. Right?!.... Right!!

Life Overwhelming

Is it just me or can life sometimes get a little overwhelming. It seems just when you get one thing accomplished the universe reminds you that you should be doing more, having less, organizing better, you get the picture. I have this running list in the back of mind constantly reminding me of all the things I want to get done, eventually. This list I think for the most part is a good thing for a person to have, it keeps you on track. But at the same time this list can begin to stalk me. As if it isn't hard enough being a wife, a mom, a daughter, sister, friend, homemaker, etc., then you have this nagging in the back of your mind that somehow all that is not good enough. I begin to set these unrealistic expectations. I make comments to myself and others that I am not doing this well enough or I want to get better at this, or clean this more and so on.

I was thinking about all this today simultaneously reading to my son (miss multi tasker). I was reading a book of nursery rhymes when I happened on one called "A Wise Old Owl". I read the words, "A wise old owl lived in an oak, the more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard. Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?" Instantly it resonated with me. I realized that this list in the back of my head is nothing more than overwhelming chatter, by me to me.

I stopped instantly and said a prayer to God to help me silence these demands I put on myself and I thanked him for all that I am blessed with. Because truly all I have is all I need. Yes the daily chores of life will always be there and honestly for the most part I take joy in doing them and feel pride when I've accomplished my daily To Do list. But it is important for me to silence that self chatter about all the future things needing tended to. They will get done. All I am doing in the present by constantly reminding myself is speaking more and hearing less.

So I am making it a priority to breath deeper, and stop trying to do so much so that the things I am doing mean more.

Thank you, you wise old bird.

What my 18 month old is loving today

Super simple tip for today that provided a lot of fun for my little one. It isn't a craft but I thought it was worth mentioning. Today I bought some Easter window clings. I let my son pick between two (he loves making choices, makes him feel big) Easter sets at the dollar store. Once home I removed them from the sheet and let him go to town on our glass door. He rearranged them a dozen times and it kept him busy long enough for me to get him lunch and then later, dinner. Definitely worth the buck. Plus he picked the set I liked best so that was in my favor. :)

Handsoap Savings Tip

I have a little savings tip that I want to share. If you have empty foaming hand soap dispensers instead of tossing them you can save big bucks by reusing them. Foaming dispensers use so much less soap than regular pump dispensers so you can make a big jar of refill soap last a very very long time.

Rinse out the dispenser and fill 1/8 of the way full with your refill soap of choice. It really takes only a small amount otherwise the foaming mechanism gets clogged. Then fill the rest with water, replace lid and shake.

Voila, the same foaming action you love, a lot less moolah.

*be sure to buy the large refill soap in a fragrance you love, because you will be smelling it for a long time to come.