Don't be impressed...

Today, I made a mermaid.

I'll bet you're impressed. Don't be.

My girls have been watching a tv show on Netflix about girls who turn into mermaids whenever they get wet. They've watched all 3 seasons of the show now, and slightly obsessed with mermaids. As a result, they want to swim like mermaids, dress like mermaids, sing the theme song about being a mermaid...you get the idea. They even looked up on YouTube how to make a mermaid costume, complete with mono-fin flipper. I draw the line there. It's just not on my bucket list.

So I compromised. It's how I roll.

Emma cut out a little mermaid doll and I sewed it up for her. It's not very good, it's a feeble attempt at sewing up a made-up-as-you-go pattern, but it works.

She had some old shirts that weren't even really yard-sale worthy, so I told her she could keep them for scraps. She pulled out some scraps and cut them up into mermaid pieces. I sewed, she stuffed, she made hair, and voilà! A mermaid. Ok. It wasn't really that easy. I'm making it sound easy. It wasn't. Just trust me on this one.

She actually cut out three tails, knowing full well that I had the stellar seamstress-ing skills to make all 3 dolls. But after sewing up the tails, then finally sewing up the first doll, I told her there was no way [anywhere] that I was going to sew up two more. At least not at *that* size. Those arms? They're very tiny. I actually sewed them *and* managed to get them turned right-side-out. I'm sure larger mermaid pieces will be visiting my dining room soon, hoping to be pieced together to form a larger and more easier-to-work-with doll. In fact, maybe I'll just teach her how to use the machine and let her go to work on a larger version. (Yeah, that's the ticket...)

So, here is the mermaid. It turned out pretty cute. She cut out the pieces (you can see a few marks where her outlines were), she made the hair, and I sewed it all up. There, I made it sound easy again. I'm telling you...never mind. Just take my word for it.

Here's Emma with her new little friend:

Behold, a "mer-made-up-as-you-go".

Elegant Birthday Desserts

Emma's rainbow birthday cake was the dessert for her "friend" birthday party on Friday night, but she wanted another dessert for the "family" birthday party on Saturday.

So she was going to have ice cream cake - and we had been looking at several different recipes. But then we went to the orthodontist and saw a Martha Stewart Living magazine - and found this dessert, so we decided on this instead. Here's magazine picture - I snapped a picture in the orthodontist's office so we would have a quick reference. 

This is what we saw in the magazine. I did *not* make this.

It is super easy and makes a really elegant-looking dessert. It's also really super yummy.

You'll just need a quart of ice cream that you get in a box - whatever flavor you want. Emma opted for one Vanilla and one Neapolitan.

We got some dark chocolate slabs from the bulk food section at WinCo, and I also scooped out some of the little broken pieces to use for sprinkling on the top and around the edges of the finished "cake".

So here are the steps:

First, cut the carton off the ice cream, place it on serving platter, and refreeze until it hardens. Then pour some slightly cooled melted semisweet chocolate over the top, and let it drip down the sides. Now is a great time to scatter some of the chunky bits of chocolate on the top and around the edges of the bottom of the ice cream. Then you will want to refreeze once more so it hardens nicely.

That's it! You have a very elegant looking dessert that was super easy to make.

 

Neapolitan

Vanilla

 

I was really impressed at how amazing these desserts looked.

Try this sometime! It's super easy and really yummy.

Rainbow Birthday Cake

Emma turned 12 on May 18. I am now the proud parent of a 12 year old and it's really quite nice to have an "almost" teenager. I don't buy into the "oh no, you have a teenager!" mentality. It simply doesn't have to be "that way". That's just about all I'm going to say about that. :-)

Emma decided she wanted to copy a birthday cake out of her American Girl magazine from several years ago (they really are worth keeping around!). So of course, since I let them both choose what dessert(s) they want for their birthday parties, I agreed to make it for her.

It's really pretty simple, but just takes a bit of time. If I were you, I'd try it sometime. It looks daunting but if you are patient, it will work out. Frosting is a layer-cake-baker's friend, let me tell you.

So here's what you do!

Mix up a plain white cake mix, out of a box - you can make it from scratch if you want to, but it's a bit easier sometimes to just use the box.

After mixing up the cake, split up the batter into 4 even amounts. I used my Pampered Chef 2-cup prep bowls - I'm so glad I got a couple sets of these before I stopped selling PC. Super love these bowls.

You'll color the batter in each bowl a different color - the recipe in the magazine said to use a couple teaspoons of flavored Jello in different colors, but instead of wasting Jello, I just used food coloring. Mr. (Ms.?) Wilton is also a baker's friend. I love him (her?).

Wilton is my friend...

Make the 4 different colors of batter, and then bake each in a well-floured pan. I was reminded that well-floured means exactly that...well-floured. I have this great baking spray, that has flour already in it. I did not realize this until after the first two cakes were baked and they did not come out of the pans very well. I tried to spray them and then flour them - when all I had to do was liberally spray each pan with only the spray that contained flour. This flour spray works great. And, I'll say it again. Frosting is my friend when baking layer cakes. You'd never know that the first two layers came out terribly. I froze them on the rack for a bit first before wrapping them in saran wrap.

These pans were *not* floured nearly well enough. I shouldn't have used flour, just the flour-spray.

Red and Orange cakes

First two cakes didn't come out real well...

Love my prep bowls!!

The second two came out perfectly after cooling for a few minutes.

After all 4 cakes are baked and cooled, you'll want to freeze them. Just wrap them up in saran wrap and let them freeze a while. I baked mine on Thursday and then assembled the cake on Friday. But if you only have a few hours that will do. Cakes are usually easier to frost when frozen - less crumbs. Also, once they are frosted and then thaw, they're nice and moist on the inside. We'll just call that a perk.

Next it's time to make the frosting. The recipe calls for cans of frosting, but I prefer to make my own. I made a buttercream frosting, and I made a lot since I wasn't sure how much I'd need to "fix" my layers that didn't bake well. Plus, with a layer cake, sometimes the layers aren't exactly perfectly sized, so you need some more frosting sometimes to make the cake look even.

After the frosting is made, you'll want to split it up into 3 portions - leave some white for the clouds, make some yellow for in between the layers, and make some blue for the outside of the cake. I rinsed out one of my 2-cup prep bowls and used it again for the yellow frosting. Have I mentioned how much I love these bowls? I also used my small batter bowl for the blue, since I need more blue than yellow.

Mixing up the blue sky frosting

 

Not quite bright enough...let's add more color...

Perfect.

Beautiful! Frosting is fun.

Now it's time to frost the cake.

Place your bottom layer on your cake serving plate. I got this cute little cake pedestal the last time I went to IKEA. I used to have a cake plate but didn't have room in my old kitchen for it. Now that I have room I decided it was time to have my cake plate again. Anyway, I also put a dab of frosting under that first layer, so when I frosted the cake it wouldn't slide all around. I put a little cloth-y thing under my pedestal so that I could turn it around easily and also to make sure I didn't scratch up my countertop. It's way easier to turn the cake around for frosting all around. You can also put your plate on a lazy susan if you want - I've done that before and it works great.

Then you'll frost the top (only) of the bottom layer with yellow frosting.

 Then the next layer,

And so on.

You'll only need enough yellow frosting for the 3 bottom layers, since the top layer will be frosted with blue.

Next you'll frost the rest of the cake! It can be messy, but put a big glob on and start spreading. Do the top first, then the sides, then you'll smooth out the top again. You can glob some into the uneven places so the cake will look nice and even and smooth. You'd never know that my two bottom layers didn't turn out of the pans very nicely.

After the frosting is done, you can clean up the serving plate with paper towels (or whatever tool you want to use). Next comes the clouds - just spread some blobs of white frosting so that they look like clouds. I wasn't sure how mine would turn out, but I think they ended up looking fairly good. Any shape of clouds will do.

Birthday Girl

Silly Birthday Girl.

My example

That's it. I left the cover off of the cake pedestal until after we cut the cake, since it would have touched the top layer and messed up my clouds. When we cut the cake to serve it, it was super moist and yummy. Layer cakes are slightly time-consuming, but are really simple to put together, so don't let yourself be overwhelmed by the prospect.

Emma's other dessert (for Saturday's family birthday party) was really fun, elegant-looking, and easy to make too...stay tuned for that one.

Yum!

Emma's note

Again another note I found in my bible that is worth saving in the archives. This was one Emma wrote to me one morning when my sister Tanya was at church with us.
I can't remember why, but we kept saying "top-o-the morning" to each other when she was here so it was fitting. I love the cute little sun yawning.

 

Yawn!

Emma's picture

This picture from my bible comes to you compliments of Emma, circa probably 2006. It had to be when Rachel still had her looooong curls as you can see in the picture, so she was probably almost 5. I have to look back at pictures to remember when it was that I had to cut off all those beautiful baby curls.

For reference, here's a family picture from September '06. I'm pretty sure this must have been about when she drew this. Look at the resemblance!

Those were the days.

Rachel's note

I sat down by the fireplace today to read, and found this note in my bible, on the back of a scribble card.
Rachel wrote this probably when she was about 5. I'm just guessing, but she was writing her name before she turned 4, so there's a good chance this was before she turned 5.

Precious.

Music Class

"That's a big niece."


What a 2nd grade boy said about Emma when she got up to take a turn in the game in Tasha's music class.




This weekend we are visiting my sister Tasha in Portland.
Today we went to school with her and are sitting in on all her music classes. It's fun to see her teach, and the girls have gotten to play some games with the kids too. They have played several different games now with several different age groups.

The 2nd grade class was especially cute today. They sat in a circle, and had some instruments in the middle of the circle. All but one student would close their eyes, while one student in the center played an instrument, then sat back in their place in the circle. The other students would then try to guess what instrument was played. A great game to develop listening skills!

When it was Emma's turn to play an instrument, she got up off the floor to the center of the circle. That's when the boy said she was a big niece. Tasha went on to explain that she was a 6th grader, so it was normal for her to be that much bigger than he was. Of course Tasha and I exchanged glances and smiles, and I proceeded to write it down - because you just have to write these things down!

Fun times.

Disobedience is like smoking...

I was talking with Emma tonight at bedtime (it seems that's the best "talking" time for some reason).
We were talking about how she doesn't have to be "that" kid - the "teenager" with attitude... she can be an adolescent young woman with a heart for God and a desire to do the right thing, not just have a desire to be cool or have the newest "stuff" or the coolest clothes or whatever the "thing" may be.

She was telling me that most of the time when she starts to have a disobedient or unhealthy attitude, and I tell her she needs to change her attitude (we even have a code word that sometimes just makes her laugh), she often does the typical "huff", and then after being alone for a minute, she said she feels guilty and realizes that I was right; she needed to change her attitude. We talked some more, and I asked her to let me know after she comes to that realization - telling me how she felt, asking forgiveness if necessary - so she can practice *now* being repentant towards God and whomever else she wronged. If she practices that now, then it will be easier in a year or two when she's actually a "teenager". [Ok, Soapbox...by the way, I can't stand that word - at least how it's used now. "Oh, you have *teenagers*? I'm so sorry..." or whatever it is people say. It's really kind of unfair to the kids when they're pretty much typecast into having an attitude problem. Kids don't *have* to be that way. (stepping off soapbox now)]

Anyway, after our little talk, she said the following (it's the basic idea, I am not good at remembering actual words):

Disobedience is like smoking.
When you smoke, you're putting bad stuff into your lungs and they turn black, and sometimes it's hard to stop doing it. People know it's bad for them, but they just can't stop.
Disobedience is something you do and it makes your heart turn black, and you know it's wrong but it's really hard to stop, even though you know it's not right.

How wise our young ones are, if only we take the time to listen to them.


[Thank you God for my babies...
may I be less selfish and more open to what they have to say.]

Trampolines

We now have a trampoline...our friends are leaving the country for a couple years, and let us "store" it at our house. Our girls keep telling people "we have a trampoline for 2 years!", which confuses people because they wonder what happens after 2 years, not knowing the situation. It's kind of funny.

So they love the trampoline, they are out there all the time - they finally want to play outside. Who knew?!? So I am going to post some pictures I took yesterday of them - should be fun to see what I got; I haven't even looked at the pictures yet.

Here goes...