Saturday, December 31, 2011

A little end of year post

Since my last post in September Jade has truly excelled in school. She loves everything about it and then some.
We only do school Mondays and then Wed-Fri for around an hour, hour and half. Because of this, many afternoons Jade is asking me "is it school time yet?"

We just started reading the week of Christmas, and Jade is very excited for school break to be over so we can hit the books again.

In cooking updates, there have been many new recipes I've tried, and loved. Ones I've actually remembered to take pictures of are as follows:



Now, this one I can't say I really "loved" it, but it gets an honorable mention because it was the first (and perhaps last) time I ever cooked with quinoa. Granted, I was missing many of the ingredients for the recipe, so that may be why it wasn't my favorite thing ever. LOL


I don't have a recipe for this one, as it was a combination of ideas. A devils food chocolate cupcake with meringue frosting and just a piece of chocolate and graham cracker. I had owned a small cooking torch I would have toasted the tops to make it more like a s'more :-) On my wish list!

This is also a combination of ideas. I took a cinnamon bun recipe from my Mother-in-law and then twisted the dough up like a tree. Made a little glaze and added sprinkles for the kids:-)
And then, there is this cake. I'll attach the link for what I was attempting to copy but sadly this cake did not come close to what I had hoped.
I made this for a friend's baby shower, and it was a very last minute plan. Thus, I didn't really do any research on the actual cake recipe I used and didn't even scroll down on the inspiration link to see what the real recipe was.
So my "chocolate" cake turned out very, very, very, dry and very, very, very bland. The frosting was good, and the malt balls were fabulous. But I did run out of malt balls and had to use whoppers. Which, are nice...but the real malt balls had a LOT more chocolate coating, and thus, more delicious.
Also, not pictured, was right before I boxed it up, I brushed the top of the malt balls with edible gold dust powder. See the inspiration link for why:-)
I'm not gonna lie, there were a lot of "ball" jokes thrown around at this shower when they saw the cake. hee, hee....we are a mature bunch of women.
With this year now coming to a close, there are a few things I'll continue to look forward to. Spending as much as time possible with my wonderful family, continuing to workout and be fit (despite the lack of weightloss, lol), continuing to eat healthy, and finding LOTS and LOTS of wonderful, new recipes to try at home (thanks mostly to pintrest!)

My resolutions for the new year is to continue to spend time in the word and in prayer every day!
Continuing to workout four days a week
Make smart food choices
Spend time with friends and family as much as possible (this I know I can keep!)
And avoid gossip and negative conversations

I'm excited to see what this New Year holds and can't wait for it to get started!

1 comment:

Patti said...

Great stuff here. 1st time poster, but long time reader --- keep up the good work!