I'm alive!

Hi everyone!
  So, so sorry to take such a long blogging break.  It was unintentional but couldn't be helped.  As you know if you follow me on instagram, I found out that my back pain and numbness in my leg was more than just a herniated disc.  That particular disc was completely shot and practically nonexistant.  What little of the disc was left had broken and a piece of it was pushing my nerves all the way back on my spinal column.  So, the only real answer for me was spinal fusion surgery.

I had it done on March 13 and am at the 3-week recovery point today.  I am feeling much better and while I still can't do everything I want to do, I am up, moving, driving and walking almost like normal.  I can't bend, lift or twist yet, but it will come with time.  I am improving every day and I go back to my doctor tomorrow to check my progress and see where I go next.

It seems perfect that today is a Totally Random Thursday because I've got so much to show off to you from the month and a half since I last blogged.

**Before the surgery I sewed like a madwoman to get projects done and out of here before I couldn't.  :)  So, I finished up 3 quilts and 2 sets of bee blocks.  Along with completely failing on a star block for Oren's quilt.  I ended up throwing away 2 attempts and just picking a different block altogether!

**First I made a baby quilt for Chris' cousin who is expecting her first.  Her shower was the weekend of my half marathon that I couldn't run so Thursday night I decided to whip her up a quilt for the Saturday morning shower.  And I did it.  I ended up loving the quilt and hating the quilting, but they can't all be winners, so I gifted it and called it done.

All the non-sewers loved that the quilt was "reversible."  I'm just glad they loved it at all.  ;)

**Next up, that secret project I mentioned in February--it was a quilt for the wonderful Michonne and her precious baby girl Greta.  Our Empower Circle of do. Good stitches made a quilt for them and I put it together and quilted it.  Meesh is famous in our group for loving flying geese blocks so I asked the girls to make anything using them in a soft palette of pastels.  I love how it turned out.  I just got some plates and pot lids and drew random circles on the quilt and quilted them using different pastel-colored threads.  Before sweet Greta was born, Meesh called her cupcake, so I found this great cupcake fabric for the backing.  :)

I wish I had gotten a better picture where you could really see the blocks better but I did this in a hurry and then never thought to look at the pics before mailing...

I've been trying out a new zigzag machine-stitched binding on quilts I think will be washed a bunch.  On this one I went around twice--once in pink and once in yellow.

**  I also mentioned that Kim was working on an orphan block project to get quilts finished and donated to a charity and that I had most of a quilt sitting here at the house already.  So I beefed it up with some extra blocks and got it done too.  I hated the blocks individually and once I got it sewn, I kinda want to keep it!  ;)

You can see the quilting better on the back--I just did a simple cross-hatch design following the blocks.  I started a quarter-inch from the block seams in gray, then 3/8 inch from those lines in yellow and then about half-inch from the yellow lines in blue.

** When mailing Meesh the quilt, I also included our February d.Gs blocks.  It was her turn in a great coincidence and she asked for Wheel blocks in a great and bright color palette.  I hope mine looks okay with the rest.  I liked all the colors I chose till I got the block put together and then saw others from the group.  Oh well...

**  And for March in our d.Gs circle, Kim asked for blocks that she'd designed herself.  She's calling them braided star blocks and once put together they'll make stars...duh!  ;)  These were really easy and fun to put together.  Kim wrote a great tutorial on her blog for these simple but stunning blocks.

**And last, in That Stash Bee, Whitney asked for Darting Bird blocks.  I'd never seen this block before, but they were quick to make and I think she picked a stellar palette. She's giving this quilt to a friend in need, and I can't wait to see it altogether.

** But also since last blogging, my favorite boy in the whole world turned 8.  He wanted to just take a few friends to see The Lego Movie, so we did.  I got these great lego candies from the candy store in the mall to put on some cupcakes.  They were a big hit and so was the movie!  It was a simple and great day to celebrate a great kid!

**The surgery went well and I came home from the hospital two days early.  It hasn't been exactly fun to lay in bed a lot and depend on others in the last 3 weeks, but I'm working on my patience and God is blessing me every day.  I'm up and mobile

**I'm sewing again and have already finished a couple of blocks and have some bee blocks to try and work on this weekend.

**Plus we've got softball...Chris' middle school team is winding down and Emma's team is finally getting started.  I'll soon have a picture of my sweet girl pitching to show y'all.  She's worked so hard and it's fun to see her sling it out there.

Sorry for the picture overload.  I've missed y'all and this wonderful community so much.  So glad to be getting back.  :)

Snickerdoodle Cake

Over the weekend I had a hankering for some cake.  So Sunday evening I made one...but I wanted to make something different, something we hadn't had before.  I knew Emma would want chocolate cake this coming weekend for her birthday and while I love a basic white or yellow cake, I wanted to be a bit more adventurous.

I scrolled through my pinterest dessert board, trying to decide on a winner and for whatever reason, I was really drawn to this Snickerdoodle Sheet Cake from Kristy at Sweet Treats & More.  I chose to make mine in layers instead of a sheet cake since I don't have a big sheet pan, but as I looked around her site she's since made it again in layer form and the directions don't change a bit.  Except she adds more icing for the layers and I would definitely agree to that--you'll want more.

It mixes up quick and does not disappoint.  If you like snickerdoodle (cinnamon-sugar) cookies, you will love this cake.  It tastes just like one!  It's fluffy and light with a sweet but not overpowering cinnamon-sugar flavor.  The brown sugar-cinnamon buttercream icing is excellent too.  Admittedly, I ran out of cinnamon at this point (who makes a snickerdoodle cake without first checking their cinnamon supply???) so I had to use cinnamon-sugar in the icing, but I just cut back a little on the brown sugar to make up for it.

Kristy says she made this to go with a Mexican meal and I have to agree, I think that would be delicious.  It would balance a mexican meal just right and give that bite of sweet without overpowering the spice you'd just eaten.

I will definitely make this cake again.  If you're looking for a fun and different dessert this summer, I'd recommend this one.

p.s.  I completely forgot to make my brother-in-law a dessert for May as part of his "Dessert of the Month Club" Christmas present so I've got these blondies cooling on a rack now for delivery later this afternoon...the batter was DELICIOUS and I'll give a full review soon.  ;)

Birthday Celebration

I did promise that I'd share pictures from Emma's birthday party...so 2 weeks later, here goes...

After much thought and discussion, Emma went with a Rainbow Fairies theme.  She is a voracious reader and has read through this series of books from Scholastic many, many times.  These books include magic, girl fun, and adventure...right up a 7-year-old's alley.  And, no licensed character plates and decorations allowing me to be imaginative with my decorations sounds great to me!
 
We did go to the website to download pictures of each fairy for the invitations and cupcake toppers, but other than that, we just went colorful!  When Emma was turning 2 or 3, I used scrapbook paper and ribbon I had on hand to make this Happy Birthday banner.  I put it up when any of us are having a birthday.  While it's usually inside, we hung it out by the pool since the colors are so bright and cheery.

Thanks, Dad for holding that up for me!  ;)

Last year, Emma had a polka-dot theme, so we bought some cardboard cake rounds and painted them with different colors of acrylic paint.  I got them out again this year and had the guys hang them with some invisible sewing thread (aka thin fishing line) and tape all around the covered part of our screen enclosure.

The dots that look white or brown in these pictures are just turned in the breeze.  We only painted one side last year!  We also hung 3 Chinese lanterns for decoration too.

For a centerpiece, I laid out some rainbow fabric I've had forever and put out a cut glass bowl filled with gum balls and a rectangular vase filled with skittles and rainbow lollipops my sister picked up for me.  We cut some of our beautiful hydrangeas from the yard and put them out too.  I was going to tie the glasses together with some pretty ribbon but never quite got that far...oh well, they still looked great.

 We just served snacks and drinks since it was in the middle of the afternoon, so I got pint-sized drinks for the kids.  We got these cute little orange soda cans and junior sized Sprites and Cokes.  I threw them all in a big metal drink container.  We put it down on a low shelf so the kids could help themselves.

The kids and parents LOVED the small drinks!

 After having a few swimming parties, I've decided "easy to eat" is the way to go since the kids hate getting out to eat at all.  Trying to dry off, get a plate of cake and ice cream and find somewhere to sit is always a problem, so this year we went for cupcakes and individual ice creams from Bluebell.  When asked, Emma decided she wanted peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes.  Since not everyone is as big a fan of peanut butter as my girl, I made a batch of peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate icing (just use a butter cake mix and use peanut butter instead of butter, or make it from scratch same way) and a batch of chocolate cupcakes with white icing.  We covered the tops with sprinkles to give them a colorful look and then inserted the cake toppers we'd made based on the rainbow fairies.

To make these little toppers I downloaded a coloring sheet of each fairy from the web site and then copied the part of each sheet that featured only the fairy.  Then in my photo editing software I made a circle and placed  tiny circles all around the perimeter of it (this was the most tedious step).  Once the circle design was done, I just copied each fairy into the middle and made it fit and centered it.  Then I colored the circle ring to match and saved it.  I made one for each fairy.  Now the fairies were black and white, so I had Emma color them in when we were all done printing and cutting.  Then I also made some circles with Emma or a 7 on them for the back of each topper.  Once these were made, I opened each image in my Silhouette software and inserted them into a scallop shape and had the machine cut each out.  Then I just sandwiched a colored toothpick between a fairy and either an Emma or 7 and done.  It was almost harder to write this all out then just do it.  I can make a tutorial if anyone is ever interested...

My sister, being the sweet and kind girl that she is, made little fairy wands for each child to take home.  Of course, I told the boys that they could just call it a cookie on a stick if they were too "manly" for fairy wands!  You should have seen their faces light up when they saw them!  She posted the recipe and steps on her blog if you want to check it out.

I gave the kids their cookie wands as they left in their goodie bag.  How cute are these??  Target.  Yep, they've got a big section now with lots of goodie bag stuff.  I am the kind of Mom who despises goodie bags because I really do not need more candy and made-in-China rubber and plastic toys in my house.  But, how can you not give them out?  So our goodie bags are always small and thoughtful.  Each bag had 1 pack of skittles and starburst (so they could taste the rainbow...), some colorful bracelets, a noise maker (like the kind you blow at parties and the paper unrolls) and one or two other knick knacks.

Everyone had a really great time.  We had about 15 kids aged 4-10 swimming, laughing, jumping and hollering at our house and I can't think of a better way to ring in turning 7.  My sweet girl had a great time and all in all, it was a very Happy Birthday!

Monday Munchies with a yummy cake

   Anyone who knows me well, knows I LOVE to bake.  When the kids were really little (before they spent their days at school), I’d bake with them at least once a week, and even now I often bake muffins for their breakfast during the week or cookies for them to have as snacks.  So…I thought I’d start a regular feature here called Monday Munchies.  On Mondays I’ll post about something I’ve made (with or without the kids) and give you the recipe or a link to where you can find it. 

  A week or so ago my sister had some bananas that needed to quickly become banana bread and she gave them to me because I have a killer banana bread recipe, but at the time I was craving chocolate.  So, instead the bananas became Farmgirl's Mexican Monkey Cake.  This recipe is so easy and so good!  To be honest, I didn’t even mash up the bananas ahead of time, but just peeled them and threw them in the mixer and let the beaters work some magic.  Susan over at Farmgirlfare has great recipes in all categories and I have a BUNCH saved that I've tried or want to try.  She also give funny stories and/or helpful tips with most recipes which makes it more interesting than just a plain recipe list.

Not sure why the photo looks fuzzy, it didn't when editing...

  So, while I usually use my “overripe” (read really brown and not good for anything but baking or compost) bananas for a delicious banana bread that I will share in the future, when you need that chocolate fix…this’ll definitely fix you up!

  I substituted pecans for walnuts and half of the flour with whole wheat flour.  I do that a lot, because it doesn’t change the texture too much and I feel like at least it’s better than nothing as far as providing my family or goodie recipients with healthy foods....don't feel bad about all those chocolate chips, there's whole wheat flour in here!  ;)

  So, here’s the recipe.  Like I said…it’s easy, good and looks more difficult than it is, which is always nice for the cook!

Farmgirl's Mexican Monkey Cake (from Farmgirlfare.com)
Makes One 8-Inch Square Cake

1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick/4 ounces) butter, softened (or 1/2 cup trans-fat free margarine, such as Earth Balance)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1-1/4 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (they cannot be too ripe)
2 Tablespoons yogurt or sour cream
1 Tablespoon milk
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees (325 if using a glass pan such as Pyrex). Grease an 8"x8"x2" baking pan. In a small bowl, combine chocolate chips, brown sugar, walnuts (if desired), and cinnamon; set aside.

In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, and egg with an electric mixer until fluffy (I use a hand held mixer). Add bananas, yogurt, and milk, and mix well. On low speed, beat in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt just until blended.

Spread slightly more than half of the batter in the pan. Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon streusel. Carefully spread the remaining batter over the streusel and then top with the rest of the streusel. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 40 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Image from www.farmgirlfare.com  Now doesn't that look delicious??