A Hard Day's Night

I have been trying to keep my perspective, and stay positive! That's the best I can say about the last week or so. I constantly need to remind myself to stay positive, as I slip into my usual sarcastic self. I still haven't done any sewing, but I got out my knitting needles and actually knit about 20 rows just to get a feel of the new bamboo needles and the cotton thread. Something new, although might not be very exciting. I got my glasses out and am trying to be okay with wearing them :) So silly to be self-conscious about wearing glasses, but I guess I am not the wisest of them. A conversation with a friend made me get my guitar out, but guess what - I didn't play, my daughter did. She loved mama's guitar, and kept telling us how pretty the instrument is. At the end of the day, even if the only accomplishment is to make Sophia happy, it's totally worth it. But not only that, my son suddenly got all excited and asked me to teach him to play acoustic. My dear husband laughed that mommy needs to learn herself before she can teach anyone. True , of course....

On the baking topic, I made a PW's Chocolate Sheet Cake and it is FANTASTIC! Make it, you won't regret it!

I also survived taking my son to his swimming lesson and entertaining Sophia on the playground for 45 minutes (If you didn't know, in that specific time frame a 2 year old girl can climb- with mama's help- and go down the slide approximately 45 times!). Soccer practice next night was a piece of pie after that, as there were no high structures to climb in the proximity of the field.

Have a Happy Turkey Day (if you are in Canada) and let's remember to be thankful for what we have, as often we concentrate on what we don't :) Hug your kids, kiss your spouses, and send a prayer into the Universe asking for some of that for everyone.

Rainy days and plum pie

Since it's half an hour past midnight I will have to be very brief. My most recent fail in baking was this beauty here


It was fantastic until we cut it :) The plums were too runny... Sigh... But it did taste good :)

And here's my rain-loving wonder:

In serach of a perfect day

Hello there! Now I finally understand why some blogs seem to do just that - disappear into nothing-ness for days and weeks and than resurrect themselves with profound apologies. Apparently life happens, and when it does you don't always think - I need to blog first. No, it usually is - I need to sleep first!

The last two weeks have been hard - all of four of us had been sick, though not all at the same time, but in a age-appropriate order; DH first, myself second, then the kiddos. Fun times, fun, fun times...

Since all of us are now on the mend we could actually do something fun now, but just one thing gets in the way - sleeeeeeep. I feel like I need to dig myself a little cozy hole somewhere in the midst of unfolded (clean!) laundry and sleep for a week or two.

Exercising would help with my sleepiness, but the wind blowing at 40 km/h I am not willing to spend more than an absolute necessary minimum of time outside.

So now, that you know all this vitally important information about us let me tell you about some books and recipes and Etsy finds.

Since we are traveling next month with DD i found her this tiny cute and sweet backpack from bratsacksbaby.

As far as reading goes I'm stuck between the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and The Host by Sthephanie Meyer. The Outlander series are overwhelmingly enormous and only encouragement of my friend on GoodReads keeps me going. As for The Host... I feel a little un-excited about it. I don;t know what it is - just the whole Twilight thing exhausted my interest to the author and while I expect to like the book I'm just into reading it.

You might wonder how did I do with the Easter baking and I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had postponed baking until Sunday and that was the day when DSS had to go to the emergency room (nothing serious, in case you are wondering), so the baking just had no chance of happening. I did bake some banana bread and it was moist and sweet, but DH complained that it was a little to moist. Still in search of a perfect recipe :)

We did not take any new photos, so my exploration of digital photography is currently halted.

Photo report

Olympics in townIf you can get over the fact that the flame is fenced in, it's actually really cool.



Yep... Pretty cool...



Oh the cupcakes.... The idea was to use raspberries to achieve the pink color of frosting, without the dye. Oops, I didn't realize how runny it will make the frosting. Tastes great, seriously. Worth the trouble? Probably not, unless you are allergic to red dye.

But look how cute the mini cupcakes are! I suppose I should call them muffins, since they are un-frosted.




And finally, my own, the very best mini cupcake:

More cooking failures!

This was my take on oatmeal raisin cookie. Well it is only fair that my husband calls these scary cookies! Too much flour, taste doesn't really have that oatmeal quality and of course they weren't soft enough.

And this was supposed to be my lemon poppy seed loaf. Well, it was in the oven a tad too long, it fell - as in the dough fell after it was taken out of the oven, and finally - it fell, as in I dropped it! Yikes! Do I get points for trying?