So in an earlier post I posted a picture of cake balls that looked like an American flag. I had never made cake balls before, but thought this would be doable. But with the 4th of July on a Wednesday, that made things tricky. (The 4th of July in the middle of the week is really not convenient. Both for cooking purposes and staying up late then having to go to work the next day.) So Monday night I bought the ingredients, but didn't have time to make the cake. Josh didn't have to work on Tuesday, so I took a risk and asked him to make the cake for me Tuesday so it could be cooled by the time I got home from work. This is a risk because this is the man who was trying to make brownies and came out with a pan and said "How big do you think this is?" and before I could answer said, "Nevermind, I have a tape measure." and proceeded to measure the pan. But I came home from work and there was a cake! He's come a long way.
I crumbled the cake, added the frosting, and made them into balls. (This mortified Josh after he made such a nice cake, I destroyed it. Oh well!) I took pictures of all of this, but for some reason they are uploading to this site all discolored and cut off. =( Not sure what the deal is!
Now came time for the chocolate, the scariest part. I melted the chocolate with the vanilla wafer things and added blue food coloring. After that, my friend who DOES bake taught me this: Any liquid added to chocolate causes it to "seize" which means as soon as I added food coloring, my chocolate got REALLY hard. My friend told me I needed the powder food coloring. The problem with that is it was Tuesday night and I live 45 minutes from the city. Going to the store wasn't, and didn't, happen. So I decided that these cake balls would just be white. I got one of the colors right!
I put the balls in the freezer for a bit and dipped half of each of them, let them cool on a cake pan. (I didn't put them on sticks so the bottom flattening out was ok) Holding the flat bottom I then dipped the other half and placed them back on the flat bottom to cool so the tops stayed round.
In the end they didn't turn out terrible, just not how I anticipated. After the chocolate fiasco, I was defeated, but glad I ended up salvaging them minus the creativity part. They were really good! I took them to the BBQ anyway and they were all almost gone by the end of the night.
I hope everyone had a good 4th of July! It was hot but we swam in Josh's parent's pool and it was very nice. Work today on the other hand, was rather annoying. But tomorrow is FRIDAY! =)
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
Weekend Warrior
I know "weekend warrior" is a term/name for people in the National Guard; I think because they go to drill on the weekends, (and I honestly have no clue if they like this term or not, so I have no intentions of offending anyone with it! Maybe someone could tell me so next time I'll know. =) ) but some weekends I feel like I do more/harder work on the weekends than I do during the week at my job!
Like I mentioned in my last post, Joshs' grandma stayed with us Wednesday through Sunday. I really enjoyed having her there. She was a great help and motivator. She was also good company to have when Josh and his brother went fishing all night. Friday night we just hung out and Josh's nephews came over to play as well. They are so stinking cute! Here they are playing in the dirt in a giant hole in our yard. (There used to be a windmill there with a concrete base that we pulled out and have clearly never refilled the hole.)
Saturday we had Brayden go through all his toys and pick out which ones he was donating to little kids who don't have toys. I think he is going to be a hoarder like his father. I will break this trait while he's young! He had a really hard time letting his toys go, but I think he did a good job and we are donating a lot of barely used toys! Then we completely organized his room.
What I have learned about this age: He is old enough to clean his room but not old enough to have my organization OCD so nothing gets put back away where it "belongs". That is how his room got to be such a disaster. Not sure if I just make him "clean" his room so it's picked up and then go back in and organize later, or what I should do. I'll take advice on this one!
After we got Brayden's room done, we tackled the windows. We cleaned the inside and outside of every window in my house which I know the outside of the windows hadn't been cleaned since we moved in 6 months ago and who knows how long ago before that. It really is the small things. All I wanted to do the rest of the day was look out my amazingly clean windows! =) After the windows, we cleaned the kitchen and living room and by that time it was almost 8:00. We literally worked and cleaned all day long just breaking to eat lunch.
By that time the boys (including kids) had already left to go fishing so we treated ourselves to going out for dinner then home to watch ID TV (The channel that has all those shows about murder mysteries and crimes and things. Kind of like 20/20 specials. We both love 20/20 as well.) which is a guilty pleasure for both of us. I'm not sure if that makes us twisted, but the things people do not only disturbs me deeply, but is also kind of interesting. I just wonder how people's minds work. How a person gets that crazy. Maybe I should have been a psychiatrist.
Sunday we had to go to a birthday party for both Josh's little cousin and his sister's boyfriend's daughter. That was a good time but a bad day. Not because of the party, but because being a step-mom is hard as hell. One of the hardest and most rewarding things I'll probably ever do. We get Brayden every Friday after work through Sunday. Since Josh's grandma asked to get him on Wednesday (remember my previous post that I didn't know she was coming on Wednesday) his mom decided she wanted to keep him next weekend. Typically not a big deal, but next weekend we had plans of taking him to my hometown to spend time with my family. I was just frustrated because she didn't ask to see if that was ok and it wasn't us asking to get him early this week, it was really his grandma. And I'm not a biological parent so of course their family functions get priority, as it should, but it's still hard. I just realized I need to find a blog of a step-mom! I need a support group for this just like I used to be in for military significant others! I will take suggestions on those too if anyone knows of any!
This was on Sunday on our way into town for the birthdays. He put his hat over his face just like his dad does and slept in the car. He cracks me up and is so stinking cute. I love him so much!
So I'm trying to stay positive and this weekend I'm going to make Josh take me on a date since we changed our plans of going back home this weekend to next weekend. We were going to do that (a date) Sunday after the birthday but had to drop off Brayden in a town that was half way home, so it didn't happen. #1 crappy part in living in a small town an hour away from the city, but after driving in the city on Sunday, I have no idea how I lived there as long as I did! There is definitely peace in our little town. =)
Like I mentioned in my last post, Joshs' grandma stayed with us Wednesday through Sunday. I really enjoyed having her there. She was a great help and motivator. She was also good company to have when Josh and his brother went fishing all night. Friday night we just hung out and Josh's nephews came over to play as well. They are so stinking cute! Here they are playing in the dirt in a giant hole in our yard. (There used to be a windmill there with a concrete base that we pulled out and have clearly never refilled the hole.)
Saturday we had Brayden go through all his toys and pick out which ones he was donating to little kids who don't have toys. I think he is going to be a hoarder like his father. I will break this trait while he's young! He had a really hard time letting his toys go, but I think he did a good job and we are donating a lot of barely used toys! Then we completely organized his room.
What I have learned about this age: He is old enough to clean his room but not old enough to have my organization OCD so nothing gets put back away where it "belongs". That is how his room got to be such a disaster. Not sure if I just make him "clean" his room so it's picked up and then go back in and organize later, or what I should do. I'll take advice on this one!
After we got Brayden's room done, we tackled the windows. We cleaned the inside and outside of every window in my house which I know the outside of the windows hadn't been cleaned since we moved in 6 months ago and who knows how long ago before that. It really is the small things. All I wanted to do the rest of the day was look out my amazingly clean windows! =) After the windows, we cleaned the kitchen and living room and by that time it was almost 8:00. We literally worked and cleaned all day long just breaking to eat lunch.
By that time the boys (including kids) had already left to go fishing so we treated ourselves to going out for dinner then home to watch ID TV (The channel that has all those shows about murder mysteries and crimes and things. Kind of like 20/20 specials. We both love 20/20 as well.) which is a guilty pleasure for both of us. I'm not sure if that makes us twisted, but the things people do not only disturbs me deeply, but is also kind of interesting. I just wonder how people's minds work. How a person gets that crazy. Maybe I should have been a psychiatrist.
Sunday we had to go to a birthday party for both Josh's little cousin and his sister's boyfriend's daughter. That was a good time but a bad day. Not because of the party, but because being a step-mom is hard as hell. One of the hardest and most rewarding things I'll probably ever do. We get Brayden every Friday after work through Sunday. Since Josh's grandma asked to get him on Wednesday (remember my previous post that I didn't know she was coming on Wednesday) his mom decided she wanted to keep him next weekend. Typically not a big deal, but next weekend we had plans of taking him to my hometown to spend time with my family. I was just frustrated because she didn't ask to see if that was ok and it wasn't us asking to get him early this week, it was really his grandma. And I'm not a biological parent so of course their family functions get priority, as it should, but it's still hard. I just realized I need to find a blog of a step-mom! I need a support group for this just like I used to be in for military significant others! I will take suggestions on those too if anyone knows of any!
This was on Sunday on our way into town for the birthdays. He put his hat over his face just like his dad does and slept in the car. He cracks me up and is so stinking cute. I love him so much!
So I'm trying to stay positive and this weekend I'm going to make Josh take me on a date since we changed our plans of going back home this weekend to next weekend. We were going to do that (a date) Sunday after the birthday but had to drop off Brayden in a town that was half way home, so it didn't happen. #1 crappy part in living in a small town an hour away from the city, but after driving in the city on Sunday, I have no idea how I lived there as long as I did! There is definitely peace in our little town. =)
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