Better Than Sunday School Cake

After a very long hiatus finally a new post. I HAVE to share this recipe. And the story behind it. Last year about this time I was sitting next to a friend waiting for Sunday School to start. We were talking about food of course, and cake in particular. She said she wished there was a Christmas version of Better Than Sex Cake - a pepperminty one. So I went home and invented it. Another friend renamed it for me. Rather fitting.

INGREDIENTS

1 (18.25 ounce) package devil's food cake mix 1/2 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk 2/3 C Hershey's syrup

6 crushed candy canes 2 C white chocolate chips 1 1/2 C whipping cream 2 t peppermint extract, divided

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Bake cake according to package directions for a 9x13 inch pan; cool on wire rack for 5 minutes. Poke holes across the top of the cake, making sure not to go through to the bottom.
2.	In a saucepan over low heat, combine sweetened condensed milk, 1 t peppermint extract and Hershey's syrup, stirring until smooth and blended. Slowly pour the warm topping mixture over the top of the warm cake, letting it sink into the holes. Let cake cool completely.
3.	Meanwhile, warm whipping cream to almost boiling and pour over white chocolate chips. Let sit about 2 minutes, add remaining 1 t peppermint extract and stir until all mixed in. Chill in fridge for a few hours. Then beat with a mixer until consistancy of whipped cream. Spread on cake and sprinkle with crushed candy canes. Enjoy!

3 cakes, 1 week

And a bunch of wedding sheet cakes this week.....

Mad Hatter cake. From the new movie. Oreo cake. Yum!

My niece's 4th birthday cake. As requested by her. Invented Peanut Butter Ganache for the filling. Double Yum! Can I just say that Ganache is one of my favorite words to say? It sounds awesome, and always means something delicious.

My nephew's Iron Man Mask Cake.

Change

This announcement is for family/friends that are not in our ward or immediate family and therefore didn't get the email....

Paul was called to be 1st Counselor in our Bishopric today. My feelings are plentious and varied, to say the least. I'm not going to get into that, just wanted y'all to know.

Just pray the pre-teen tendencies my daughter likes to bring out in sacrament meeting don't cause me to carry her out kicking and screaming like a toddler some week. Other than that I am clinging to the faith that everything will work out.

Indoctrinated

So I am a huge fan of Michael Buble. I got to go to his concert in SLC a few weeks ago. It was awesome. Paul is supposed to email me the photos we took on his phone. If he does, they'll be part of this post. If not....I'll post them later.

I have made fans out of two little boys as well. Zander was playing games on my IPod the other day and wanted to listen to music. So he went into the music and my playlist with songs from assorted artists was up. He kept skipping through the songs saying "I no like that one." Until he would get to a MB song, then he'd say "Michael Buble!" and listen for about 20 seconds (that's all the attention span he has) and then start the process over again. I'll have to teach him about Bon Jovi, Josh Groban and Gavin Degraw later I guess.

Then today I had to run to Michael's for some cake-ing stuff. Payton asked what store we were going to. We pulled into the parking lot and he asked if that was the 'Michael Buble' store. Uh, no. But I did wear my MB shirt there.....And I may have hummed a MB song there....

There he is! We were in the same room!

Okay, that's enough of that.
That is when he moved to a smaller stage and sang 'Home'. Just him and the guitar. Beautiful! He also sang Stardust on the way out there with Naturally 7.

The whole night was just amazing. Paul asked before it started which songs I wanted him to do....I told him it really didn't matter I like them all (well one exception - but isn't there always?) Two of the songs in the encore were probaby my faves of the night though. 'Feeling Good' (Not sure why but as much as I like that song, it was a thousand times better live.) And then I was just really impressed with 'Song For You' when he left the mike and sang the last of it without it. The crowd went silent and it was an awesome effect, for sure. I'm sure even the people in the back could still hear, he was that powerful.

This is Naturally 7. Just as their name implies, seven guys, all natural - no instruments. I hadn't really heard of them before, and I am not likely to buy their albums... even though they were spectacular and incredibly talented. More of an act you should see... I don't know that you could fully appreciate them just listening. Oh, and the guy who does their bass? - I'm pretty sure pure testosterone flows in his veins. How LOW can you go?

Two Hours in the Life of Me

Alarm goes off at 6:30. Paul is long gone. I'm reluctant to get out of bed as last night we discovered that our furnace was not working. Too late for a repair person to come. So we borrowed space heaters and we slept fine, but the rest of the house is going to be cold. It takes 15 minutes, but I do get up. Bundle up and head to the kitchen with the space heater. I start some hot chocolate and mix up some buttermilk pancakes. 7am now. Get the kids up. Take their space heater downstairs so it'll be warm when my preschool kids come at 9:30. Start the pancakes. Get the kids up again. Kiara goes and gets dressed. Kegan goes and spends 10 minutes in the bathroom. Tell him to get dressed and take his bedding downstairs as his bed wetting alarm is broken AGAIN and I have to do a batch or more of laundry EVERY day. Fix Payton and Zander's pancakes and pour hot chocolate. Yell at Kiara and Kegan that if they don't hurry their food will be cold. Kegan finally goes and gets dressed. Kiara arrives and starts eating. Kegan comes. Takes a few bites and then goes back to the bathroom. After fixing Payton and Kegan seconds I wolf down a few pancakes. Now time to cattle prod Kiara and Kegan into making their lunches. They ask me to make them, I politely refuse, I have the kitchen to clean and preschool to get ready for. I realize that it's trash day and due to the furnace issues last night we forgot to do it then. I take the garbage out in my jammies and socks. Discover the can is in the backyard. The gate won't open from the outside. I go through the house to the backyard and open the gate and get the garbage out. Back inside. After hemmming and hawwing and many suggestions from me Kiara gets done with her lunch and I almost have the kitchen clean. And I put together little boxes with kisses in them for my Valentines to the preschoolers. Kegan has only got a pudding out for his lunch. I suggest getting a baggie of chips. He does. Then starts complaining that he doesn't feel good and he doesn't want to go to school (just part of the daily ritual). But he informs me he has diarrhea. I actually believe him and get him some Immodium. Coach him on how to swallow a pill. With helpful hints from Kiara (who still can't do this) he finally gets it done. Now it's 5 minutes to 8. Knowing it will take Kegan 15 minutes to find and put on his shoes I send him to that and I finish his lunch. Phone call. Paul needs me to find some pictures for a presentation he is giving to day. If I can find a moment. Ha! I'll have to MAKE a moment. While talking to him I am filling up water bottles and putting them in the fridge. As I close the fridge the sugar cookies for preschool fall off the fridge onto the floor. (Yes I swore - which I'm sorry about. It was unwarranted. Now if the tray had shattered, well then swearing would have been fine.) Say a terse goodbye to Paul. Most of the cookies landed on the plastic wrap so were fine. Not pretty anymore, but edible. Do 3-year-old's care anyway? It sugar, that's all that matters. Now Kegan begins his full-out 'I hate school, I'm not going, you can't make me.' I ignore him and tie his shoes. Tell him he's going to be late and to get his coat. "Where's my sweatshirt. I hate my coat. I'm looking for my sweatshirt." Me-it's still dirty. Kegan goes and looks for it anyway and can't find it. I hand him his coat. He hates that one. So I search for his other one. Finally they are out the door, and only 10 minutes later than usual. They'll make it. I finish setting stuff out for preschool and turn on cartoons for Payton and Zander. I discover that Kegan did not take his bedding downstairs after all. So I do it. Did I mention our furnace was out? So he had extra blankets. All of which are wet. I start laundry, making sure his sweatshirt is put through too. Although he'll just find something else to complain about tomorrow.... Now get Zander dressed. He has been wearing the same thing for about 36 hours because he didn't want to get dressed yesterday (Superman jammies are awesome!) and I chose not to fight that battle. Now time to find pictures for Paul. Done. Phew! Now time to vent on my blog for 30 minutes before the preschoolers come. Only so I am somewhat normal for them. And that was just the first two hours. I won't mention my extensive to do list for the rest of the day......

I love being a MOM! (and that is not sarcastic - well, only a little)

Slacker, but only at blogging

Man, I've been slacking here lately. Blame facebook, blame life being busy, blame my new IPod, but here I am. Briefly. Just to let you know I'm alive. And well, busy! As shown by the following pictures. Enjoy!

I know, not cake. But they were so pretty.....

Ahoy Matey!

This is for a friend. My kids are getting tired of not being able to eat my cakes. Luckily I have no more cakes on my schedule. Time for a break! I need a good book to read or a sewing project. Or I could do my laundry.....hmmm. Any one wanna recommend a book?

Crazy Cake Month

I have been doing tons of cakes lately. About 1 a week for the last few weeks, with one more next week. It's fun, but occasionally stressful. The most stress comes after they are done and waiting to be delivered/picked up. With 40 little fingers in the house, one almost always finds its way to the cake. I'm getting better about time management though. I usually get a huge head start and then finish early. Now I'm better at knowing how long something will take so it's done right before it needs to be. Leaving less time for mishaps.
This is from a long time ago, I don't think I ever posted it, but maybe I did. Kiara's birthday cake. She loves the show iCarly. It was going to be a lap top, but I couldn't figure out the top so it didn't happen.

Cookie Monster!!!!

I can't see!

Phew! That's better!

Completed cake. For a 1-year-old. The present was the smash cake for him to dig into. Fun, fun!

I also did a wedding cake, but I have no photos of it. It was 3 tier square covered in chocolate fondant. That was all I did. They had ribbon they put around it. Simple and elegant. Oh, and the cupcakes for our Halloween party. No pics of those either. I just frosted them in pinkish frosting and squiggled it to make it look like a brain. Kiara said they looked like small intestines. Whatever, that works too.

Puppy

Yeah, after a year or so of begging and pleading from the kids, Paul and I gave in and we have a new puppy. We named her Peanut. She is a Shi Tzu/English Pointer mix. Paul has dubbed her a Shinter.

That's a treat, not poo. Although.....sigh new puppies, I don't need to say more.

We've had her a month or so now so she is bigger than in these photos, although without a point of reference it's hard to say how big she really is anyway.

Baby Quilts

Baby quilts are my favorite kind to make. 1. You can do whatever you want, they don't have any preferences to consider. 2. They are always cute. 3. They are small so they only take from 3-10 days, depending on how complex and whether you do laundry and clean the house while you are working on it... ;)
This was for my friend in our ward having her 3rd little girl. I mostly used scraps I already had, so bonus!

And since it was the 3rd girl the older sisters needed some doll quilts to match so hopefully when those moments come when they want to be a little 'too' helpful they can be diverted to the dolls...

This was for my very best friend who is having a little boy after 2 girls. Ever since I heard it would be a boy I've had the idea floating in my head that I wanted to do a quilt based on the poem What Are Little Boys Made Of? This is what I came up with. It was so fun to make because I got to do lots of different quilting methods. Regular piecing, paper piecing, applique, and embroidery, then I machine quilted it. I love the way it turned out. I had a small mishap when my embroidery machine gummed up on the last line of the poem, but luckily it resulted in only a small tear that I was able to patch. No way did I want to start over, it took FOREVER to get it all centered and stitched!

A close up of the cute doggies on both of the quilts. I love the little 3D feet that hang off. Fun fun!

This was for friends from law school having their first baby. Josh, the dad, and some other friends threw us a baby shower when we were expecting Kegan, even though we'd only known them a month or so. And they even got presents for Kiara, which is incredibly thoughtful. So I knew I wanted to make something special for them when we heard they were expecting.

Missionary Cake

I got to make this cake for a friend in our ward. Her son's birthday was the same day as his farewell, so if you look close, Happy Birthday is written on one of the stripes of the tie. This combined my clothing making skills with my cake making skills since I had to figure out how to make the collars 3D.

I'm DANCING!!!

You might say I'm doing the potty dance. No I don't have to go.... I certainly wouldn't be blogging about that. TMI!!! And although this borders on the TMI, oh well! ZANDER IS POTTY TRAINED!!!! Well, I'm slightly premature in saying he is trained, but we've had an accident free day. DOWN WITH DIAPERS!!!!! Started on Tuesday, mostly for Tuesday, Wednesday and half of Thursday it was me just taking him every so often and making him RUN to the bathroom when he starts to go (he's been minus pants, plus underwear all week). But Thursday afternoon and all day today he's told me when he needs to go. HURRAY!!! Won't you all join me in a celebratory dance?!!!

Sewing For My Girl(s)

My niece is in town and I decided to make her and Kiara some matching outfits, just for fun. We had a photo shoot when I was done. So fun!

Playing around with Picasa 3 (free photo editing program)

They are almost 'twin cousins.' Only 12 days apart!

This is a dress I made for Kiara - just because...my friend wanted to see it, so here it is.

Boys Room

I think many moons ago I mentioned I was working on a big project. Well, as often happens with big projects....I lost steam. I got one quilt finished and the other three quilt tops sat on my sewing table waiting for me to get a Round Tuit. Well, I decided to give myself some rules. I have a few friends having babies soon that I want to make stuff for. I am also into some good books (culinary mysteries - right up my alley!) and have been spending every free moment reading them... So I told myself no more trips to the library until all three quilts are done. Also, no new baby projects until they are done. Sooooooo. The last three days have been spent at my sewing machine, and here they are!!!!

guest/stuffed animal bed

Payton's bed

Kegan's bed

Zander's bed

And the color coordinated closet.

We built this into the room and boy is it great! It's been done for several months and the organization is working out wonderfully. I did have to straighten the shoes for the picture, but generally, it stays this neat. I still want to do some pillow shams for each bed and I'd like some curtains instead of the ugly blinds....but all in good time. See what happens when you give yourself the proper motivation?

Somewhere Over the Rainbow!

My niece had a Wizard of Oz birthday party. So here is her cake! Complete with rainbow, ruby slippers, yellow brick road, shrivled up witches legs, poppies and lollipops. Oh, and I had a moment of genius when I was picking up the foam core board for the cake plate. What if I glued scrapbook paper on it to make it prettier? And lo and behold, they had some that was blue gingham! (The pattern on Dorothy's dress). Too perfect!

Some darling child stuck his fingers in it before I got a picture. GRRRRR!!!! Considering it takes much yelling and shooing away of my kids to keep cakes perfect before delivery, I was very frustrated when some other kid got to it. But it still looked great and tasted great, so all was well in the end.

Awwww! and AHHHHH!!!!!

Awwww! moment:

So a few weeks ago the kids and I were at the dentist getting our biannual teeth cleaning. Kiara came out in tears. "I have two cavities mom! I knew I should have brushed my teeth when you told me to instead of playing around." I wisely refrained from the I told you so and just comforted her. Well today was the day for the fillings. She has been worrying about this ever since. Payton also had some cavities, but he could care less. So on the way to the dentist this morning Kiara (who was quite pale) asked me to turn off the radio. "Why?" I asked. Well, she wanted to say a prayer! What a sweet girl! She went back quite calmly and did wonderfully. She was only slightly shaky when she came out declaring that it was only like a small pinch and she shouldn't have worried about it!

AHHHHHH!!!! moment:

At the dentist I decided to read a parenting magazine after I read the newspaper and caught up on all the Lincoln County shootings and accidents (my home town dominated headlines today). Well, one article caught my eye. It was about talking to your kids about puberty. I skimmed the article thinking "glad this is not eminant in our house yet, but it'll be good to see what it says." Well, it gave an age range of when different things start happening. Ages 9-15. "Hmmm." I thought. "Nine seems a bit early, but ok, whatever." It wasn't until in the car on the way home when Kiara reminded me that we need to plan her birthday party that it hit me. You see, this would be her NINTH birthday. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

When is it time?

Parenting is full of questions. When is it time to __________? is a common one. One I am once again contemplating is "When is it time to end naptime?" For every child it has happened at a different age, but I do have an answer that is universal.... When it takes more than 5 minutes to clean up the mess they made in their room while they were supposed to be sleeping....

For example. If they empty all their drawers and sort their clothes into piles by color, that's a quick clean up. If they convert their bed to a slide (move the mattress half off.) That is a fairly quick clean up. If they found a crayon and very artistically decorated the walls/dresser, that a quick clean up, (if you have a magic eraser, and they are magic). If they line up 100 or so diapers into a train, that's a quick clean up. With these examples you must continue to insist on nap time. For everyone's sanity!!!!

However, anything requiring you to get out your carpet steam cleaner and clean the ENTIRE carpet (a spot clean would be different). Well, perhaps nap time is no longer worth the battle.....

Anniversary Trip

So for our tenth anniversary this year we took a trip. Paul got to ride the STP (Seattle to Portland) bike race. Well, bike ride, I guess for him. I sat in the motel with a stack of books to read and movies to watch on cable. I mostly read. I met him at the finish line. Then the next day we played around Portland. We ate at a really good restaurant called Papa Haydn's. It was yummy. When you walk in they ask if you are there for dinner or dessert. Heh. ;)(I researched it before hand.) We had both. Dinner was good. The menu is one page - double sided - just paper. The DESSERT menu is leather bound and two pages, with an extra page of seasonal specials. Oh HEAVEN!!! Paul got a fallen chocolate soufle and I got something I can't remember the name of, but it was 3 or 4 layers of meringue that had whipped cream and assorted berries in the layers and it was all drizzled with chocolate. I will be trying to replicate that sometime for sure!

100 miles into the ride.

175 mile into the ride

Just before the finish line - 200 miles

THE END of the ride!

The last day before driving home we drove out to the coast in Newport and went to the Aquarium there. It was quite large and they had tons of sea life. I got to pet a shark, sting ray, star fish, anenome and some other stuff. Paul did touch one thing, but it took some coaxing. And reasurring that they had hand sanitzer available. Heh. We then drove up the coast to Tillamook and saw them make (well, package really) cheese. And sample the cheese, fudge and ice cream. I have always love Tillamook ice cream, but WOW it was so much better there. I don't know if its a different recipe or if it was just fresh, but YUMMMM! I got the Caramel Butter Pecan, if you're interested...

Kegan loves all sea life due to Grandpa Thueson and of course Sponge Bob. So we took tons of pictures for him. We had to include the Jellyfish thanks to Sponge Bob...One kid asked his mom is he could bounce on the tops....thanks Finding Nemo!

the shark and sting ray tank

That's pretty much it, but we had a great time and it was good to come home to the kids. They had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Kilie and Uncle Brad and clan. Thanks for all their help!

Arrington Reunion at Bear Lake

We had an extended family reunion at Bear Lake with Paul's family. There were about 60 people and we only missed 1 husband who had to work and 1 mother and newborn baby. We had a ton of fun catching up and playing on the beach. Everyday was a different holiday. We had Halloween and Thanksgiving (complete with the tradition meal) and Christmas. (We had Paul's BBQ pork instead of another turkey/ham dinner.) We made a Christmas video of a Christmas story from one of Paul's ancestors which I had a role in...not my favorite thing being in front of the camera....I much prefer being behind it!

Normally pictures of me do not end up on my blog, but today is an exception I guess....
Bear Lake is famous for its raspberries....which happen to be my favorite berry...so we snuck off one night to get famous raspberry shakes. They were delicious. There were two fast food places across the street from each other. One had Famous Raspberry Shakes and the other had "Famous" Raspberry shakes. We had the Famous ones and some other cousins got the "Famous" ones. The ones with quotation marks were MUCH better. Weird.

We stayed at a HUGE lodge with 15 bedrooms. We got two of them, one with a king size bed and one with two bunk beds. The bunk beds were very tall, I had to stand on my tip toes and raise my arms to get this picture. Sleeping was rare on this trip.

A Halloween pinata instead of trick or treating....

Beach time!

Sleep time!

I wish I had a picture of everyone, but they haven't been sent out yet, so I'll have to share later.