Pin of the Week - July 10 - 16

  This entry will be short and sweet.  If you're a Harry Potter fan, you likely know the final movie came out Friday.  You may have even already seen it.  I'll be waiting until my husband finishes reading book 6, we re-watch Deathly Hallows Pt. 1, and the crowds die down a little bit.  But this pin...well, it made me laugh.  So here you go, for any who may not have seen it:

  The caption with which I pinned this (and many others have as well) is, "It is obvious that this student deserves an A+."  Have a great week!

Pin of the Week - July 3 - 9

  So, this post is only 4 days late... sorry about that.  Do you know what it's like when you're trying to clean your house for company and then ten (or a thousand) things pop up that you HAVE to do, and then you realize there's only a few hours until company arrives and you're still not ready, or is that just me?  Anyway, the house is still slowly getting more organized.  I've finally figured out what to do with a little table and hutch that so far has been a catch-all for things we have nowhere else to put, and I'm working on that.  At least one shelf is going to be a mail station.  I'll keep stationary and stamps there, as well as incoming mail to deal with/respond to.  Thus, this last week's pin.

  I love that it's something I could personalize and make all by myself - or at least with help from the husband, dad, or combination thereof.  I mean, I'm sure I could make it myself, but it would take a whole lot longer and they have the tools.  I'm sure they'll be overjoyed to help me with this! (Where's that sarcasm font?) Here is the link to the step-by-step instructions if this projects interests you too.

Red, White, and Blue Cake

  Happy Independence Day!  Can you believe it's already the 4th of July (and the day is almost over, to boot)?  We've had a rather relaxing holiday weekend here.  My Uncle Dieter came for a visit (from Germany), so we had a nice family gathering for Sunday dinner.  Uncle Dieter isn't actually related to us by blood or marriage, but by a foreign exchange program that occurred years before I was born and has developed into a strong kinship with our whole family.  When Chris and I were in Berlin almost two years ago, we made sure to visit with his family.  Dieter was here to drop his daughter Andrea off just outside of Atlanta for her own two-week exchange experience.

Andrea, Dieter, Daniela, and Felix

  At any rate, this special visit combined with a holiday weekend necessitated a special dessert.  Now, if you look online you can find a variety of patriotic-themed desserts (and is that odd? I'm not sure I'd want a patriotic German dessert...).  The problem for most of them, though, is that they're decorated with berries, which I really don't like (yes, I know I'm a bit odd - just remember, more berries for you).  This problem was solved when my mom found a recipe for Blue Velvet Cake on Pinterest.  She proposed this: I would bake the blue cake, she would make her Red Velvet Cake, and we would exchange layers.  I was, of course, agreeable.  She cut each of her layers in half, and assembled with the frosting she always puts on her Red Velvet.  I didn't cut my layers in half and used the frosting from the Betty Crocker site.  It got great reviews, and I'd not tried one like it before.  I'm not entirely sure what went wrong, but it wasn't really easily spreadable.  It tastes fine, but I'm not sure I'll use it again.  Maybe I'll just blame it on the weather.  Anyway, here's a very low-light picture of the cake.



  You can find the recipe for the Blue Velvet cake and frosting here.  My mom's recipe for Red Velvet is included below.  I hope you all had a wonderfully enjoyable day.  And you know what? I think I could deal with a dessert the colors of Germany's flag if it were devil's food cake with peanut butter frosting, and maybe red frosting decoration?  It's not quite right, but I guess I have until October 3 to figure it out.


Red Velvet Cake
Cake Ingredients:
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks) - softened
1.5 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 oz. red food coloring
2 teaspoons cocoa, leveled
2.5 cups cake flour (from a box)
pinch salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vinegar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and prepare cake pans.Cream first three ingredients.  Make paste of cocoa and food color and add to mix.  Combine flour and salt, and buttermilk and vanilla.  Add to creamed ingredients, alternating wet and dry, starting and ending with dry.  Place baking soda on top and pour on vinegar.  Fold in - DO NOT STIR.  Bake in 2 prepared 9-inch pans for 30 minutes.  Cool completely before frosting.

Icing Ingredients:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup water
1 cup butter (2 sticks) - softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:
Mix starch and water.  Cook until thick over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Cool completely.  Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add vanilla and cooled cornstarch.  Beat until like whipped cream.

Pin of the Week - June 26 - July 2

  I know it's been a rather quiet week around here, but I've been working at VBS.  Do you know how exhausting that can be?  Well, it's finally over and life is getting a little bit back to normal.  I have a few neat things that I'm planning to do over the next week or two, and hopefully I can blog about those soon.  Cleaning and organizing is still slow going, but at least it's going!


Anyway, here's my pin of the week.
 


  I love to read.  I tend to forget about anything else when immersed in a good book.  That not necessarily a good thing.  I don't hear people when they ask me or tell me something and sometimes I forget to eat.  


  Toward the end of May, the website www.woot.com offered a 2nd generation Kindle 3G.  I went for it!  I had been considering purchasing an e-reader for a while.  I wasn't convinced I would really love it, but the thought of being able to carry around multiple books on one small device... well, it appealed to me.  My Kindle arrived a few days later and I Fell.In.Love.  I take the darn thing everywhere.  I have over 50 books loaded in my account, most of which were free (Free ebook collection -> Limited Time Offers -> sort by price: low to high).  And though this Pin has been accurate since I learned to read (I used to check out 15 books from the library at a time when I was little, read them all in about 4 days, and anxiously await the next week when I would wash, rinse, and repeat), it's especially accurate again now, because I've finished about 8 books since I got the Kindle... some of them around 4 in the morning.  What can I say, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.


  What about y'all?  Have you been reading anything recently?  Got any great recommendations for me?  And as always, you can find my pins at Laura's Pinterest Site  and comment here if you'd like an invite.

Pin of the Week - June 19-25

  So I've seen some other bloggers post their favorite pin of the week, so I thought I'd engage in the sincerest form of flattery.

  Because I love to dance, I have a few (or 6) pairs of shoes with suede soles.  Dance floors can be quite dusty, and this has a tendency to get all over anything the shoes end up touching.  And no matter how carefully I try to arrange them with their soles together and everything, the dust still ends up on everything (like the nice black skirt I was going to wear to the dance tomorrow night, darnit!), so sometimes I'd put them in a plastic grocery bag, but then I saw this:

  Just pack the shoes in a disposable shower cap.  Love it!  And it's still a relatively cheap solution.  I'm all about that!  I thought maybe I wasn't the only person who could use this idea, so here you go.  If you want to follow me on Pinterest, find me here: http://pinterest.com/kix444/  And if you want an invite, just comment and let me know!