Our ROCKIN' Cake!

So tomorrow is my daughters 8th birthday!  I can't even believe that I have an 8 year old, but that is another story.  When I gave birth to the little butter ball it was on Super Bowl Sunday.  So we have made it a tradition to always have her little party on that day each year.  This year she got a guitar for Christmas and loves it!  I decided to try my skills at a guitar cake as well.

I started out using this template but had to free hand it to make it a bit bigger.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do it on my printer or computer.

Next I used a chocolate cake mix and poured at the bottom of a 15X11 sheet cake pan.  I think took several bowls of vanilla cake and mixed in food coloring to them.  I then poured globs randomly through the cake.  Thought it would be a change up from the average marble cake.

Baked it according to the box of cake mix (ya had to much to do I wasn't going to go completely homemade).

After it is baked I chilled it for about an hour and turned over onto the counter and placed the template over it.  Cut around the template and hope to end up with something close.

I will never use the "P" brand of cake mix again for this lol.  Even chilled it was very crumbly and hard to move around.  Which led to being really hard to frost.  I dirty frosted it first and even let it sit and tried to add the finishing frosting and it still wanted to crumble and not stick to the cake.

Still it turned out decent and the kids loved it! Birthday girl was happy so it was a success. 

An awesome giveaway page!

So this wonderful lady from Ben and Me blog has made a great giveaway page. 

Check out the information on her page: Homeschool Giveaway Share Launch!

There are several giveaways posted each week!  Who doesn't love to get some free stuff?!

You can also post your giveaways and get more traffic to your site by sharing on the page.  It is a win win situation with this new page!

So stop procrastinating and go "Like" the Homeschool Giveaway Share Facebook page and start finding some great giveaways.

What you ment to me....

I lost my only brother on September 15, 2005. To this day that is the worst thing I have ever had to experiance. My brother was my world! Of course we fought like all sibblings, but he was always there for me.

I remember when both my parents worked long hours and Aaron had to get my sister and I ready for school. I never was a morning person and instead of yelling at me or pushing me to get ready he would get me up a bit earlier and let me crawl in bwd with him and watch tv till I was more awake. Man I can still just imagine it to this day.

One time I took my earrings out and the hole had grown closed. He sat with me and used ice and my earring and reciting this silly poem for me to repeat until he got it back in for me without it hurting.

My brother was a true hero. Even in grade school when asked who my hero was I always replied Aaron. I maybe a bit biast as he was my brother but so many people would say the same. It was never a figure of speach to say that he would give the shirt off his back to anyone, because he litteraly did at times.

When I had my first baby he was there to cheer me on. He waited at the hospital the whole time. I am so thankful he was here to meet her. He died when she was 7 months old but he left his mark.

My baby girl will be turning 8 years old next month and it is hard to believe he has been gone that long. He never got to meet my two other kids...my son who is just like him.

I know one day God will bring us together again and that brings me so much joy.

The ice is rolling in...

Well I live in south west Missouri and the ice is all over the place.  It started raining about noon and the temperatures started dropping quickly.  It then turned to sleet and rain shortly after and started freezing the trees and powerlines.  About 4:25pm the electric went out and stayed that way for a good two hours or so. 

 

The bad thing is that my entire house is electric, so that means no heat.  I bundled the kids up and put their pajamas, the ones that cover your feet and all, and got the big heavy sleeping bag out.  They all sat bundled together on the couch nicely playing the iPad.  I must say I am glad it was charged because it kept them calm and quiet.

 

This made me think about how I could better prepare myself for this kind of stuff.  It is funny because today I was trying to put a home binder together with all the important things in it.  I need to take it a step further and figure out some steps to prepare me for the rest of the winter here. 

 

I do not have any family or friends near me, my parents are the closest at almost 3 hours away.  So there is no place for me to go when this happens.  I am thinking I need some sort of heater (kerosen maybe) that will work off something besided electric.  I have just always been afraid of those types of things.

 

Back in December the power went out on us but it was bed time so I just put all the kids in bed with me with all the blankets and the electric came back on while we were sleeping.

So I am curious about, those of you that live in cold climates, what you do to prepare for power outages?

Looking back...

Man 2012 was full of ups and downs for me. I finally got my divorce final after 2 years of being seperated. I learned to live on my own (had gotten married straight out of highschool). Moved around a lot, which sucked some but being in Georgia was great. I am now in Missouri and hating the winter lol.

Last year threw so many things at my feet that I never thought I would over come. Well I have made it to a new year, even though some of those things tugged along with me by my ankles.  I must say I am stronger and hoping to teach my kids that skill too. They have had to learn to adapt to many new things that has been hard on them as well.

As a single mother I had to make many cuts to our budget. We don't have TV or internet. We use my phone for internet when we need it. We don't go out to the movies or other places that require admission fees. We also eat all of our meals at home unless we have a pretty darn good coupon. We all know it could be worse.

This year I would like us all to work on compassion. I have a hard time not getting angry when others complain about not getting something for lack of money when said item isn't even a have to have. I have made my life work on $12000 a year with three kids and no state assistance.  I know that maybe I have a stronger will to not over spend on somethings than others. I know bot judging them is something I really need to work on. God made us all different and we are to be accepting of that.

What things did you learn from last year? What do you hope to learn this year?

TYSC Weekly Experiment Results: Bending Water

TYSC Weekly Experiment result and conclusion: BENDING WATER

Results: The stream of water moves towards the balloon
Conclusion: When the balloon is rubbed on your hair, it becomes static and has an electric charge. Water also has a slight electric charge and gets attracted to the balloon.

 

This was a very cool science experiment for the kids and I.  I hope you guys check TYSC on Facebook and do some of the cook easy weekly experiments.

TYSC Weekly Experiment

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Young-Scientists-Club/170174354854

TYSC Weekly Experiment BENDING WATER

Materials Needed: balloon and a faucet

Methods:
... 1. Blow up a balloon.
2. Rub the balloon all over your hair to make it static!
3. Turn on your faucet so that a constant but small stream of water comes out.
4. Move your balloon very close to the stream of water but make sure that you don’t touch the water.
5. Observe what happens to the stream of water!

Post your results with photos!

We will post experiment explanations on Mondays, but look forward to hearing from you first through posts and photos.

 

 

So first we needed to charge the balloon....Micah was a great sport!

 

Next we put it to the stream of water to see that the stream would pull towards the balloon, however that is hard to capture on camera.

 



 

Very cool little experiment to do today!  Easy schooling after the holidays!