Happy Birthday To MEEE!

So, it was my birthday yesterday, and I had a request for a birthday post.  I do realize that it’s not my birthday today, so technically, this is the day-after-my-birthday post.  But I warned her that I would probably be late in doing this…  I enjoyed every second of my birthday doing other things.  🙂

{I think Cael had a good day too.}

I’m getting on in my journey towards 30, which is pretty crazy.  I had decided a long time ago, that I really wanted to reach 20, but after that, I would just stay 20 forever.  So let’s just say I’m 20.  And I’ll say that forever.  Sounds pretty good to me.  What do you think?  Will it work?  Will it have staying power?

Aging is not actually something that bothers me.  I love getting older.  And I think I always will.  It means that I’ve made it through another year.  And this past year was pretty exciting.  I had my first baby [EVER!], and we bought our first house.  I’d say that’s a fairly productive year (if you were going to ask me what I thought…).

So to my birthday!  It was awesome!  I always feel let-down by birthday (well, not always, but sometimes).  Because you wait for them all year, and then they’re not entirely awesome, and then it’s a day gone and you have to wait 365 more days until the next one.  But yesterday when I woke up, I decided that I was going to make it a good day.  It’s all about how you think, and how your heart is.  Wake up with a prayer and sunshine outside your window, and I’d say it’s going to be a pretty good day.  I got an awesome hug from my hubby first thing, and then went to my mother’s house for a shower!  For those who don’t know, we don’t have a shower at our new house, so this was a really great thing.

Then, I made the frosting and filling for my birthday cake!  Mom had already made the chocolate cake.  I made myself a hot chocolate, and helped myself to lots of the chocolate cream cheese frosting.  Then I had my dad’s amazing chili for lunch, and Cael, Mom, and I walked back to my house, stopping to visit my grandparents along the way.

Keep reading, the awesome continues.

{Don’t you love the scarf?!  It was a gift from an amazing family.}

After I put Cael down for a nap, I was going to go outside to clean up a garbage mess that some rambunctious raccoons had made through the night.  BUT, on my way down the driveway, an amazing family came barreling up in their minivan. With tidings of the best coffee ever, homemade birthday cards and origami, a present AND cookies.  Like, the best day ever, right?

Over coffee and cookies, we hung out and talked for quite awhile.  Eventually, I lost track of a few of the boys in the family, and they came in my door bearing a bag with all of the garbage!  They picked it up for me!  Yay!  So happy at this point.

Soon came suppertime at my parent’s house, with all my family, and a friend.  Do you know what the best dinner ever is (in my books)?  It consists of BBQ chicken, BBQ potato slices, vegetables, Greek salad, corn bread, and butternut squash.

{Dad makes these – my Grampie’s recipe.  Don’t they look awesome?  And my crazy little bro… haha}

Followed by my favourite cake EVER.  Let me describe this cake to you.  This chocolate cake recipe, made into three layers.  The layers are filled with whipped cream, and then the whole cake is iced with chocolate cream cheese icing.  Pretty close to perfect.  Mind you, the cake never stands up quite straight, but that does nothing to how wonderful it tastes.

Then, there were presents.  Enough said.

Around 9 o’clock, I convinced my hubby to watch a chick flick with me.  Flicked through Netflix, and chose Vanity Fair.  I must say, it was pretty good.  He was bored, but oh well.  My birthday, right?  😉  (Thanks babe for watching it with me.)

So there you have it.  That is most of my birthday summed up in, well…  I guess it wasn’t really summed up.  Quite detailed actually.  Oh well.

Here’s the recipe for the cake!

Cream Cheese Trifle Cake

One chocolate cake, made into three layers

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing (recipe follows)

Whipped Cream Filling (recipe follows)

Place first cake layer on a plate, top with whipped cream.  Repeat for next layer.  After you’ve placed your third layer on, coat the entire cake with the chocolate cream cheese icing.  The more you can slap on, the better.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

1 pkg cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup margarine, softened

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 heaping Tbsp cocoa

3 cups icing sugar

Cream the cream cheese, margarine, and vanilla together.  Add cocoa and sugar, and beat until smooth.  Frost that cake!

Whipped Cream Filling

1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1/2 cup icing sugar

Whip together until firm peaks appear.  Fill that cake!  Do it.

Enjoy.  It’s really the best thing since sliced toast bread.  (That actually went through my brain, I had to write it.  Toast is completely different from bread, right?)

30 Day Challenge

Day 4 – Your views on religion

Religion, as such, is not something I believe in.  Religion is performing acts to achieve a purpose, normally eternal peace, life, etc.  Works does not get you these things.  Obedience does not get you these things.  The sole way to salvation is through Christ Jesus; believing in Him, that He died for you, that you’re a sinner and he can reconcile that.

“I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me”  John 14:6

He is the only way.  You can never work your way into heaven.  There is no possible way we can be good enough on our own.  Only through Christ’s death and His covering of our sins, can we come to God.

30 Day Challenge. And Easter. Wait – a cake too.

So, I came across a challenge on Tyler’s blog (which initially came from Elle’s blog).  It’s called the 30 Day Challenge (pretty self-explanatory, no?).  I’m going to attempt to do it.  I don’t promise to do all 30 days consecutively, but I will try my best to do all 30.  This way, you can get to know me better, and it’ll change things up a bit too.  Hope you enjoy.  And I’d love to hear from you – your thoughts, comments, and questions.

My next post will begin the challenge.  🙂

But for now, I’ll (finally) share my Easter with you.  And my brother’s birthday cake.

First – the cake.  I had asked my brother what kind of cake he wanted (mostly wondering what I should decorate…), but all he said was chocolate.  He wasn’t very much help.  I already knew that.  Anyhow.  I thought about it for awhile, and came up with something quite easy, but that fit.  He has been set on watching all 9 seasons of X Files with my husband.  So – the X Files logo it was.

Sides first, then the top.

Then to the logo, the edges…  The blowing of the candles.

Now to Easter.  First off, our Easter is a little bit different from a lot of people.  We grew up without the Easter bunny.  Instead, we focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

This is the reason we celebrate Easter.  Jesus has risen.  And we aren’t just saying this.  We really believe that it’s true.  Christ, our Saviour, reigns.

We also have a family dinner.  Which means lots of food.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that there is no end to food when it comes to my family.  It is central to all of our gatherings.  I love it.  Mostly because, well, truth be told, I love food.  I didn’t have a hand at much this year, as we were in the process of moving into our new house.  But feast your eyes on what I feasted on.

As you can tell, I share my passion for baking with others in my family.  I think it’s genetic.  🙂

Cael loved sitting with Papa at dessert time…  Cookies for him.

I also made a cake on Good Friday for a bunch of people that came over to decorate Easter eggs.  It was a really quick decorating job, but I thought it turned out pretty good.

My hubby got a hold of it after it had been cut into though…

Ohmy…

So – I hope that you have a great weekend.  I’ll get started on that 30 day challenge soon.  Thanks for reading.  And sorry my Easter post was so late.  Better late than never??

What’re your Easter traditions?  

Finally… Christmas.

And I am ever still the worst blogger ever.  Christmas in almost a month past (as is my last post), and I have yet to write about it.  Sorry.  A million times, sorry.

It was our little boy’s first Christmas this year.  He was 5 months old.  It was really sweet.  He was spoiled to death, but it was really great.

Cael really enjoyed the icing we were using to decorate the gingerbread house.  Isn’t he especially cute in his ‘First Christ-Moose’ suit?

So!  Christmas was great.  It was really busy.  I really enjoyed having my friends come home (especially those that are FAR away).  It was really awesome to spend time with them, and catch up.  I can’t wait until that happens again.  Thing is, soon enough, they’re all going to get married and will probably stop coming to visit me so often… I’m hoping that doesn’t happen (I WANT them to get married, but they need to keep visiting…!!).  Anyways, enough with that.  Time with family was great too.  We just took our Christmas tree out on Saturday actually.  It was really nice to have it up for a while afterwards.  It was getting pretty dry though.  It left most of its needles on our living room floor on its way out the door.  So now, the house is in more order (if that’s possible in a house of 9?).  We ate so much food through the season.  Multiple turkey dinners, lots of sweets, it was great.

Me and my beautiful cousin Allie at our family Christmas Eve supper.

Our Christmas morning is always my favourite part.  We get up around 7 (I’m in charge of getting my brothers up on time, and keeping them quiet as to not wake up my husband).  Then we go downstairs and go through our stockings – which are massive.  They are at least 3 feet long.  My mother made them when I was about 10, and I just made 3 for my own little family.  They’re really great though.  My all-time favourite.  We then get dressed up, and have a good old-fashioned breakfast of homemade brown bread, fried baloney, and eggs – SO good.  After that, we read the Christmas story.  We read it out of a picture book, and then the account from Luke 2.  Read it.  We read it before we open our gifts as a reminder as to what we’re actually celebrating.  Not presents, not family; we’re celebrating the miraculous birth of our One and Only Saviour.  He is why we celebrate.  We read the story, and then we pray and thank God for the best gift of all. Only after that do we start opening presents.  This year, we had church in the morning (as Christmas was on Sunday), so only a few presents got opened before church.  Then we have multiple turkey dinners, go to grandparents, etc…  This year, we didn’t get our presents all opened until 10:30!  PM!

Our first turkey dinner of the week.  

I did so much baking in preparation for Christmas.  It was AMAZING.  I love to bake.  I.  Love.  Baking.  Except, I need people to eat all the lovely baked goods so they don’t go to waste.  At Christmastime, I have people to eat my baked goods.  It is wonderful.  I attended two cookie exchanges (actually the first two I’d ever been to…), and I loved them.  I will share a few recipes from those REALLY soon.  One of them is Cranberry White Chocolate Skor Cookie Dough Balls.  (Yum.)

In all, it was really great.  Loved it.

How was your Christmas?  What do you do special to celebrate? 

Sorry!

Hey everyone. I just wanted to apologize for being the worst blogger EV-er.  I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted.  I’m going to blame it on the craziness of life – being a mother of a 4 month old, living in a house of 9, and writing exams (not to mention getting ready for Christmas and the umpteenth things that go along with that!).  The good news however, is that in the time since my last post, I’ve baked about a zillion things, and can’t wait to share those with you!

I hope everyone is in the Christmas spirit – I’ve had Christmas music playing since November 2nd!  (Hey – it’s great music, and we only get to listen to it for a short period of time in the year!)  Presents are being bought, trees are taking over the house, decorations and baking galore, add in Christmas crafts, and you’re all set!  Well, except for one thing…  A HuGe thing actually.  His name is Jesus, and without Him, we’d never even celebrate Christmas.  It is a great time of family and friends, music and laughter and presents, but the reason I celebrate Christmas is a little boy (much like my own), who was born this day.   Look is up – Luke 2.  It’s the greatest story ever, and will change your life for sure.

My parent’s have a really high ceiling in one room, so we put up a 12 foot tree every year.  It’s really great, we get some family friends over and make a whole evening out of it.

Isn’t she the cutest?  She’s about halfway up, working from the bottom up as you can see.  🙂

We also have a “kid tree”.  The kids get to string popcorn and cranberries for a garland, and all the hand-crafted-by-the-kids-in-elementary ornaments, along with any other “kid” ornaments go on that tree.  It really is a lot of fun.

A new baking experience and recipe will be on its way VERY soon – I promise (but will not be held to it….  I’ll try my best!).  Need a new Christmas cookie recipe?  Check out these chocolate cookies.

Does anyone have any awesome tree decorating ideas or traditions?

We Three

So this is our family.  My husband and our sweet little boy. I can’t wait for him to be big enough for me to bake for him, and to share my faith with him.  These two men have to put up with me in the kitchen at least 2 times a day.  And watch out!  Don’t be caught looking over my shoulder, or out you go!

We live with my parents and four brothers now, so there’s a lot of getting kicked out of the kitchen going on…  Along with a LOT of cooking!

Who do you guys cook for?  How big are your families?