If I Were Not Me…..

If only for a day, I would transport myself to a place where the weather is perfect. Warm, with a slight breeze, and I would cruise with my windows down, and listen to music that holds nostalgia for me. I would sing until my voice ached. 

If I were not me, I would find a beach with crystal clear water, dig my toes into the sand, and chug sip 5 pina colada’s. I would soak up the sun, and not worry about the repercussions, and carry the suns warmth with me on my skin through out the day.

If I were not me, everyone would listen when I spoke, and they would take heed to my advice, and praise me for my insight.

If I were not me, my mind would be calm, it wouldn’t race to a non existent finish line. I would know inner peace, and I would fall asleep as my head hit the pillow.

If I were not me, I would only be concerned with the well being of myself. I would have shaved legs, manicured fingers and toes, a firm body, and long beautiful flowing hair.

If I were not me, my biggest concerns in life would be miniscule, like whether or not I have enough toilet paper at home. Or if a pair of jeans makes my butt look big.

If I were not me , I would breathe even steady breaths, my stomach would would be free of knots, and my heart free of weight.

But…… if I were not me, I would never know that my mind and my heart are far more resilient than I ever could have dreamt.

I would never know that I could love someone so much it can drive me to tears, stomach knots, and a heavy heart. 

I would never have those racing thoughts that sometimes lead to really great, really creative notions.

I would never know that I am capable of things far greater than I ever expected.

I would never know that 3 boys could change my whole existence. That 3 boys could make me a better, stronger, braver person.

 

 

I would never learn the valuable life lessons I have learned, and am still learning. I would never be able to share those lessons with you.

Most of all though, I would never know love like I do now. 

Life has never come easy to me, and sometimes I like to dream how it could have been different, but regardless, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Still, its nice to dream from time to time.

Toilet Paper Tube Butterfly

I made this craft with my four year old, he really liked it, especially all the different steps that go in to making it.

What you will need:

• toilet paper tube
• cardstock or other heavy weight paper
• glue or tape
• colored pipe cleaner
• google eyes
• black marker
• glitter
• paint and paint brush

To make this fun craft:

First, paint the toilet paper tube, and let it dry completely.

Cut out some wings from cardstock, decorate them how ever you like. We first added some glue.

Then a little glitter…okay a lot of glitter. Let it dry.

Glue or tape on the wings, antennae, and google eyes. Draw a smiley face on. And let your butterfly take flight!

Blog Frog

I added a blog frog community to my sidebar, I have seen these on other blogs, and thought I would give it a try.

So hop on over there and check it out. I started some topics for you to ponder. You can basically ask me anything you like, lurkers that means you too! Check it out. I will keep it up for a few months and see how it goes.

Metamorphosis

Meet Cowboy, Rowan named him that.

 

Cowboy is not your average ranch hand. He doesn’t dine on meat and potatoes. Cowboy is a vegetarian, and prefers his leafy greens. Cowboy and his cronies especially loves my Passion Flower plant. So much so, I think they ate it all.

For the sake of science, we wrangled Cowboy, and gave him some new diggs. He adapted nicely, shortly after, he spun his cocoon. And we waited.

A week or 2 later, we found this one morning. Cowboy dangling from his cocoon. 

 

I think he was a little confused, he did morph into a different being after all.

For a Cowboy, he cleans up pretty nicely, don’t you think?

Seconds after I snapped this shot, Cowboy took off into the vast open world. Good luck out there Cowboy. Thanks for contributing to our science project.

I Heart Faces (feet)

I didn’t think I would have anything for this week’s theme, and then I remembered this picture. I haven’t had much time to take pictures. This was taken at the beginning of the summer, Ezra’s first time through the sprinkler.

Go check out some more feet…

Cotton Candy Cupcakes

Months ago, I saw this idea on CakeSpy , I have had it bookmarked since then, and was waiting for the right excuse to make them. I looooove cotton candy. Have you had cotton candy ice cream? Amazing. So naturally, I had to try to make these. I changed the recipe slightly, I used a different cake recipe.

Again, I turned to the OG domestic Goddess, Martha. I used her recipe for the cake part. I don’t really like cake with out frosting, but I found myself eating more than one unfrosted cupcake…its a great recipe.

Ingredients:

• 3 1/4 cups cake flour (found mine by the cake mixes)
• 1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
• 1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter (room temp)
• 1 3/4 cup sugar
• 5 large egg whites
• food coloring, I used Wilton gel in sky blue.

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sift together cake flour, salt, and BP. Stir vanilla into milk.

2. Mix on medium high speed, cream butter until smooth, add sugar, mix till pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add flour mix in 3 batches, alternating w/ 2 additions of milk, and beating until combined.

3. In separate bowl, with electric mixer on medium speed, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into batter to lighten. Gently fold in remaining whites.

4. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake 18-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

For the frosting-

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 6 to 8 cups Confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup Milk
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
• I used about 1/2 of one of those buckets of cotton candy you can buy at the grocery store, or more like 3 handfuls, if  you don’t have that at your store.

1. Mix butter and 4 cups of sugar. Add milk and vanilla

2. Beat until smooth and creamy. 3-5 minutes.

3. Add remaining cups of sugar one cup at a time, or until desired consistency. Add red food coloring.

4. Stir in small pieces of cotton candy, mix until dissolved.

5. Frost cupcakes, and garnish right before serving with another piece of cotton candy.

These cupcakes are really sweet, great for a kids party. Enjoy!

3 things you did not know about me

I am giving the MckLinky blog hop thing a try this week, it really confused me for a couple of weeks (it doesn’t take much) ....hopefully I have it figured out. Here are 3 things you may not have known.

1. I have 2 sons, Rowan, and Ezra. Ezra, my 2 year old was diagnosed with Leukemia a couple of months ago, it consumes a lot of our time right now. I write about it on this blog and over here as well. My regular readers obviously know this one, but if your new here you wouldn’t know about my sweet boy. We could use all the prayers and positive energy we can get.

2. I am terrified of interstate driving. I do ok if its not busy, but if its busy and there are 3, or heaven forbid 4 lanes, I am white knuckling it. It may have to do something with being rear ended by a semi in my VW beetle when I was 19. I will never forget seeing a semi grill coming at me in my rear view mirror. It was in stop and go traffic but he still crunched the hell out of my beetle.

Image from Google images

3. I grew up in Minnesota and moved to Florida when I was 23 to go to Zookeeper school…yep you read that right. I got to have a lot of great experiences, like being licked by a lion, having a hawk dig its talons into my scalp, or having my finger nipped by an exotic parrot. I did a year of the program and decided to be scooping the human variety of poop vs. animal poop. My first son, Rowan was born shortly after.

Thought Provoking Thursday

What do you think is one of the greatest works of art, of all time?

My Answer: Salvador Dali’s, Hallucinogenic Toreador. For one of our first dates my husband took me to the Salvador Dali museum in Tampa. I was absolutely blown away. I still don’t understand how a persons mind could think the way his did (well obviously he was a little mad), but he painted so many images, inside of other images. His work is so brilliant. Look at it awhile, how many things can you see?

Your turn! Leave your answer in the comments, or do TPT on your blog, use my question or one of your own, you can find the button in my sidebar. Thanks!

Summertime Lemon Cupcakes

I created these darlings for 4th of July, but I am calling them a Summertime cupcake, because it sounds right to me. These are amazing. I took a recipe from Martha’s Cupcake book, for the cake part and added lemon whipped cream cheese frosting, its much lighter than a traditional cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients for the cupcake:

- 3 cups all purpose flour

- 1 tbsp. baking powder

- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp

- 2 cups sugar

- 4 large eggs

- finely grated zest of 3 lemons (about 3 tbsp.) plus 2 tbsp. lemon juice

- 1 tsp. vanilla extract

- 1 cup buttermilk

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 325 f. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, cream butter and sugar till pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat in zest and vanilla. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk and lemon juice.

3. Fill liner 3/4 cup full. Bake, rotate half way through, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.

Ingredients for the frosting:

- 1 80z pkg. cream cheese

- 1 cup white sugar

- 1/8 tsp salt

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 3/4 tsp lemon extract

- 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions:

1. With electric mixer beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form, set aside.

2. Combine cream cheese, sugar, salt, vanilla, lemon extract, beat until smooth. Fold in whipped cream.

3. Pipe onto cupcakes, and garnish if you like. Store in the fridge, because of the cream cheese in the frosting. These are great straight from the fridge.

Our uneventful 4th of July

Our 4th of July was probably one of the most uneventful ones in years, but it was perfect that way. Our lives have been a little too eventful lately. We stayed at home, for the most part, and loved every minute of it.

In the morning I took Rowan over to a friend of mine’s house. She had rented a bounce house, and giant water slide for her 4th party. We came over before it got crazy. All Ro wanted to do was hang out in the pool at the bottom of the slide….go figure.

Then Daddy and the boys constructed a train track setup, one of the boy’s latest obsessions.

We smiled, cuddled, and giggled.

There were even some tears.

Ezra and Daddy colored some pictures.

Rowan ran around like a maniac at dusk, the air thick with anticipation, and mosquitoes. My hubby barbequed an amazing meal. We ate, drank, and were merry. Ezra slept.

It was a beautiful night, as it got darker we lit sparklers, and my husband chased Rowan around with them..which is hysterical if you are 4.  When it got dark we woke up Ezra. We then lit off more exciting fireworks.

As you can see I am really excited about my sparkler….fireworks terrify me, they were illegal in Minnesota (where I am from) until after I moved (when I was 23) , I have to think there was a reason they were illegal for so many years.

After our little fireworks display we loaded Ezra up in the stroller and then we went for a walk with the boys around the neighborhood. I live in a middle working class neighborhood, the people don’t have a lot of money, but damn do they throw some money down on fireworks every year.

So after the spectacular neighborhood show we came home, and Dad made kettle corn, and then off to bed for the boys and me! It was such a perfect day, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

You can find an update about Ezra here.

Fairy Costume Winner

Lolli you won! I will contact you via email.

Thought Provoking Thursday

If you could have one band, past or present, play at your birthday party who would it be?

My Answer: The Beatles! Hands down, that would be spectacular.

Grab a button (in my sidebar) and do Thought Provoking Thursday on your blog, use my question or one of your own.