Every year I promise myself that next year I will design my own Christmas cards, and every year comes around and I just don’t have the time.  We just got our beautiful family pictures back from Olan Mills and I hopped onto Shutterfly to design our cards.  I know, I know…but really, next year I’ll do custom ones

Merry Christmas!

Stationery card

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I keep dreaming that Alice comes into my life and cheerfully restores order to my house with her little blue dress and apron.  But alas, it’s still just me slogging through load after load of laundry.  I’ve stumbled across a book that looks truly hopeful and fun 31 Days to Clean:  Having a Martha Home the Mary Way.  I’m going to give it a try – I’ll give it a brief review in 30 days – we’ll see if it can rescue my home…just in case Alice never shows.  Click here or on the book to take a peek!

I just found this fun site – Recycle Bank.  The idea behind Recycle Bank is rewarding people for taking small steps toward a greener lifestyle.  You earn points by doing things like taking quizzes, making small changes to your lifestyle or home and spreading the word.  It seems fairly easy to get some quick rewards – I earned about 100 points this morning just taking quizzes and posting on facebook.  I earned enough points to get 3 coupons for $1 off an Honest Tea drink (and I learned that each coupon can actually be printed twice – so I really got 6 coupons).  Stop by and give it a try!  You can visit by clicking HERE.

About a month ago I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals.  My motivation for reading the book had nothing to do with eating or animals, really I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I was looking for something to read on my new kindle and did a search for Foer.  I loved the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel and I happened upon Eating Animals.  I can’t even remember if I realized when purchasing that it was a non-fiction book.  That’s the beauty of the kindle – that super fast non-existent checkout.

I won’t go into too many details about the book, I’ll just say that it was life changing and I strongly believe that everyone who eats meat, and probably even those who don’t should have to read it.  Just to be informed.  It’s a quick read, although not an easy one.  The content is disturbing…shocking at times, but as is pointed out in the book, not necessarily something that we don’t know on some level.  The book can get a bit preachy at times, but not in an overwhelming way because it seems to sneak it in with thought provoking questions.

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I’ve noticed that the pacifier debate brings up strong feelings, whether for or against.  My mother always felt like they took my brother’s pacifier away too early, thus creating a thumb-sucking habit that lasted until he was 5 or 6.  She is on the pro-paci side, telling me to leave Aiden alone when I try to remove his pacifier.  My in-laws are more old school, thinking pacifiers aren’t necessary after 6 months, I’ve heard them tell Aiden “you don’t need that.”  My husband and I were thrilled that Aiden would take a pacifier, because Delia never would…and her colicky crying would last for hours on end.  When Aiden was a baby, my pediatrician said pacifiers were great and it was completely fine to let him have it.  At his 18 month appointment she started counseling me on how to get him to give it up – “it’s just a habit now and it only gets harder to get rid of it.”

When Aiden was a newborn, I was sure we would be done with the pacifier by age 1.  When that didn’t happen I vowed to be rid of it by his 2nd birthday.  As that date approaches I console myself with the wisdom from several of my friends, who have assured me that around his third birthday, Aiden will give that pacifier up on his own.  My gut tells me this is true, but I still feel anxiety over it.  I’ve even seen him recently make strides toward independence from it, but he still wakes up in the middle of the night crying pitifully, “passee, passee.”

The truth is, I feel like when people see him with a pacifier they are judging my parenting.  It doesn’t help that he is tall and has a lot of hair, so people are often surprised to learn that he isn’t even 2 yet.  I’ve also been told that his speech is “amazing,” making it hard for strangers to see him as barely 2.  On a recent trip to the pediatrician, we saw a doctor who hasn’t seen him since he was a baby.  She remarked at how good he was doing for a 3 year old.  I laughed and said “yes, especially since he isn’t even 2 yet.”  She marveled at how clear and plentiful his speech was, knocking away one of the arguments against the pacifier: delayed speech.  These days, he rarely has a pacifier in public, it is typically saved for the car and bed, and times when he is just tired and needs a little comforting.

There are those times though, when it just seems a necessity…like traveling.  It’s an all day affair when we fly to see my family, and I can’t imagine him on the plane or in the airport on a long layover without it.  Still, I try to hide it and feel a twinge of anxiety when he starts hollering and crying for it.  In the end though, my need for him to be happy, comfortable, and well, pacified always wins out.  I keep reminding myself that he’s still so little and this time will go very quickly.  Soon, I’ll wonder how he grew out of the pacifier so soon.

It started when Delia turned one…my pursuit of the perfect birthday cake. I am a firm believer that although a box cake is always good, it’s just never as special as a from scratch cake.

For Delia’s first birthday I did a strawberry vanilla cake that was amazing. I spent hours online researching recipes and agonizing over it. Everyone raved and I was hooked, not only on how good it was, but how amazed everyone was that it wasn’t from a box. For her second birthday I made a vanilla coconut cake…again, amazingly delicious. Each year there was a super special cake from scratch to celebrate (although one year she insisted on a kitty, we used store-bought pound cake for the kitty part and one year we did cupcakes instead of a layer cake).

Before Delia was born I hadn’t much luck with home made cakes. In high school, I made a whole wheat chocolate cake. My family laughed as I served it – always the health nut – they just couldn’t fathom why anyone would make a whole wheat cake. The cake was ok…but it was made with pudding instead of frosting. It didn’t occur to me that it needed to be refrigerated, so the next day, after eating a piece that tasted a little odd, I ended up with food poisoning. It was awhile before I attempted a cake from scratch again.

My next attempt was a German chocolate cake for my husband’s birthday – approximately 15 years after my first attempt. The frosting was delicious, but the cake didn’t have a great flavor and the texture was off. His face was so disappointed when he took the first bite…of course he tried to hide it, but obviously he was wishing I’d stuck with the box version. I was in no hurry to try my hand at cake baking anytime soon after.

When Delia was born I remembered all the hand crafted cakes my mother made for our birthdays and really wanted to recreate the specialness. I’ve since fallen in love with making cakes from scratch. For Aiden’s first birthday I searched and searched for the perfect recipe and decided on a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting from scratch.

Well, let’s just say that it turned out less like the delicious cakes I made for Delia and more like my first attempts. The cake was very dense, more like pound cake, which I really liked but I don’t think everyone else was a fan of (just for the record, Aiden loved it). The frosting however, was another story. I’m not saying that I won’t ever try my hand at buttercream again – but the promise in the recipe that I needn’t worry – just keep whipping and it will come together, never materialized…I assumed just keep whipping didn’t mean longer then 30 minutes, which is about how long I mixed before I gave up. I did use the buttercream, it was just a bit of a disaster…runny and gloppy at the same time…it tasted ok though…thankfully we had Haagen Dazs to go with. This time though, it didn’t deter me…I continued to bake cakes, with much better success.

I made the amazing Beatty’s chocolate cake for my best friend’s birthday last January. If you love chocolate cake, this one was incredible. Then I made Martha’s super yummy red velvet cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday. In October I made the most delicious carrot cake I’ve ever had for my father-in-law’s birthday. I’m pretty much hooked on cake baking at this point, I’m not saying I’ll never make a box cake again, but the rewards of the scratch cakes are hard to deny.

Another birthday is nearing, so, I’ve started searching for the perfect recipe for little Aiden’s birthday number 2. So far the forerunner is the chocolate banana cake from the Betty Crocker cookbook (it’s actually an applesauce cake with banana substituted in). We all love banana bread and I haven’t seen anything else that looks quite as good. I’ll keep you posted on our cake progress….I can’t believe my little monkey turns 2 in two weeks…so sweet!