This & That

THE Cake

First off, happy birthday to my sis! I don't get to see my sisters nearly often enough.

This week's recipe is for the birthday cake...the one 2/3 of my kids, my husband, and me will choose to celebrate with. I got the recipe from my MIL. She doesn't really like to cook, but this cake is definitely a family favorite.

 

THE Chocolate Cake

• 1 cups water
• 1 cup (2 sticks butter)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 4 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a microwave safe bowl, melt butter. Add the water and bring to a boil in the microwave. Pour over dry ingredients in mixing bowl and mix well. Add eggs, buttermilk and vanilla and beat together for 2-3 minutes. Batter will be thin. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and bake for 30-35 minutes. Sometimes the middle of the cake falls a little bit. Don't let that scare you. It's pretty normal for this cake.

Around Here This Week

Around here we've been getting ready for my daughter's farewell church  service tomorrow. We will have grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends here for the event, so there has been a frenzy of cleaning, baking and generally getting ready. I finally planted my flower pots in the back, which I'll show once they get a better start.

Around here, we've harvested the last of the lettuce. Peas will be following shortly, which makes me very excited.

We also had some unexpected rain, which I loved. It's unusual for us to get rain after May, and I had the windows wide open.

I've also got the yen for card instant gratification this week, taking available snippets of time to try some designs from an older holiday card class from Online Card Classes. This collection is pretty much a lift of Jennifer McGuire's from the class. They are thank you notes specifically for Christmas gifts.

This card comes from the class as well.

I turned it into these designs as variations.

And this one as well. I haven't come up with variations yet, but plan to.

Busy, busy week, which I don't see slowing down until after my daughter leaves next week.

A Cuteness Break

 

I just love the expression on Isaac's face. It's like, "Pleeeeeeease, just stop it!"

Here's the big boy chair. Totally cute.

How Much Wood....

You know that old saying, right?

Well, I'm tellying you that with 3 boys working on the project, even skinny as they are, you can get quite a lot.

There's usually a little work that comes with the fun at the cabin and sometimes that entails chopping, splitting and stacking wood for the winter.

When my boys are involved, though, there's quite a bit of fairly good-natured yammering about how they're overqualified for the job, and when is their required 15 minute break, and they're going to have to talk to their union reps about the harsh working conditions.

How much wood can wood chucks chuck? A pretty hefty stack when they set their minds to it.

The Girlies

Some random pictures of the grandgirls during their time with us.

Caroline still loves Ollie. While I caught this very cute photo, the one I missed was of her stretched out next to a tired Ollie on the floor, with her arm thrown around him.

She also loves her grandpa.

 On our rock-throwing walk, although on this one she didn't really want to do much walking.

Collin found a dandelion for Gwen to blow on the walk.

Gwen's version of chest hair. :) And in case you missed out on this stage with any of your kids, this is where Miss Caroline is at conversation-wise. Make sure your volume is turned up so you can hear her little voice:

 

Miss these girlies.

Walks and Rocks

We walk...a lot...when we're up at the cabin.

It keeps the kids busy and there's always something interesting to see while we're out tromping around. 

Frequently our walks take us over to the stream or to the river, where there is the never-ending amusement of throwing rocks into the water.

With my boys, it's always a contest to see who can throw in the biggest rock and make the biggest splash.

And lots of times, who can get the others wet.

Then the kids always have to give it a try.

When the water was at its highest this spring this tree got washed down the stream and got stuck on the bridge. Collin tried to get it loose, but couldn't quite manage it.

When we're done throwing rocks, we turn around and head back to the cabin, because tomorrow is coming, and we can always come back and throw rocks again. But if there's time, and a good stick, it's always fun to play Fetch It Up with Ollie.

 

Strawberry Shortcake

 We know it's really spring when good berries start showing up in the store. We love berries around here and like to use them in all kinds of ways, like these Strawberry Muffins. So good. Made them just last Sunday for Father's Day breakfast. Apparently it was Strawberry Sunday, because I made strawberry shortcake for dessert. This was also...So. Good. It is our go-to recipe for spring events. The recipe comes from my big Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

Strawberry Shortcake

• 6 cups sliced strawberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 beaten egg
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 cup whipping cream, whipped (with a little sugar and vanilla added)

Stir together the strawberries and 1/4 cup of the sugar; set aside. Stir together remaning sugar, flour and baking powder. Cutt in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine egg and milk; add to flour mixture. Stir just to moisten. 

Drop dough into 8 mounds on an ungreased baking sheet; flatten each mound with the back of a spoon until about 3/4 inch thick. (Don't stress about this, just free-form it.) Bake at 450 degrees (and yes, you read that right. Make sure your oven is well pre-heated.) about 10 minutes or until golden. Cool slightly then cut the shortcakes in half lengthwise and layer with strawberries and whipped cream.

 

Stuff This Week

Things are starting to get back on whatevery schedule I might call real life for now. We are trying to get some last minute things for my daughter, and she's wondering if it's all going to fit into her 2 suitcases. We are going to make it work.

I did some instant gratification cards early in the week. I did a little catching up from last year's holiday card class. I know, it is June, but for some reason I thought it would be fun to work on a Christmas card. The left card is pretty much a lift of the sample from the class, but I wanted to also create something I could use for another occasion, so I tried the same techniques for a guy birthday card and quite liked the results. I thought the stars were too plain at first so I did some tone-on-tone stamping before adding a little glitter brush over them, which you can kind of see here. 

Also did last week's Project Life, which documents catching up post-family visit and a quick trip to Utah for my husband and PB to fish, as well as a church girl activity for me and Father's Day. You can click on it to make it bigger. You can see from the photos that we stopped at the cemetery near my in-law's home. We hadn't been for a while.

Roaming, pt. 1

Another "right now" thing from yesterday. The cold front held on through yesterday. It was gloriously rainy and chilly, so much that my bird-boned daughter complained that she was suffering. 

I started a fire in the kitchen wood stove so she Would. Not. Die. A fire here at home in the middle of June is just unheard of, and I'm totally loving it. Of course, I did have the windows open....

We did quite a bit of roaming in the hills while we were parked at the cabin.

It was bear season while we were there and a bunch of them headed up to check on the bait and see if anything had been on it.

 

Apparently no bears were out tonight, or any other night for that matter and my camo-ed up men returned empty-handed, but at least they were enthusiastic about it.

Tenting It

When my kids came to visit we spent a good chunk of the time at the cabin. 7 ice chests worth of time.

 

But before we headed up there, there was a fishing trip with the girls, and they reportedly ate nearly their weight in Cheetos.

Now, my daughter is not dumb. She also is very comfortable in the woods and she knows that the grandgirls are early risers. She would rather not be up at 6, so she talked my husband into setting up a tent outside so that she could sleep past the early girl rising time. Yeah, really bad phone photo taken from the deck.

She had her own little "room" next to the cabin where she could snooze in comfort.

And she was totally content with that as long as she had an extra sleeping bag to ward off the chilly mornings.

The tent was damp in the mornings, and because we headed for home early on Sunday morning, it didn't have time to dry out before we left. So we had to bring it inside the cabin and drape it over the loft railing to dry, where it is still hanging waiting for us to come back and tuck it away until my husband's family reunion later this summer.