A Graduation Party!!

We have been invited to a Graduation party in two weeks for my husbands cousins son. It’s that time of year isn’t it! One of his older brothers graduated from a University here in Illinois. Another brother graduated from Real Estate school. In an effort to be unique…he’s graduating from heavy equipment operator school. I didn’t even know they had these things, but after reading up on it…I’m kind of glad they do! Can you imagine someone behind the controls of a huge earth mover without experience? Thanks, but no! There are several different types of classes available, he’s certified with cranes, and they even help with job placement. They even have courses for a CDL. A few years back my father in law was out of work and decided to go for his CDL in order to drive a school bus. Again, something I’m glad you have to study…but I never really put too much thought into where you would go to learn.

With the economy seeming to spiral, an occupation in construction is ‘recession’ proof. That’s got to make his parents happy (and less worried)! According to their blog there are 240,000 job openings a year. That is amazing!

I don’t know what his plans are for the future…but until then, I have a graduation cake to make! I’m just trying to decide if I should make a 3D Crane/Tractor cake, or if I should just do a sheet cake with the picture of a crane on it. Let me know what you think

Sooooooo NOT Me!!

Ok, so it’s not quite the cute castle cake I had planned!  In fact…it is NOTHING I had planned!  But due to the fact that I woke up with a terrible case of Pink Eye…I decided people would appreciate a store bought cake instead of the cute, girlie, disease ridden one I would have brought!  Of all days to get sick!!

I had already baked the round cakes, but hadn’t frosted them yet.  So they will be made into the cute castle cake another day, and I’ll post the pictures when I get it done!!

Eight Is TOO Many!!

If any of you read my sister’s blog you know that she is getting new carpet this week. Her carpet has been bad for awhile and way too light to deal with the foot traffic in her house. Because of the excitement of something new, she’s now got it in her head to totally redo all of her furnishings in her living room. This isn’t that big of a shock as it’s something I would probably do as well, but now she wants me to hang out in furniture stores with her all week. Now normally this doesn’t sound too bad at all…furniture shopping is one of my favorite past times. But her husband and my husband have to work, so we will be shopping with EIGHT kids in tow! Are you kidding me? I don’t enjoy an afternoon out with my four, let alone adding four more rowdy kids to the pot!

The Baby Shower

Today was the shower for our nephew in California. It was held at my mother in laws house, and it turned out to be just a really nice day. I was supposed to make the cake, even spent a fortune on cake embellishments, but this morning I woke up with what I think is Pink Eye…Woo Hoo! NOT! It was awful. It hurt so bad and at first I thought I had a detached retina, but as the day went on it did get better. I didn’t get to touch anyone, and I wouldn’t touch any of the beautiful new baby bedding they received because I didn’t want to contaminate it. I felt so bad, but I was happy that everything turned out so great!

It’s That Time Of Year Again!!

Nothing frightens me more than natural disasters. Mainly because you can’t always run away from them. There are some steps we can take to protect ourselves and our belongings, but when Mother Nature turns her wrath on you…there isn’t a whole lot you can do to prevent it! I have never wanted a beach front property simply because I’m terrified of huge storms and hurricanes. When I lived in Japan we had a tsunami warning for the small village we lived in on the coast of the Sea of Japan. A couple of cars were washed into the sea, but other than that we were pretty lucky.

My husband has a dear friend who lives in Florida. It seems as though every summer he’s boarding up his house and heading inland to wait out a storm (or four)! He does carry full home insurance, but it just doesn’t seem worth the risk to live where he lives. But it’s his home. It’s where he works. he doesn’t have a choice. If you are like Chris, you need to make sure you are covered. Quickly and accurately. You can bind your next home insurance policy online with HomeInsurance.com. With everything you have to lose, it’s so important to protect yourself and your family.

Strawberry Cream Filling!!

For the baby shower cake I’ve decided to go with a yellow cake, a strawberry cream filling, and strawberry flavored stabilized whipped cream frosting.  There really isn’t a lot of decorating to be done aside from the stars in the windows and around the turrets, and I think I will just use a buttercream for those.  We are going to use pink and white M&M’s for the little balls around the castle, and the frosting should match them pretty closely.  When it’s finished I will for sure take a picture of it, and see how close I can get it to the actual cake!

Overheating Kills Me!!

I am not a fan of this whole “heat rising” thing! Our house is three stories and we sleep on the top one. I am one person that has to have cool air, circulating around me at all times. I have two air vents in my room, somewhat blocked by furniture, a ceiling fan and a box fan sitting next to my bed blowing on me. Every morning I wake up HOT!! As I come down the stairs though, the main floor is perfect and cool, and I’m sure the basement is frosty. This is the first time in our 6 years here in Chicago that we’ve not needed air conditioners in our windows. It’s so nice to walk in the house and have it cool without having to turn the air on and waiting 20 minutes for it to cool me down.

In the last house I purchased two extra air conditioners for the windows and left them with the house because of the central air here. However, if this morning heat continues I may have to go steal a unit from the old house and put it in the side window of my bedroom. My husband will hate it, but when I overheat I end up with a migraine and I’m worthless the rest of the day!

I can’t imagine how people lived before there were air conditioners! I would have to move somewhere cold and layer up, because the heat would kill me! I have to make the cake for the baby shower today and trust me…I will be kicking up the cool on my air!

Buying Some Piece Of Mind

When we bought our house we put enough money down that we didn’t have to carry mortgage insurance, you know the one that guarantees the bank in case we default on our mortgage. That has always been a needless expense for us, but necessary in these uncertain times. The one thing that I’m not sure we have is mortgage protection insurance. This is the one that protects us in case one of us pass away before the house is paid off. I don’t know if it’s cheaper to carry the insurance with the mortgage or to just increase our life insurance enough to cover both our future needs and the home payoff. With four kids can you imagine what would happen if something were to happen to my husband or I? The one left behind will have so much on their plate, that this is a huge thing to take care of. I have been worried recently about final expense insurance. If I go first my husband will have to worry about finding some help while he is at work. That can get expensive. If he were to go first I would need to find a job to support us all and still have a future that includes school and weddings. It’s a daunting thought. Hopefully with us taking care of this at our age, we can have some stress free times ahead of us.

Foreclosure’s Galore

It looks like the foreclosure rates are coming down. Hopefully! We’ve lost 4 neighbors to this, and all of them had kids that were the same age as my kids. That means that my kids have had a pretty darn boring summer! All four of these houses remain empty, and they don’t even have For Sale signs on them. The worst part…there is no one there to mow their lawn, so they are just covered in dandelions. I can’t wait until this slump is over!

Planning For The Man

After we get through this weekend’s festivities I get to start planning our family night out for my husband’s birthday. I need a manly cake, one befitting a Chef. My kids think a cute 3D chef’s hat would be good, but how boring to frost…it’s all white! The kids are planning on getting him a PS2 game and I’ve been looking at Swiss Army luggage. We are taking a ‘couple’ trip later this fall–and he has nothing to put his clothing in. It may not sound like an exciting gift, but have you seen these pieces of luggage? They are downright cool! I want to get him the red one. It may not be his favorite color, but it is mine! Plus, so much easier to find on the luggage carosel when everyone else has boring black luggage!

I Hate Slow Computers!!

How can you tell if your computer has a virus? I was just trying to finish up that last post on the chocolate cake, and it froze on me at least three times! It’s not really a freeze, my computer just doesn’t recognize that it has an internet connection for about 5 minutes. I did find a Norton 2008 download online for a very reasonable price. The nice about this download is that they offer a 60 Day Guarantee. Not that I plan on using it, but it just adds that confidence to purchase something online when you know you are protected.

Hopefully, I will be able to find the problem and post again with no problems!

5 Minute Chocolate Cake

I was sent this recipe in an email from a friend. It’s prepared in a coffee mug and microwaved. 5 minutes later you have your own personal chocolate cake! To see all of the “How To” pictures, head on over to Dizzy-Dee.com. They make it look so quick and easy!

Ingredients:

4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug

Directions:

Mix flour, sugar and cocoa. Spoon in 1 egg. Pour in milk and oil, and mix well. Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Run a butter knife around the edge of the mug to loosen and tip contents out of mug onto saucer.

I Got An 85%!!

We have been working for the past several months on getting our home refinanced. We have tried to be pretty smart, and I thought we were doing really good. We’ve never needed Credit counseling or anything and we live debt free. So when I took a little IQ test on our finances I thought I would sail on by and get an A!

I was wrong! I got a smack dab 85% Financially Fit score. It’s a straight B! Now I know, some people come out a lot lower than a B–but what I was surprised about were the questions that brought my score down. Things like “Do you have a will”…my answer would be “Dang, I know we need one, but we haven’t sat down to do it yet”! Things like that. In my mind we are still young enough not to worry about some of the ‘Retirement’ questions, but you know we are young enough to start and in fact, we are a little late.

You need to head over and take this test. You may be surprised to find out what your score really is. Plus, it will show you (like it did me) that there are just somethings you shouldn’t put off until later! It was eye opening!!

Favorite Desserts??

We were at a birthday party on Sunday and somebody asked me what my favorite dessert was. I have to say, it was a hard question to answer. It’s like favorite food and favorite color for me. Heck I can’t even narrow down my favorite movie…but I can give you a top 10!

I did think long and hard and realized that I have varying favorites depending on the season. Autumn and Winter my favorite dessert is a pumpkin cake recipe that my mom has. It’s sinful! But for this time of year my favorite thing in the world is ice cream—and if I have to narrow that down, it’s this one…

This yummy creation is by Haagen Dazs–it’s their Pineapple Coconut–and I could eat it non-stop for weeks! It costs an arm and a leg, but on those blue days…this is a sure fire way to pick me up!

A Fresh New Pad!!

A friend of mine just finished up with a divorce and moved herself and her kids into an apartment. I had hoped that they would move out by us, but she decided that out of all the Chicago neighborhoods available, she would like to live close to her mom in Oak Park. So she’s still about 45 minutes away. I showed her how to Search Apartments Chicago, and she found a really cute place. It has 2 bedrooms and a really big family room and dining room.

I was surprised at just how many Chicago Apartments are available and at such varying prices. She found hers for around $1000 a month–which is just less than our house payment, but all of her utilities are paid, so that was a bonus!

If you are looking for an apartment in or around the city of Chicago, look no farther than ApartmentSavvy.com–it was fast and easy to use. If she ever needs to move…we’ll head on back to their site for the amazing help again!