Ingredients:
3/4 cup light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
2 Tbl *instant* coffee [I do heaping ones]
1 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup [1 1/2 sticks] softened butter
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips [heaping!]
Directions:
Oven to 325 degrees
Cream butter and sugar, add egg, add vanilla, add instant coffee. In medium bowl mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, & salt. Stir in chocolate chips. Bake 10-14 minutes depending on how you like them. I like them a bit crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. It is hard to tell when they are done b/c they are dark already. Honestly, it just takes baking a few batches to figure out what works best for you.
Enjoy!!
Courtesy of Sally Grein Hall and Sarah Hall via some outdated cookbook!
With this new school schedule that we are all engrossed in, it has quickly become apparent to me that we are going to need to build in some weekly family traditions to hang on to – to give us a sense of stable connectivity. If you don’t understand why your family unit must build a sense of stable connectivity, I would suggest some serious prayer on the subject. I’m not going to digress into a diatribe on the vitally necessary components of child rearing because, quite frankly, I’m still learning what all those are. To be frank – I feel quite like the father in the cartoon on the left!
I was thinking today of my first real boyfriend. I was thinking of him because for some reason, as I was preparing dinner tonight, I thought about his mother and her weekly family meal night. Their family didn’t sit down for a meal every night of the week because the schedules did not permit. But she blocked off two nights each week and they were deemed “Family Meal Time” and every one was expected to be present for dinner. And she really laid out a spread on those nights. It was always some wonderfully cooked meal like chicken fried steak, or a full blown Italian meal. Her kids were all older and her husband and children appreciated the hearty meal.
At these dinners with this family, they would discuss their week, how things were going, what family things were coming up, chore responsibilities would be discussed and redistributed for the week, and there was a lot of open communication between all the kids and the parents. I was regularly invited to come for family meals each week and I looked forward to being a part of them. I always thought they were such positive weekly milestones. This family wasn’t perfect – they had their faire share of family/teen drama – but they were making concerted efforts to stay connected to their children and build positive, encouraging, family connectivity.
And it was that memory today that has encouraged me to begin family weekly meals with my children and husband. I also plan to, alongside the mandatory weekly meal nights, have 1 family activity prepared for us. This week we are going to start with circle affirmations. Circle affirmations are great for building family bonds. You literally sit in a circle on the floor with your kids. You can hold hands or not – though we are going to tomorrow night to help keep the younger ones engaged. In family circle affirmation time you basically are going to speak affirmations (positive encouraging statements) over every member of the family. Each person is elected to the center of the circle and they have to sit there and receive positive feedback on their contributions to the family. After the entire family has offered up at least one affirmation, the person in the middle gets to elect the next person to sit in the middle. You continue this until everyone has had a turn to sit in the middle of the circle. It’s a little awkward at first, but after you get into it – it is actually really fun.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day stress of raising a family. And that can start to take it’s toll on your happiness and your children’s happiness and everyone’s ability to develop resilience to stress. I really think that, aside from the power of prayer, family affirmations can counter-balance negativity. If done enough, and on a regular basis (meaning that affirmations become part of your family culture), learning to speak positively and optimistically about your family members will shape the way your children learn to view the world around them – as either a place full of negative oppression or a place where opportunities for greatness abound. I, personally, want my children to see the world as a place were positive opportunities abound and where they feel empowered to make a difference. I want to raise children trained in the power of the Word of God and optimistic thinking.
This link has a list of really great but simple affirmations. You can easily replace the word “I” with your child’s name.
Also, I highly recommend THIS BOOK on the wonderful reasons to raise optimistic children.
First, while you can use any recipe you want, I highly recommend THIS CHOCOLATE CAKE recipe. It has been, hands down, the most delicious chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever found! I wrote about it a while back on my blog.
However, if you are short on time you can always grab a boxed cake mix @ the grocery store. I like to use Devil’s Food Cake over all the other chocolate boxed mixes. It is the most similar in flavor to the homemade chocolate cake recipe above. But you can use any combination of cake mix/icing. We’ve stuffed butter cake/vanilla icing cupcakes before and they turned out great. For the cupcakes I’m making tonight for George’s birthday I’m using devils food cake box mix and chocolate icing.
If you haven’t ever made home made stuffed cupcakes before – you have been missing out and you are in for a real treat!!
1. Start with a freshly baked and completely cool cupcake.
2. Holding the knife on a diagonal angle, cut the middle of the cupcake out. You want to cut down into the cupcake about 1/2″ or 1″ depending on how big your cupcake is. Avoid cutting through to the bottom or being too close to the sides.
3. Remove the middle part but DO NOT DISCARD. Your goal is to have a cone shaped piece of cake removed from the cupcake.
4. Cut the inside of the cone off so that you are left with a “flat circle” which will become the top of the cupcake. You are creating space for the filling.
5. Eat that little piece of heaven!!!! (Hey. Just doing my part to reduce landfill waste.)
6. With the center removed, fill the cupcake with the filling of your choice. Level the top of the whipped cream off so it is flush with the cupcake.
We prefer, around here, to make fresh whipped cream using Heavy Whipping Cream and Powdered Sugar + Vanilla Flavoring. It is SO yummy. Here’s a great “Step-by-Step” blog post with photos on how to make fresh whipped cream. This blog post uses the same recipe I use for home made whipped cream. **Note – using fresh whipped cream means you will need to eat the filled cupcakes w/in the next 24-48 hours and they will need to be stored in the fridge.
7. In the photo above, you see the circle-top part of the cupcake. Pick it up and place it on top of the filled center.
8. Press down lightly and smooth out the “seam” area.
9. Ice the top of the cupcake with your choice of icing. I love chocolate icing on chocolate cake. You may prefer a different combination.
10. Viola. The PERFECT home made, cream filled, cupcake.
11. Here’s what the inside of the cupcake looks like after filling and icing it. These are SO yummy.
ENJOY!!!
In order for one to become a professor of Philosophy, one must naturally possess the following attributes:
- Love of Self
- Love of talking about Love of Self
- Ability to ramble on for long periods of time expressing your love for talking about your own Love of Self
- Additionally, you must be highly intelligent and able to ramble on for long periods of time using huge words that are unrecognizable by your audience.
- Some kind of background in Philosophy so that you have a starting point for any classes/lectures you are going to give
- Ability to draw conclusions between seemingly non-related subjects and make philosophical dissertations regarding your own epiphanies.
- Ability to talk about these epiphanies with a sense of authority during your lectures on your Love of Self.
- Be technologically delayed. In other words – it is not necessary that you know how to actually use email or any other form of post-modern communication.
- Pay little attention to things such as how well you are keeping your audience engaged in your Love of Self Diatribe.
These qualities must come naturally. In other words, this ability to detach from the real world and ability to immerse yourself in your own reality is not something that can be taught in a college Ph.D. program. If you do not possess ALL of the above skills you most likely will not be a good candidate for any degree or job in Philosophy.
Because, if the oven is metal, why WOULDN’T you move all the magnets from the fridge to the front of the oven? I mean, come on, it’s totally cute!
Life with Claire
Having four kids who all utilize the toothpaste tube in their own logical way, I thought this was super funny. Each one of these tubes represents one of my children! I won’t say which is which though. But how about you? How do you rate? And wouldn’t it be great if all personality tests were THIS simple!?!?
My kids went back to public school this year and that has meant a lot of positive changes for our family.
It also has meant some positive changes for our school room.
Moving from home educating to public schooling has meant a decrease in the need for a number of places to sit and do school work and in increase in the way we keep backpacks, lunch boxes, and important paperwork from being strewn all about the house.
So after a week of imagined chaos being a reality (backpacks, lunch bags, paperwork strewn all over) we reorganized a wall in our school room to help meet the different needs of keeping up with all the micromanagement that goes along with institutionalized education. 
The Before Picture – When we were home schooling.
Here are the girls at their little school desks in the school room along with all kinds of wall clutter to help with school.
During the “mini-makeover.”
Desks cleared out, clutter removed, Royce measuring for placement, Claire directing....
Adding the important touches. (Coloring the silver screws with a black sharpie! So Clever!!)
All Ready For School!
I still need to find a clock and something else to go on the left side of the “blackboard” (which was a cheap bulletin board I painted black.) I’m thinking maybe a collage of the kids school pictures.
Before...
The girls share the smallest room in the house and it has been a challenge keeping it organized. That said, this room is still about 50% larger than their bedroom in what we affectionately call our “Little House in Live Oak.” (Ok I just spent 20 minutes trying to find an old post with pictures of the house we sold in 2006. My blog is utterly disorganized so – no go. Sorry.)
This is what their room looks like on a regular basis these days. They have so many little toys and boxes and dress up clothes and stuffed animals…. it’s easy for everything to get out of control. Actually it just looks like a tornado blows threw it everyday.
We’ve really just been throwing their toys in rubbermaid tote boxes (as seen in the photo) but I really don’t recommend them for day to day use. The girls just dump all their toys out everyday and it’s such a pain to resort everything. I really wanted to get their room organized, things put up and away, and make it a little more user friendly for the girls.
So here’s what we did:
- Earlier this week I purchased the Trofast Storage system from IKEA ($110). I actually need to get one more unit – 2 was not enough. Will pick up in October when I drive up to Round Rock again.
- Royce ran to Lowe’s and picked up a closet bracket and rod. ($8) and he hung a low rod in the closet so Claire can reach her own clothes. This also enabled her to put away 100% of her own laundry tonight! (BONUS!!)
- We moved their dresser into the closet. This created a “closet system” but without actually having to purchase a closet organization system. Eventually I want to put in an Elfa system but not right now.
- We hung the super cute umbrellas that Aunt Mary brought back from Chinatown from the ceiling. I am not sure I really like this look but the umbrellas are out of reach for a while and that makes me happy! (You have no idea how much these girls drive me nuts with these umbrellas!)
- Hung up the bug and flower lights we bought at IKEA a few years ago. Have had them in the closet for a few years now. I’m not sure why we have had them in the closet. ???
- Hung up the “Princess Dressing Room Tent” on the wall for Claire b/c she thought it was a great idea. This is actually a canopy for a bed. It worked when there was 1 bed for 1 girl. But now there are bunk beds for 2 girls and the canopy doesn’t work that well…and we’ve had it in the closet – along with the lights. I just figured I’d let the girls “decorate” some on their own.
- We hung the hooks up for the girls hooded towels. SO GLAD to have the towels up and off the floor!
Things that really need to be done eventually:
- Paint
- Curtains
- New Bedding
- New Beds
- Elfa System
- Etc. so on and so forth
This will happen when 1) We have more money and 2) I have more time. Which means … at the e
arliest… we’re talking about NEXT August.
But for now. What is is definitely better than what was!
After
That is the Trofast Storage System. I need one more set. Hannah wants a TV to go on top of it.
Claire's Princess Dressing Room. You can also see the hooks and the hooded towels. I made the hooded towels and we made the hooks/plaques a few years ago.
Jumpers by Leslie Evans
I’m so excited that fall is right around the corner. Summer has been long, hot, and dry. I hope the fall bring a clear change in season but I live in Texas so I really am not holding my breath on that one.
Fall means:
- Steady routine with the kids in school
- Family photographs
- Lots of fun outings
- Races galore
- Holiday preparation = time for some fun family traditions
- Accomplishments across the board
I think fall and spring are my favorite seasons. Although I do enjoy summer immensely (even at 110, the heat really doesn’t bother me) and I tolerate winter because I’m in Texas and it never gets really intolerable – it seems that life is at its fullest during the fall and spring.
Bring on FALL!
Well the blog itself isn’t new – but it’s new to me…
I have recently discovered Michael Hyatt’s blog and I just wanted to give a shout out here. I don’t think I’ve read such an inspiring and encouraging blog in a long time. The content is fantastic. His ability to clearly and directly articulate his thoughts get big bonus points. The articles are actually interesting to me. It’s a borderline “selfhelp” type blog, and even though I normally greatly dislike that kind of material, I think his blog is really awesome.
It’s the first blog I’ve read in a long time that inspires me to live a better life. To be a better person. To succeed.
Michael Hyatt is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing – a Christian business. I am thinking this is the kind of person I want to work for when I enter the job market.
