Great blog!

I bumped into this great blog, by chance. Take a look!

Child Labor anyone? ;)

This past weekend, my DH wanted to sheetrock our basement and not the walls - the ceilings, to be precise! This project let me tell you is a pain where it shouldn't be! So we decided to have some fun family time and brought Annika down with us. She turned out to be a pretty good helper. She helped daddy measure the sheetrock, and while DH and I were doing the heavy stuff, she was busy doing the following...

Happy (early) Birthday, Daddy!

As promised, here is the end product of the "Better-than-anything" cake (recipe in the previous post).

We already ate the cake since daddy could not wait until his bday! It was ok. I think it could've been a little more moist and I will have to tweak the recipe a little bit.

Annika also wore her "new" earrings that her grandma gave her when she was born. She has been having some issues with one of her ears with sensitivity to the metal, I think and hopefully it will heal pretty soon. We'll see...

P.S. Just for the records, I still can't believe that my DH will be turning 35!!!!

Minnesota morning skies - February 19, 2010

Better-Than-Anything Cake

I've known of this cake with various names, but since this is a G rated blog, let's just name it Better-Than-Anything cake. I wanted to bake a cake for my DHs bday this weekend and here's what I am planning to do. I've never made this before, so it should be interesting and hopefully easy. I am not much of a baker though I thoroughly enjoy cooking. My style of cooking is a little bit of this, a little bit of that, etc. :)

Will post pics of the end product but here's the recipe

Parenting - harder on parents or child?

This morning, I have a burning question that stems from a little girl who is new to our daycare and was bawling when I dropped Annika off. It broke my heart to see her and knowing from experience (have changed daycares a couple of times), I am sure she will be fine in a few days. Driving to work, I kept thinking how difficult parenting is. But the more burning part of my question was - who is it more diffcult on - the parent or the child?

I know that this girl's parents might not need to set aside any money for therapy, parenting is difficult on the parent, than it is on the child IMHO. The child is at a age where they are more adaptable and flexible. And their memories are volatile, thank goodness!

Parents (especially moms) are guilt ridden to begin with and we question everything that we do. Sometimes I wonder if its genetic and maybe we inherited the guilt gene and evolution never even went that route! We feel guilty about sending kids to daycare. We feel guilty about keeping them home making them less social. We feel guilty about this, or that. Its never ending.

This parenting is also difficult on parents because we "understand" what is happening and we take it to heart and keep it there for the longest time.

So my burning question today is - parenting is harder on whom - the parents or the child?

Pimping the blog

Man its addicting and I have Kate to blame errrrrrr... give credit to for hooking me up. Thanks to you Kate, my blog looks puuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyy :)

One foggy morning...

Last week, fog settled in on our little town of Hutch. It was crazy, not to mention that it was hard to drive. Here's what it looked like right outside our neighborhood...

This is what I love about MN - when the snow freezes on the trees they look oh-so pretty! In my foodie mind, its almost like frosting on a cupcake! :))

And one more...

This is a view from just outside our living room window... it was almost picture perfect - the snow and all.

Another close up of the cute trees!

Happy Valentine's Day

Last week our daycare was closed since Chris was on vacation to Disney World. What a week to be out - we actually got caught up on our v-day projects ;)

We started by making some favors for the kiddos at daycare. In my earlier post I'd mentioned that nothing like a sugar rush! But at less than 75 cents, it was a no brainer. Not the mention a lot less work for me (the non-creative!). Here there are...

Ofcourse, the teachers Valentine had to be different. So we did that (the how-to is in the previous post). But here is the end product...

My little cake decorator at work and the finished product :) (Please note the sprinkles - heart shaped and in nice Springy colors!)

And then we made a card for daddy...

Annika sticking her tongue out, as usual!

And then a more nicer pose ;) - my little actress!

Card (close-up)

Today her daycare has a V-day party, so she is wearing red pants, black shirt with a sparkly heart and socks with hearts. In our hurry to leave this morning, I forgot to take a pic and was promptly "informed" by missy that mom, its ok. We'll take a pic in the evening!

Hope your Valentine's day was as fun as mine :)

So not crafty

Its a well known fact to my family and friends that I am not crafty. I mean really, I am not. While most women I know can make hand made cards, cute little things, etc. I am just what I call "craftily-challenged"!. So when someone shows me how to do it, I am always glad :)

This year for Valentine's Day, I actually made some favors for Annika to bring to her daycare. Ok, granted they are candy (yay sugar rush!) that I put in a pretty bag and I didn't really "do" anything. But for the $10 of candy and $1 of cellophane bags at Target, I got 15 favors made. Not bad for ummmm... less than 75 cents per favor. Now that I call resourceful. Anywho, I digress...

Wanted to do something special for our daycare provider who is an angel in disguise, I tell ya! But that's for another post some other time. Here's a cool idea for something inexpensive for a teacher/daycare provider.