The Angel Forever

The Pop Century Tie-Dyed Cheesecake experiment

Posted on August 2, 2009 10:13 pm by TheAngelForever

Back in December, we did a lot of research to try to figure out which Disney World resort to stay at. Several of the Disney message boards had amazing posts with information about anything and everything you could ever want to know. Seriously, they had information about the rooms, pools, buses, and even the food. Best of all, they had photos of items that helped to lure us into staying at the Pop Century Resort.

One night, JL and I were sitting at the laptop reading about the Pop Century. At the time our reservations were at a different value resort on Disney property. We read about all of the activities that took place at Pop Century each day, especially for kids that were NHL’s age. Then we looked at photos of things from the food court. We were immediately intrigued by something called tie-dye cheesecake. The photos were amazing and we sat there almost drooling. Several days after this we changed our reservations to Pop Century Resort.

When we went to Disney in May we knew that we HAD to try the tie-dye cheesecake. Of course, we did just that one morning as part of our breakfast splurge.

We had this colorful, delicious treat twice while on our week long vacation. . . so did my parents. A short while ago JL did a search for the tie-dye cheesecake on Google. He found a recipe mentioned on Slashfood.com that compared itself to the cheesecake at the Pop Century Resort. Today we went grocery shopping and JL mentioned that he wanted to try making this. It seemed like the perfect time since his birthday is tomorrow. So we bought the red velvet cake mix, got bricks of cream cheese, and bought food coloring just in case we needed it.

When we got hom JL and NHL baked the 9" round red velvet cake in our never used springform pan from my bridal shower. It also made a dozen cupcakes with the extra batter. Then I switched out and made the cheesecake part. We opted to only do four colors this time around. So I mixed green, blue, purple and yellow for our experiment. Here is the cake just as it was heading into the oven to bake the cheesecake part on top of the red velvet cake.

Now this colorful creation is baked, cooled and chilling.

Tomorrow we will slice in to test and see how our colorful creation tastes when we have it to celebrate TechyDad’s birthday.

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Submitted as part of Grace’s Kitchen Friends on Feels Like Home.

Categories:
baking birthday Disney food glorious food jl looking back vacation yummy

Swing time with Daddy

Posted on August 1, 2009 9:00 pm by TheAngelForever

Dear JSL,

I love watching you and your brother grow up, even if it makes me sad at times. Last summer you were not walking. When we went to the park you were hardly able to do anything. This year you love to romp, run and climb. Of course, the climbing part has me pretty nervous at times. Today you were too small to go on the swings alone. Thanks to Daddy, you were able to climb on his lap and go soaring in the air. I was off a short distance away watching NHL on the dinosaur. Suddenly I looked over and saw you sitting on the swing and singing "Weeeeee!" Hearing your sweet little voice, seeing the cool dude shades and watching your smile grow made my heart flutter. I just had to take a quick video to remember this snap shot in time.

Love,

Mommy

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If you want to participate in Dear Kid Saturday, head on over to Cutest Kid Ever by clicking on the button below.

Categories:
Dear Kid Saturday fun jl jsl summer video weekend

My Blogging Sisterhood

Posted on July 31, 2009 5:42 pm by TheAngelForever

Growing up, I always wanted a sister. Do not get me wrong, I love my brother, but there are some things that you can not chat about with your younger brother about. Eventually, I grew up and became a mother. While pregnant with my oldest son, I joined an online Mommy group. Six years later, a core group of us still remain active. I not only became friends with these woman who had children the same age as my son, they became my sisters. We talked about everything from giving birth, nursing, marriage, life and the list goes on. When my water broke, I actually stopped and e-mailed all of them to tell them the fabulous news.

Fast forward to February 2007. I was pregnant with my second son and started to blog. I was suddenly thurst into a completely new world. Thanks to the blogosphere I met many amazing women online who helped me to smile as I was dealing with the death of my grandfather, febrile seizures hospitalizing my son and learning to be the mother of two little boys. While I sat nursing my infant, I made connections with people that are still in my life today.

Right after my son was born, I became friends with CityStreams through an online Flickr Swap group. We had so much in common, yet we were so different. We had both left a medical profession for a teaching career. Her first born was due soon after my youngest was born. I followed her adventures in the south, as she laughed at my battles with snow and ice. I watched as she became a police officers wife, and she saw me transition to being a stay at home mother.

Another one of my online sister’s is Renee. When I was pregnant with my youngest, she was the support I needed during a major scare. We were not sure if our baby had Downs Syndrome. Had it not been for online group and blogs I never would have met Renee and her Special K’s. I love keeping in touch with her family and seeing all that they do.

So to me . . . You Know You’re a Sister… when women who used to be complete strangers come into your life and change you. They become a part of you and you genuinely care about them and they care for you, even from a great distance. Through tweets, comments and online talks they motivate me and bring a smile to my face. One day, I hope to meet many of my online sisters, perhaps even at the Type-A Mom Conference in September so I can have photo evidence of me with my sisters!

This blog post was written as an entry for a chance to win an all-expense paid trip to the Type-A Mom Conference in Asheville, N.C. The Sister Project is running a contest to give one lucky blogger an all-expenses paid trip to the conference, as well as two additional prizes. This post is my entry in that contest, which asks entrants to fill in this blank-”You know you’re a sister when…?

Categories:
bloggy friends dreams me moments

Nanny Fine all the time

Posted on July 31, 2009 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Oy! Let me take you back to the early ’90’s for a few minutes. Say hello to Nanny Fine, Mr. Sheffield, Niles, C.C. Babcock, Margaret, Brighton, Grace, Sylvia, Val and Yetta. These were all of the friendly and quirky characters from the television show The Nanny. There was just something about Fran Drescher and the rest of the amazing actors on the show. Once you looked beyond her nasal voice, it was oddly captivating.

Thanks to Nick at Nite, I can once again watch The Nanny each night as I settle into bed. I love just sitting there, laughing (while sometimes knitting) and catching each of the fabulous punch lines. The timing on the jokes, often said by Daniel Davis as Niles the butler, still hold up today. As an adult I appreciate many of the items that likely went right over my head as a high school student. Now I enjoy how The Nanny makes me laugh, and melts the stresses of the day away.

So my question this week:

What television show from the past would you, or do you, love to watch? I suppose you can call it your guilty pleasure. It could be a cartoon (like Muppet Babies), drama (like Little House on the Prarie), or another comedy (like Mork & Mindy, The Nanny, Dinosaurs . . . . or countless others) or something else.

Now I will leave you with the fun theme song from The Nanny:

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the Mr. Linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #59

Categories:
Aloha Friday fun laughs looking back me moments television

Beaucoup de books

Posted on July 30, 2009 9:10 am by TheAngelForever

To say that we have a lot of books for our boys would be an understatement. As an elementary education major, I purchased a lot of picture and chapter books from Scholastic and beyond. While student teaching I bought even more, and again while getting my masters degree in Reading. I truly do have a very large collection of books from many different genres. At one time or another I have read most, if not all of the books. When NHL was born, and then started in daycare, we added many more books to our house.

Last year, we bought a book shelf for the boys room. This was to house their books and some of mine that had been brought down for their age group. The boys love their own personal library. NHL and JSL are constantly grabbing books off the shelves and taking them to read. The problem, the boys rarely ever put the books back. Most of the time they leave piles of books in the living room, or on their bedroom floor.

With the arrival of my in-laws last week, I had to do something about the book shelf disaster (sorry forgot to take photos of this mess). Thursday night after I was done eating dinner, I excused myself to their room to tackle the project. I took all of the books off of the shelves. I put them into a few piles and started to organize by type of book, author and so on. What I soon realized was there was really no room in the book shelf for all of our board books that JSL reads. As a quick solution I put them into a big Rubbermaid tote and kept moving along with my other project.

It honestly did not take me long, but the result was SO much better than it originally looked (take my word for it). Here is the entire bookcase when I was finished.

A closer look from the bottom up. On the botton shelf I put larger books that would not fit elsewhere, along with some of our coloring books.

On the middle shelf I grouped collections of books by a single author, along with books about familiar television/movie characters. You can see all of the Curious George, Froggy, Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle and multiple other groupings.

The top shelf has the early readers on the left (a few chapter books also here). In the middle I put an empty space for NHL and JSL to put books back when they are done reading.

On the right are some of our Jewish book collection (many thanks to the PJ Library) and books about holidays in general.

A week after this project was completed the books are still looking good. NHL and JSL have been good about only taking three books out of their library at a time. Each day I go back in and help them to put the books back away to keep it on the sort of organized side.

So do you keep your books in a certain order? How do you deal with your ever growing collection of books? Inquiring minds want to know!