New Blog!!!!

Hello Everyone!

Long time no see! I know, I haven't blogged in ages, sorry!!!!

This blog, All the Little Moments, kind of started to become a mess. I changed the name of it (which didn't, for some reason, change the name in a lot of places, so it had two names... kind of... see, I said it was a mess) and I kept taking breaks and then thinking that nobody read the blog anymore because of the breaks and so on and so forth. It was/is messy and I decided to start over with a new blog and since I'm not on facebook anymore I will be keeping my blog more updated for those interested!

Sooooo.... if there anybody still out there (again sorry!!!!) check out my NEW blog at http://alifelesscommon.blogspot.com/

I just finished setting it up! I have a few changes here and there that need to be done but I hope that you will check it out and follow me over there!

Love ya!

Easter Cake

Last night I had a Pampered Chef party at my place and I decided to make a cake! Now, to be honest, I thought Easter was next Sunday not this Sunday for the longest time. Seriously. Kind of pathetic how long I thought this. Hence why I scheduled my party for last night because when I scheduled it I thought 'oh I don't want to do it the Thursday before Easter because people will be busy and nobody will come, so let's do it the 21st...' but the 21st (last night) was the Thursday before Easter and everybody was busy so hardly anybody came! Lol! Oh my brain... it's a work in progress! Oh, and also, this is why we're not going to have any of the super good Easter candy in our baskets because I got to the store too late to get any... bummer!

Anyway.

Ahem.

So, since it was so close to Easter I made an Easter cake (I even colored the inside to make it festive, there were blue, green, pink and yellow layers! But, you can't see it here of course =D ).

So ya'll have a great Easter this Sunday!!!

Easter Eggs

On Wednesday night we colored Easter eggs!!! Gabriel was beyond excited. He loves to help me cook eggs normally and will just stand their holding the eggs until I need to put them in the pan or whatever recipe I'm making. So for him to get to color eggs was very special. Last year he was a little too young to enjoy coloring Easter eggs but this year he was literally jumping up and down (much to the dismay I'm sure of our downstairs neighbor) with excitement!

Very, very excited!

Even Eli was excited!

Oh how long can it really take to boil a big pot of eggs?

Then we got to start the whole process...

Yes, Gabriel wanted to make sure his milk was in the picture :) Every time I moved it out of the way he put it right back!

Eli hung out in his high chair and ate cheddar goldfish the whole time :)

Makin' eggs just makin' eggs...

And the finished project?

And all Eli wanted to do was eat the eggs which Gabriel thought extremely hilarious and kept trying to take them away from little Eli...

Now I can't wait to see their faces when they find their Easter baskets!

Otiki Otiki Aye

Back when Josh and I lived in South Korea we used to make fun of their commercials a lot. Seriously, go you tube Korean commercials and you will probably understand why. This particular commercial drove Josh nuts, just because of the girl and the way she talked... and because I used to mimic her which made it so much more annoying :)

In the commercial the girl says something along the lines of 'otiki otiki aye' which when I asked a Korean what it meant they told me it's like saying 'oh no! what should I do?' But it's come a little joke that we say it to each other when the other is whining about something.

So. Yesterday Gabriel peed in his underwear twice in twenty minutes and the second time I was slightly annoyed because Eli was crying in his high chair and I was trying to clean up Gabriel while he wasn't really holding still. I sighed and said something along the lines of 'Gabriel you need to stop doing this, you pee in the potty, not in your underwear.' His response under his breathe? "Otiki otiki eye, otiki otiki eye...."

Finally get to run outside!

Josh and I have been getting into running lately. Josh more so then I (he's going to run Grandma's Marathon! The WHOLE DANG THING!) but I still enjoy it. Problem is, running on the treadmill drives me nuts. I do it, but it drives me insane. I would much prefer to run outside. Now that the weather is finally getting slightly warmer here in Minnesota running outside is finally an option.

We got a single jogging stroller last year at a garage sale. It was only $20 and in pretty good shape. But now we needed a double, or another single as long as Josh and I went together. So i've been keeping an eye out on craigslist for strollers but finding nothing.

So the other day I was walking back from the post office and I decided to stop at a little store by our apartment building called Lots for Tots and I came across a very nice double jogging stroller. I was super excited about it! I got it for an amazing deal. Amazing.

Now we can finally run outside and get off the dreaded treadmill!!!

Can you tell which of my children hates getting their picture taken and which turns into a complete ham when the camera is pointed anywhere near his directions?

Yeah... it's pretty hard to tell who is who...  ;P

Precious Moments

I never get to hold Eli while he is sleeping anymore. It's sad. I absolutely love holding sleeping babies! Eli just needs to fall asleep on his own and wakes up when moved, except for the other day that is!

We came home from the store and Eli was asleep in his car seat and he actually stayed asleep while I carried him into the house so I decided to soak it all up and hold him for as long as he stayed asleep. I ended up having 15 minutes of blissful baby sleeping holding-ness with my beautiful little boy!

Eli the cheeky musician!

What a mess!

Eli's new favorite hobby?

Emptying the entire contents of my cupboards! What a mess!

Butterfly Cakes!!!

This past week I got to make a cake for a very good friend of mines daughter who was turning two! We were invited to her party on Thursday night so I tried to start prepping for this cake on Monday night. This was my first fondant free cake too (at least, for decorating).

See, making things like butterflies can take awhile and I've never made them before and they take time to dry. So I wanted to give myself a little extra time just in case of any mishaps. And I am sooo glad I did!

My friend pretty much gave me free rein on how to decorate the cake, she just said as long as there were butterflies on it. So my mind started reeling on how to make butterflies and flowers and make a cake cute enough for a two year old.

I read up on how to make butterflies using royal icing and then flooding it with flooding icing. I made all these outlines for butterflies and filled them all, let them dry and then they all broke when I tried to take them off the paper. I then figured that I made them too thin, so I redid it and made them thicker. They all broke again. I kept joking to Josh that butterflies were going to be the end of me :) Now I didn't mind that I was learning what worked and didn't. What was making me nervous was that it took forever for these butterflies to dry in the first place so by the time I found out that they were not going to work it was the morning of the party. Yeah, I was freaking out a little bit.

So I sat there in the kitchen on Thursday morning trying to think of a place I could go buy fake butterflies to put on the cake (even though I so badly wanted them to be edible!) when I remember that I had some sugar paste (gum paste) in the fridge. I figured, what the hay, I'll try it! So I colored it a few different colors with petal dust and rolled it out and then cut out wings for the butterflies. Then while they were drying I painted little designs on them with edible paint. And you know what? THEY WORKED!!! And, they were so much cuter then the royal icing things that all the books and websites told me to do (and took far less time! Seriously, the royal icing ones were taking 24 hours to just dry).

Here is the finished cake! The birthday girl loved it and I happened to think they were pretty cute too :)

Chocolate Truffle Torte

A little over a week ago I decided that I wanted to try something new with the cakes I make. I found this recipe for a chocolate truffle torte and I then topped it with chocolate ganache and a chocolate glaze.

This cake was the most unhealthy, expensive, rich, yummy cake I've ever made. Seriously. If you want to indulge, if you want something different and delicious then regular cake, make (or order from me!) this cake. 

This is the top of the cake before I frosted it...

See, it's got a different, brownie type texture to it rather then normal fluffy cake. 

I also decided to try my hand at making sugar craft flowers. I needed something for the top of the cake so I made three white roses. 

Then I decided to add a little color, just around the edges to make them pop a little.

This cake was strictly experimental... new cake, new frosting, new glaze, new flowers... new everything!

Then I took the cake to my parents house to spread around the millions of calories floating around in the cake. Unfortunately, they do not have the best lighting for taking pictures...

Me and my cake :)

Gabriel and I pretending to take a bite out of the cake! 

Yummmmmm!!!!

Stylin'

We took Gabriel to get his hair cut the other day. I've always wanted to get Gabriel a mohawk, I thought it would look cool! Then I was informed when I got there after I explained what I wanted his hair cut to be that what I really had in mind was a fohawk, not a mohawk... I don't keep up with these types of things!

Anyway. Gabriel has never had his hair cut before in a salon. I've always done it myself. So he got to sit on my lap and have his own drape around him. He didn't like the trimmer. He doesn't like it when I do it either to be honest, he hates the feeling of it buzzing.

He didn't cry at all, he just hid in Mommy's arms the whole time and the hairdresser had to work around him.

Now, to be completely honest, I loved every minute of it. Gabriel never sits on my lap for that long anymore and he definitely doesn't hug me for that long. So I was soaking it all up :)

He did a lot better with the scissors.

And he was very excited to get the sucker in the end!

The hairdresser cut his hair a little too short unfortunately. So even with mousse, it never really stays in a fohawk, it just flattens. But while it lasts, it's oh soooo cute!

Eli's hair on the other hand will stay up all day long.

And this is the face Eli will give you if he sees you are taking a picture of him. He wrinkles his nose and shows you all his beautiful teeth:)

I love my boys!

Tiger!

This is the newest member to our family...

Gabriel named him Tiger!

I've wanted to get Gabriel a fish for awhile because I thought he would love it, and he does, a lot! He loves it so much he talks to it all the time and is always telling it to move. Problem is, our fish is boring. I know Betta fish aren't the most exciting, but I've had some in the past and our is extra boring. It rarely moves.

On the first day Gabriel tried to pet it and he also tried to feed it jello... that didn't turn out so well. By day three the fish started to look a little... well, like he was on the verge of death. But a little change of water and he's doing better. Let's hope he stays with us for awhile... and that Gabriel stops feeding him human food :)

Art...

What is art? Does art depend on the eye of the creator, the eye of the viewer? Does it depend on opinion? Sometimes I will see something on television, someone will claim something it as 'art' and I think it could be anything but the truth. But then again, I think my two year old scribbles is art.

When I went to my Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Switzerland about 5 years ago I had this teacher that spoke a lot about art. He said that art was anything that a person does deliberately. Therefore anything, painting, singing, dancing, murdering, sitting down, scrunching your nose, prostitution ect. could be art.

This made my friend Whitney and I very annoyed. Out of our school of (I think) 26 students Whitney and I were the drawers, painters, artsy people. There were dancers and musicians in the school too, but they didn't seem to get as annoyed as Whitney and I did. Actually, Whitney made much more of a stand against it then I did in class, but I was cheering her on :)

It took me awhile to wrap my head around it, but I really had no choice but to agree with him in the end, however much it pained me to do so. I didn't want what I enjoyed creating so much to be in the same category as murder, but alas it was. Art is art, deliberate human action.

Now, if you are anything like I was when I started my DTS 5 years ago, you will be fiery mad right now about my statement here. That's ok. I don't blame you. Sometimes I still get that way too. Especially when I see something that someone created that is absolutly beautiful, how can two things, say burping on que and the Mona Lisa, both be labeled as art? *Sigh.

I'm gonna go and create some art... and do the dishes ;)

tid bits...

So you know how I said that I had a lot of things to share with you and I was going to do that all last week? Yeah, so my old computer died the day after I wrote that. My trusty ol' computer has been all over the world with me, helped me create, helped me reach people, helped save my sanity in Korea, helped write many things, held many pictures, helped me organized my life a little and kept precious pictures of my little babies... now it's dead. And all of my things that I just mentioned are all trapped inside.

Apparently I should be able to get all of my documents, pictures, music ect. off of my computer with something called a firewire and connecting my new computer with the old... errr something like that. So there is hope that I can still save everything, once I figure out what a firewire is of course...

So all those things I was going to share with you, well they all had pictures to go with them and since my pictures are trapped in my old computer blogging about said things just can't happen.

On to more interesting things...

My new computer... so beautiful! Ok, ok, I know, it's just a piece of machinery, but I can think it's pretty :)

That wasn't very interesting though...

I made a ton a baby food last night. It took all night because I waited waaaay too long.

That's not super interesting either...

Hmm...

So today, yeah, it's one of THOSE days. I think I was the only one who woke up in a good mood and my children have been trying to change that mood all day. Sadly, I think they are succeeding. Eli is crabby and moody because he is teething. Can't really blame the poor kid for that. He is not an easy teether. Last time it took him 3 weeks to pop through his two front teeth, let's hope and pray it doesn't take that long this time!

Gabriel on the other hand doesn't have much for an excuse for testing my sanity, he's just mad. He has whined about everything under the sun thus far today and decided to have a melt down half way through eating his cereal this morning because apparently he didn't like it anymore, even though he had no problem eating the first half of it. Then he spilt some food all over my couch while being naughty, then he got mad at me because he spilt it and even madder when I told him that he needed to clean it up. He got so mad that I think the whole apartment building heard our disagreement and it took him ten minutes and many disciplinary actions taken before he cleaned up his mess.

Josh has an interview on the southwest side of the cities today. He was/is super excited and nervous about it. Then on the way into work this morning the check engine light came on in our car... so here it to hoping that he makes it all the way down to his interview and back and nothing happens to him or our van.

As for me, I'm just trying to save this household from anymore emotional melt downs today... did I say yet that I'm looking forward to nap time? 'Cause I am, a lot.

Not that my day is super interesting to you either... but as I said, it is just one of those days.

Valentine project...

Yes, Valentines Day was almost a month ago. I told you I was behind in blogging! Ok, so I wouldn't have even mentioned it but I had to show you our cute project that Gabriel and I made for Josh on Valentines Day.

On Valentines Day Gabriel and I made these chocolate cookies while Josh was at work. We wanted to spell out something fun and cute to welcome Josh home with. So we made hearts and letters and decided to decorate them with chocolate and strawberry frosting.

Gabriel put frosting on his heart shaped cookie...

He didn't just put it on, he loaded it on...

This was his beautiful heart when he was done decorating :D

Then he decided to do a pink heart. He was supposed to decorate it but instead he decided to go straight to the eating part...

This is one of those 'only a face (and shirt) a mother could love' moments...

The end project...