Apple Harvest Cake Heaven!

Went overboard with my apple purchase this week- I'm talking 5 types! I always mix up the apples in recipes, never using just one variety. I gave ~him~ the choice of apple cake or crisp to cook first- cake won. Decided to kick it old school & find a recipe in a cookbook- one of those community types. Oddly the ingredients don't specify apples, but it says to add them. I went with 3 medium sized apples of different varieties (Braeburn, Golden Delicious & Granny Smith), chopped tiny. Needless to say the result was Apple Harvest Cake heaven & I see the need for a crisp in the near future!

What a day!

Do you love our scoring "liters"?  What?!?  You didn't look at the heads and recognize that they are a decimeter cube, carefully cut and recut and wood glued and wood re-glued, nailed, sanded, painted, an ultimate labor of love that lasted longer than my second childbirth?  This was the Chemistry project for my stepdaughter this weekend, and let me say, WE better get an A!  The project in it's simplest form was make a decimeter cube with a grid and a label.  Decorate for extra credit.  Really be creative for extra-extra credit.  I am not a believer in extra credit for many reasons, #1 being that all children don't have resources like she does to get here...some to take her to Lowes and Michael's and spend $30, then to Home Depot when what we bought at Lowes was wrong, and thus another $12...no less than 8 hours of time of two parents tag teaming...parents who have a lot of tools and skills and a good saw and drill...and so on.  The world of extra credit just isn't a level playing field.  She decided to make herself in her soccer uniform, the other is her friend, who was also here for the duration.  Extra points for a creative name (that was me, the "Scoring Liters").  I truly don't know if she grasped the project idea from a chemistry perspective.  I truly hadn't planned to spend my Sunday on this project.  What did we get?  You might think two cute box headed soccer girls.  What do I think?  She saw I will come through for her in planning and getting materials, and sticking through it til the end, even when dad got frustrated.  I taught her to make yarn hair the easy way.  I showed her how to make a pattern, helped her saw and drill (dad helped there too)- but they did the sawing- so they know we believe they can do it.  I sewed little shoes out of felt in the simplest way, but you would have thought I bought her new Uggs.   I helped her take her idea and make it a reality, even though she could have made a box of paper and gotten an A.  We commended her for dreaming big, sticking it out even mid-day when she wanted to throw it away, and I know the dreams she has of Georgetown or JHU will probably become her reality in a few years.  Til then, she just came up and asked for help with government homework... :).  <3 my blended family.

My Summer Pinterest Project!

C'mon, you know we all had at least one! I Modge Podged me some letters and managed to hang the photos within half an inch of accurately...I need to swap out one photo ( the one with Santa) but that was some user error on cropping the beach photos too much to enlarge, so I went with a "stock" photo.  Each child was supposed to have their own, but one of them didn't have a presentable solo picture because he was hamming it up non-stop, and I love the one of ~him~ with his oldest son so there you go!  This was the first time we had all six for a week and the first time the oldest son had spent this much time with dad in years, not by dad's choice.  Turning 18 has been liberating and I will stop this story there.  To other blended families, have faith it will get easier because regardless of how challenging another parent can make it the kids know who cares and supports them, and when it comes to the point they get a real say and the courts don't have to be involved we have two that have spoken loud and clear about who they consider their family.  Our kids have truly embraced the idea and we know the nuclear family was the ideal we all started with and hoped for, but when life didn't work out that way we really think we have a good thing here all around!  Counting the days until our New Year's trip to the Outer Banks, and hoping the oldest two don't get better offers before then!