Funk of a day

Today was (is) the anniversary of dad's funeral. Not an all together bad day, the weather was nice, the kids were all to school on time. It's just well let's start at the beginning.

I didn't get to the store for groceries AGAIN! Life has been so hectic that I haven't really gotten to stop and do nothing during the day for any real length of time (after 9pm maybe just not before).
Anyway.... I started the day running late... no milk so no real breakfast for the kids... but at least they were to school on time right?
I skip my 9:30 meeting to go shopping, get the food for the next week and 1/2 for lunches and meat for dinners... Short of cash so take all the meat off the bill. OK now I'm down to $0.75 to my name... Take the kids some lunches for today... Go to work and put the perishable (ie. milk) in the fridge there and then get to work making circles for scouts (more on the later... maybe). By now it's creeping up on noon and my next meeting. And I forgot the get a lunch for me. So now I'm sitting in a lunch meeting without a lunch... Talk about fun.. NOT! Oh and by this point depression is sinking in. Gee I don't know why....
After the meeting I get some more stuff around work done... Mind you that only the noon meeting is actually work, the rest is all volenteer hours, so it's stuff that in a different frame of mind, I'd be glad to do. Just not today.
So now it's 4pm. I'm home and unloading the groceries (after I go back to work since I forgot the stuff in the fridge). Little lady decides to make some jello... I say fine you know how to do it... next thing I know there is an exposion in my kitchen and glass is everywhere! thankfully none got on the kids but WOW!! Turns out she didn't remember how we made it before and set the glass bowl on a burner and turned it on!! What a mess... what a smell. I now have melted glass and grape jello stuck to the burner and the under side of the stovetop.

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed!

It's getting close

This is the recipe I found online and tweeked a bit. I just mixed it all in the bowl and microwaved it for 4 minutes, it did stick to the bowl a bit but it was soft, moist, spongy, and pretty good. I think it was the best one so far. Now to just get it to a coffee mug size for easy indulgence without the over eating....

INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt

DIRECTIONS
Spray a medium microwave-safe bowl with non-stick spray and set aside. In a mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla extract, and milk; blend together. Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt; blend into the mixture until smooth. Pour into greased bowl.
Cover and cook in the microwave on high for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes, or until cake springs back when touched. Since all microwaves cook differently, adjust the cooking time to accommodate your machine. To serve, let the cake cool five minutes, then cover the bowl with a plate and turn both bowl and plate upside down so the cake falls onto the plate.

butterfly garden

milkweed

tickweed

black eyed susan

cone flower

queen anne's lace

bergamont

Its' official!

The girls finished their Bronze this week. According to the person I talked to the paint we used will stay on the clay tags for the garden. I figured that if it doesn't then we can always re-write them in another type of paint or dye. The girls were so proud of themselves for finishing it, especially since it morphed from this little part in the beginning to some very major work by the end (at least that's how they see it)
See this link on the way to bronze regarding some of what they did.

Here is another part.

After they dried we put them in the garden. Hopefully they are still there and in one piece when we go back next month.

With this finally under their belt they got to receive their bronze awards. And about 10 minutes after that ceremony we had the bridging ceremony. Now everyone is at the cadette level. I feel like the girls were some how cheated out of a year at the junior level, but really there wasn't much left for them to do at that level.

This year we are going to try this new thing that national has called Journeys. I have to admit that it's a good program for the cadette level, but for my girls specificly I'm not sure they'll like it since we do character education at school and this year it's the same as what is in the cadette journey. Oh well, we'll find out on Thursday at the meeting when they all get their books.

Experiment munber 5

I decided to try again after the girls tried the following wih varying results...



Adding peanut butter - really BAD, had to throw it out.
Adding extra vanilla - no real change
Adding peanut butter chips - not bad with the chocolate, still has the same issues as the others though

Adding 1 extra TBS of sugar, honey (didn't measure) :(, 1 TBS brown sugar and NO cocoa - Not bad, tasted like a honey cake, still has a funny texture thanks to the egg but you get that will anything you use egg in with the microwave. - Verdict is I'd do this mix again. Forget the chocolate until I can come up with a better mix.