Brownies, Brownies & Brownies

So I have become quite obsessed with brownies in particular. I found this recipe for brownie covered oreos and it has led me down a dark, dark path...lol.

It's simple. All you need is a pkg of oreo cookies and a box of brownie mix (plus whatever your brownie mix calls for). You make your brownie batter as the box tells you, then you dunk each oreo (one at a time) into the batter and let the access drip off and place one oreo in each muffin spot of a greesed muffin pan. Bake @ 350 for 12 minutes and they are done. As soon as they come out of the oven, you need to take a knife and go around the oreo or it will stick. Then allow to cool and remove. They are so cute. See the obsession? :o)

So I made my first batch. They came out perfect and I brought them to work. Everyone loved them so I started to think about the variety that I could do here. I got some great suggestions about the Halloween Oreo and the Christmas Oreo but they would taste the same so I was anxious to try the mint ones.

So I got my box of brownie mix:

and my mint brownies:

And made my new brownies:

What I have learned is that cooking spray is no good for these. It comes over the brownie and makes the brownie crisp around the edges as you see in these. Not my best batch but you get the idea.

Once I finished all the mint oreo cookies, I still had batter so I used up the regular oreo cookies too. But how was I going to tell them apart? I mean not everyone likes mint so I had to be able to say which ones were which. I heated up some white cocolate and drizzled it over the regular oreo cookies so that I could tell them apart. To my surprise, I still had batter left over (maybe I shouldn't have bought the family size brownie boxes...lol). So I looked around my kitchen and found this:

I bought the no salt added peanut butter and the family hates it. I thought that by adding it to the extremely sweet brownies that it would be offset but I don't think I was successful. I created these:

So when I was done, here was the trio that I had to offer:

In order they are brownie covered mint oreo cookies, brownie covered regular cookies with white chocolate drizzled on it and peanut butter brownies. Aren't they pretty?

Pictures

Yesterday I promised you pictures. I think that this all started when I took the cake decorating classes. It was four weeks for the first course and these were my projects.

The first week we practiced on cookies. Here is my favorite cookie that I decorated:

Then we did our first cake, sorry for the blurry picture.

And then we made cupcakes with different tips we learned how to use. I really hated that blue one. Some of the girls did such a great job but mine was horrible.

The last thing we did was our final exam cake which I am really proud of:

It appears as though I got the bug to make things after that. I made cupcakes for Jose's birthday.

then I made cupcakes for my neice, Brooklyn's birthday.

Then I made cake pops just because I felt like making them

And finally the girls at work started to get spoiled and started requesting things. This was the first strange creation.

These are chocolate cookie covered s'mores. They were not the easiest thing to make but once I got the hang of them, they were not that bad. They were a hit at work.

So this was the beginning of my baking obsession. That is what my daughters says. She says that I have become obsessed. I am just happy to have people appreciate what I do. Everyone at work has been happy with all my treats and it is wonderful to get such great feedback.

I will do another post on my brownie creations.

Baking and More Baking

I don’t like to bake.

Well…I don’t like to bake in the traditional sense. I mean, why do I need to measure out the flour, the sugar, the baking powder and everything else you need when I can go to the store and buy a box that already has everything in it measured out for me. Doing all that just has never really interested me.

I have always been more of a cook. You know, a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it comes out different every time but it comes out great. I like that if you don’t have butter, you can use oil or spray or if you don’t have chicken, you can make it with beef or shrimp. I am not very good at having all the things on hand and measuring. It’s a taste thing. I make it to taste, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less depending on my mood.

So you can imagine my surprise when I find myself baking. I mean baking a lot. It started with cake pops. Then it was chocolate chip covered s’mores. Then it was brownie covered oreos. And some cupcakes and muffins mixed in between too.
Here is what I have realized. I don’t like to bake, I like to create. I like creations. I don’t just like to make brownies. I like the oreo covered brownies and I have tried the regular oreos and the mint oreos and even threw some peanut butter into some brownies when I had batter left over. It is all about the creation to me. Most of what I have been doing is from a box but I have doctored it up to be a new creation. Not my creations. I can’t take credit for them, but I have played with the ideas until they worked for me.

I can’t seem to get the chocolate thin enough on the cake pops to make them smooth the way that they should be but that didn’t stop me. As a matter of fact, everyone likes them just the way they are. I am excited about trying out the Halloween oreos so that I can make the brownie covered oreos with the orange crème. I am picking my brain at what I can sprinkle on top to make them festive on the outside as well as on the inside. It’s all about being prettier. You do eat with your eyes first after all.

So this past weekend I made the brownie covered oreos for our friends from MA that came to spend the day with us. They seemed to like them a lot. Then Sunday I made apple cinnamon muffins in the morning for breakfast and I made brownie covered mint oreos for a party that I went to for a girl here at work. I had made the regular ones before for work and she requested that I make them. I thought that it would be cool to try the mint ones and they were a huge hit. I had extra batter left over so I used up some leftover regular ones from Saturday and I drizzled some white chocolate over them so that people would know which ones were regular and which ones were mint. And I still had more batter leftover so I added peanut butter to those. My family wasn’t fond of the peanut butter ones so that is motivation for me to play with them a bit more until I can make ones they love.

I will post pictures tomorrow of all my goodies that I have been talking about today.

The 2012-2013 School Year

The 2012-2013 school year has officially begun. Begun…is that the correct way to say that or should I say began. Oh well, let me go on.

CJ and Nathan started school on Wednesday and Larissa started school on Thursday. It is really too soon to tell what kind of year it’s going to be but I will do everything in my power to make it the best possible year. Of course, I tried to do the same thing last year but that failed….literally. Honestly though, I think that both Nathan and Larissa gave up at some point making any efforts on my part or on the part of the school completely pointless.

I have signed up for MMS. That is a parental site that allows me to see what assignments they have due, when they are due and if they are handed in. I can also see grades once they are posted, or at least that is what I am told. So far, Nathan has three assignments due in Physical Science so I can sort of tell how the site works. I am not sure yet if it will be as good as I had hoped though. The assignments are listed by name but that means nothing to me. So I still have no idea what is due, just that an assignment named “the maze” is due on Sept 4th. Now I know what that is because Nathan told me but I am pretty sure that at one point, I am going to tell him something is due and he won’t know what I am talking about. Or Larissa for that matter.

Larissa seems excited about this school year. Apparently she never really like the kids in her class last year and all of her friends were juniors anyways so she will be graduating with them now. I just don’t understand my daughter. I am pretty sure that is not reason enough to throw away a year’s worth of education and of life just to graduate with your friends. But then again, there is little that I truly understand about the way that Larissa thinks of her education. She is looking forward to the yearbook and prom and graduation and her class ring. Most of those things she never got to do last year or even showed any interest in. Right now, I am just staying optimistic because that is all that I can do. I want to be supportive of the things she does. Here she is the first day of school. She hates her hair that she had to chop off because she destroyed it from dying it too much so she wasn’t thrilled to take the picture.

CJ loves his teacher too. He misses some of the kids that are not in his class anymore but he still sees them at recess and lunch so it’s not a big deal. He enjoys school and I hope to keep it that way. Watching CJ grow just makes me smile. He enjoys spending so much time outside and I love that he does. He plays with the neighbors each and every day. I wonder what will happen when the weather turns cold and it’s too cold to play outside. Here is picture right before heading off to the first day of school. He could not wait to get out the door.

CJ has started karate. He has had his first two meetings and his classes start next week. He will be going every Tuesday and Thursday. He can go as many times during the week as he wants at no additional cost. I love the karate school that he is enrolled in. I think that they will help him grow into a well-rounded boy. I really wanted Nathan to go too but he has no interest in it at all. I won’t push it on him. Here is CJ getting his white belt. They teach the kids that all things in life must be earned so he had to earn his white belt. I think that is awesome.

Nathan has been doing better on his meds. He has been playing with CJ and getting things done. He has already started his project that is due on Sept 4th and it’s not a rushed project, he is actually taking time to make it look really nice. I am proud of him and I hope that this is an indication of what the school year will be like for us. He still shows no interest in any extra-curricular activities but I am enjoying the small changes. The biggest thing is that it has not changed his personality. He is still a clown and full of jokes. I don’t ever want his personality to be masked by the meds. Here he is the first day of school. He really does not like to take pictures at all.

So that is it. That is how the school year has started. I hope to have some good progress this year and will try to document it all here. I hope everyone has a great 2012-2013 school year !

Preparing Nathan for School

Yesterday I took Nathan to the doctor. It was not his physical but it was an appointment to discuss his meds and get him to where he needs to be for the first day of school.

I have always struggled with the option of medication. I only wanted to use it as a last resort. Last school year, after failing several classes first quarter, I worked with his doctor to get him on 26mg of Concerta. That worked ok, no side effects and his concentration seemed to improve. On our first appointment back to the doctor to discuss how it has been working, Nathan mentioned that it appeared to be wearing off too early and he wasn’t able to get through his homework. So his medication was changed to 36 mg of Concerta but extended release. I have to admit that I did notice a good change in Nathan. He was not as argumentative at home and most importantly, he maintained his colorful personality…lol. Nathan is a comedian and a jokester and I didn’t want that to change because I have seen kids get medicated to the point that they are no longer themselves.

Second quarter report card was great. He got all B’s and C’s…which is great. He brought up every single grade. We had also taken away his laptop after the first quarter report card since we thought the amount of time he was spending on it might have been a factor in his grades as well. So I was happy with how that quarter ended. So happy that we gave Nathan his laptop back at the beginning of the third quarter as a reward.

Unfortunately, when the prescription ran out a couple of weeks into third quarter, we needed to go in for another evaluation to get a refill prescription and I had just started working and could not take the additional time to do that since I had already taken so many days already. Days ran into weeks and weeks into months and I was just so used to Nathan being back to “his normal” that I didn’t think it was a big deal. Well third quarter report card came and he had dropped in all his subjects again and failed many of them. I wasn’t really convinced that it was all the medication that had made him do so well because we had also taken away his laptop. Then he went off of the medication and he got his laptop back so I wasn’t sure what to think. Since I was still skeptical with the medication, I decided to keep him off the medication but take away his laptop again.

I got the confirmation that I needed. Even without the laptop and any distractions, Nathan failed his 8th grade year. I know that it is not entirely not my fault but I should have kept him on the medication. I feel as though I am hurting him by making him struggle. I had always thought of medication as a crutch and not as an aide.

I did a lot of thinking over the summer and I stared at his report card, I knew that I had made the wrong decisions. I made the appointment to take him back to discuss medication once again. So as I said at the very beginning of this post, yesterday we went to the doctor. We all made the decision to put him back on 36mg of Concerta and see how that reacts with him. He gained 14 lbs and grew 4 inches in the last 10 months so the same medication might need some tweeking. I am willing to take him as many times as necessary to get Nathan the help that he needs to be the best Nathan he can be this year.

This is going to be an amazing 2012-2013 school year !

Cake Decorating Anyone

Yesterday I took my first cake decorating class. I had such a good time. I was shocked, in a good way, at what I learned. I assumed it was just cake decorating. I learned all about how to make sure your cake comes out the way that you want it to and how to make my own homemade frosting. I learned how to make star tips which is the tip used to make all the form cakes that Wilton sells like this one

…see all those little stars. I can make those now ! What a great feeling. I mean you have all seen the cakes that I have made in the past. They might not be anything you would sell at the store but I am certainly proud of them. But now I can be even prouder of what I make.

What is even better is that I have people that want to take them too so I am going to wait a month to take the other class so that we can take them all together. Didi wants to take them and so does Dalissa. It would be great to take the next courses with them both.

Let’s see who else I might be able to get in with me….lol!

Perfect for us

Our house is officially a HOME. Our HOME!

Our home is perfect. It is perfect for us. And now that things are finally falling into place, things feel right. Everything seems a little brighter and easier to deal with. Life is not easy. Our lives are not easy. As a matter of fact, we have some things that we are having a little trouble getting over the hurdles but they seem bearable now. It’s not that the problems have gotten easier but since there is less stress from the house, it means less on my shoulders and that means it feels lighter.

When I walk into the front door, I smile. There are still stacks of boxes left to unpack and things still left to take to Good Will and maybe even a few things that I would love to get for our new home but it already feels perfect. It fits like a glove…for our family.

I remember when I first saw the house. The landlord kept telling me about all the things wrong with it. The things that could mean it’s a deal breaker for us. Things I wish our old landlord had bothered to sit down and tell us about our previous house. All the things that he told me though, were not deal breakers for us. The bathroom doesn’t have a window. Would it be good to have one? Sure but it certainly is not a deal breaker. The biggie that might really scare many families away is that there are no closets. Yes you heard me right. There are no closets in the bedrooms at all. There is one big closet off of the dining room which is where we have our holiday stuff and our vacuum and things like that. We have a basement for storage also but I hate basements and try to keep what we put down there to a minimum. I even pared down on my holiday stuff and will probably go through it again to pare down some more. The great thing about not having closets is that you can’t just shove things in the closet and you really need to think about what you keep. We have found alternate forms of storage that fit us. We have a free standing wardrobe that holds all our hanging clothes. I have cut down moving boxes that fit perfectly under the bed that I will cover with pretty wrapping paper so that it looks good. We got a big armoire for the dining room that holds all our board games and my craft stuff. There is a dresser beside the computer desk to hold all the computer stuff out of sight.

We have gotten rid of so much unwanted stuff. I am sure that we will get rid of so much more. I hate a cluttered house. I want to enjoy what we have. I have found stuff from three houses ago that we forgot we had. Like CJ’s igloo tent that we bought at Ikea three years ago. It was buried in a box somewhere and we couldn’t enjoy it because it was packed away. The great thing was that I washed it, put it up and he didn’t even remember it so it was like getting a new one all together. He had a blast playing with it this weekend.

I am enjoying our house and can't wait to start entertaining in our new home.