week 52!!! Christmas Desserts

I can't believe the year is basically over! My last experience of the year may not seem like a big deal to most people but it was a big deal to me.
For years I got to help Vo, my grandma, with all holiday meals. After Justin and I got married I was no longer able to help out as much as I would like. This year that changed.
Vo trusted me to make all the desserts for Christmas dinner! Some of which are recipes I have never done before.

For Dessert I made: Sugar cookies, torta Alema, cupcakes, chocolate mousse,

Raspberry white chocolate cheese cake

Flour less chocolate cake

Upside down apple cake

To me this was a big deal because it means Vo trusts me enough with what a lot of people consider a big part of the holidays: desserts.


Other Christmas pictures:

Mom & I at Vo's
Daniel , my youngest brother, opening his gifts

Justin & I in Boonville

I have truly enjoyed having a new experience every week this year. I am now considering keeping this up next year. I am not sure yet if it will be a weekly thing next year but as soon as I decide I'll let you know.

Thanks for reading!

Week 51: Christmas Party and Lost

This past week was Justin's Duke work party. After over an year and a half of Justin working at Duke I finally got to meet his coworkers. The Party was at the Marriott, which brought back prom memories, in downtown Durham.
It was great to finally meet some of the people Justin works it.

I have really enjoyed having Netflix and getting to watch things on instant watch. So, as I have been speding hours decorating cookies I decided it was time to find a new tv show to watch. So, I finally decided to see what everyone was so intrigued about Lost. I am really enjoying it so far. I have more questions than answers but it's a good show so far. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen next as I continue to watch it.

As far as baking goes this week I worked on more cookies and a couple of cakes for gifts.

Thanks for reading!

Week 51 Gingerbread houses!!

I have wanted to make Ginger bread houses for a long time. So, it sounded like the perfect thing to do with our bowling wiigue! We decided to make 2 houses in teams. We had a ladies' team and a guys' team. I made ginger bread for the first time following a recipe from one of the cook books I got in Portland. It smelled really good but we didn't eat any of it. It did however work really well to make houses. I used the wilton recipe for Royal icing which held up really well.
I know I say this a lot but we had a lot of fun! I really enjoy our bowling wiigue. Here are some pictures from that night:

There are lots of more picture on facebook.

Thanks for reading!

Celebrating Teresa's life

Any one that has known me in the past 8 years has either met or at least heard about Teresa. I started to babysit for Teresa when she was pregnant with the twins over 8.5 years ago. I started by coming over to play with Cyrus as Teresa and Merhan decided he should get to know me before his brothers were born. At first, the plan was for me to come over once or twice a week so Cyrus would have someone to play with as mom and dad would be busy with work and the twins so they wanted to make sure he would have some attention all to himself. Very shortly after the twins were born, 5 days to be exact, things changed. Teresa was in a lot of pain from a pinched nerve on her neck and had to be taken to the E.R.. That was the first night I started babysitting over night. That summer, the summer before my junior year of High School, I came over a couple times during the week to help with the boys and 2 or 3 nights a week to stay up with the boys so Teresa and Merhan could sleep. Back then, MTV still showed music videos so I would set up my "bed" in the living room with a baby on each side and watch videos and nap on and off.
The following spring I got to help them move in to their new house. The twins were 9 months old at the time. I continue to help out on weekends, breaks from school, and whenever else they needed me.
When the twins were 18 months old Teresa and Merhan split up. I was at UNC-G by this point. I came home on the weekends T had the boys to help out. I also lived with T and the boys over the holidays and summers. T would jokingly introduce me as her wife as I was around to help with the kids or do things like laundry, grocery shopping, help organize the bills or whatever random projects Radius needed done so she could spend more time with the boys. I have many, many memories of T. From our yearly beach trip with the boys, to holidays with her family and mine, harder things like packing up her old house on Manora Lane, the death of John and so many others. T was like an older sister to me. We didn't always see eye to eye on things but she was there to help me with things, but she also needed my help at times. She used to say that I was there to take care of not only the boys but of her as well.
Back in March she found out there was mass in her lungs. They soon discovered it was cancer and that they couldn't operate. In the months after that she went through chemo and radiation. I have never had anyone close to me be sick before and I didn't realize how sick she was in till very late in the game.
This past Sunday her close friends sent out and email to let everyone know she was in the hospital and not doing well. On Monday afternoon mom and I went to go visit her. Teresa had passed away just 30 minutes before that.
Today I had a new experience I would have never hoped to have had. Today was Teresa's funeral. The service was wonderful, we sang some of her favorite hymns, friends shared stories about T, and there was a wonderful picture montage. We also got to listen to a recording she had made for the boys. After the service we went out to the grave site. After the funeral it was time to celebrate her life! When Teresa moved to the Carrboro house she was planning to have a big party, and tonight we had that party for her.
Teresa had many close friends, many of whom have been her best friends since college, some ever before that. I have always admired how her friends were like family to her. They have always been there for her and each other no matter what. They don't all live in town, nor do they all agree on everything but they have always been there.
In a couple weeks I will be helping her friends pack up her house and I am guessing how I feel now is nothing compared to how hard that will be. I have lost a good friend but I know I will see her in heaven some day. But, I can't imagine how her boys, or friends who don't share her faith must feel.
I am asking you to please pray for her boys, her friends/family, and Merhan who will know be raising Kaveh, Jahon (8) and Cyrus(10).
I also want to encourage you to tell the people you love just how important they are to you and to reconnect with people you care about. Nothing is big enough deal or a big enough fight to loose a friendship and you never know how long they will be around for.

To all my friends thank you for being there for me.
Everyone of you has made a great impact in my life even if I haven't talked to you in years please know that you still mean a lot to me.


thanks for reading!

week 50: BAKING marathon

This week I had the pleasure of making Jeff and April's cupcake/cake for their wedding. This week I made a total of 324 cupcakes - for April and Jeff's wedding, 18 for Lili's bday, 30 for Sebastian's birthday, 24 for Maddie's birthday and 3 cakes- one for April and Jeff, one for Maddie, one for Seigrid's birthday.I also made cookies cookies- 50 chocolate chip, 55 sugar cookie sandwiches and several dozen iced sugar Christmas cookies.

So, in order to get all this baking done I came up with a system . First, make 2 batches of batter at a time (enough for 48-52 cupcakes). Pour them into cupcake pans, I have 4 so I can prepare 2 while 2 are baking. That way, I could baking continuously, and save time/electricity. Next the cupcakes bake for 17-19 minutes

Then they cool on in the pans for 10 minutes

They then get moved to the storing containers to finish cooling, while the next batch bakes

They then all get filled with butter cream icing

After they are done cooling they get iced

After the icing swirl they each get a flower. I made all the flowers before this week as they can be done ahead of time and stored.

Some of the vanilla cupcakes got chocolate icing, some got vanilla icing. The dark chocolate cupcakes got almond icing.

April made stand for all the cupcakes

Here are the pictures from some of the other baking I did this week:

Cupcakes for Sebastian's birthday at school

Lili's cupcakes Maddie's cake and cupcake

Seigrid's Birthday cake

Thanks for reading!

Week 49: lacto-ovo-vegetarian, make your own cookie cutter

When I first decided to have my year of experiences I had made a small list of things I wanted to do. One of them was to be a vegetarian for a week. I love fruits but I am not a fan of most vegetables. I also don't like peanut butter so I knew this was going to be a challenge. There are Types of vegetarians and I decided to try to be a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. Translation: one who eats dairy and eggs as well as fruits and vegetables.
I started by going to trader joe's to pick up lots of bananas, nuts, soy nuggets, and soybeans.
Monday I started the day with a yogurt and granola bar. For lunch I had Soy nuggets and a salad. I had never had soy nuggets before. They look just like nuggets but don't taste at all like chicken. They weren't my favorite but they were decent. For dinner it was our turn to cook for bowling wiigue so I made pancakes.
Tuesday for lunch I had a quesadilla, carrots, and soy beans. For dinner we had pizza right before I went to work. Wednesday I had a queasadilla as well. For dinner I had pasta with nuggets. Thursday for lunch I had a grilled cheese and green pea chips (they were really yummy they are dehydrated peas in their pods from traider joe's). By Thursday night I decided I really wanted meat, so I had meat balls and pasta for dinner. I continued with my vegetarian lunches but, decided while I plan on eating more "healthy", I enjoy meat too much to give it up.
My baking experience of the week include using my awesome new toy: The make your own cookie cutter kit!!
Sebastian asked for a Starwars party. So I made a starwars cake similar to the one I made earlier this year.
I wanted to make something cool for the cookie pops. I went to kitchenworks (an awsome store in University mall) to see what I can find. And there it was the make your own cookie cutter set! So ofcourse, I had to make a lightsaber cookie cutter.
They turned out pretty well and the kids loved them.
Thanks for reading!

Week 48: Thanksgiving, Wake football.

Every year Justin and I celebrate 3 Thanksgivings in 48 hours. We usually drive 2 hours, have lunch in Jonesville, drive back to have dinner with my family than it's back to yadkin county to celebrate with the Shores. This year things were different. Justin's grandma decided to have Thanksgiving the Sunday prior to Thanksgiving this year. This worked out great! It meant we could spend more time with each of the families instead of spending half of our time driving back and forth. We spent Saturday afternoon-Sunday in Jonesville. Had a nice and quiet Thanksgiving morning, had dinner with my family. Friday we spent with the Shores in Boonville. It was a very nice change of pace.
Saturday some of Justin's family came down to go to the Duke Wake Forrest game. I have been to many Duke Football games but never to a Wake game. Duke got killed but it was a very entertaining game. I also got some great ribbon fries. I had never had them before, they were very tasty. Overall it was a very good Thanksgiving break.

My baking of the week was a thanksgiving cake. I also maybe a couple of pumpkin pies but I didn't take any pictures of them.

Thanks for reading!

Week 47: Baby pictures and Kate's cake

I have enjoyed scrapbooking for several years and I love looking through pictures. For a long time now I have been meaning to try to put together a scrapbook with pictures of my childhood. When we moved from Brazil we left our albums with my dad's family and they some how all got damaged and thrown out. So what I have left to work with are a little over 100 pictures grandma has and a box of negatives (that my dad sent me many years ago). This week I started the long process of individually scanning the pictures my mom and grandma have. I figured this would take a while but had no idea just how big of a project this was going to be. They are all on the computer now, on a back up CD and on Snapfish as I want to make sure they are not lost again. I have started to scrapbook them. It's been a lot of fun so far to go through the old pictures and get to scrapbook pictures begining with when mom was still pregnant. Unfortunally, there are tons of things missing. For example we have pictures of my first birthday but the rest of my birthdays are missing. The next phase of this project will be to get a negative scanner, upload all the negatives (100s of them), get them all printed then scrapbook it all. It's going to be a long process but I am looking forward to it. It will also be fun to get to sit down with my mom and figure out how old I was in the pictures what she remembers from them etc.
Here is one of my favorites so far:



The baking of this week was Kate's cake. I have been babysitting Kate and Luca for a couple years now. I decided to go with a simple multi color flowers:

Thanks for reading!

Week 46: GPS and candy apples

This past week I got to make candy apples which I had been wanting to make for a while. They are pretty simple to make as long as you have a good candy thermometer that can tell you when you reach the hard crack point. I opt to leave out the cinnamon and food coloring for the recipe I found online and was really happy with the results. The left over sugar coating stuff we used to make caramel popcorn as Justin doesn't care for candy apples.
The main experience of this week was getting a GPS system. Justin's mom had told me that once I started driving she would get me one. It's a Nuvi and it's really cool. I am sure it does what most GPS system do but I think it's really cool that it can tell you want your current speed is as well as what the speed limit is. I did find that it can be really distracting though. So, I need to use it more on my daily routine so I can get used to what it sounds like so once I need to use it I can follow it's directions without getting too distracted.
I did for the first time this week have to drive in places I didn't know and ofcourse it was raining pretty hard but I did find where I was going and was able to do it without freaking out.
Overall not a lot to share about this week but I am looking forward to what the next few weeks may bring as Christmas gets closer and 2010 will be here soon.

Thanks for reading.

Week 45: Parties, Scrapbooking, fondant cakes

This past week was a busy one. I started to teach the SDU classes, which means I got to teach 3 nights in a row. We also had 3 parties to go to between Friday and Saturday afternoon.
The SDU class went ok, the students didn't know what to expect to it started off a little rocky but things got much better and I am enjoying getting to teach the class. (The second night of class went really well and it felt like the students were enjoying themselves and starting to feel more confident in their decison making which is pretty great!)
The first party we went to this week was Eva's 4th birthday. At the party I got to roast hot dogs over the fire for the first time. It was fun and they were tasty. We also roasted marshmallows and had a pinata. The kids had a lot of fun and Eva really liked her cake and cookie pops.
She asked for a big round cake and for the icing in the to be purple, she wanted the rest of it to be a surprise. So I made a yellow cake with purple icing covered it with carolina blue fondant and played around with different techniques for the details.

The next party was the Portmanteauga party. Chris had been talking about having this party for a while. For those who are not familiar with the concept portmanteau is a word that is form by blending two words. Examples: Jazzercise (jazz + exercise), Pictionary (picture + dictionary), Cheeseburgers (cheese + hamburger), Fudgesicles (fudge + popsicle). We got together, the wiigue and some other of Chris's friends, for a great night of games and food. We had some great snacks like Count Chocula, NUTrition and gogurt. And we played Scattergories, which I had never played before, but had a lot of fun with. We were our Wiigue shirts, Katie came as bridezilla in a toga and Justin and Scott wore jhorts.
The final party of the weekend was another first for me, a co-ed wedding shower for April and Jeff. The party was at Michelle's place and it was great to get to see some of my Cru friends.
I had the pleasure to make a cake for the shower, my first wedding shower cake. I ended up doing a really colorful cake to look like gift boxes. Luckily it traveled well.
My baking experiments this week were the 2 cakes. I got to use the spiral fondant tool I hadn't used before as well as play with color which I usually don't do much of when it comes to fondant.
Thanks for reading!

Week 44: Halloween

Growing up in Brazil we never celebrated Halloween. When we first moved to the US grandma's church didn't celebrate it so this year was the first time I have ever celebrated Halloween.
So, this week was full of first time Halloween related experiences.
We started off the day by going to the Halloween festival at Downing creek, we went to it last year but this year Justin dressed up for the festival.
At the festival they had a guess the pumpkin weight station, and I own the pumpkin! The pumpkin was 25lbs, and I guessed 23 lbs. I came up with my guess by picking up the pumpkin then picking up Lili and deciding it weighted a little less than Lili (who did not want her picture taken).
After the festival Justin headed back home and I went to IBS with Howard, the 3rd time I've been to IBS this year. This time I only got glass pearls for my costume.
We decided to get an early dinner with Chris as we didn't really eat lunch. At dinner we ended up deciding that as Chris' parents have never had trick or treaters and as I had never been trick or treating that on the way to Katie's party we should stop by their house. They were really excited to see us! As we didn't have a halloween bucket we used our popcorn buckets. We left with almond joys, snickers and homemade treats! The next new esperience was going to a Halloween Party. Katie and her roomate decided to have a 20s themed party. I borrowed Margie's flapper dress and her gradmother's head piece.
I made my necklaces and were my wedding pearls. Justin got a hat and suspenders to go with his suit.

My baking experience of the week was making a cake for the party. This cake was A LOT of fun to make. I love how it turned out! I am not usually proud of my cakes, but this is possibly the cake I am most proud of so far. The top 2 layers are vanilla with vanilla butter cream and the bottom layer is chocolate with vanilla butter cream. it's all covered with fondant, the black fondant was homemade the rest was store bought. Homemade fondant tastes a lot better than store bought, but it's a pain to work with. The flower is gumpaste.
Thanks for reading!

Week 43: Duke basketball and Night time driving

This past week I felt like a traitor. As a Carolina fan it's hard to admit I went to a Duke basketball game and enjoyed myself. Justin's brother has been working at Duke for a while and this past week was the last game he was working as he is moving to Charlotte. As he was working the game and it was the first game of the season he got free tickets to the game. We got to sit 4 rows behind press row right at center court. Duke played Pffifer, or should I say murdered them. The final score was like 128-70. So, it was a fun night and the tickets were free so I don't feel too bad about it.

My other experience this week was starting to drive at night by my self. I am now driving to and from class by my self which may not seem like a big deal but I feel like it is. In the past couple weeks I have been running errands while Justin is at work, going out to get things as I needed them. At first I figured I would miss running errands with Justin. But, honestly I have found that if I can get errands done while Justin is at work I have more quality time to spend with him. And, there is always the weekends to run errands together.

Baking experience of the week: Double chocolate peanut butter cookies.
While in Portland I bought a cookie cook book and this was the first time I used it.
I didn't try the cookies as I am not a fan of peanut butter but everyone else really enjoyed them.

Thanks for reading!