My Beautiful Friend's Baby Bump

I have been toying with photography for awhile, my dad is a professional photographer so I guess that has rubbed off on me a little. I love taking pictures of my children and posting them on my Facebook for my friends and family to see. My best friend asked me to take her maternity photos for her, I'm not going to lie I was hesitant to say yes right away. I feel those photos are something that you will want to look back on, not unlike wedding photos and they should be done by someone who knows what they are doing. After much encouragement I agreed. I of course had to sit on the phone with my Dad and have a crash photography course just to make sure I sort of knew what I was doing.

Here is the final product. I have to say I am very happy with how they turned out and more importantly so is my friend!

Daily Routine

My son (age 6) has a hard time with transitions throughout the day, moving from one activity to the next. He gets frustrated and overwhelmed easily, so we came up with a daily routine that shows him what he needs to do at each time of the day. This was suggested through the program we are going through with my son to help with his behavior.


 Children thrive on routine, they love it, it allows them to take a bit of charge in their life because they know what they need to do and they can get it done without constant nagging. I made this one with empty boxes along the description so that my son (who loves to draw) could draw himself doing each of the activities. Ever since we created this it has decreased the number of meltdowns in our house, he now knows what is expected at any given time of the day and also knows what is coming up so that there are no surprises to overwhelm him.


I am currently making one for my 2 year old daughter as well, but I thought with hers I would do basic activities like getting dressed, eating, playing, reading, bathing and take pictures of her doing all of those things so that she can see herself doing her routine. 


Here is a copy of my son's daily routine chart. 

Daily Routine Web

Family Rules

We have been having some difficulty with our son and his behavior. He is a very sweet child who seems to "forget" how he is supposed to behave, even though he is reminded daily. I have been involved in a very good program that teaches both him and I how to deal with certain behavior issues. One of the ideas that come from this program is to have a set list of Family Rules so that they can see it. If it is concrete and they can see it, touch it and read it themselves it will stick with them more than the constant nagging that I was doing before. So far it really seems to be helping.






Here is our copy of our family rules feel free to download and use them at your home!


Family Rules Web

Ellen's Dance Dare Pregnancy - Nichole Tobin's Dance Dare for Ellen

Ellen's Pregnancy Dance Dare!

My best friend and I used to do really weird and crazy things in public to get a rise out of people our ourselves in high school. We would pretend to interview people on elevators, stare at people on the bus then furiously scribble stuff down on paper and stare again, among many other things. I love the Ellen show and I saw that she was asking for pregnant women to join her dance dare. This was our calling!!! We did it and I hope you enjoy!

Delicious Black Bean Brownies

My daughter usually refuses to eat meat, so I have been trying to come up with interesting ways to get extra protein into her. I came across black bean brownies and thought I would give it a shot. They turned out great! They taste great, I can't keep a pan in the house for more than a day without them all disappearing. Here is the recipe I use.

Ingredients 

• 1 (540 ml) can black beans, thoroughly drained and rinsed
• 3/4 cup sugar (you can probably go down to 1/2 if you don't like things too sweet)
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbl oil (I have used coconut and olive oil both work great)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp instant coffee (this is optional but I highly recommend it)
• 1/4 nuts (optional)
• 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips (optional but also recommended) 

Spray an 8X8 pan or I use an 8X11 pan with Pam. Preheat oven to 350.

Put your black beans, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, eggs, oil, vanilla and coffee into a food processor and pulse until mixture is smooth.

Pour mixture into pan and sprinkle your nuts, and chocolate chips on top.

Bake in oven for 30 minutes. Cool completely before cutting.

This brownies are healthy, tasty and moist!  ENJOY!


Nutritional Info (16 servings, without nuts)

Calories per brownie 105
Total grams of fat       4g

Rainbow Cake

This is the best white cake recipe ever! I make it all the time, and my Mom has made it for the family for years. Every time it is made people devour it! I used this recipe for the Rainbow Cake. It is from Bon Appetit (June 1994)

Cake (make two batches of this separately for the 6 layers)

Ingredients

• 3 cups cake flour (I used All Purpose)
• 1 tbl baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 3/4 cups of sugar
• 4 large eggs, separated
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp coconut extract (optional)
• 1 398ml (14 oz) can unsweetened coconut milk
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 6 colors of gel food coloring

Directions for Cake

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line bottoms of two (or three if you have three, it would make it less time) 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 2-inch high sides with waxed paper. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into large bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until smooth, gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add yolks 1 at a time, beating well with each addition. Mix in vanilla and coconut extracts. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture alternately with coconut milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients and beating until just combined. 

Using clean beaters, beat egg whites and cream of tartar in a large bowl until medium-firm peaks form. Fold 1/3 of whites into cake batter to lighten, then fold the remaining.

Divide batter into 3 separate bowls. Add a little bit, and I mean little drop, of gel food coloring to batter and mix until it is the color you want that layer to be. Use different colors for each bowl. 

Pour batter into lined pans and cook for approx. 15 minutes, check your cake with a toothpick, if it does not come out clean cook for another 5 minutes and check again.

Pull pans out and let cake rest in pans for 10 minutes, then use a knife along the sides of the cake and pan to loosen. Finally, carefully transfer to cooling rack and peel wax paper off. 

Repeat all steps for the 4th-6th layers.

You can make the cake layers a day ahead, make sure to wrap them in saran tightly and leave at room temperature.

Icing 

Believe me when I say you need A LOT of icing for this cake. It has six layers and you will want icing in between layers as well as it being so tall you will need a lot to cover the outside. 

Ingredients 

• 15 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1.5 (the Kg size) bags of icing sugar

Directions

Divide your ingredients into two batches, this will make it easier to mix. Cream your cream cheese and butter together first. Add your icing sugar a little bit at a time until well combined. 

Ice the cake layer by layer, and then the outside. The icing will harden in the fridge so remember if you make it ahead of time give it time to soften again before you ice the cake.

ENJOY! And if you need a nice white cake make this recipe in half and omit the food coloring. This is one of my favorite cakes!

Second Birthday Rainbow Themed Party

My daughter's birthday is in spring (even though the weather out here proved different, it was snowing) so I wanted to have a birthday theme that was bright, cheery and not to frilly. I of course have been all over Pinterest and saw a lot of great ideas for a birthday themed party. Here are just a few of the things I did for her party. I do wish I had taken more pictures, but once there was enough light to do so, I was too crazy busy with all of our wonderful guests!

Favours

 These are the favours I made. I took a few sheets of packing paper, but them, and made little rectangle pouches. Then I stamped them, and hand sewed them almost all the way closed. Finally I filled them with Jelly Belly jelly beans and gummy frogs. Great way to do favours on a budget! I will be doing this again!

Keeping the little ones busy...

 I covered a couple tables with paper then put out a few jars of new crayons. This was a good way to keep the little ones busy. I had high hopes this would keep them entertained enough that I wouldn't have too much screaming and running around, but alas with 10 kids under 10 that is bound to happen. The girls at the party really enjoyed this activity.

Decorations

 I wish I had been able to get a better picture of the tenting I did in the living room. I thought it looked great! And it is another idea on a budget. Buy the large plastic table clothes at the dollar store, fold them in half and pin them on the ceiling with tacks. I will be doing this again! MUCH better than streamers!!!!

 I made up 16 tissue pom-poms and hung them around the house. These are also a lovely decoration to look at, and they don't cost very much to make. You can find the how to on the Martha website here.

 I wanted my son to be a part of getting ready for my daughter's special day. He is in grade one so just learning to read and write. I got him to tell me how to spell how old my daughter is turning, then I printed out the letters in block form, and he colored them in as a rainbow. I LOVE how it turned out, I think I will keep this in the memory box. 

The Cake!!!!

This by far took the longest to do out of anything, but worth every bit of time. I made the cake from scratch, using a recipe my mom has used for years from Bon Appetite. It is called a Coconut Bridal Cake. Here is the post for the recipe. Rainbow Cake Recipe

I made two batches of my cake recipe and divided the batter each time into thirds. I used gel food coloring. It was my first experience with it and what a difference! I won't go back to the liquid stuff again.

 This cake was sooooo Yummy and Beautiful!!!!!!!

Do It Yourself Buddha Board

I have always wanted a Buddha Board, it seems so relaxing to paint something and then it disappears and you get to start over again. Now that I have children there are more reasons to want one. If your kids are like mine they LOVE to paint. The problem is that I always find that I spend more time cleaning then they do painting, which is why a Buddha Board would be awesome since you just need water! I could have gone out to buy one, but when I looked they were too expensive for us to buy, so I saw how to make one and I thought I would give it a shot.

Supplies

• 1 sheet of Brush Stroke Paper (you can find this at your local art store)
• 1 8x10 Frame (I got mine at the dollar store)
• Acrylic Paint (if you decide you want to make your frame pretty)

My whole project only cost me $4.60!!!!! 

Here are the steps I took:

 I took the glass and back off the frame, picked out my color and started to paint!

 This is after the first coat.

 My daughter wanted to join me, this is 2 minutes before I had to leave the room for no more than 60 seconds and she took that lovely painting on the couch with her. I had pink paint on my couch, all over her and on my Coach bag. Lesson learned!

Once the frame dried (and my couch was cleaned) I put the the brush stroke paper in the frame first, then the glass behind it, and then the back of the frame. Put a little water on your brush and paint away!

Marbled Easter Deviled Eggs

I wanted to an Easter egg activity but also didn't want to waste our eggs, so I made colorful edible Easter eggs!

Here are the steps I took.


1. Hard boil your eggs. First put your eggs in a pot and then cover 1-2 inches at least over top of the eggs with cold water. Bring to boil, then let them cook for another minute.

2. Take your pot off the heat, cover with a lid and let the eggs cook for another 10 minutes. 


3. Take your eggs out of the pot and let them cool down. Next you want to crack the shell without breaking it off or carving into your egg. We used the back of a spoon for this.

4. Pick the colors you would like your eggs to be and spread the food coloring all over the outside of the shell. We used our spoon, but afterwards I realized putting them in a plastic baggie with the food coloring inside would have been much easier.

5. Let the eggs sit with the coloring on for a few minutes, then use some water to clean off the excess food coloring.

6. Very carefully peel off the shell. And you have your marbled hard boiled egg. You can leave them like this, they look great! Or you can carry on with the instructions to make them into deviled eggs.