JAMSquared

Lelia of {Green} Goddess Creations has a fabulous blog candy up right now. She is celebrating two years of blogging. You have until Oct. 1st to enter for a chance to win a ton of fun crafty stuff. Click here to go to her site and find out how to enter. The picture below shows some of what you can win.

On Thursday, I mentioned that Jessica can now feed herself using a spoon. So far, she has fed herself yogurt and applesauce this way. Here’s a little video of her in action.

It’s been a while since I posted anything food related. That’s not saying I haven’t baked or cooked anything worth blogging about, just that other things are higher on my list of blogging priorities.

My friend Stephanie’s birthday was back in August. We went and celebrated with dinner at BJ’s. Stephanie is lactose intolerant and as such, most places don’t have dessert that is edible for her. So I made cupcakes to bring to dinner. I spent quite a while perusing recipes to find one that was just right. Did you realize that most cake mixes contain dairy? This eliminated a lot of doctored cake mix recipes. Finally, I came across one that sounded perfect. It has a jam center and Stephanie really likes linzer cookies, so how perfect is that.

I started getting out the ingredients and realized that the recipe called for milk. Oh jeez, how did I overlook that? I had hoped not to have to go to the store to make something for Stephanie, but alas that was not meant to be. I thought about looking for a different recipe, but I had my mind set on these jam-filled cupcakes. We went out for another reason and on the way home stopped at the grocery store where I ran in and picked up soy milk.

Surprise Cupcakes

Source: Quick Cooking March/April 2002

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shortening
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1-1/2 cups milk
• 3/4 cup strawberry or grape jelly (I used strawberry)

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Fill 36 greased or paper-lined muffin cups half full. Spoon 1 teaspoon jelly in the center of each.

Bake at 375°F for 16-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted 1 in. from the edge comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks to cool completely. Decorate as desired.

Yield: 3 dozen

To decorate, I whipped up my MIL’s Creamy White Icing. This stuff is to die for. I tinted it blue since Stephanie likes blue and added some sprinkles.

Creamy White Icing

Source: Olivia Moore

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening
• 2-1/2 teaspoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar

Directions:

In a saucepan over low heat, melt shortening; add flour and salt. Slowly stir in milk. While stirring continuously, bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat; add vanilla and confectioner’s sugar. Set pan in ice water to thicken while stirring to spreading consistency.

Yield: enough for 3 dozen cupcakes

Jessica turned 11 months old last Thursday. I had planned to do a blog post sooner than this (still later, but sooner). However, the server that hosts our website and email was exploited and died. It was down all day Friday and Saturday and part of Sunday. I ended up losing 3 posts (2 already posted and 1 scheduled) along with some comments. It was disappointing to have to rewrite them, although I think the scheduled one turned out better. You’re probably saying, why didn’t you back up? Well, I do personally back up about once a month and the server is actually backed up daily, but they restored to a point prior to the exploit. I am going to try to back up more frequently, but sometimes I forget. Anyway back to the preferred topic of Jessica.

What Jessica is Up To

She is a little speed demon on her hands and knees. She moves all over the place. Jessica is also a little mountain goat, always trying to climb things. If I’m sitting on the floor with her in her playroom, she likes to climb on me to climb up on the futon. She walks a fair amount, but only if she is holding on to something like the couch or some of her toys. We had bought one of these toys that she can push and walk behind. As of yet, she hasn’t pushed it and walked behind it, but she has gotten up on her knees and pushed it from that position.

Jessica is quite my little explorer. Sometimes that means exploring the inside of her monkey laundry hamper or climbing into the laundry basket to try to climb into the dryer.

She explores the underside of her exersaucer.

She has also explored my tupperware cabinet and I don’t know how I feel about that.

Jessica loves to play and can play by herself quite well. She doesn’t have a favorite toy. She enjoys her crawl ‘n’ cruise jungle as much as her swim toys as much as the free fire hat from Firehouse Subs.

We’ve been trying to see if she has a favorite stuffed animal to sleep with at night and comfort her when she is upset, but alas, most of the time, she just pushes them aside.

What Jessica is Wearing

Yesterday, I started packing up most of her 6-9 month clothes. She can still wear the 6-9 month dresses, so I haven’t packed those up yet. Outside of dresses, she is wearing 9-12 month clothes. Although some of the one piece outfits are getting snug in the length. She seems much skinnier than she used to and I attribute that to being so active. But don’t worry, she still has the cutest little chubby tummy.

Since about 9.5 months old, I’ve been trying to get her accustomed to shoes, primarily this pair of little white size 2 sandals. I’d put them on her feet and see how long she’d last. Most of the time, she got upset as soon as I set her down in them. I recently switched to a pair of little brown size 3 shoes with flowers on them. Since they’re closed toe shoes, I put socks on first and I don’t know if it was the size difference or the socks, but she loves wearing her shoes now. Although she will try to eat them while she’s wearing them.

What Jessica is Eating

Jessica still has just four teeth, although it seems like she has been teething the entire month, just nothing to show for it.

In the last two weeks, she has started feeding herself. I put food on the spoon and then she will take the spoon and put it in her mouth. It is fun watching her feed herself. Sometimes she won’t eat now if you try to feed her, but as soon as you let her have the spoon, she’ll eat it up.

I will warn you that the 1 year post will be late as well. Her 1 year check-up isn’t until the 19th, because apparently insurance and vaccinations won’t let you have it even 1 day earlier than her birthday and her birthday is a Saturday.  Don’t worry, there will be multiple posts relating to her birthday.

Bluebonnets may be our fair state’s state flower, but I often think of yellow roses when I think of flowers and Texas. This is kinda weird, since you don’t see many roses, at least not in west Texas where I grew up or in central Texas where I live now. However, the origin of the folk song “The Yellow Rose of Texas” is tied to the Battle of San Jacinto, which is east Texas. I also know that Tyler, which is located in northeast Texas, is considered the rose capitol of the world. So obviously, maybe I just need to visit those areas of Texas more often to see roses. Or maybe I should plant some.

Since I got to thinking about yellow roses, I decided to use a yellow rose as my main image on this week’s Texas Tuesday card (1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month). I also need more birthday cards as my stash is down to two birthday cards, so a yellow roses birthday card it is. I started off with the inspiring Mojo Monday #157 sketch, but I decided to nix the vertical panel on the right and the bow, so it doesn’t really follow the sketch. The picture doesn’t really do the card justice, I think. The background really sparkles.

Make sure and check out the cards of the rest of the Texas Tuesday team: Mark, Tina, and Betty. Libby, Geeta, Karen, Linda, Shannan and Steph took breaks this week.

Stamps: Stampin’ Up Dear Friend, Floral (background), and Edgy Eloquence (sentiment)
Cardstock: Stampin’ Up Whisper White, Garden Green
Ink: Stazon Jet Black, Stampin’ Up Garden Green (sentiment), VersaMark Dazzle Frost (background)
Embellishments: green sparkle brads
Coloring Tools: Stampin’ Up marker Garden Green; Prismacolor colored pencils; atYou Spica clear (on top of roses)
Tools: Nestabilities Classic Ovals Large and Classic Scalloped Ovals Large; corner rounder