What's Your Superpower?

Today @HomeschoolSue who is also known on her blog as The Homeschool Chick tweeted the following.


I love that! As a Mom I DO feel like I have superpowers. Sometimes I feel like the superhero's alter ego who doesn't get CREDIT for having superpowers, but I have them. I think that God has endowed each mother with the potential, the aptitude, the giftedness that will be required to mother the particular children that He gives us.

I find confidence because of the conviction that I am the person chosen by God as the best fit for my son. This is something I have spent time thinking about. I have a lot of super powers, but I think the one that is the unique key to being the right Mom in my family is that I keep getting up.

You know in the movies where the big villain/bully is telling the little guy he's just trounced to "Just stay down." Well I'm the scrappy superhero who keeps getting up.

Even when I feel intimidated, or defeated or like I'm spinning my wheels and getting nowhere... I may even have myself a cry, but then I shake myself, I lift up my head, I get up and go at it again.

And you know, it's the scrappy ones who triumph in the end.
What's your superpower?

Chocolate Pudding Cake - No Eggs

*************Updated 07/06/21. I appologize for the formatting on this post it used to look beautiful but Blogger has lost it's mind and I no longer have any control over formatting THIS is why I have quit blogging***********

It would make me seem very smart to say that I thought of making this recipe because of the current egg scare, but it wasn't until after I MADE the cake that I realized, "Hey, there are no eggs in this cake, cool!" This is an old fashioned style pudding cake, you can't cut it, you have to spoon it out. It has a wonderful chocolate cake on top and chocolate pudding on the bottom. It's real fudgy so I suggest you serve it with vanilla ice cream. When you eat leftovers, if there are any, heat each serving in the microwave. I was planning to make fruit crisp for my family, but suddenly I got a craving for this. It's a good recipe to answer chocolate cravings as it uses standard pantry items. This recipe is from The Pampered Chef Delightful Desserts.

Chocolate Pudding Cake
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups granulated sugar (that's 1 1/2 cups total)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (that's 1/2 cup total)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon vanilla (that's 1 1/2 teaspoons total)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 3/4 cups boiling water
1 tablespoon powdered sugar (optional decoration)
NOTE: Sugar, Vanilla, & Cocoa powder are used in 2 different mixtures. I have listed these measurements separately to help you remember.
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine flour 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 cup for cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a medium/large mixing bowl. Add milk, melted butter and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla; stir until smooth. Stir in chocolate morsels. Spread evenly in a baking dish. 2) In a small mixing bowl, whisk together remaining 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa; gradually stir in boiling water and remaining 1 teaspoon vanilla ( I ALWAYS goof & put all the vanilla into the thick batter - if you make this mistake don't worry, it still tastes good.) Carefully pour mixture evenly over batter in baking dish. 3) Bake 30-35 minutes or until done - the toothpick test doesn't work with this cake because it's supposed to be pudding underneath. Don't worry this cake has no eggs so you don't have to worry about the eggs getting cooked enough. Sprinkle with a dusting of powdered sugar & spoon into dessert dishes with vanilla ice cream. This would probably also be good with some berries, I'm allergic so I can't test that theory but if you do, let me know.

Call From The Principal

Mother's of school-age children know the drill.
The house phone rings in the middle of the morning, everyone you know calls your cell phone. It's probably another telemarketer or the phone company wanting to put you on a different plan... until you see the caller ID & it's...

...your child's school!
Your heart leaps into your throat. You are at once filled with dread. Your initial thought is "WHAT did he do?!" second is "I hope he's OK!" So with butterflies pelting your insides, you grab the phone and say, "Hello?" in a voice you hope is nonchalant, cheerful & natural, you'll settle for anything that doesn't reveal the truth, you've read the caller ID and begun to panic.

The voice on the other end of the line announces that he is the assistant principal of your child's school, and that your child is with him in his office. Now your heart falls from your throat to the pit of your stomach as you acknowledge that you are indeed the mother of the child in question.

"I was just calling to let you know that Ethan has switched lockers & he is all set."
You thank him very much and hang up the phone.

So that's it. Ethan had a locker where the lock was a few inches above his head, difficult to SEE even more difficult to unlock. So now he has been moved to a nice low, bottom locker just like I requested. Hooray!

Do you think teachers & school administrators know? Do you think they know how we panic every time they call? They must know. I like to think that the kind ones blurt out their purpose as quickly as possible to put us out of our misery.

If you're new to the whole experience, you'll soon know what I'm talking about, and If someone from school calls and begins to beat around the bush - that's when it's REALLY time to panic.

Middle School Boy

Ethan started Middle School, today. How can that be possible?!

Heather & Emily

This is my dear friend, Heather. I finally got to see her daughter, Emily, when I was in California this summer. Isn't she a beauty!

I had a lot more embelishments on this page, but took them off becuase Emily is so pretty, I wanted her pictures to shine.
Here are the steps I used to create the title.

I used a text title.

I added the cat head & body & positioned the layers so the body was behind the title and added a shadow behind the kitty.

I added two heart swirls & added shadows to make it stand out from the other layers a little more.

And finally I used a flower sprinkles element and clipped it to the title layer so that it looks like the flowers are painted on the letters.

Another digital scrapbook page from Just The Basics class at ReneePearson.com

Template from Sketch Collection 22 (provided with class) by Jen Caputo for ScrapbookingGraphics
Digital Elements from A Sweet Day kit by Ellie Lash Sugarplum Paperie found at SunshineStudioScraps

Picture Summer Day 30: Endlesss Summer

The final assignment for Picture Summer was to capture a sunset. Here's mine. Texas skies certainly are spectacular!

More Reasons To Love Kindle

This is a YouTube video comparing several popular E-readers it wraps up with a show-down between The Kindle 2 and The Nook. It is about half an hour in length, but is of interest because it shows the different way you accomplish different tasks on The Nook and on the Kindle. I am pleased to see that the Kindle sweeps the competition (since I own one and am unlikely to spend a wad of money on another e-reader anytime soon.) I also actually learned 2 capabilities that I did not know about (ability to search Wikipedia being one of these.)


I found this video at The Reading Edge Podcast Blog

I Still Love My Kindle

Sometime in June an update to the Kindle 2 operating system was released, included in the update was the ability to share highlights over Twitter and/or Facebook.

This new feature allows me to share passages on Twitter (or Facebook if I want.) This particular passage I wanted to share with my brother, who isn't on Twitter:
I highlighted the passage, clicked to share on Twitter and off it went! It looks like this:

Tweet Link

Twitter linked to the passage of text I wished to share (and now I have a link to it that I can email to my brother.) The quote must have a limit as to lenght as the final word is missing, the last line should read "shortly after."

Link to Quote

Isn't that cool!