Introducing Foodie Fridays

I love to cook... well most of the time! Someone recently asked me when I find the time between a two year old, working full time, my multitude of hobbies and the daily chaos that comes from raising a small family. It made me think about it because believe me there are days when cooking is the last thing I want to do, but on those days when I have time, when I catch sight of a new recipe that inspires me, on those days the kitchen becomes a haven instead of a prison.

Recently I came across a blog called the Big Red Kitchen and boy does this lady have some fabulous ideas. I tried out her Cream Cheese Sheet Cake for Mother’s Day (recipe below) and plan to find a reason to make her cinnamon rolls. I didn’t tweak either of the recipes to make them gluten free since I’m still getting my feet wet in that arena but the cake was awesome without any changes needed.

I plan to start posting my favorite recipes and those that I get asked for often under the tag Foodie Fridays, so stick around and see what I cook up! ☺

Big Red Kitchen's Cream Cheese Sheet Cake...mmmmmmm
1 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups cake flour

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, cheese, and sugar for 3 minutes on high speed. Add vanilla then one egg at a time mixing well after each egg. Add flour and mix well. Pour batter into a greased 15x10x1 inch pan. Bake at 325° for 25 minutes or until cake springs back when touched. Frost immediately with this glaze:

Chocolate Glaze:
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

In a medium sauce pan combine sugar and milk and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil for 3 minutes. Do not stir! After three minutes add chocolate and butter and stir until blended. Pour and spread over cake. Place in freezer for 45 minutes.

Thinking Thursdays

I spent today looking for profound thoughts to post about but I love this so much more! :) Alex and I had a blast in the bluebonnets a few weeks ago and when Scholastic ran a contest for their magazine cover I couldn't help but enter. If we make the finals I'll post the info here so you can vote for us and help us win! :)

Make a Smilebox postcard

Works for Me Wednesday -- Google Reader

REMINDER: Aussie Muslin Baby Swaddle Wraps contest ends today. Click here to sign up!

I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday and I’m just getting a chance to log on. I love themes, for parties, for coordinated Christmas wrapping paper and newsletters, and prompting me to log on and blog about something. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my daily “to-dos” that I forget about things that used to excite me. I’ve always loved to write but was never disciplined enough about it to get the relaxation that comes to me from blogging.

So on to today’s theme…Works for Me Wednesday (special thanks to We Are That Family for my recurring Wednesday prompt). Today I had a couple of meetings with friends/coworkers and all of them seemed to center or quickly focus around being organized. I think sometimes those of us who have to work at organization want it the most. My husband thinks he’s funny when he says I’m the best fake organized person he knows. I like to talk about it, I love to teach others how to do it, but I’m not the best at implementing it. Well, working at constantly being more organized is what keeps me moving in the right direction.

I love gadgets (probably too much), am addicted to sites like Stumbleupon.com where I learn of fascinating new things to help me get even more organized (somehow that additional knowledge tends to take way more time than doing something the old fashioned way, but hey, it's fun!), and am always searching for a new tip or trick that will allow me to do something, anything, better.

In honor of this I want to highlight one of my favorite things to date…Google Reader! If you like to bookmark blogs so you can read them later but never seem to have time to check back up on them, you’ll love it too! I have a blackberry (I did admit to liking gadgets right?) and with the Google reader downloaded on my phone, standing in line at the grocery store, or waiting for prescriptions is now my time to relax and quickly catch up on the blogs I love to read.

Each blog you add pulls together into a running list of posts from your favorite sites. Although you can read this online, I find that I stay up to speed far better catching this in short bursts during time I would otherwise have spent getting impatient. Ok enough rambling, if you’re a blog reader go to Google, Click the More link at the top, Click on Reader and check it out! Soon you’ll be slowing down the grocery store line by not paying attention too!

Oh and the Aussie Muslin Swaddle Contest ends tonight, so be sure to head over here and sign up before its too late! ☺

La Dia del Madre!

What a great weekend. I took the weekend off of work, hobbies and my to-do list and spent it having some great quality family time. Eric’s IPod is kicking the bucket so we spent some of that quality time Saturday at the Domain here in Austin getting to know our local Apple store a bit better. And since Alex isn’t able to visit the Domain without a penny pitching trip to the fountain I snuck in some photo time! Check out the mini scrapblog below!

An organization I happily support, called MomsRising.org knows all about being a Mom and the work it takes and awarded me an honorary Mom of the Year award. You can read more here and spread the fun! ☺


Then Sunday it was off to brunch to celebrate Mother’s day at one of my fave restaurants called North by Northwest, who luckily enough have a great Gluten Free menu for hubby. I’m trying to embrace his lifestyle but cheated today and had an AMAZING pork tenderloin with this fantastic bacon, spinach and cheese risotto. YUM! Then back to the Domain for more Apple store time and home for naps and mommy time.

And how did I spend Mommy time you ask? Filing ☺! I had over 1200 emails sitting in my email inbox and I’m a fanatic for filing all my emails into nice neat folders and only having a week’s worth of emails at at time. Recent craziness has not allowed me time to file and I was going nuts with my overflowing inbox! Am I nerd or what!

Works for Me Wednesday--Frugal, Sanity Saving Tips for New Moms

I was recently asked if I wanted to review some new muslin baby wraps by aden and anais, and to possibly blog about them. They are Australian swaddling cloths and are large enough to continue to be useful after the days of swaddling (or squaddling if you are talking to my father) are over. Since swaddling saved my sanity when Alex was a colicky, fussy wee one, I thought I would give this a shot. Even better, the picture shows the set being given away free to a reader this week!

The wraps arrived and were that lovely soft feel of good cotton, and as the packaging promotes the more you wash them the softer they get! They had cute designs in a light green and brown pattern that was pleasing, but not in any way gender specific, and best of all as soon as I took it out of the package my two year old made a grab for it and took off using it as a cape, thus proving that far beyond their days of swaddling and lulling fussy infants off to sleep, these blankets would still find use around our house.

The blankets are about twice as large as the hospital giveaways you come home with and are very thin, light cotton. They were very easy to use in a typical swaddling fold and my out of practice husband even got a refresher course in swaddling how-to as I was playing with them.

In the last few weeks this cloth has done double duty as a light blanket for our already overly warm Texas nights, is the perfect size rolled up to fit in the diaper bag and travel anywhere with us, and unlike the mountains of nice, fluffy fleece blankets we have left over from Alex’s babyhood, these stack and store in a minimal amount of space.

I’m a huge fan of swaddling babies and am often suggesting to friends that they should try it out to help baby, and them, get more sleep at night. My frugal tip for Works for Me Wednesday is to try swaddling. Before you buy Mylicon drops, before you buy a white noise machine, before you look for the latest gadget you simply must have to help you get some sleep at night, reach for blanket, or better yet a aden + anais double layer muslin wrap (you can win one today for FREE, how’s that for frugal ☺) and swaddle baby up tight for bed.

When we started swaddling Alex my family thought it was some new trend in parenting…but it’s not. Swaddling is a time honored tradition of helping little ones adjust to life outside of Mommy. All that extra space and lack of Mom’s cramped quarters can be upsetting for babies, but tucking them up in a tight swaddle brings back the security of Mommy.

If you’re a recent new parent or even a veteran that is looking for something new to try, check out this week’s contest and give swaddling a shot!



Free Giveaway for Frugal Works for Me Wednesdays!
Aden + Anais is giving one of you a free set of two double layer muslin wraps (retail value $49.95): Read how to enter below and spread the word about this great giveaway!

Contest Rules: VISIT adenandanais.com and tell me some other uses they have listed for their swaddling wraps or something about these wraps that I haven't mentioned in the above post!

EXTRA ENTRIES:
To receive these extra opportunities for entries, you must fulfill the first REQUIRED entry. But for extra entries, you can:
* Tell your own story about how swaddling saved your sanity.
* Tweet the contest with the following text “Traveling the Tightrope Great Giveaway—Free Aussie Muslin Wrapshttp: http://easyurl.net/TTCGiveaway”. Leave the Twitterlink in your comment.
* Blog about the contest - add a link to Traveling the Tightrope and the Sponsor aden + anais
* Add Traveling the Tightrope widget (on the right under the blogroll) to your site OR add Traveling the Tightrope to your blog roll.
*Become a Traveling the Tightrope follower.


One person will be randomly chosen when the contest ends on May 12 at midnight CST. Check back next Wednesday when we announce the winner. I will contact the winner directly through your email or blog link that you leave when commenting.

The Musical Stylings of Alex

Good morning everyone! Alex is what a lot of people very nicely call a verbal child. Really he is never quiet and recently the chattering has been a lot of singing. Here are a few renditions he was willing to have Mom tape! :) Enjoy and I hope you all have a great weekend.

Recessionista

I've been MIA this week while we've dealt with a crazy sequence of events. In the last week my sister's car has been hit twice, once by a drunk driver (thankfully it was parked and no one was injured), a scorpion discovered underneath it when it got towed away (my husband finds it hilarious that I add this to my crazy events of the week, but come on it could have stung me), my son came down with hand, foot and mouth disease, I had surgery, and our house was overrun by nastly little black bugs that I'm constantly waging war on by Windexing the crap out of them. Needless to say, although I could have definitely used an outlet for this crazy week I could never quite find time to post. So I'll skip the week and pick up with a thought I had yesterday! :)

I've grown a bit addicted to twitter lately and yesterday it was all abuzz with the growing wave of Recessionistas. Women who are turning to age old ways to save money in tough economic times are now being known by this fashionable moniker. I've never been a coupon clipper but even I have begun to wonder how much I could save by spending my time skimming the Sunday paper each week. My two year old is a big boy and eats a lot of food! Yesterday he polished off 4 slices of pizza and asked for more :), so our grocery bill is constantly rising. Even with the best of intentions though I rarely find the time, or should I say make the time, to sit down, clip coupons and still remember to take them to the store. Although I'm sure that works for a lot of people it just doesn't quite fit with our busy lifestyle, so I was super surprised and happy when my mom let me in on this little trick!

Walmart will honor all competitors ads. No coupons necessary! I just need to take the flyers with me to the store and they will honor the lower prices. My mom spotted a few Red Hatters working this brilliant money saving technique and they told her that although it's not advertised Walmart has done this for years. I tried it recently at my local Wally World and was happily surprised.

In a time when we are all looking for ways to save I'm always happy to find an easier way to do it!

ETA: Not sure if anyone's seen this, but GRRR, not happy at the lack of foresight from some people! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/INSIDE-WASHINGTON-Rude-apf-15091434.html?.v=1 If you're enjoying that extra few dollars in each paycheck courtesy of the 2009 stimulus, be sure to check this out and make sure it won't bite you next year.