A Wonderfully Made Built-In Home

This past week was a bit rough at my house as I was under the weather, so there weren't any funny anecdotes, enticing recipes, or fun photos from trips to share except for a few from Emily's Laura Ingles Wilder Celebration at school. I didn't get as many pics as I wanted because one, only one boy dressed up and two, I only stayed until noon.

 

But once I was feeling a bit better, I decided it was time to review a book by Christian author Janis Cox called Tadeo Turtle. Miss Cox approached me a while back and asked if I would review her book. She sent me a free e-copy for my unbiased, honest, opinion.

As I began reading, I was quickly drawn in by the attractive water color paintings that accompanied the rhyming text. Written as a Christian example of how we are all lovingly and wonderfully made, it was a sweet story. There was one spot where the story did not flow as well as it might have, but over all it was fun. As an added bonus, the book also included several turtle crafts which were quite cute and would provide lots of extra entertainment value for children between the ages of four and nine. To learn more about Miss Cox stop on by website, He Cares For You, and look around!

Tadeo Turtle reminded me a bit of a book we already own called A Home For Little Turtle. It is out of print, but used copies are still available on Amazon. Although not written from the Christian perspective, the idea that a turtles shell is a wonderfully made built-in home is the same.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Rain, Snow, Mud__ It Has To Be Spring

Here in Ohio we started spring in the normal fashion with rain, rain, and then a little bit of rain. There were a few sunny days in-between, but on the rainy days, Emily and I whiled away the hours playing Uno and Jenga. And after the long, harsh, cold winter, we were happy to welcome spring rains. And then it happened, it snowed one last time. Yep, it was almost seventy one day and it was thirty and snowing the next.

As I looked at all the beautiful daffodils that had bloomed just days before, I saw their poor faces bowed to the ground with the weight of the frozen, fluffy precipitation heavy on their slender backs. I worried that the cold would kill them, but for the most part, they survived and returned to their upright positions, sunny faces looking skyward.

What turns out to be so interesting about this is the first book I picked for review this week had similar occurrences. It was called Mud Flat Spring and it was the story of all the creatures in  Mud Flat and the different things each group did when spring arrived. Some did the happy dance of spring. Some went back to bed. Some looked at the beautiful flowers. But then__ it snowed. Few of the characters seemed to be bothered much, and they went about enjoying the snow as much as they had the beginning of spring. Some of the animals bemoaned the fact that the snow ruined spring, but my all time favorite line from the book had to be when one of the characters replied, "when this snow melts, we'll have spring all over again." What a lovely way to look at it!

The second book I read was a book of poetry since we still have a week left to celebrate National Poetry Month. It was called A Whiff of Pine, A Hint Of Skunk, A Forest Of Poems. These poems actually celebrate all four seasons of the year, but Eau De Forest, A Woodsy Cologne reminded me of how we spent Easter Sunday afternoon. We did a little geocaching, did a little hiking at Gorman Nature Center, and had a little picnic lunch. The hiking and the geocaching offered me the opportunity to take some pictures along the muddy trails. I did indeed partake in a whiff of pine, but thankfully not of skunk.



Geocache Finds

A Blue Bird House
 

One of our geocaching sites was at a very small and very old cemetery. Cemeteries happen to be one of Emily's favorite geocache spots and she is always curious about the people who lived so long ago. On this particular trip, we saw some small rounded head stones that had the names on the tops instead of the sides. Some were so worn that we could barely read the names, so Emily decided to make a grave stone rubbing. Her constant curiosity reminded me of the third and last book I read titled  A Chick Called Saturday which happens to be by my very famous UK friend, Joyce Dunbar. 

 

Head Stone Rubbings

 Momma chicken has seven little chickens, each one named for a day of the week. All of the chickens behave well accept for Saturday. It isn't that Saturday is bad, it's just that he is full of curiosity. Saturday finds himself in all kinds of trouble until he finally figures out what he is meant to be when he grows up.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

So Let Them Eat Cake...

As you have probably figured out by now, I like to take whatever has happened in my week and somehow connect it to the books I review. The past week involved my monthly get together at the library with my Cookbook Club. 



Two of my Cookbook Club pals Crystal and Amy!

Each month when the Cookbook Club gets together, we have a theme. April's theme was spaghetti sauce. Now it is true that I love to cook from scratch, but spaghetti sauce isn't one of the items I attempt. My idea of spaghetti is to open a jar of Ragu, add ground beef, and pour it over cooked angel hair pasta. That being the case, I chose to bring a dessert that I thought would go wonderfully with the various versions of spaghetti, an Italian Cream Cake.

Not having made many cakes from scratch in the past, I boldly went where I had not gone before... my mother's house. Okay, so I have been to my mother's house before, but that just sounded so dramatic that I couldn't resist. The reason I had to go to my  mother's house was to borrow two nine inch cake pans. I had two eight inch pans, I had a ten inch pan, I had assorted sizes of spring form pans, but not a single nine inch pan did I posses.

I then went home and set about to bake my cake. The only problem I ran into was that the recipe called for the batter to be put into three pans. But, being the creative soul that I am, I simply split the batter between two cake pans, and put the remaining batter in a bowl. Once the first two cakes were done, I washed the pan and baked the third. Problem solved. It smelled great when I was baking it, looked delicious when I was frosting it, and tasted fabulous when I was eating it! Everyone else must have thought it tasted fabulous as well, because all I came home with was one small slice.

Italian Cream Cake

Since I had also attended a volunteer brunch that same morning (I am a library volunteer), I squeezed my book choosing session in-between the two feasts. Because I had so lovingly baked a cake to share with friends, I thought it would be fun to review a book involving  cake. The book I found was Splat The Cat Takes The Cake an I Can Read Level One book.



Splat the cat wants to enter a cake contest, but his first attempt is a disaster. A very tired Splat goes to bed and dreams of a solution. He bakes a super cake and takes the super cake prize. His cake wasn't the tallest, wasn't the prettiest, and it wasn't the widest, so how did he win? To find out, you will have to be sure to read this book for yourself. And if you want to try your hand at an Italian Cream Cake, my recipe is as follows:

 Cake 
 

1 cup buttermilk 
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup butter softened
2 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour

Icing

8 ounces cream cheese softened
1/2 cup butter softened
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
2 TBS milk
1/2 cup chopped pecans                                                               

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease three nine inch pans and flour them. Set aside. In a small bowl dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Set aside.

In a large bowl cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla beating until well mixed. Add coconut, flour, and baking powder. Pour into pans and bake for thirty minutes or until toothpick comes out of center cleanly. Allow to cool.

To make frosting, combine cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and sugar. Mix well. Add milk a little at a time until desired consistency is reached. Spread between layers and then frost tops and sides. Sprinkle top with chopped pecans. (My picture doesn't show nuts because we have a member with nut allergies).

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Variety Is The Spice Of Life

Usually my weeks are pretty much a series of routines, which makes sense since I am basically a very organized type of individual. I take my daughter to school on weekday mornings, I pick up groceries on the way home, I return home to feed the cats, do the dishes, clean the house, and exercise, I wait for the bus to bring said daughter home, I help her with homework, I fix dinner. You get the picture.  But then there is this other whole side of me that sparkles, shimmers, and shimmies with creativity of every kind. The part of me that loves to learn or try something new, the part of me that wants to travel somewhere new, the part of me that yearns to build, bake, create, reshape, dream, and make something new. The part of me that craves variety.

That is why I spent most of last week looking forward to Friday. What did I do on Friday, you ask? Why I traveled to the Polaris Fashion Place outside of Columbus, Ohio to meet with some of the ladies from my Blog Ohio group. I love this group of ladies, and I sit humbly at their feet, or maybe just at the same food court table, reveling in the knowledge they so willingly impart about blogging. Most of it goes over my head, but sometimes a bit sinks in, and I put it to good use.


Blog Ohio Moms

And the really great thing about meeting at Polaris was, that afterwards, I had the opportunity to explore the very lovely Barnes & Noble store. I was a woman with a mission. I was a woman bent on using the extraordinary book offerings to  make a spine poem in honor of April which is National Poetry Month. Now for those of you who have never created spine poetry, I heartily encourage you to do so. You can use books from your own collections, books from the library, or books at your local book store. Spine poetry is very addictive and once you get started, it is difficult to stop!



Spine Poetry

Friday was a lovely day of variety spicing up my routine life. So when it was time to sit down and write this post, something I do routinely every Sunday afternoon, I decided to review a few books that were random books, books without a theme, simple books to add a little variety to your upcoming week.

First I read Someday by Eileen Spinelli. I was sure I would just love this book, after all Eileen is so very close to Aileen. And do you know what? I did enjoy it. It was a beautiful book, a book of great aspirations, a book of dreams. It was a book about a child imagining what she would do "someday" in the middle of all the every day things she was doing right then. It made me stop and ask myself, As an adult, do I still dream of what I will do someday? Yes, yes I do. Someday I will go on a cruise, and someday I will visit Alaska, and someday I will be a traditionally published picture book author with an agent all my own. What will you do someday?

Next I read Perfectly Percy by Paul Schmid. It turns out that it is terrible to be a small porcupine when your favorite thing in the whole wide world is playing with balloons. That is unless you are Perry. Perry puts on his thinking cap and thinks long and hard until he comes up with a solution to his balloon popping problem. Perfectly Perry puts a new spin on the term, Thinking Outside Of The Box.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.