~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~ with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter
Wow, I haven't participated in a {p,h,f,r} day in so long. Here's hoping this gets me back into the swing of things.
{pretty}
We took a field trip to a local glassblowing studio that is owned by one the families in our homeschool group. We've been there before, back in 2007 but BigBoy didn't remember much of it so when the chance came up again to go for a demonstration, we took it. The owner and his team were working on a sculptured glass project which is different than a blown glass project. One of the guys took time out to give us a demonstration. He made a glass ornament, a glass flower and a fluted glass bowl.
{happy}
My kids were very happy that I tried out this new recipe for an Extreme Chocolate Cake in a Cathedral cake pan to honor St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church. I seriously thought it was going to flop when I put it in the oven. The batter was soupier than soup! But it tasted amazing and made it out of the pan with only a few cracks that were easily repaired. I topped it with a simple chocolate glaze. It was awesome. Might have to make another one for Easter. (I did follow one reviewer's advice and replaced the boiling water with hot decaf coffee. I think it makes the cocoa taste richer. Also, the Cathedral pan that I have is too small for all this batter. Only use 3/4 of it and place the rest in another pan so it doesn't overflow and mess up the bottom of your oven and make you have to scrub and scrape it all off. Ask me how I know.)
My happy is this… my cuckoo clock. My grandparents had a beautiful one in their house. I wish I knew who had it now. I think my uncle, maybe. I loved that clock. I loved the tick tick tick of it. I loved hearing the cuckoo in the middle of the night when it was too hot to sleep. Knowing how special their clock was to me, my husband surprised me with the on my 30th birthday. It's is a real German cuckoo clocked shipped from the Black Forest. It's smaller than the one in my grandparents' farm house, but it's got the cutest little deer on it and trees and logs. I really love it. It has stopped working a few years back and we tried everything we knew or could find online to fix it. Nothing worked anytime it started up, it would stop again. So I left it on the wall figuring that we'd have to find a clockmaker to fix it. Well, something inspired Sean to take it down, open it up, clean it throughly (like he would an old computer) and it's working again! He doesn't know what he did to fix it, but it's fixed and Miss Cupcake has been just as enthralled with it's sweet cuckoos, just like I was when I was little.
{funny}
A ribbon tied to door knobs, a basket full of unmatched socks and a handful of clothes pins... that's entertainment!
Seriously… if you have a toddler, try this. She spent about an hour hanging socks and then taking them down again. So much fun! So much quiet!
{real}
Look at my cutie pie babies the first time they visited the glass blowing studio! So tiny. So cute! Seems like so long ago and yet only yesterday. So big now. So fast. Hang on to those tiny ones as long as you can.