Anyhow, I found a recipe (via Pinterest, duh) to make a Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. The pictures were so pretty and mouth watering and I could not wait to make it. Granted, I was a little nervous. Making something so pretty seemed daunting and some of the ingredients I had never used before in baking. I hadn't baked many real cakes (just mixes), but I had baked plenty of cookies and brownies over the years so facing sour cream and distilled vinegar as ingredients just made me think I was making something really weird.
Either way, the cake was actually very rich and yummy. Even with a couple of mistakes in baking (the batter ended up actually being thicker at the bottom of the pan and I didn't realize that until too late and I ran out of powdered sugar for the icing, oh, and not using parchment paper). The cake sections were very fluffy and light, but rich. Because the cakes were so light, I really should have followed the recommendation to freeze the cake in the pans before trying to remove the cake from the pans. So, because I didn't use parchment paper, and, due to the delicateness of the cake, getting a perfect round out of the pan didn't happen. Which led to the cake collapsing on one side later, after putting some of the icing, lacking some powdered sugar, on the cake. Anyhow, mom ended up having to make the glaze for me because Asher became demanding of my time, and she and Brandon made executive decisions on how to glaze a collapsed cake. Well, here is a picture of the cake.
And here is a picture of what one of the slices of the non-collapsed side looked like. Not too bad, right? It still tasted great. It actually tasted better after being refrigerated because the chill to the cake made it feel less delicate and just seemed to mesh better with the cake as a whole. Oh well. I may not try it again. Not because it was too much for me but because we prefer the torte that I made to the cake, so, if I'm going to pour my time into a dessert, might as well pick one we freaking loved versus liked a lot.
This is the torte we love so much.
Moving on to home ownership. This year we have a lawn mower, weed eater, and edger of our own. Actually, our weed eater and edger are all one machine, you only have to switch out the end section to change the function. It is pretty sweet, to tell you the truth. Since Brandon is very allergic to freshly cut grass, most of the time I'm taking care of the yard (I don't mind! It is exercise, sunshine, and a sense of accomplishment!). Wow, have I had to learn a lot. I had to learn how to use the choke on one of those 2 cycle engines, how to start them, mixing gas and oil, and I can now tell you what a lawn mower sounds like when it is about to run out of gas! However, my yard is pretty awesome. It still has some weeds to it, but it looks pretty trim. I'm having to maintain it weekly (which is expected, honestly) but it is so much cheaper than paying someone to do it. And better for us, really. We just need to add some dirt to one side of the house since the rain has washed it away from the foundation and add some to the back yard to even it out. We are also venturing into a little gardening. Our parsley (2 different versions) seem to be thriving. It is too early to tell on the other stuff.
Also, our garage door broke. Sigh. I can't stand when things break. No worries, I thought. We still had that home warranty thingy from buying the house since it hasn't been a year yet. Oh, it doesn't cover the garage door. If we would have opted in for a special coverage, we would have had the door opener covered, and I think she told me there was some special coverage that would have covered the door, and if the electrical system broke we would have been covered, but not for the actual door. Turns out, the pulley system failed and one of the cables got loose, which made the door get lopsided and the roller pop out...making the door not functional. Luckily, my dad is awesome and was able to come and fix it for us. He can't figure out why the pulley system failed and thus caused all the trouble, but, for now, the thing works like a rock star. We almost had to spend money! Gasp!
Lastly, I'm trialing a daily chores set up. I found some links on Pinterest of people who had put together little game plans of chores to take care of every day so the house is basically always clean, but instead of torturing yourself in one day, you do little bits of maintenance and cleaning every day to create an altogether clean house and not killing yourself in one day. I would post them, but I think I'll post my finalized one that works for us when we have created it and feel that it works. For an example of why I think one won't work out for us is I don't understand why someone would separated deep vacuuming and mopping/swiffering the floors by like 3 days. I see no point in mopping or Swiffering the floor if you hadn't vacuumed first. I do understand asking someone to do both of those in one day, plus working and cooking and whatever else, is too much, but you should follow deep vacuuming day with Swiffering and mopping, in my opinion. That way the floors are still mostly clean and you won't be just mopping around the dirt. Also, not on the lists I've found, is wiping down cabinets and the fronts of your appliances, like the refrigerator, dishwasher, and oven. Even in the bathroom the cabinets seem to get dirty from toothpaste or shaving cream and such. Our refrigerator is stainless steel, so when it's dirty, it is extremely unattractive (of course when it's clean, you feel like the kitchen is sterile!). Point being, we're working on managing our lives of work, play, home maintenance and cleaning, child rearing, and dog ownership. I would like this to work out with me managing graduate school and little projects I like to take on, like Pinterest projects or finally unpacking or organizing the left over boxes in the garage since I've finally recycled all the other boxes.
So, standby for all of that!
Thanks for stopping by!
Ribby (and you can see JJ on the left and Hunter on the right) chilling
If you look close, you'll see Ribby's nose. He still fits under the bed!
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