Hanukkah

So Randy and I have a new project:  The wall of things that make us happy.  Otherwise known as art on the walls going up the stairs.  Hopefully we'll get to working on it soon, but I'd like to put up stuff like this:

Or whatever we decide on, and I'm sure it will change.  It all started from our Hanukkah gifts to each other.  I painted 8 wooden signs and canvases for Randy with his favorite and motivational quotes, and he got me....

Voodoo dolls!  I know what you're going to say, aren't we trying to get rid of objects of the occult in our home?  Why, yes we are!  But these are positive voodoo dolls.  Like this little Freddy Krueger look-alike - he's for reducing stress.

This little hula girl helps you keep sunshine in your life and protects you from people who are trying to ruin your day.

You can probably read what this one does.

Apparently, Randy thinks I am late for everything.  Oh, he says he doesn't think I'm late for everything, he knows I'm late for everything.

So you're thinking, "How does this apply to the wall of happy things?"  And I will tell you, they don't  ...yet!  Since there are 8 of them and we don't want them spread all over the greater Philadelphia area, we're going to put them in some sort of display or shadow box.  Because they're cute.  And they're probably about as evil as Dr. Doofenschmirtz.  CURSE YOU, PERRY THE PLATYPUS!

Now on to our wall of things that make us happy.

We have.

Hard to do sometimes, and it's good to have a reminder:

Randy's catch phrase.  He pulls it out at the most interesting times.

We are Philadelphians after all.

This one is still a work in progress.

So overall it was a good Hanukkah and it gave us some good ideas for making the house more like us.  Touchdown!  

Actually, we were having a really hard time getting all of our candles to light on the last night of Hanukkah.  Kind of ironic, huh?  Everytime Randy would light one, another one would go out.  Maybe we would have done better with oil.  

A Tale of Two Cakes

Jodi:  Yesterday was my dad's birthday.  When he was little, my grandmother would make him a maraschino cherry cake each year for his birthday.  I used to make it for him with my mom when I was little.  It was just a white cake mix with maraschino cherry juice instead of the liquids called for in the cake mix.  Then Mom would ice it with store-bought vanilla icing and decorate it with cherries and walnuts.  This is the cake I always knew and didn't love, but it was Dad's favorite and we only made it once a year.

It has since become the bane of my existence.

The last time Mom and I made the cake together, it looked like this:

See all the toothpicks sticking out?  The cake mix cake was so moist, the cake couldn't hold itself together and the top literally split into three pieces.  Mom and I tried in vain to keep it together with icing and cocktail picks.

Randy: Let me be honest... it is very nice of Jodi to make this cake, but the cake is gross. Why can't Jodi's dad just like what I like?

Jodi:  When I started taking the Wilton classes for cake decorating back in 2009, I decided I was going to take on the Cherry Cake for Dad's birthday, but do it my way.  Based on the year before, I was going to make it from scratch so the cake wouldn't fall apart.  I made a vanilla cake and covered it with buttercream flavored with cherry juice.  It turned out like this:

Can you see the bumpy texture to the icing?  The cherry juice didn't mix in nicely with the butter.  Dad wanted to know why it was mottled, and complained that it wasn't the right cake.

I took a year off, and then last year, I went back to the basics and did the box mix (ugh) and store bought vanilla icing (double ugh).  I went with the Smurf motif since my brother affectionately refers to my dad as "Smurf" (he's 6'7").

Besides getting my hand in the icing when filling in the apples with red sugar, I forgot one major thing.  Can you see what it is?

Dad's beard!  You know, the one he has had since before I was born.

Oops.

And the cake was gross.  Way too sweet, and I hated the store icing.  So I'm starting to see why Mom and Grandma were both happy to pass along the birthday-cake-making duties, and I'm complaining to Grandma about this cake and she says, "There's a from-scratch recipe."  She adapted it to a box mix when Dad was a kid!  The sky opened up and angels started singing.  I swear.

Fast forward to Valentine's Day, Grandma's card arrives and inside is the recipe for the cake.  Hallelujah!

So Sunday night, I get the recipe out to try this cake.  I read the recipe.  1/2 cup spry.  Spry?  What the heck is Spry?  So I call Dad, trying to be all sly, sly about spry.  In the meantime, Randy googled it.  Guess what Spry is?

OK, so I mix up the batter and chop up the cherries and walnuts because they go IN the batter!

I even drain my cherries so they don't drip all over the cake (like in past years).

I make the icing and smooth it on the cake and I get this piece of loveliness.

Oops.

The icing called for more Spry and butter, so it was slippery and dried too fast, so my icing slipped and then got crunchy.  I tried to push the top layer back on top of the bottom and I got my fingers stuck in the cake.  The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got.  So I had to apply a tourniquet.  Not one of my prouder moments.

Randy refused to eat it.  He thinks it's gross and tastes like Sucrets.

Randy: Ok, I didn't really refuse to eat it.  I went to the bathroom after dinner and when I came back, Jodi was kind enough to not give me a piece.  I would have eaten it as a courtesy to Jodi, but the cake is gross. And do you want to know what's worse?  They eat maraschino cherry ice cream to go with it.   Seriously, that's like fruit cake with fruit cake flavored ice cream.  I ate potato chips and was happy.
But do you want to know the worst part?!  So Jodi is making cake, right, and she is complaining and all. She cuts off this edge and says, "Here, try it."  So I tell her that it tastes like cough medicine and she gets all mad.  So I call her a "hypocrite" because she always wants me to be honest with her about her baking.  And I love her baking... except for this cake.  It's gross.  Don't let anyone tell you differently.

Jodi:  But Dad loved the cake.  It was actually pretty good.  VERY sweet, but yummy.  It would be a good Valentine's Day cake, which I believe it was originally meant to be.  Don't worry, I won't be making one for Randy this year.

Super!

Randy and I are incredibly lucky to have some really great friends, and our friends are incredibly lucky because they have cute kids.  Specifically cute kids who love super heroes.  So I was on Pinterest a while back, and I got an idea from here to make super hero capes for all the cute little boys in our lives who LOVE super heroes, for Christmas.  

Randy and I went to JoAnn fabric and Randy found costume satin in bright red and royal blue and declared them perfect for super hero capes.  So I picked up a couple of yards and the appropriate colors in felt to make Superman and Batman capes.

I printed out the Batman and Superman logos from the internet and made templates using an exacto knife on an upside-down Dunkin Donuts crate from Costco.  Yes, we're real high tech here.  Then I pinned it to the felt and cut it out.

Then I stitched them together on the sewing machine.  As you can see here, my sewing isn't that straight, but I didn't think the little boys would care too much.  

 Don't pay any attention to the papasan behind Randy's head, I had to hide it somewhere while the Christmas tree is in its spot.

Then I made capes in the appropriate sizes for a 5, a 3 and a 1 year old.  When I made the Superman cape for the 5 year old, I modeled the cape on myself to make sure it was long enough and it would velcro properly around his neck (not too tight!).  I just finished the edges and cut a semi-circle at the top and used bias tape to finish the curved edge.  If you try this at home, avoid ironing on too high a temperature!  I melted some of the Superman fabric by accident.

Then I tried it on and danced and jumped around to make sure it fluttered the way it should.  Otherwise, what's the point of a fun cape?  I think this was Randy's favorite part, watching me dance around wearing a cape designed for a little kid.

For the 1 year old, I couldn't model the cape myself, so I enlisted another willing volunteer who was the perfect size.No, I'm not a crazy cat person who likes to dress up her animals, but Camille was very helpful and didn't get too annoyed ...until I took too many pictures.  

Look how great the capes turned out!  They even gave them laser eyes!

Totally cute, right?  And the capes are machine washable and I made them floor length so as the kids grow, they can attach the capes to their shoulders using the velcro.  The felt kind of sticks to their shirts as long as they're wearing a plain old cotton T like above.  Otherwise they can just use regular tape to attach it to their shirts.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is Randy's parents' 40th Wedding Anniversary, which means they must have gotten married at birth.  Happy Anniversary Murray and Joni!!!  Way to be an example for us all.

Christmas Day

So here we are, finally with the details of our Cajun Christmas at Randy's brother, Jason's house.  I stupid forgot my camera Christmas afternoon/night, so I had to get all my pictures from my dad.  

Every year before Randy (or B.R.) my family did a traditional type of Christmas with Stouffer's lasagne Christmas eve and ham for Christmas dinner.  When Randy and I started hosting Christmas we decided to do something a little non-traditional, so we did something everyone likes, Italian food.  Last year we had chicken cacciatore, meatballs and spaghetti and canolli cake for dessert.  Jason then hosted "Second Christmas" (Randy's dad was away for Christmas Day for work, so we celebrated twice.  We are totally ok with celebrating things twice in our family, especially Christmas.)  Jason chose his theme as southern Christmas with BBQ, red pepper corn, etc.  

There was some concern in Randy's family that my family might be offended by having a themed Christmas celebration.  I can understand the concern, that all the hullaballoo would make us forget the true reason for Christmas, but I don't think that's the case.  Everyone celebrates Christmas differently, so we realize it's not for everyone.  Having us all together for Christmas, Jews and Gentiles, working together to create a wonderful meal for each other and celebrate the birth of Christ together, I think that is at least part of what Christmas is all about.  Both of our families were all for it, helped plan, and participated.  Randy's grandmother is probably rolling over in her grave.

Jason went all out and created a Cajun Christmas wonderland with a Christmas tree, beads, purple tablecloths, gold and green sparkles and mardi gras masks.  We had a full spread complete with gumbo appetizer, shrimp etouffee, jambalaya, greens, crawfish, two vegetable soufflees, pecan pie and bananas foster over home-made icecream.  Now let's be honest here, we're a bunch of yanks from Philly.  We've been down south, we love Paula Deen like we love cheesesteaks, but cooking this kind of stuff is not second nature to us.  We relied heavily on the food network website, and everything turned out beautifully.

Randy likes to play with his food.

Here we are too busy enjoying the awesome food to look up for pictures.  See the pretty purple paper tablecloths?  Easy clean-up!  All those little specks are tiny shiny stars.  Jason even had gorgeous little red and yellow damask print napkins and played jazz music.  The man is genius at creating a mood.

Jason bought awesome masks and beads from the Party store.

If anyone from the south is reading this, I'm sure you have fabulous recipes for your favorite Cajun foods.  For those non-southerners like us who crave awesome southern food that we can't get every day, we Philadelphians really liked these recipes:

Gumbo over steamed rice

Jambalaya

Shrimp Etouffee

Pecan Pie - from the Red and White checkered Betty Crocker cook book that everyone and their mother (literally) has.

Bananas Foster

If you haven't made Bananas Foster before, the flame can be a little daunting.  I have now made it four times, including Christmas, and it was super easy.  I didn't even burn Jason's house down.  I did, however, make flames shoot about halfway up his microwave over his stove.  Nothing melted and there were no scorch marks, so I would consider it a success.  And if you've never had it before, it's soooooooooooo good, and you don't even have to like bananas.  It's so rich a yummy, like caramelized sunshine.  Of course, please be careful as anything flammable can be very dangerous.  Also, the bananas get very very hot, so even if you serve it over ice cream, please let it cool a little before you enjoy.  I heard about my delicious hot bananas for hours when I made it this past weekend for our friends in State College.  Don't worry about your ice cream melting, it mixes together with the butter and brown sugar mixture and it's a-MAZ-ing.

After dinner we all piled in two cars and hit a local Christmas attraction, two houses all decked out for Christmas.

It's a little over the top, but hey, go hard or go home, right?

Anyone else have any themed Christmas celebrations?  Just us?