Lemon Apricot Cake

Don't you love cakes made doctoring cake mixes?  Here's one that I make a few times a year and in fact is in the oven right now.  Why do I have a cake in the oven at 6am besides it being delicious? 

It's for a meeting at our local library for a group of volunteers discussing how to make our library better.  I'm all for a better library although I think our library is pretty great as is.

If you've ever have a hankering for a lemony, moist cake knock yourselves out with this recipe:

1 box yellow cake mix (I prefer Betty Crocker)
1 small box of lemon flavored jello mix (dry)
4 whole eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp lemon extract
3/4 cup apricot nectar juice (you can find in Mexican foods section or in the juice section of your grocery store)
Powdered sugar dusting

Preheat oven to 325F.  Combine all the ingredients above and blend on medium for 2-3 minutes.  Pour into greased bundt pan and bake for 50-55 minutes.  Allow to cool and invert on pan.  Once room temperature, dust with powdered sugar and slice and serve.

Ten days and counting

I have been crabby lately.  I've been doing some changing folks. If you follow my blog, you know I love my coffee. Light and sweet with powdered creamer and two Splendas.

Well, it's been ten days since I've had coffee. I found a tea (oolong) that I love and have substitute it in the morning. It's been really hard but the headaches weren't as bad as I had in the past when I've tried to stop drinking coffee.

Why did I do this?  Well, it's about all the artificial sweeteners I was ingesting.  I had bought a Costco box of Splenda (1500 count) and had used it all in eight months.  Holy crap!!

My daily routine used to be: three cups of coffee (6 Splendas), plain Greek yogurt (2 Splendas), and one Coke Zero (??? Splendas).

Yikes oh yikes.  Here's the thing about tea and me.  I don't like my tea sweet. So I have found a tea I like and put my coffeemaker away.  I don't miss it as much as I thought I would.  I am forty now, I can do anything I set my mind to.

Now, I add a tsp on Agave on my yogurt and I am down to two Coke Zero per week.  It's crazy when you give up sugar and artificial sweeteners how sweeter foods taste when you have it.

Marriage

I listen to Dr. Laura's podcast show when I'm at home during the day while I'm cooking and cleaning.

She keeps me entertained.  She asked a question today that got me thinking:
"Would you rather be right or be the most, cherished wife?"
Definitely I feel very cherished in my relationship with my husband. I don't mind that the toilet seat is left up, I don't care that he leaves his shoes everywhere. I don't care if he never takes out the garbage. I don't like to micromanage him.

What I appreciate about him is he does not micromanage me too.  He doesn't care if the house is clean. He doesn't care if his clothes are wrinkled. He doesn't care if we have ice cream for dinner.

There were callers who compete with their husbands. They don't like to do anything for their husbands because they feel like it is beneath them and if they give him an inch, they'd have to give a mile.  Apalled I am. 

I can honestly say we go about our day trying to make each other's lives better, happier and feel cherished.  I love being my husband's helper. He is my most favorite person in the whole, wide world and I forever grateful to have him in my life.  He works hard for our family and if I can make his life easier in anyway, I do it.

We pull together to raise our two boys and we often look at each other across the bed when the boys pile in and just feel like we are the two luckiest kids to ever.

Here's to cherishing your spouse. 

I think I'm a twelve...

Do you love "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction?  I do too.

How about "Boyfriend" by Justin Beiber?  I do too.

And lately, I've been getting pimples again.  Maybe I'm twelve again. 

It's no secret I love yard sales.  Yesterday was another crisp, cold and bright day to go look for treasures. 

The lovely and I were talking about getting a small portable grill to take camping-you know for burgers, chicken, and all.  We have a large one at home and wanted one for the travel trailer.  It was a nice to have not have to have.

We looked around and finally decided on getting one of those small one you put on top of a picnic table around $30 dollars.  I really wanted one of those Coleman two-burner grill on a stand but it was $189!! Jimmey Cricket!!

While at our second yard sale, there was a big luggage-looking bag with a pink price tag of $75 for a BBQ grill inside. 

The lovely hubby asked to look inside and look what was inside!!! It was dirty but not caked on.  I just looked like it wasn't cleaned after the last cookout. 

She then told me her bottom price was $50.  Lovely and I took it home and spent 20 minutes cleaning (me) with baking soda, vinegar, and soap while lovely tightened and checked all the fittings.  What do you think?!

I'm so excited because the piece de resistance is he found an adaptor hose to make it hook up to our big tank of propane so we don't have to use the little bottles!!!

What have you found at a yard sale you're still high-fiving yourself for?

We have this pull-up bar attached to our bedroom closet door.  My husband does pull-ups, chin-ups, and whatever on it.

He's had it before me.

I tried it once when we were dating.  Could not budge.  I couldn't even pull it up an inch. Overweight and out-of-shape at 157 lbs. made it impossible.  Oh, 157 lbs isn't so bad?  It is when you're 4'11".

Never tried it again until about three months ago.  I had worked myself up to just dangling my chin above the bar for 25 sec.  I would do this a couple of times/day.

This morning I did my first pull-up (palms facing me of course).  Then I tried it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke.  And I did another one!!! Way to go Idaho!!

One day I'm going to do a crossfit class.  I watch Bob Harper's do crossfit and I want to do this too.

(Sorry if this sounds like I'm bragging...you just have know idea how HUGE this is for me). 

boys and the man we love

Style.

 Love.

 Pleasure.

 Peace.

As you can see, I've been letting Koo dress as he please.  He is ghetto fab.u.lous. 

S.E. is infinitely curious of how he will change once he turns eight.

The love of my life and the boys taking a break from painting our boat (more on this project later).

How lucky am I? 

Upholstered Cushion

Always trying to challenge myself.  An aquaintance had asked me to make a seat cushion for her lovely bench and some pillows.  I get so inspired by bloggers who repurpose furniture. I want to get better at upholstering. The only way to do it is to keep doing it.  Through painful trial and error...I have made this on Monday (the long bench cushion and four pillows).  What do you think?

Hello.

I'm back.  It's been busy around  here.  We returned from Disneyland and finally (three weeks later) feel like I've got a handle on my life again.

What's tripped us up at the Ramblin' On household is the lovely traveling for business, Koo's been sick and I've been sick.  In addition, everything is blooming and I've got KILLER allergies kickin' in.

Which is strange because we paid a chunk of money to get tested by an allergist/internist and the results of the prick test showed I WAS NOT ALLERGIC to any plants, trees, bees, grass, etc..etc...etc...

When I went to my homeopath yesterday she tested me for outside allergies and BINGO, I tested positive for pollen and trees.  This really explains why I continued to slide south last year at this time.  In this region, it'll be in the 60's one week and in the 30's the next making the trees/bushes go into crazy mode.  The result has been multiple bloom stop. bloom stop-causing serious allergy attacks.

I've been getting little new bumpies on my skin and I've been itching a lot this past two weeks.  I have even started taking Benadryl (3 times now).  I'm back on my restrictive low yeast, no sugar, no bread diet to kill off a particular yeast Candida which runs rapid in my body when my immune is down. 

I've noticed I've been quite short tempered with the kids too.  I'm working on not yelling at them.  I just get so easily riled up when my skin is flared up that I have little tolerance for their bickering and misbehaving.

Deep breath.  I'm going to take it easy.  Low expectations again.  Lower stress.  How about you?  Dod you have allergy problems when it's spring?