Hopeful Homemaker

Joy, week 2

January 15, 2012 jennifer JOY in 2012

How is it that January is already half gone? I feel like I’ve been busy and diligent, yet the last half of the month looks too short. I’m crossing my fingers for a couple of weeks of smooth sailing.

Joy. Did I feel it? Yes. It was a good week, aside from the day I fell off the wagon and was an emotional wreck {and yes, it’s true, you can ask my mom and one of my sisters about this}. I recovered and am back on track, grateful for all the things that are right and trying not to dwell on the one big thing that isn’t right. My circle of influence is where it’s best to keep my focus; the other things aren’t worth wasting energy on. Easier said than done, but I’m sure trying.

So how did I feel joy? Well, I tried to pause when the children were noisy and notice what was going on to make them so excited. I ended up observing some really fun things taking place among them and it brought me joy. I played ping pong with my husband late at night. I tried to notice funny things and let myself laugh more often. I am still writing daily in the “Joy” books I’m keeping for each child, which has been a really healthy thing for me already. If I’m struggling to think of something great that a particular child did that day, then I either didn’t connect well with them or I wasn’t in the proper frame of mind when I was around them and therefore I probably didn’t build them enough. This little exercise is helping me to begin the new day more aware of which children I really need to seek out and spend a few minutes with. It isn’t much, and I’m not perfect at it, but I believe that small yet consistent efforts will make a big difference over time. I also made this little notebook for collecting quotes in, quotes both for my own pondering and also for us to memorize.

I’ve continued to do well, really well, with my morning routine of studying scriptures and reading good books. I’m reading a little bit from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families every day and have gleaned so much already. I’m trying to put it into practice and I do feel like I’m getting a little bit better although I have much to learn and many habits to create. Today I also started reading The Happiness Project, and it’s funny how much of what the author says in her first chapter mirrors thoughts and feelings I’ve had.

While I cannot say that every day I did a good job on my daily list of essentials, necessities and nice-to-do items, I can say that taken across the week as a whole I feel like I worked on a lot of important things, like there’s a decent balance overall. I like that feeling. No, my house isn’t spotless; in fact, it’s quite messy. But I’m spending time every day working at it and it’s going to get better.

I have some things on the weekly list that I’ve been intending to do on Sunday evenings, but so far we’ve had Church-related commitments on most Sunday nights (and will through the end of the month) and it hasn’t worked out. We also started a new Church schedule so our day is more chopped up than it was before. I’m going to give it until February to work it out, but it’s possible I need to schedule those activities for another time if it just doesn’t work out.

Our family wrote thank-you notes for Christmas gifts received (I just realized as I’m typing this that I haven’t mailed them yet). I had a few great conversations with friends, a couple in person, the others over the phone. One in particular was so uplifting. I tried a couple of new recipes, tickled a lot of little ones, did a lot of laundry. It was a good week in many ways.

I didn’t meet my goals to be creative every single day but I did it several days, and on Saturday I woke up early and had some time while the house was still quiet to work at my projects. Although I’m craving a marathon day or two of sewing, I’m learning to be happy with a handful of minutes and the knowledge that I’ll get another handful tomorrow. I’m also reading a book about creativity when I’m in the carpool line at school and have learned some interesting things about myself. For example, I’m a results girl. I do things to get them DONE. I want to see the final product. I don’t, by nature, find as much joy in process. {This was a big revelation to me about myself.} Spending just a few minutes a day on creative activity is helping me to recognize that the process should be enjoyable, and this is a great way to school myself to appreciate process.

I am so grateful for the chance to learn! I’m grateful for this opportunity to teach myself how to notice and feel joy even when we’re facing adversity. I’m excited to see how my daily efforts, carefully prioritized, add up at the end of the year. I am thankful to be alive, to have the husband of my dreams and a whole bunch of imperfect but very loveable children to share this journey with. Life is good, oh so good!

Joyfully, Jennifer

Chocolate Fudge Cake

January 13, 2012 jennifer Desserts

After my little comparison between cakes and life yesterday I figure the least I could do is share with you the recipe. It’s one of those cake-mix-gone-gourmet recipes and we won’t even talk about how fattening it is. We’ll just talk about how incredibly moist and flavorful it is and you can just file it away in your mind as an easy, sure-win Valentines Day dessert in the next few weeks. It’s really good. {And I’m lucky we have ten people to share with in my house; it means I can’t eat too much.}

I got the recipe from Bonnie at Cotton Way , but I did make a small change, which I’ll tell you about.

Here’s what you need to make this luscious cake.

Chocolate Fudge Cake 1 fudge cake mix 4 eggs 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup water 1 large box instant vanilla pudding 1 cup sour cream 1 3/4 cup milk chocolate chips, divided 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup whipping cream If you’re like me you got to the pudding and sour cream and in your mind you said, “Yep, moist!” Oh yes, very moist.

In a mixing bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, oil, water, pudding and sour cream. Mix together for 5 minutes. Add one cup chocolate chips and stir in. Grease a bundt pan and spoon batter into pan. Bake at 350 for 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 15 minutes, then invert. Cool completely (at least another 30 minutes).

Here is where I diverted from the recipe. It calls for a can of store bought chocolate frosting, and without offending any store bought frosting fans, I’ll just say that I don’t buy it. Period. So we needed another alternative. I had some whipping cream in the refrigerator that needed to be used, so I whipped up some chocolate ganache. It was fabulous, a great pairing with this cake.

For the ganache:

3/4 cup whipping cream 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I usually use semi-sweet, but since I had just opened a bag of milk chocolate chips for the cake I used them instead, and surprisingly, it didn’t taste too sweet.)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before it boils. Remove from heat. Place chocolate chips in a bowl and pour hot cream mixture over the chocolate chips. Whisk until chocolate is completely melted and the ganache is smooth. Let sit, stirring occasionally, while it cools. You want it to cool to a good drizzling consistency, still warm enough to meander down the sides of the cake, but cool enough that it goes very slowly and doesn’t puddle. It takes a little while, but it’s worth waiting.

Let the ganache set and serve that cake! I hope you love it. And here’s just one more picture of an incredibly moist cake with ganache on top. I love the way it shines slightly in the light. YUM!

Oh, we’ve been embellishing some mini notebooks this week over at Sisterview . It’s a fun way to get the creative juices flowing, and would be a fun activity with the kids too. You could turn it into a Valentine as well. Check them out!

Have a great weekend!

Hopeful Homemaker

On cakes and life

January 12, 2012 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

I baked a cake on Monday. It was a recipe I’d never tried before and for some reason the rich brown batter in the bundt pan looked unusually pretty as I prepared to bake it.

Forty five minutes later the timer went off and I checked the cake. Looking good almost everywhere… except for one spot that had fallen. The hole looked deep and I wondered if it would turn out. Reminding myself that the recipe called for another ten minutes of baking, I closed the oven.

Ten minutes later the sunken spot tested fine and I removed the cake from the oven to cool. And for some reason my eyes kept moving back to it.

That sunken spot had created such beautiful texture on the cake, making me want to study it. Had it been perfectly smooth (as I planned and expected) there wouldn’t have been much to look at. I would have let it cool, inverted it and missed an opportunity to notice more.

This momentary pause in my day to study a flawed cake with rapt attention and fascination got me thinking. Isn’t life like that too? We think we know how things should go and confidently mix together the ingredients and pop them in the day with high expectations. But sometimes the day (insert just about anything in place of “day”) doesn’t turn out how we hoped. Part of it falls, sinks, looks mushy. We eye it warily and hope it will turn out, which it usually does , but not how we pictured. What was meant to be is now flawed and too often we wonder at its worth, or our worth.

But it was the flaws that created my moment of beauty, not a perfect cake. It was the sunken area that made me want to look at it longer. And you know what, the same is true of people. The things we wonder at are the sunken areas that turn out, the areas that somehow come together in spite of adversity. There is beauty there, not the perfect kind but the kind that we earn as we go through life. The kind of beauty that follows faith, hard work, squaring your shoulders to do the best you can. It’s a beauty that also follows the valleys in our lives, the days of uncertainty, fear, worry and tear-stained faces. But because it’s one-of-a-kind, completely custom beauty, we marvel at it.

{Funny how we appreciate this kind of beauty in others but rarely welcome it in ourselves…}
Another thought hit me as I was wondering at all of this. I know people whose lives hold no visible evidence of any flaws whatsoever. Although some cakes have no flaws, we can be assured that all people do. We all have disappointments, fears, heartaches. It’s just that most of us manage to invert our cakes pretty well and come off looking normal.

And as for my worry about the cake, I needn’t have wondered. It looked beautiful and delicious {which it was, every single crumb of it} and my family had no idea it wasn’t “perfect”. So when we’re worried that our holes reveal too much we can remember that most of the time the flaws end up on the bottom and the best that is in us rises to the top. And it all turns out just fine.

{I suppose I should insert here that this is probably just a pep talk to myself, but I’m sharing it in case it might cheer you up, too. Sometimes I feel like I have some deep, ugly holes…}

All this thinking reminded me of a quote I liked in one of my current reads:

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”
-George Eliot, Middlemarch , published 1871