Life Cake & Whimsy

Cake for a Cause: Foster Care, Basketball, and the Jersey Cake

After learning just how severe the foster care crisis is in our community, we knew we were being called to serve in that area. The journey down that road has been slow moving, but that story is for another time. For now, we serve the kids through a foster care ministry in our church, and some incredible faith based organizations, which exist only to serve these kids. For this event, I had the opportunity to partner with some amazing friends to provide mentoring opportunities for teen boys while playing one of their favorite sports, basketball! Of course, it wouldn't be a Project Zero event without great food and gifts!

Okay, so I must admit that, although I may be from the south, AND I am a cheese lover, pimento cheese is not the first thing that pops into my head at dinner time. It never really has at all. Ever. However, the other day I was thinking about what I had on hand to make a grilled cheese, besides American, and I had one of those moments. You know, one of those moments where something randomly pops into your head and sounds perfect at the time. Well, I fixated on giving pimento cheese a shot, mostly because we had an open house for our homeschool co-op to get to, and I needed a quick fix. Anyway, I decided that a hamburger patty, and even better... BACON would step that grilled cheese up a notch, so this is what we ended up with.

As promised, I cut the baby farm animal post short to spare any potential readers from an opinion post. There are so many blogs brimming with opinions on everything that occurs under the sun, and I know that the world is not waiting for my opinion on anything. However, I had some thoughts about the pressures that parents (or I alone) feel to provide our children with the perfect everything, including birthday parties. I realized when I was posting about the bunny cake, that if I'm keeping a blog, and writing or talking about our thoughts and feelings are considered to be cathartic exercises, I should probably write about my thoughts on my mommy blog, duh! (The light bulb can be a little slow to come on sometimes.) It makes sense, because if anyone out there thinks similarly and also wants to share, this could be a place to do it. Anyway, this is what was on my mind when I posted that one:

Well, I have a stockpile of pictures and things to blog about, but we all know how life tends to, well.. it happens. Anyway, I'm taking a minute to have my coffee, before getting back to work on a cake for a birthday party today and thought that I would use the opportunity to add a new post. Since it's a Saturday (cake day) and, as I mentioned, life happens, I'm reminded of one party and cake in particular. The baby farm animals party!

WARNING: Do not open this post if your heart cannot handle adorable kids playing with nearly as adorable farm animals!

Look out! I'm blogging about food now. Well, I'm actually blogging about items on my "Need to Try" list, that may be on yours as well. I should probably be up front about the fact that I am not a professional chef. I'm not even remotely close to being a great cook. I do have a lot of children, we live in chaos, and the law says that I must feed them. Truthfully, if dinner makes it to the table without triggering the smoke detector, it's a good night. That's why I think I may be able to help reveal whether some of these popular Pinterest recipes and projects are actually attainable by those of us who just feel so regular. Believe me, if I can do it, anyone can. If it's something that should be left to the pros or those people who say they're not, but should be, I'll be happy to share my Pinterest fail. It should be fun, or at least funny. The Ramen Burger is where we'll start.

Update: So, you apparently liked this cake! I recently found it on Pinterest! After following the link, I discovered that it has been featured on websites, "borrowed" by many, and viewed nearly 4,000 times here (on the blog I quit shortly after starting 5 yrs ago)! Of course when they are created from my vision, I only see the flaws in what I make. However, as much as I love looking at other people's cakes, it made me realize that people might actually want to see them. So I'm catching up on the blog!