Sweetheart Cake for Your Valentine
Ingredients:
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
3 eggs
1 large bar baking chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly great a 13 x 9 inch baking pan. In a large bowl beat butter, sugars and vanilla until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Gradually stir in the milk, mixing well after each addition. Fold in coarsely chopped chocolate.
Pour batter into pan and bake for approximately 30 to 35 minutes or until golden and baked through. Decorate the cake with kiss-shaped chocolate pieces.
Scrapbooking Ideas For Your Kids Artwork
If you are like me, you have lots of great pieces of artwork your kids created espacially for you. And while you’d love to keep them all, they are just too hard to store. If this sounds like you, it’s time you devised a plan to incorporate all of them into one neat and compelling work of art. Here are some ideas for all that artwork your kids made for you.
If you can find a larges enough to accommodate the artwork, why not set up a collage and frame them proudly? You can also set up a portfolio of your child’s artwork by purchasing an artist’s book. In this way, the artwork will not become damaged over the years, and can be stored in a safe area in your home.
Another idea is to develop a theme scrapbook based upon your child’s artwork. You can organize the album alphabetically or by genre. Whichever you prefer, this will be a fun project for both you and your kids.
Perhaps you’d like to start scrapbooking your child’s artwork by incorporating his or her picture on the front of the scrapbook, and have your child write a few words about each piece of artwork. If you have a scanner, you can reduce the size of the artwork to fit the scrapbook as well. In any case, always use page protectors to ensure no damage will come to these special works of art.
If your child is much older, and you can’t find space for all of his artwork but nonetheless want to preserve it, how about buying those mailing tubes. You can label each one by year. This is another great way to keep this precious artwork from becoming stained or accumulating damage through the years.
Whatever scrapbooking ideas you come up with, you and your kids will have a lifetime of memories to look forward to. They, in turn, will be able to show their kids and start their own traditional scrapbooking ideas as well.
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Create A Special Dinner For Your Valentine
With Valentine’s Day approaching, you’ve decided to cook up something special for your spouse or partner.
Decide on what type of dinner you are going to prepare. Perhaps his or her favorite meal would suffice. Set the mood by setting your table for two with a red plastic tablecloth under a white lace cloth. Have red and white candles in the center, or on each side of a vase containing red roses. Take out your best china, as well as red napkins.
Choose a main dish that you can prepare ahead of time, so you can enjoy the evening. For dessert, why not try a cheesecake with strawberries? Or a chocolate fondue you can dip the strawberries in? Have the red wine ready in a bucket of ice, and you are set to go - for dinner, that is.
Now it’s time to decide what to wear. Perhaps you just purchased a special dress for the occasion. Great! Now just before your spouse or loved one comes home, light the candles; lower the lights, and play your favorite romantic music. Open up the bottle of wine; and you’re romantic evening is about to begin.
Valentine’s Day dinner doesn’t have to be fancy; the one you love will appreciate anything you do to celebrate the occasion. It is a time to rekindle the romance; remind each other how much you love each other; and live in the moment. You don’t need ambience to express how you feel. Just being with each other is enough. But, just in case you do intend to go all out; then by all means enjoy every bit of it. Remember, it’s the little pleasures in life that mean the most. “A rose by any other name, is still a rose.”
