Untangling My Dreams part 1

Like a strand of Christmas lights that were wadded up in a rush to get what resembles more of a cactus than a tree to the curb, some of my dreams have been shoved in a box with every intention to get to them some day. Unlike Christmas there isn’t an annual holiday to unpack the dreams and give them the respect they deserve, unless you count my birthday. 

This year I’ve decided to give myself a gift. I am pulling that box of tangled dreams off the shelf and daring to take a look at what they have been, how they have changed, and where they dare to take me still.  

When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a singer/songwriter like Amy Grant. She was a teenager when she was discovered. I dreamed of singing in church and having just the right person with all the right connections happen to be visiting, hear me sing, and whisk me off to Nashville with a recording contract. That was my dream. When high school ended with a diploma instead of a recording contract I was disappointed. 

I thought someone would come along and make my dream come true. I was wrong.

Have you watched the Disney movie ‘Tangled’? It’s the story of a girl who was kidnapped by an evil woman when she was a baby because her enchanted hair had healing powers. The woman keeps her locked in a tower so that she is the only person who ever benefits from Rapunzel’s gift. A few days before Rapunzel’s 18^th birthday she dares to ask this woman she believes to be her mother if she can leave the tower to see the floating lights that are her dream. Of course her captor is afraid that if she ever leaves the tower Rapunzel will discover who she really is…that she is a princess.

Rapunzel pleads with her captor to no avail…

YOU ARE NOT EVER LEAVING THIS TOWER!

  

Rapunzel has to choose whether to pursue her dream or believe her captor’s lies and never risk at all.

My dreams are not safe. They require much more of me than I’m comfortable with. They require faith. They require me to believe that what God has planted in my heart is real and true and valuable. They require me to make time for them. They require me to risk so that they can be free to do what they are meant to do. I have to choose.

Wrestling

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been away from the blog for awhile. This is in part due to the fact that I've been wrestling with a few things and felt a little too raw to be trusted with a keyboard. That is the truth. I've never been a big fan of wrestling. I don't like to watch it. It makes me uncomfortable. The outfits, the sweat, the head-gear protection, the fact that the opponents weren't even irritated at one another before they stepped onto the mat...it's awkward. I didn't want us to have that awkward sweaty moment...

   

I don't know who these boys are, but this is awkward. I'm just sayin'.

It's good to be back.

And just in case you're wondering who won the wrestling match...it wasn't me. 

Cupcake Drama part 3

Birthdays only come once a year. Thank God. Because they only come around once a year I like to take the entire month to celebrate. Not everyone does this, but I do. Birthday month isn't necessarily about receiving presents from friends and loved ones every day during the month, but noticing the gifts He gives me every day. This birthday month has been no exception.

Most mornings I reluctantly drag myself out of bed to face whatever the day holds for me. These past several weeks have been more of a challenge than usual because of some pesky health issues. I would wake up every morning believing with all of my heart and soul that this would be the day that I would be completely healthy and able to tackle whatever came my way that day. And about five steps after my feet hit the floor I would realize that was not yet reality. I'm still waiting for that day and I believe with all my heart that it's coming. But in the meantime, I'd be lying if I told you I haven't been discouraged.

One of the first things I do after I get out of bed is grab my Blackberry, unplug it from the charger, and do a quick check for messages. Nearly every morning this month I have received a text from Julie that simply greets me for the day and asks this simple yet life sustaining question: "How can I pray for you today?" I usually wait until I've had some coffee to respond and work up the courage to ask again for what feels like the same thing over and over again. I choose to call it persevering. Pressing in. Whatever...because it feels pathetic to need the same thing over and over. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you know someone in a similar situation. The way I feel is often not the truest thing and I have to push back against the lie threatening to take me down.

The question "How can I pray for you today?" has rescued me day after day after day from my pride in one way or another. Having to ask for prayer for things like:

Having strength to fold laundry or allow my guys to help with housework.
To be able to follow a recipe.
For sleep.
For strength to keep my commitments at work and with my boys' education.
To be able to sing!!!
To let stuff go.
For enough energy to grocery shop.
And on and on.

These prayers have sustained me. I believe with all my heart and soul that they have slayed dragons for me. God cares about me. He cares about the things I care about. Even things like cupcakes. He answers prayer and turns something so incredibly frustrating and overwhelming into sheer joy.

I now believe that sprinkles and fondant can change the world.



119 decorated cupcakes. We won't focus on the number that were actually baked. Or the calories. Instead we'll celebrate the gift of true friendship and the process that is still teaching me life sustaining truth...gifts from Him that will last a lifetime.

Thanks for stickin' with me. How can I pray for you today? I will not publish any comments from this post.

Cupcake Drama part 2

If you missed the first part of this saga you can start reading about it here.

Chocolate is one of God's most cherished gifts to me as a woman. I cannot remember a time when I did not love or cherish chocolate. I do remember giving it up for a year for some kind of wacky fast. Of course I replaced it with Krispy Kremes which probably was not helpful at all. Thank God for the wisdom that comes from making questionable choices. Anyway, my birthday cupcakes had to include a chocolate variety in order to maintain balance in the force. It was my duty. Don't even tell me you don't think about maintaining balance in the force.

One evening after a long day at the office (which is NEVER like a normal long day at an office so please don't feel sorry for me) I decided it was time to get my chocolate cupcake mix prepared so that on the next day off I could just whip them up. Remember, I hadn't been feeling. Dinner was nothing short of a miracle most evenings...baking cupcakes might as well have been wishing on a star.

The 'Deliciously G-Free Chocolate Devil's Food Cupcakes' recipe appeared to be the logical choice for the party.
This dark rich cupcake will make any chocolate lover's head spin. I live for these cupcakes! Really, I do! Go ahead and try them yourself, and you will see why.--Elisabeth Hasselbeck

I decided to go ahead and start mixing up the flours. I mixed a cup of cocoa powder, brown rice flour, sweet sorghum flour, and potato flour in a big bowl. Then I actually read the directions. I was supposed to mix the cocoa with a cup of hot water before adding it to another set of ingredients. My oxygen deprived brain had struck again! No problem, or so I thought. I just set the bowl aside and went to bed. The Scarlett O'Hara voice told me that tomorrow was another day and it would all work out. Oh Scarlett, when will you learn?

After mixing the batter and tweaking a few of the instructions...I mean, how hard can it be, right?...I ended up with this.

Does any of this look familiar to you? It eerily resembled the muffin-looking sugar free batter I had prepared before. Yet I knew that I had remembered the sugar this time. I had to trust that somehow the oven would work things out. Who else in the world thinks their oven can fix things? I really need to know if you're out there. After 25 minutes in the magic oven I removed these.

This probably wouldn't have made me cry if I hadn't already been feeling so crummy . But it did. I had discovered a new talent for baking the ugliest cupcakes on the planet. Surely they would taste better than they looked. No. They would not. They tasted as bad as they looked. And instead of turning them into chocolate croutons or stuffing, I threw them in the trash.

Defeated. Deflated. Demoralized. Disastrous. Desperate.

I knew I had to make some adjustments after receiving a text from my husband the Monday before my party telling me that he and my boys would make cupcakes that evening. Most women would probably feel relieved if such an offer was made by their men-folk. Let's just say that relief is not what I felt. The thought of my guys conquering this recipe was simply too much for my pride to take.

Instead, I raised the white flag of surrender...



I desperately needed to be rescued from myself. King Arthur rode in on his black horse and saved the day. One day I hope to be able to follow Elisabeth's recipe, but for now I have to swallow my pride and thank the Lord for these boxes of perfection.

To be continued...

Cupcake Drama part 1

100 years ago today the Titanic sunk in the icy waters of the Atlantic. I also took my mother to the airport early this morning and have been crying off and on ever since. I might as well blog.

Ever hear someone say "It's a piece of cake" and believe them? Yeah. Me too. I've probably said it. Believe me, I'll be more careful the next time I'm tempted to let something like that fly out of my mouth.

For my karaoke themed birthday bash I knew I wanted to bake my own gluten free cupcakes so that I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not it was 'safe' for me or the many other gluten free popstars who would attend. There is a bakery in town that makes fabulous gluten free cupcakes but I didn't want to spend that much. After all, it's a cupcake. How hard can it be?

Elisabeth Hasselbeck's 'Yellow Birthday Cake or Classic Yellow Cupcakes' recipe from her 'Deliciously G-Free' cookbook seemed like the perfect choice.
Birthday celebrations call for buttery cakes in my house. This cake even tastes great when made the day before; just be sure to wrap it in several layers of plastic wrap once it cools, to keep it moist. Mix and match flavors with my Trio of Icings (also included in the cookbook). --Elisabeth Hasselbeck

After choosing the perfect cupcake liners I went about mixing up a batch of what Elisabeth calls 'Power Flour' so that you can have a big batch of the flour blend on hand (brown rice flour, coconut flour, tapioca flour) to really crank out the cupcakes.



**Liners purchased at Michael's.

The first batch of cupcakes went together so easily. The coconut flour (and coconut milk I substituted for dairy) adds a sweet hint of the tropics that I found absolutely divine. It would have been criminal not to taste these...

Seriously. These are SO delicious. My boys even loved them without the frosting. I had to try one without and one with some canned frosting I just happened to have in the fridge. One must be tested and approved...yummmm.



Ok. So now that I knew that this recipe was going to be more than good enough I needed to crank out a lot more. The plan was to make around 50 yellow and 50 chocolate (also a recipe from the same cookbook). A piece of cake, right? Yeah. That's what I thought. And then I started to not feel so good. My lungs started battling some chronic junk that hit me like a sledgehammer again. I decided to take things nice and slow...let some house work go and focus on the baking.

The next batch I mixed up exactly the same way as I had the first time...but something was seriously wrong with the batter. It just didn't have the right consistency, but neither did I come to think of it. Maybe the oven would take care of it...


Upon taking these out of the oven I began to text my mother like crazy hoping that we could fix these with frosting. They looked like biscuits! She assured me that with A TON of frosting we could cover a multitude of sins. I volunteered to taste one to make sure that it didn't taste like it looked. One must do what one must do. So I did...and I discovered that I forgot to add that very important cupcake ingredient...sugar. Too bad we weren't going for gluten free, dairy free AND sugar free. Yeah. Gross. They are now in my freezer. One day they might become croutons. Or stuffing. They will definitely not become cupcakes.

Apparently I don't bake well when I don't feel well. I never baked another batch with the correct ingredients after the first (and only!) perfect batch. Bakers are now among the most respected and revered professionals on the planet.

To be continued...

Fabulously 40

When I was a little girl I thought that 40 was really old. Heck, when I was 30 I thought 40 was really old. Yesterday, when I was 39...40 sounded really old. Thankfully I woke up this morning with my hair still looking like it did when I was 39. I think it helped a lot. I may never wash it again.

My mom came to see me all the way from California. We have had a fabulous time prepping for my crazy karaoke themed birthday bash. It's so fun (and dangerous) to let our creativity loose together. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons God has scattered my family all over this globe is because if we were together we would be in constant party mode and not do what He's actually called us to do. But once in awhile we get to experience the high of seeing it all come together...here's a peek.


This is my beautiful mother making karaoke microphones out of black fondant. Her fingers and thumbs are a little sore now.


We made about 60 of these puppies.


We decorated 119 of these. No wonder her fingers hurt!


Total cupcake madness which paled in comparison to my parents bathtub full of sourdough bread bowls for one of my sisters wedding. It's all about perspective. And being together.



All of the cupcakes are gluten free. The cupcakes have their own tale to tell. But not today. We're going to focus on happy things today.

For now I think mom and I will head out for a little more shopping while my hubby naps. I'm supposed to deliver her to the airport in the morning. We'll just have to see about that!

Random Confessions Episode 3

1. It's been awhile since I've posted anything due to a rough few weeks. I haven't wanted to spill anything for fear that anything that spilled would be icky sticky smelly yucky. You're welcome.

2. My house is messier than it's been in the history of being messy.

3. My mother will be here in 9 days!!!!!!

4. I'm SUPER excited that my mother will be here in 9 days, but I'm SUPER concerned about confession #2. I will be singing the 'Happy Working Song' from Enchanted at the top of my very tired lungs totally OK with vermin pitching in if that's how it has to be.

5. Today officially kicks off 'birthday month' at my house. This means that henceforth, all things must somehow fit into the birthday fairytale I have created in my very vivid blame it on Walt Disney imagination. For the entire month. My family would appreciate your prayers.

6. I've been baking cupcakes for the upcoming birthday celebration (see confession #5). There will be an entire post about these very soon. It may or may not include anecdotes about missing ingredients.

7. This year's Easter family feast is one week away and at my house. Refer to confession #2 again. Let's face it, I need a serious kick in the pants. Refer to #3. This is a good thing.

8. There are things I'd like to confess but am not at liberty to confess yet. They are good things that I hope to be able to confess before I'm old(er) and gray. Or explode. They are not about 'The Hunger Games'.

9. We have been blessed with an unusually early spring here in Iowa. It's a beautiful gift and I'm saying THANK YOU GOD! You may need to remind me of this if it snows in July.

10. My 40th birthday is 13 days away. It is also the 100th anniversary of when the Titanic struck the iceberg. They are not related whatsoever.

There you have 'em. Don't you feel better? I know I do. Give it a try...