Mrs. C Does Stuff

What do you do when you are in the middle of baking a cake and your air conditioner goes out before you finish?  Well, if you are like me and all of your cake has baked but a circle in the center of your cake about one inch in diameter, you turn your cake into cake balls.  True story, folks.  I was baking a quick cake for Teacher's Appreciation week.  This was nothing fancy.  I was using a box mix and had planned on whipping up a quick batch of my French Vanilla icing after the cake had cooled. As I was cooking the cake, I realized it seemed as if the temperature was rising in the house.  After checking the thermostat, we discovered something was wrong with our air conditioner.  I had taken the cakes out of the oven, and immediately turned off the oven so it would not continue to heat the house.  When the cakes cooled and I leveled them, I discovered the uncooked section in the center of the cake.  I didn't want to turn the oven back on...

As  mentioned before in the post about my natural hair, I flat iron my hair a couple times a month.  I try to make it to the salon and have it professionally done at least once a month, so I only have to go through this extremely time consuming routine about once a month.  I like the results, I just don't necessarily love the amount of time it takes to get these results. I use some of the same products at home my hairstylist uses in the salon.  I brush through my hair with the Denman brush before I wash it to relieve my hair of any knots that may have formed amongst my curls.  I also use it after I flat iron my hair.  I love the way that brush feels on my scalp. The leave-in conditioner I use is the It's a 10 Silk Express Miracle Conditioner.  And, I use the Lanza Healing Strength oil to protect my strands from the heat.  The long tailed comb with the medium width teeth will come into play later when I am actually running the flat i...

I am always looking for quick and easy dinner solutions.  This is especially true now that I am a working mother and wife.  By the time I get home from work, I am rushing to find something quick to fix for dinner. When I was on Weight Watchers, I found a Spice-Crusted Roast Pork Tenderloin recipe.  This was a low point recipe (3 PointsPlus points) that was beyond easy to prepare.  I have made some modifications to this recipe by adding paprika, onion powder, black pepper and cayenne pepper to the rub, and turned it into a slow cooker recipe.  The original recipe called for the tenderloin being cooked in the oven at 450 degrees for about 26 minutes. Ingredients: 1 pork tenderloin Spice Rub Ingredients: 2 1/2 tsp kosher salt 2 tsp granulated garlic 2 tsp dried oregano 2 tsp dried thyme 2 tsp ground cumin 2 tsp paprika 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp black pepper 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper Combine all of the spices in a bowl to create th...

Let me start by saying, I do not have a green thumb.  My main problem is my lack of attention to plants once I have planted them.  However, it is a personal goal of mine to improve my gardening skills.  I love plants and flowers.  And, I have always wanted a garden.  The idea of growing my own food seems so rewarding. This is a great activity that can be done with a toddler.  My plan is to learn while I teach my two year old how to garden.  Together, I think we can do this and have some fun too. We wanted to create a raised bed garden using cinder blocks.  We leveled out the ground as best we could and created a rectangle with the cinder blocks.  We placed cinder block caps on each of the blocks to finish off the look.  Doing this will also help block light from getting through in the holes of the cinder blocks and keep grass from growing within the holes. We actually built and prepped the garden bed a few weeks prior to plantin...

In my last post, I talked about my decision to transition my hair into it's natural state.  Here are some pictures of how my hair looked throughout the transitioning process.  I will warn you, some of these photos are not the best quality.  I am trying to do a better job documenting this hair journey. When I flat iron my hair, I wear that straight style for about four days to a week.  If it starts to revert to its curly state in less than a week's time, I simply wash it and just go back to wearing it curly.  I flat iron my hair at least twice a month.  I know, some naturals may be out there gasping.  Flat ironing is sometimes considered a big natural hair faux pas.  So far, I have not had any issues with heat damage. February 2012 May 2012 May 2012 - Flat ironed April 2013 (a month after my son was born) September 2013 - Flat ironed March 2014 - Flat ironed August 2014 April 2015 April 2015 - Flat ironed...

In December of 2011, I decided to stop using chemical straighteners on my hair and allow it to grow out in its natural state.  This means it has been three years since I put a relaxer in my hair.  Before deciding to go natural, I was relaxing my hair every four to five weeks.  I always had thick hair and when I would sweat, especially when working out, it usually began in my hair and my hair would revert back to it's curly state.  It seemed to get to the point where my hair was resisting the relaxers.  I wondered why I was even going through the trouble of relaxing my hair. Picture right after my last relaxer After years of relaxers, I started seriously thinking about going natural.  My hair had been relaxed since I was three years old, so I needed to first figure out how I was going to pull this out.  I knew very little about natural hair styling.  To educate myself, I started checking out YouTube vloggers.  One in particular, Mahogany...

Photo from www.gardenguides.com As I have mentioned before, we don't give our son a lot of candy and sweets.  Easter is such a candy filled holiday with chocolate rabbits, Peeps, Cadbury Eggs, Gold Brick Eggs, and all sorts of other varieties of sweets.  In an attempt to minimize the Little Mister's sugar intake, we fill his plastic eggs with other treats.  Here are some ideas for filling those plastic eggs for baskets and Easter egg hunts with non-candy sweets. Mini Cheese Puff Balls Chex Mix Froot Loops Cereal Goldfish Crackers Honey Nut Cheerios Cereal Teddy Grahams  Pretzel Sticks Mini Vanilla Wafers Gerber Puffs Gerber Yogurt Melts Some of these alternatives work well not only for toddlers, but can also be used for older children. These are just a few ideas if you are trying to stay away from an overload of chocolate and candy.  You could fill eggs with some of these types of goodies, then y...