Vegan chocolate cake!

Hey guys!

With the baby coming and us doing spring/early summer cleaning I can’t help, but think about the upcoming baby shower.

During the planning process my friend shared a delicious recipe with me that was shared with her by her friend. This takes me back to when I was planning my cousin’s baby shower. She had a Vegan friend and we wanted to have some foods that would make her feel comfortable in eating. Of course there were different degrees of Veganism. Some are strictly on this and some are a little more lenient on that. One of the food items I had a great time making were Vegan Tofu spring rolls which included almond butter as part of the dipping sauce. It was delicious. The Tofu was marinated in soy sauce and freshly squeezed orange juice. That was a new flavor for me and I love how refreshing it was especially with the fresh crispy bean sprouts and other veggies. I’ll have to look that recipe up and post it. Oh and part of having some Vegan friendly foods were Vegan friendly desserts.

I contacted a few places for desserts and they all sounded so great, but were out of my budget range. I also considered trying to make them, but some of the ingredients were pretty expensive. I ended up buying some prepackaged cookies and macaroons from Sprouts. I bought a few boxes to test out first and I think I threw about 3 boxes away. Not so tasty. Anyways it was a great experience with trying different types of foods.

So here is the recipe from Joanna K.

Vegan Chocolate Cake recipe

Cake:

1 ¼ cups Flour

1/3 Cocoa Powder

1 cup Sugar

½ teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1/3 cup Vegetable Oil or Canola Oil

1 cup Warm Water

1 ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 teaspoon Apple Cider Vinegar

Mix all the dry ingredients together, and then add in all the wet ingredients. Preheat oven to 350’. Bake for about 30 minutes. When it’s done, let it sit for about 2 hours before putting the glaze or frosting on top.

Glaze:

½ cup Sugar

2 tablespoons Soy Milk, or Almond Milk, or Coconut Milk

2 tablespoons Cocoa Powder

2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

4 tablespoons Vegan Butter (You can use Earth Balance. They sell it at Sprouts/Henrys, and sometimes at Vons and Ralphs.)

In small pot, mix all the ingredients together in medium-high heat until it’s all melted. Then you can let it sit for 10-30 minutes so it’s not too hot, and pour on top of cake. If you don’t want to use the glaze, you can use store bought frosting that is vegan. Pillsbury and Betty Crocker have some vegan frostings. The vanilla and chocolate fudge frostings are vegan, just not the milk chocolate.

Enjoy!

Paying it forward

Hi saw this on fb and thought it was a great way to share the kindness. Just the thoughtfulness rally warms my heart so if like to share this with you :)

I'm participating in a 'pay it forward' initiative. The first five people to comment on this status with "I'm in" will receive a surprise from me at some point in this calendar year! Anything from a book, a gift card, any surprise. There will be no warning and I will try to find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy! These five people MUST make the same offer on their post, IG, FB etc... and distribute their own joy. We can do more nice things for each other in 2014 without any reason, just to make each other smile and show that we think of each other. Here's to a more enjoyable, friendly, and love-filled year!

Pregnancy Announcements

We're expecting again!!

I really can't explain to you how I feel. The only word I can come up with was excited! We will be welcoming another miracle and Em will have a sibling. So we kept it hush for a little bit until keeping it hush was stressing me out and we ended up telling my family a week earlier than expected. I wanted to wait for the ultrasound photo, but after I told them I was relieved. Even though there could have been complications which I always worry about I shared the great news with family regardless of the outcome. 

Recently I've been really fatigued and one day I realized I was a few days late. This didn't worry me too much because it fluctuates here and there. I was curious just to find out although there was a good chance it might not come out positive. So I grabbed my wondof pregnant strips and the first strip was 2 lines---positive! Then I ran to cvs and tested on the expensive digital ones. Pregnant! After my second positive result I shared this with my husband. He said great. The next few days before my first appt I tested again and they were all positive :) amazing news!

So began my search for really cool pregnancy announcements. I saw a few I liked then ended up just using what I had and I came up with this :) 

Either way we are super excited  to add 2 more feet to our little family. 

It's here!!

My Tote arrives!!

So a box arrives at my house and I wonder what I ordered from amazon again. I should have realized it wasn't an amazon box when I looked at it, but then again I was too tired to focus on it. It was probably some molds I bought a few days ago. 

I bring the box in and look at the sender. Golden tote! Wow that was fast. I ordered on a Friday and got it on the following Tuesday.

I open the box to see an invoice, a thank you card and 2 look cards. I'm pretty sure I got one of the items on each card. The lace black with the baseball white sleeves I've seen a few girls on YouTube get that as a surprise as well when I was looking into golden tote so seeing that I knew it came with a cami which was nice.

I looked at the pieces and got worried I over estimated and should have gotten mediums. I tried the dress and it was a little loose on the sides but the length was good. I paired it with a belt and it was ok. It'll probably come in handy later on.  I wore the black cami and it fit perfectly. I wore the tee and it surprisingly for snugly. Not really what I picked, but it looked ok.

So a recap. It cost me a little over $60 with tax and shipping. Which comes to about $20 a piece. Dress I would guess maybe $25, blouse $18, and cami $8. My estimated would be $51. I really want this to work out so ill try one more box and see where that takes me.

Box Subscriptions

Hey guys! Do you guys love getting stuff in the mail? I sure do! Well not those advertisements for life insurance or that I'm pre-screened for credit cards.

I used to write to a few pen pals back in the day, but now that we've all grown up it's been more difficult to pull out a piece of paper and pen our thoughts down then take the time to mail out the letter. I did like the element of surprise from friends though.

One day while I was googling something online I ended up looking at monthly box subscriptions. I've heard of monthly subscriptions to make up brands etc, but I didn't know they had things like shaving boxes and stuff to comfort you during your monthly visit from Aunt Flo. One of the subscriptions that caught my interest are the clothing surprise bags. I'm not really good at picking my own clothing nor do i have too much time to go shopping and trying on clothes I thought it would be cool to try this out.

 I started at www.boxsubscriptions.com to check out what was out there. Then I checked out myboxsubscriptionaddition.com which reviewed some of the boxes. Reading though I figured out I’d like to try to Golden Tote site. A lot of you who know me know I have no style. I stay at basic colors and basic designs whenever possible. This has been cost affective for me in the last  few years.

How I went about ordering my Golden Tote

1.       It asks me to chose between the $149 for 5-7 items and $49 for 2-3 items. I chose the $49 so I can get a feel of how this whole surprise grab bag works.

2.       Chose an item. I had a few options. The one I would have liked was the playful zebra blouse, but that was out of stock. I'm sure if I had registered earlier it might have still been available. I picked the Breezy Open Back Dress. It was short so I figured I could wear it as a tunic with some leggings. Then it asked me if I was happy with my selection and gave me the option to proceeded to the next step or start over. I proceeded.

3.       Select style profile.  Name my profile. Then indicated my top size. When I got to what size jeans I normally wear I was stumped. I’ve usually work 7-10 since my body has been fluctuating over the years. A few weeks ago I went to the mall and was checking out these cute Levi brand jeans and they didn’t have my 7-10. They had like 24 and up and I'm like huh? I don’t know my waist size at all. Post preggie I never measured myself so I ended up not grabbing a pair of Levi's. Now here I am really curious to find out what my jean size is. I measure and I think I'm about a 40 which isn’t in between their options of 24-31. And I wonder if this site is for those skinny model types of girls because I'm a beautiful curvaceous woman, but none the less I forge on. I pick the 31 and continue because there is a red asterisk so the field has to be filled out. Then there are a few more Qs and it also asks if there is something I would never wear. I put it jeans so they don’t try to pick anything out for me especially when they don’t fit my measurements.

Then there are 3 style types to pick. The first one was a little glamor-flashy for me, but I did like 3 pieces. The second one had a little bit of a more hippie-bohemian sort of feel to me. I liked 2 pieces. The third one was like me being Goldilocks and sleeping in the bears bed. Baby bear’s bed was just the right size! This look was more of a wear to work and still wear out classy sort of feel. I liked most of the items.
 

Now it’s been added. Then I review my purchase and check on shipping info. Now I had to search for discount codes. The discount codes I used didn't work so I just paid the total $60.63 with tax and shipping.
 

Then you had to create an acct. I was having issues with using the mobile device to open up an acct so I had to log in to the computer and sign up. the mobile act seemed like I can only log in through FB, but the computer version let me us my email address.

So I'm looking forward to getting my tote!