Charity : Water

This year has been hard financially for many people in the US and Christmas makes it even harder. So although giving to charities may not be on your radar for a gift this season but it maybe the cheapest and easiest way to give gifts this season! I am involved in a website called Shespeaks.com who is supporting this charity. So I decided to get involved! I bought their little black box as a gift that includes a wrist band and a donation to charity! There are several different options as well and here is some more information on the charity itself along with the link to the site!

Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water. That’s one in eight of us. charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects. Learn more or donate.

http://www.charitywater.org/

Its been too long!

With everything going on lately I have neglected my blog! Football cheerleading is over and of course there isn't much of a break then basketball cheerleading starts up! Not much has been going on besides cheerleading, Clemson football, and family. Darien is applying for a new position at work and I am praying he gets it. He has done so well with his job that I cannot imagine that he won't but of course we want what God has planned for us. I have tried getting another job watching a little girl but no luck with that. We are also still trying to figure out when the best time to try for another baby is. I would love to try for a girl and as much as I have the baby itch I am not sure I really want another baby next year. We are just starting to get alot more things changed with the cheerleading program and it would be hard to add another baby to the picture along with competitions, practice, games... Maybe in a year or so....

Well I need to get off and try and get some things done around the house! :) I hope I will write more soon!

My life in a nutshell... Getting it all together

Ok so I need to vent and what better place to do that but on your own blog!! :) So my goal in highschool was to get married and have kids partly because I always wanted what I didn't have growing up and because I love kids. Case in point... Im married with 2 boys who are my life! I never really wanted anything until I had them and I honestly never thought I was really that good at anything until I had kids. Once I had them I wanted more for them and realized that I cut myself short before I had them and Im not the example that I want to show for them. As any mother I want them to grow up and fulfill their dreams and shoot for the stars, go to college, enjoy life! Growing up I dealt with too much enternally and was never able really be who I could have been. I found cheerleading to be that outlet and really thrived in the sport but it filled a whole that I didn't want to fill with anything else. I had to work really hard to get c's in highschool and that was enough for me because I didn't really want to go to college anyways. I always played it off like I only wanted babies and a dream marriage but in reality (don't get me wrong I truely wanted kids and marriage) I didn't really thing I was good at anything to go to college for plus I knew I wasn't good in school so why put myself through 4 years of just getting by.

So of course I went to college, had no idea what I was in for, took too many hours, had cheerleading on top of it plus I was 5 hrs away from home with no car so needless to say I failed out... Lost my scholarship and cheerleading squad which was the biggest dissapointment for me. I came back home feeling like more of a failure than I had in my entire life and I had some seriously failure feelings before... I tried going to a tech school for a semester and although I did well I didn't have the funds to keep taking classes and so I got a full time job as a secretary. Here is where life just got worse... I tried making friends because all of mine were in school. I made a friend that I will never regret making but the choices I made with this friend weren't the greatest. As a 19 year old I was working a full time job like an adult but my friends were in college living life as a college student and as a girl who never really faced the depression and issues I had in the past my emotions spiraled out of control and I ended up drinking to get rid of those feelings. WRONG CHOICE! A year after I started this full time job I ended up having to quit due to getting kicked out of my house. I don't really blame my mom. Im not sure as a mother I would have been able to keep my child who was spiraling out of control under the roof with a 9 year old child but at the time I didn't understand and I just wanted to feel like I wasn't drowning anymore.

I ran to my dad in Greenville and without him I probably would have landed at my friends house which would have just aided my drowning instead of someone helping me out of this ocean of depression. Now don't get me wrong my dad never said "ok Amanda we fully support your habit of self destruction" it was more that he accepted me and was supportive of me. He gave me a feeling of stability that I seemed to lack at the time. I ended up taking some more classes and did pretty well but started working full time and got another job along with that so I only did one semester got another job in which I met some more destructive friends although I didnt realize it yet again at the time. The only light in the dark spot was I met Darien. My destructive friends introduced me to this goofy guy who made dumb jokes and who he and I had a certain banter that was fun. He was a Clemson fan which was probably the biggest attraction for me when we met but other than that he was a good friend.

Darien smoked which I hated and I think he wanted to impress me so much he cut way back while we were friends and at some point quit altogether. He was always there being the one friend who reminded me of who I truley was not this person or shell that I had become. After hitting rock bottom, moving in with my desctructive friends, and adding drugs to my drinking I thought I was never going to pick up the pieces. My mom who I had kinda put out of thought out of mind at the point got me to come home a few times to help them open their new icecream stores and I reconnected with old friends(good friends) and after I opened my eyes to my destructive friends crazy personalities I decided to get out. My mom let me move back home and I was determined to get my life straight. Darien and I still talked constantly and I encouraged him to get his life right with me. Columbia was a good move for me and after only falling off the wagon once I really thrived managing my moms store. I enjoyed actually doing well at something! In 2005 Darien and I got engaged and planned on getting married that next summer and in July 2006 and a month later we got pregnant with our first son. 3 years later we now have 2 wonderful boys that I love so much! I am coaching cheerleading, blogging, and this week I will start watching a littler girl named Karsyn. I have alot going on and I don't really want to add to it I just wish I had a skill or that I could finish college so that I can say LOOK boys! I raised you and I still did something with my life because I had a dream! But what am I good at?? I'm good with kids, I love photography, I like teaching(albiet cheerleading), I love medecine and helping people but what do I do? And why do I feel like I need to make something of myself? Really my question is why do I feel so lost? I wish I would have taken advantage of the opportunities when I had them but I didn't know what I know now back then and I didn't really know who I was on top of that. I can't afford to go back to school and if I even went back I don't have the time. I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself but I feel like I should be better! As a mom, as a wife, as a person! I guess I have high goals this time around and I don't know how to achieve them... Ok I got that out! Thanks for listening if you did!

Marshmallow Fondant and Icing Dough

So I don't like normal fondant because its just not very yummy so when I decorate cakes I tend to only use icing and pipe things which anyone will tell you isn't always the cleanest. You can work really hard for clean lines that don't always happen. So your next option is fondant which is pretty easy to work with and makes a very smooth surface on cakes but as I said before its not very tasty. So after some googling and a helpful nudge from a friend who tried it I decided to play with marshmallow fondant! It was super easy albiet messy!

Grab a bag of marshmallows, crisco, powdered sugar, and a little water.

Put the bag of marshmallows and 3tbl of water in a glass bowl and microwave for 30 seconds, stir. Do this at 30sec intervals until the marshmallows are melted. It should take about 3 minutes total. Let this cool for a few minutes because if you start mixing it while its still hot you will have a huge mess and its harder to mix. Now take your crisco and grease your surface VERY WELL!!! Also COVER your hands in crisco after you do this next step.
Add 3/4ths of the bag of powdered sugar(2lb bag)to the top of the marshmallows and mix with your greased hands. Once you have it mixed together pour out onto your surface and continue to knead like bread dough. If it seems to dry add water and if it seems too wet then add more powdered sugar. I had to regrease my hands several times as well as my surface just FYI.

Knead until you have a smooth ball of marshmallow ball and cover with crisco then place in a ziplock bag. Before you close the bag try and get all of the air out. This should stay good for a week or two.

You can do the same thing with a can of white icing and powdered sugar without adding the water.

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Catching Up!

Here are pictures of Noah's bday party!! And a month in review!

I realized I haven't posted in awhile which makes me kinda sad but so many things have been going on recently it doesn't surprise me. We rarely have a weekend without something going on and with cheerleading coming so much closer I have had alot to get done. This past weekend we went to pick blueberries which I have been excited about since April!! I picked 2 gallons worth while Conner mostly ate all the ones he picked and Darien walked around with Noah who couldn't be put down due to all of the old smashed blueberries on the ground that he surely would have picked up and ate!! So I froze some, the boys are still eating a ton! and I made blueberry jelly out of some!! I think next time I will invest in a strainer the get some of the seeds out but Conner loves his blueberry jelly sandwiches!

I wish I remembered to take pictures of things!! Then you could have seen the mess I made making the stupid jelly! I was doing too many things at once AND neither boys had naps (Noah's story later) so it was a crazy thing to do while dealing with all of that but it still turned out pretty good!

Ok so we went at 12 which was a bad idea in the first place but hubs HAD to eat lunch which was pizza which takes forever to heat up. So its hot and we stayed an hour and I promised Conner that we would stop and get icecream which we did so it was 2:30 by the time we got home. Darien got Noah's diaper changed and put him in his crib. Conner however I knew would sleep way too long so I let him skip his nap. About 45 minutes later I hear him laughing and then crying so I walk up to just lay him back down and as soon as I step in the door I am struck by the smell of poop! Oh and Noah is just grinning so big like HI MOM!!! He has no diaper on and there is poop everywhere!! All in his hands, around his face, ALL OVER the crib!! Seriously I have NO idea how one small child could get so much poop all over the place!! I quickly screamed for Darien and handed him off to him so he could get him in the bath ASAP. I stripped the bed and went to cleaning and quickly realized that he must have touched every inch of that crib with his poopy hands!! Now Conner had a poop accident in his crib before but it was at about 20 mths old and he pooped and peed in the corners of the crib but stayed away from playing in the poop. So this was a new experience and one that I would rather not relive!!

I think thats it for now!