So delicious Strawberry cupcakes

(I think without the frosting, these would also double as strawberry muffins and they are quite delicious plain!) Um, okay I am in the process of making them as muffins right now, tonight, after dinner. We made these for my neighbor's birthday, I knew how much her and her girls loved fruit, so I thought they would be the perfect birthday treat for her- plus the strawberries here are just divine!

This recipe is adapted from Annies eats (same place as the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes)



Now, I followed her cupcake recipe almost exactly, with a few minor ingredient changes- she used cake flour, I used all purpose, she used buttermilk, I used milk- got to use what you can get in Japan.

Cupcake recipe:
Oven: 350'

2 1/2 cups cake flour (or all purpose)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (I actually used salted, it was all I had- tonight I am using unsalted though)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk (or milk)
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups chopped strawberries

Cream butter and sugar in bowl until fluffy, slowly add the eggs, mix some more, then add the milk, oil, and vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients, add slowly to mixture. Fold in chopped strawberries. Fill muffin cups half way.
Baking time: approximately 20 min.

Frosting: ( I still cannot add that much butter to my icing- so I changed her amounts to the following):

1/3 cup cream cheese
7 TBSP butter
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 TBSP vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup strawberry puree

Beat cream cheese and butter in bowl until creamy. Add some of the powdered sugar and mix. Puree strawberries in food processor. Add the strawberries, vanilla, and lemon juice to the mixture, slowly add in the remaining powdered sugar.

You can garnish the tops with strawberry slices too.

I added too much strawberries and I think that is why my frosting did not have volume on top of the cupcake like I wanted, it just kind of fell down, still tasted very very very good though, I have the leftovers in the fridge and have been using them on Dave's unsweetened chocolate scones that he made last weekend.

If you don't make these, you are crazy!

Our workbox system

To keep track of our work throughout the day and to make it fun, I found some ideas on line about doing a workbox system. I don't know the exact place I found the idea, because there are a bunch of people using it and I don't follow the "system" religiously, just for tracking our daily work.

I used scrapbook paper that was patiently waiting to be put in a scrapbook, just never happened. I printed out number cards from makinglearningfun.com, penguins for Nathaniel and cars for Owen. I cut out the numbers, and laminated them. Then I traced the penguin cards onto Nathaniel's scrapbook paper and wrote the numbers 1-12 in the boxes, then I laminated the scrapbook paper. Since Owen only had 4 numbers, I didn't trace the cars on his scrapbook paper before laminating.

I used velcro that had tape on one side to attach the numbers to the chart. When they are done with their work, they stick up the number, when we are at the end of the day, they remove them to be ready for the next day. It is a fun way for them and me to keep track of their work through the day.

We have bins and draws with corresponding numbers, where I put their work so they know which number they are on. I try to put the work and whatever supplies they will need in the bins the night before so they are not scrambling to find their work. It is easy for them and me and keeps us more organized, not to mention it is fun for them to open the box to find out what lies inside for them to do.

Here is Nathaniel's blank chart:



Here is it full, doesn't it look fun:



Here is Owen's full (you can see the box next to it with Nathaniel's penguin cards, we keep them there so they are easy to reach right next to the chart and Owen's are kept around the corner hanging in a ziploc baggie):



Here are some of the boxes labelled with numbers, the white numbered ones are Nathaniel's and the one's with laminated pictures of cars are Owen's:



Here are drawers for more of Nathaniel's work, we use it for papers and workbook exercises:

Chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes

And yes, they taste as good as they sound!!!!　I found these online today at this blog, Annie's Eats.　I HAD to make them today. I was missing a few ingredients, so I made a couple substitutions and the results were AMAZING (I think anyways)!

For the cupcakes:

3 sticks butter
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed
4 large eggs
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Cream butter and brown sugar (I let it mix for a minute or so). Add the eggs while mixing. Next, I added the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mixed a bit. Then, I added the milk and mixed. Finally, I added the vanilla and mixed about 1 minute, then I put in the chocolate chips and let it mix on low for about 30 seconds.

I baked them in the oven at 350' for about 20 minutes. I will warn you that this yielded a LOT of cupcakes (23 mini, and 19 large). I bet a half batch would be perfect if your just making them for your family and not a large party- that's what I'll do next time.

While the cupcakes were baking, I mixed up the filling, here's where I made it my own:

Filling:

4 TBSP butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
7 oz. marshmallow fluff
1/2 cup flour
2 TBSP milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

I blended all ingredients with a hand mixer and then I put it directly into my decorator. I used a wide open tip so that the mini chips would not get stuck when I was filling the cupcakes. I stuck the tip in each cupcake and squeezed some filling in. If it would not move because a chip was stuck in the tip, I stuck a chopstick in and pushed it back. You might want to try grating chocolate bits and putting that into the filling to avoid clogging the tip.

Frosting: ( I made up my own, I could not even fathom using 3 sticks butter in the icing like the recipe that I found)

4 TBSP butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 TBSP flour
1/2 box confectioner's sugar (sorry I didn't measure the exact amount - it was a 1 lb box)
2 tsp vanilla
3-4 TBSP milk (again, I didn't measure)
the rest of the filling mixture

I creamed the butter and brown sugar, then added the flour and some confectioner's sugar. I added about 1 TBSP milk, then more sugar, then more milk until the frosting showed the thickness I wanted, and finally, I added the vanilla. I let it mix for a few minutes, so it was nice and fluffy. I put in the rest of the filling mix because I didn't want to waste is and it was about 1/4 cup that I had left. I put the icing in my decorator and voila:



The inside:



I don't know, this guy reminds me of a dollop of frosting:



If you like cookie dough, you must try these because they actually taste like cookie dough!

Peeps s'mores pie

Are you looking for a way to get rid of your Easter candy? Well, this is fun, yummy, easy, and used up a lot of ours. I read an idea one time about a s'more made with a peeps instead of a marshmallow, so we made our own twist on it:

Crush up 1 sleeve of graham cracker crumbs and mix with 1/4 melted butter. Normally a graham cracker crust calls for sugar, we didn't add it because the peeps are coated with sugar. Press the crumb mixture into a small pan (8 x 8):



Next, we unwrapped our foil milk chocolate eggs (so gross, but they were still left over from last year- tasted fine and we didn't get sick), and opened a pack of m + m's that we had from valentine's day. We laid the chocolate down all over the top of the crumb crust:



Finally, we lay our peeps bunnies all over the top of the chocolates:



We baked it uncovered in the oven at 350' for about 20 minutes.
Aah don't cook us:



The thing that excited the kids the most was that the bunnies eyes and noses disappeared after baking!



We had leftovers the next day and they were still good.

A visit to my NINTH hospital here in Japan!

Guess who takes the cake for most hospitals visited in Japan out of my neighborhood??? ME!!!! I have been to 9 now, thanks to Owen. Last night, we were making a yummy dessert, so I let the kids stay up a bit late in honor of it and that's when things went wrong. Two of the kids were pillow fighting and next thing, I hear BANG and Owen is rushing towards me with blood spurting out of his forehead. I called my neighbor who was a nurse before moving to Japan. She came over and confirmed that stitches were needed.

Why is 9 pm a bad time to get injured?

1) Everyday there is a different on call hospital for surgeries, adults, children
2) I don't know how to get to the 30 different hospitals
3) Are they open this late?
4) The doctors and nurses might not speak English
5) You might not have enough money in your wallet to pay cash for the visit
6) Your husband's cell phone doesn't ring or isn't in his pocket, why does he even have it?
7) Your husband doesn't have his own phone/voicemail at work and his coworkers don't take messages
8) You might not be able to find someone willing to come over and watch all the other kids.
9) The ER doctors here are not Emergency doctors like in the US, but they are whoever is oncall
10) You can't call a japanese friend to help translate
11) Most importantly, even in the daylight, let alone the dark, it is hard to tell which building is the hospital, they are not clearly labelled like in the US

I could go on and on. So, I went to the main hospital here in Kobe, which I knew had a 24 hr emergency room. I had called our property manager at 9 and he phoned the hospital to let them know we were on our way, which he is getting a batch of brownies for that. I get to the hospital (after driving by twice because I was not sure it was the hospital because it looked like any other building and had no clear sign saying hospital or H, or the green and white plus symbol you see here a lot). I pulled in after the third drive by and it was the right place. The emergency room had only 3 people outside and was eerily quiet.

By the way, if you don't know, the hospitals here haven't been renovated or redecorated since they were built and yes, they believe in reduce, reuse, recycle because all the beds in the emergency rooms and clinics I've been in have sheets, towels, and pillows on the, no paper or plastic covering, and I'm almost 100% sure it's not changed between every patient. That's not the worst, the worst is the nasty looking thermometer that they hand to every patient to take their own temperature (please tell me they all do underarm and not undertongue). Then I didn't see the nurse clean it after we used it, ewww!

While we were waiting, one emergency came in on a stretcher, a boy with a cut head with a lot of blood. The funny thing was the ambulances rarely use their sirens and everything here is quiet in general, so you didn't even know an emergency was arriving, this was so much calmer than the US emergency rooms I've been in. The ambulance drivers wore a pale blue jumpsuit uniform, but I had to chuckle because they are made of papertowel type fabric, I wish I had my camera with me.

We only waited fifteen minutes and were called back to the non-english speaking doctor. The annoying thing was some guy at some point behind the desk had to help the nurse ask me questions and he spoke good english, why wasn't he in the room with us? The doctor kept telling me stuff in japanese, clearly he didn't see the blank expression on my face or think that I understood NOTHING he was saying to me. Finally after my third time of askign him (in my limited japanese) to speak more slowly and repeat himself, did he use english to say "since he has not vomited or had a seizure, he doesn't need a CT scan of his head", well buddy, why didn't you just say so 20 minutes ago??? I was shaking my head because I thought he was saying since he might move around a lot when we give the stitches because he's so young, we are going to put him under and one of the side effects when he wakes up might be vomitting. Holy lost in translation! So, why didn't he just try to keep using English? Because I have heard they are embarrassed or too insecure to use it, well I could care less if he used 2 word sentences, I wanted to be able to get Owen fixed.

Finally, he brings in all the stuff to stitch up Owen, and he just lay it all on the bed next to Owen, not on a tray, clearly this guy isn't a pediatrician or a stitcher. There was no one else to help us hold Owen down while he got the anesthetic. I got nervous he was going to whack all the equipment onto the floor. Finally, another guy walked by and came in to help hold him (okay at age 3, it took 5 adults to hold Nathaniel down). Needless to say, the anesthetic didn't take and when the first stitch went in, he could feel it, I almost fainted, he was screaming and squirming, it was AWFUL! More anesthetic was needed and then he got 2 more stitches, both of which he could feel some of. I felt so bad that he had to go through that because I couldn't communicate with the doctor to ask for me people to help hold him down and that it was after 9 and we couldn't just see a plastic surgeon.

So, the doctor tells me to come back tomorrow (which was today) to see a plastic surgeon. I wanted to anyways because the stitches were far apart and long. They are holding the skin together nicely, but have a look for yourself, I think there are smaller needles that could have been used or thinner thread or closer stitches to help prevent this little boy from gaining a big scar on his forehead.

Here he is after coming home last night:



Here is it up close:



Here he is this afternoon, proof that this kid is super tough and a little old cut isn't going to ruin his day:



We went back to the hospital today to see the plastic surgeon, and there was A LOT of traffic. We were getting of at an exit with 2 lanes, the left lane went to other highways and we needed to be in it. The right lane went to a parking area, and at the end of the ramp, we could have cut off people in the left lane and gotten back in, if we were rude and drove down the right lane. But, since I am the foreigner here, I try to do things right and follow the rules. I decided there was no need to rush since walk ins were until 1 and it was 11:15 at the time. Well, at 11:48 when I was told walk-ins were only welcome until 11:48, I wasn't so Mrs. Nice Foreigner (gaijin) anymore. So, we didn't get to see the plastic surgeon because of those three minutes, seriously, I wanted to SCREAM. We did however get to go back to the ER and see another non-english speaking, non-plastic surgeon doctor, who changed the band-aid and said, "oh it looks clean, no infection". Okay, what about the scarring? He said come back Monday or Tuesday before 11:45 to see the plastic surgeon, but the skin will be healing by then!

Then, I had to go out and wait to pay. Oh no, I had to wait to get a red envelope with some papers in it to take up to the second floor, I wasn't sure if I was going to pay or going to the plastic surgeon, a glimmer of hope flickered by. We get out of the elevator to counter central, there were six big huge counters, three on each sides of the floor and then one huge one in the middle, the counters all had names of stuff on them, so I was looking for emergency, figuring I had to go there to pay. I round the corner and there is the mother of counters, with about 12 people working at it, on one end, it said "kusuri" which means pharmacy and the other "referral writing" and next to that, information. I go to information, they tell me that I need to wait in line for the people at 5-9. I get next to this red ribbon indicating a line forms her and wait til a girl calls me over to get the envelope. She tells me to sit and wait again for my name to be called by 1-4. This was the hard part, all the people had microphones and were calling name of 3 or 4 people at a time to line up and make their payments. I had to listen very carefully, how crazy is it that one of the hardest parts of the day was listening for my name. Why did I have to go to three different people to have to pay? I guess it must have to do with keeping people employed (or annoyed).

And finally, here is another reason why we were three minutes late, but how could I resist? Sorry, this was taken with my cell phone:

Owl apparel March (#5)

This was done in March, I swear, but I've been occupied with other things so I wasn't able to get it posted in time. Anyways, I think this might be my favorite owl fabric so far, so I designed a shirt, that next year, I can take off the straps and it will be a skirt, yes, I did try it on her and it looks cute as a skirt, just a tad bit big right now.

I used the strap measurements from the Bananfana Tea Party Twirl pattern, everything else, I made up on my own. I measured out 2 rectangles of the owl fabric, about 28" wide by 9 " long (all I had since I didn't get a big piece of fabric, it was expensive, I got it from Etsy, I think it was imported from Italy). Then, I just folded over the top and made a casing for the elastic, so the shirt would stay up and so it would get a nice full look to it when the elastic was added. To give it length, I added a 2" piece of the pink fabric and then a 5" piece of the turquoise fabric to the bottom. It can be worn on it's own as a tank or with a long sleeve underneath, see below:



I could even get away with adding some lace later on for more length and more life out of this little gem. Look at the cutest owls:

Fabric easter eggs

I have been thinking about making these for a few years now. I finally mustered up the time to make 2 eggs for each of the kids, one plain and one secret pocket egg. I found the secret pocket pattern here at sew mama sew. For the non-pocket eggs, I just used the same pattern, but omitted the curve for the pocket. I also traced about half inch larger of a pocket size than the pattern for my eggs and it still felt too small (I could put a matchbox car in about half way sticking out, the kids were still excited about it though). Next year I'm going to make the pocket even bigger.

Here's our basket full of eggs, can you guess who each of the eggs were for?



Here's Hazel's favorite up close:



HAPPY EASTER!!!!