It's Just Me

We have family night at my Mom’s house every Friday night. So I figured it would be the perfect time to try out my Big Top Cupcake silicone bake ware that I got from my mama for Christmas. Eli thought so too. He adores him some chocolate cake boy!

So I really wasn’t sure how it would actually turn out. I have have uses some other silicone bake ware and I wasn’t all the way sold on them. I am sure Hubs knows exactly what I am talking about when I say “silicone snowflake FAIL”. Anyways, let’s not talk about that.

Ok let me say first, I did a little research on the product before using it. I watched some youtube vids and found some good advice. I think the most important advice is not to use a light bubbly cake. A dense box cake that does not have pudding in the mix will work well. It’s just that the structure will not hold up as well with those types of cakes. You can use a homemade cake also, but for this first attempt, we just used box cakes.

The second piece of advice I would give is that inside the bottom part of the cupcake, fill it just slightly over the two lines showing you where to fill it. We used the insert with ours and just slightly filled it past the lines and it come out perfect. It’s kind of one of those things where if you have one, you will just get use to where to fill it.

Third advice is to make sure you spray the mold with cooking spray. If you do this, you should have no problem when it comes time to take the cake out. Ours come out perfect.

So, like I said, Eli LOVES him some chocolate cake so I decided to use two different kinds of chocolate cake, one for the bottom, one for the top. I also chose to use canned frosting and instant chocolate pudding for the filling. The mixes make it much easier when trying to make a cake with a seven year old boy with a short attention span. If I was making this at home on my own, I probably would have searched through my piles of recipes and picked one of those to make.

After baking, you are suppose to level off the top if need be so that it fits onto the bottom part. We decided not to do this. It seemed pretty level and just seemed like a waste of cake. ;p Make sure to let the cakes cool before taking them out of the mold.

We had premade the pudding we were going to use as filling and had it chilling in the refrigerator while the cakes were baking.

Looking at it now, it probably would have been better if we had leveled the top out.

I decided it would be fun to let eli pipe the frosting on. He got tired of it though and I had to finish.

My mom thought it very much looked like an acorn. It was very tasty though and I am not sure I could say the same about an acorn. ;p

Here is what it looked like cut.

The only negative about it was that once it was cut in half, it didn’t want to stand up. The cake became unstable and we ended up having to lay it flat. I don’t know if it was just too top heavy or if we should have cut it from different sides or what. More tries and I should be able to tell if it is just the cake we used, or if falling down once half of it is gone is just something we have to deal with. Maybe leveling it off would have made it stronger or putting frosting between the layers as glue would have helped. Not sure, but there was not one complaint about taste! it was a hit with the family and everyone thought it was cute. It seems to be very versatile in that you can pretty much decorate it any way you want for lots of different occasions. It was fun to make.

*note: I have also seen metal cake pans for the giant cupcake at walmart if you are opposed to using silicone.

The laughs are what I will remember most about closing out 2010 and opening up a whole new year. Despite the troubles that plagued us on our annual NYE trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, it is the laughs that I recall first.

This year, we decided to bring my mom and nephew, Eli, down to celebrate 2011 in style. We booked our hotel with anticipation way back in August 2010. The perk to that being a hotel within walking distance of the Space Needle in downtown Gatlinburg. The hotel itself, was not a disappointment at all. We had a fireplace a balcony overlooking the river and an in room two person hot tub. We were all loving the room once we finally got there. Eli especially, exclaiming that this was the best trip ever. He was very impressed with the fireplace and balcony. Which was good because the journey to actually get to our room was not an easy one. We ran into some, uh, “issues”. But by the grace of God and all our good humor, we were not traumatized and the trip was not ruined.

We left really early so we could be in Tennessee by mid morning. The trip started with the Dark Lord himself, Darth Vader, telling us which direction to go. Not that we needed directions mind you. Our car could probably drive itself to Pigeon Forge. But we had purchased a TomTom for Christmas and had loaded Vader as our voice to guide us. Now let me tell you, Vader made for an interesting guide and kept us giggling as we jumped into hyper space and made our way through Kentucky.

We actually arrived in Pigeon Forge on schedule with hopes of going over to Cherokee, NC, to look for the painted bears (which me and Donald have done but we wanted Eli to enjoy it too). But our first stop as always, is to feed the ducks.

After that, we headed out via the Gatlinburg bypass, (donald’s fav road) to journy onward to our first scheduled activity.

Upon getting to Sugarland Visitor Center though and saw that the mountain road to Cherokee was closed due to snow and ice. So, we stopped and decided to kill some time by building snowmen and having a snowball fight.

We had so much fun!!! I don’t recall ever doing such things with my mom and having Eli there only added to our childish spirits. We all showed our creativity by building some of the best snow people ever. We even had people coming over taking pictures of our snow creations. The snowball fight was alright. I mean, it was really fun till hubby decided to bash me in the head with a snowball.

After playing around, we headed back to the car and noticed that a park ranger was at the gate, opening the road to Cherokee. So, Donald being daring, decided to brave the road and see if we could make it over there.

We made it as far as Newfound Gap. It was sleeting and snowing on top of the gap and we decided not to press our luck by going any further. We were afraid that the road would be closed again and we would be trapped in Cherokee and not be able to get back over to our hotel in time to check in.

On our way back down the mountain, we stopped to get in a little mountain sledding. That was some scary stuff!! It was super fun but really a little frightening.

Somewhere between where we went sledding and Chimney Tops picnic area, is where disaster struck. A rock, tumbled off the mountain side and we hit it. It wasn’t like a car sized rock or nothing but it was a good sized hunk. We couldn’t dodge it and we were lucky enough it didn’t come through the windshield or I just may not be sitting here telling this story. It did however, pop our tire. We were able to roll into the Chimney Tops picnic area and there we sat for the next couple hours. We had to sit there because the spare tire would not come off the car. A spring that held it on was broken and would not release. Donald tried with all his might and it just would not budge. There was no fixing it.

There was no cell service. None. No rangers. Nothing really but some kind hearted people who offered to send help. They had come there intending to hike but instead headed back to Sugarland to call AAA to our rescue. It literally took hours but a tow truck finally did appear. Just as it was getting dark and everyone of us had almost lost hope. It was starting to get scary. Donald was thinking of leaving us to walk down the mountain to try and get cell service. It was seemingly really bad. Eli, was near panic and none of us was feeling all that safe in the diming light.

Help did come though. One of the nicest tow truck drivers who could have ever helped us out. So, there we were, all piled in a big ol truck with our car loaded up and headed to Gatlinburg. Luckily, it was only seven miles away. The tow cost us nothing. We were towed to our hotel. The driver even tried to get our spare off. To no avail though. But that was ok. We were back on track somewhat with our trip and in high spirits.Checking into the hotel brought us great joy. We decided we would deal with the car the next day.

We had to eat though. So after unloading everything to our room, me and Donald hoofed it to a McDonald’s up the street. Everything is pretty much up or down the street in Gatlinburg. Everything is within walking distance of your hotel anywhere in the city pretty much. Even if the car had been running, we would have still walked to get food. We brought back dinner to the room and while Eli, enjoyed the hot tub, fireplace and balcony, me and Donald formed our plan for the next morning.

The basic plan was, for me and Donald to walk two and a half miles to Ace hardware and get a low profile hacksaw. So first thing, that morning, after our continental breakfast, we set off. Our mission was accomplished with a total of five miles total walked well before noon and some pretty gnarly huge blisters on the balls of my feet to show for it.

Donald had some work ahead of him. So, I took a nice long shower and Mom and Eli, decided to walk around town. They actually ended up having a really nice time together seeing all the sites. When they came back, Donald was still working so we played around up in the room rolling each other around in the desk chair and jumping on the beds.

Donald spent several hours hacking away at metal and succeeded in freeing the spare tire. We were all thrilled! Our original plan was to spend this day, NYE, in Pigeon Forge before heading to the street party in Gatlinburg. It looked like our trip was going to get right back on track. Until the next disaster struck.

The actual tire that was busted, would not come off the car. The nut was stripped and donald couldn’t get it off to put on the spare. CRAP!. So, back to the internet I went to find us some help.

I found someone who would come change our tire in the hotel parking lot. We have an odd sized tire so he couldn’t bring us a full size replacement. We would have to head to Walmart in Pigeon Forge for that but he was able to get the tire off and the spare on. WOO FREEDOM!!

Spare Tire on and Walmart bound, we piled into the car ready to roll. Walmart had our needed tire in stock and while we waited for it to be put on, we loaded up on all the goodies one might need for an evening of fun ringing in the new year. This included some bubble bath for the hot tub and various snacks for when we made it back to the room that night.

We did have time to go into the Three Bears store after hitting up a Sonic for dinner before needing to be back in Gatlinburg. My Mom paid for us to actually go see the live bears that the store kept out back. It was cool but kind of sad. The bears just seemed kind of pitiful. We took some fun pictures outside and danced to some music being played at one of the go cart track places. It felt nice to not be cooped up.

Once back to Gatlinburg, we got ready to party. Donald was tired and still in need of cleaning up so he opted to soak in the hot tub while me, Mom and Eli hit the streets to party. Donald was going to catch up later.

First place we hit was the Space Needle Arcade. Eli LOVES video games so he was in heaven. I won a little Hello Kitty and a astronaut Mickey Mouse out of a grab machine. I gave Eli the Mickey Mouse. Once done with the arcade, the DJ on the street was revving up some tunes so we walked up that way to dance.

We were having a ball! Eli loves to dance and well, so do me and Mom for that matter. We joined in the party and it wasn’t too long before Donald showed up. He called my phone to ask where we were but I think he pretty much knew where we would be. He knows I can’t resist dancing in the streets.

After wearing ourselves out and me dancing on my tore up feet, we went to where we would be watching the fireworks. People were starting to fill in. I had brought a beach ball to throw around once it got crowded. A really nice person gave Eli their light up mohawk because it hurt their head. We stood around laughing and talking and generally just having a good time waiting on time for the ball to drop. Eli did get cranky because he was getting tired. But after all we had been through it really didn’t ruin anything.

The new year finally came with the ball dropping, fireworks, hugs and kisses to welcome it. I was kind of glad at that point to see 2010 fade away.

Happy New Year!!!

After all that, we retreated back to our room to sit on the balcony and people watch. We also filled up the hot tub with bubbles and got in.

A good nights sleep was welcome and we woke up the next day to rain. Heck if that was going to stop our good time now. We were just getting on a roll! So we took our time packing up and decided we were going to go explore Cades Cove. Donald’s most favorite spot on earth I think.

On the way over, we spied waterfalls, and beautiful mountain views. We even got out to show Eli “The Sinks”.

Once in Cades Cove, we were even lucky enough that a huge buck bounced past our car as Eli hung out the window in awe.

We got to drive through a stream that was up over the road.

We explored a church house where me and Mom promptly hopped on the piano and played some “Heart and Soul” (about the only thing I can play on a piano).

Cades Cove was quite lovely, and the rain wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t get out and enjoy some of the old homes and such.

And a trip to Cades Cove would have never been complete without a stop at “our” cabin. Me and Donald claim this as our imaginary dream home.

No bears were spotted this time though to Eli’s disappointment. It was fun however to show him how people use to live. Especially since me and him watch “Little House on the Prairie” together on the days I take him to school. Eli did happen to get to walk up on some wild turkeys though. Which may have been the highlight of the trip for him.

The trip pretty much ended with a visit to the Apple Barn, the Christmas Store and dinner at Zaxby’s.

It was dark and even though we hated heading home, it was time.

It’s always good to see that Cincinnati skyline come in to view from Northern Kentucky way. I was personally ready to be home and see my fur babies. I was content knowing that the year 2011 had started off so well. I kind of feel like, if you can start the year off with a heart full of happiness that the year will mostly be filled up with the same. I was so glad to share one of my favorite times with my Mom and nephew. For me, the making memories part of life is what helps to make life so beautiful.