Two Trifles for Tasty Tuesday

So today I'm doing a guest post over at Raising Miss Mommy.  She does a Tasty Tuesday recipe every week and today it's my Snickers Trifle:

Apparently I have developed a reputation as being the One Who Brings Trifles and these are now requested anywhere I go.  Including guest blogs. Which also means lots of dinner party invites.  Some of them even include bounce houses:

Setting the bounce house up inside so that the adults could eat trifle and drink wine in peace while the kids ran themselves ragged?  Best. Idea. Ever.

And whoever invites us over next gets to try a version with melted frosting inside.... just sayin'

Anyways! The alliteration of naming the posts Two Trifles for Tasty Tuesday was just too much for me to resist. So how about a recipe for a Strawberry Trifle?

What You Need:

• Box of Devil's Food Cake Mix (and stuff required to make it.  Usually 3 eggs, some water, some oil)
• Box of Instant Chocolate Pudding (and stuff required to make it.  Usually 2 cups of milk)
• Tub of Cool Whip (if it's frozen stick it in the 'fridge for a few hours to dethaw)
• 2 Containers of Fresh Strawberries (you could get by with only 1.  They were buy one get one that week and the kids ate ALOT of them while I was assembling the trifle)
• Strawberry Sundae Topping (you could skip this if you want)
• Mini Chocolate Chips

Prepare:

Bake the cake in 2 round cake pans (or whatever configuration.  The cake pans are just easiest for assembly but don't really matter in the grand scheme of things)
Make the pudding.
Allow the cake to cool completely and the pudding to set completely.
Slice up a good amount of the strawberries leaving a few for garnish and snacking.

Layer in a trifle dish:

1 of the round cakes (I cut it up into wedges first):

Strawberry Topping:

Sliced Strawberries:

Chocolate Pudding:

Cool Whip:

Chocolate Chips:

Then Repeat the Layers:
Chocolate Cake:

Fresh Strawberries (I eliminated the sundae topping for this layer because it just seemed like too much.  It was a good move and I would probably eliminate the topping altogether the next time I make this)

Chocolate Pudding
Cool Whip

And then garnish and make pretty with the chocolate chips and some strawberries:

The end result is super impressive and very fancy (my 3 year old daughter's favorite word):

Please to enjoy! And thanks so much to Amanda for hosting me today!

Meet the Misfits.

So I've had quite a few new follows to the Life in Cleveland Facebook Page lately (Hi!  Welcome!  Thank You!)  so I thought it would be a good time to do a little About Me and This Blog.  Which ties in perfectly with the Misfit Bloggers who are doing a Meet the Misfits Blog hop!

Love it when things work out like that.

Anyways the Misfit Bloggers are a group that started as part of the SITS Girls 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and has evolved into a very active facebook group of bloggers helping bloggers.  They are a great group and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Anyways the questions they asked are:

Who I am... 

I am Jeanne aka Sourire11.

My profile pic pretty much everywhere these days.

I'm 30 something and happily married to my college sweetheart:

Our wedding back in 2004.

I"m a mom of 2:

The Boy who just turned 1, and The Girl who just turned 3.

I'm a Cleveland girl who loves her hometown despite being married to a Steelers Fan.

I"m a knitter and an indie dyer who occasionally dabbles in designing patterns. I also love dogs, wine, twitter, reading, and photography. 

What I Do...

This:

And this:

And a whole lot of this:

I was an architect with the 6 years of design school and masters degree and ambition to remake this city I love and all of it.  And then I had a baby and..... I never went back.

Pictured:  A bit of a distraction from that whole Architecture thing.

But! Also!  I couldn't walk away from design completely.  So I started a company, Destination Yarn, which merges all of my passions - design, travel, knitting, and color.

Every colorway is based on a place.  This makes me unreasonably happy.

I occasionally post shop updates and pretty yarn to this blog.  Because seriously even if you're not a knitter who doesn't love a rainbow of yarn?

Why I Blog...

I started blogging because I was obsessively reading knitting blogs as a way to research patterns.  It didn't seem fair that I wasn't contributing to the online knowledge bank.  Then I got into it and it became a way to share both my projects and our adventures.  I still see it as that even if our adventures are less this:

Us at Machu Picchu in 2007.  We hiked there via the 4 day Inca Trail.

and are more this:

The kids at Geneva State Park last summer.  We drove there at naptime.

And my knitting is less this:

Traditional Stranded sweater that it took me 2 weeks to knit (part of the knitting Olympics but still)

and more this:

Hat that it took me 2 months to knit.  I did design the pattern, though so that's something I guess!

What the misfits mean to me...

The misfits are support.  Plain and simple.  They get this blogging thing and what it takes to do it and are happy to help in any way they can.  Which is so, so awesome to have found.  I especially love that the group is so diverse.  The bloggers there have all different backgrounds and their blogs are about all different things.  Which is perfect for me since I often feel that this blog is a misfit.  I'd love to be able to be a genre blog and do it well.  To be a Cleveland Blog.  Or a Knit Blog.  Or a Parenting Blog.  But... I just don't have the attention span.  So often I feel like I don't fit into blogging discussions because I'm kindof all over the map.  The Misfits made me feel welcome no matter what I blog about and for that I am incredibly thankful.

If you want to join in (we won't bite, I promise!) with the Misfits the very active facebook group is here.  And the linkup is here:

Spring Rainbow of Yarn

So you guys I am super excited to finally be debuting a brand new line of semi-solid colorways from Destination Yarn!

Celebrate Spring!  This series of semi solids celebrates the bright, vibrant colors of spring.  Perfect for knitting outside in the sunshine!  Each skein is kettle dyed for deep, intense colors with enough subtle variation to show off patterned stitches well.

Each colorway is dyed to match a shade of spring. Which for me meant either a spring break style drink:

Daiquiri:  Bright strawberry pink of a frozen daiquiri.  Yum!

Peach Schnapps:  A lovely bright peach.  This shade of melon orange is one of the most fashionable colors of 2012!

Margarita:  A bright, icy, lime green.  The exact shade of a frozen margarita!

Or a flower that blooms in spring:

Daffodil:  Pale through Bright yellows of daffodils.  One of my favorite flowers! 

Blue Hydrangea:   The light, sky blue shade of these lovely flowers.

Lilac:  A lovely periwinkle purple.

Hyacinth:  A purple/fuchsia reminiscent of spring blooms. (this is the colorway that I used to knit the Warm Up Your Wellies pattern)

All of these beautiful new colorways are currently available in both Postcard and the Souvenir bases at Destination Yarn.

And in case you're wondering what happens if you throw all of those lovely colors in the dye pot together:

Awesome is what happens.

I have two skeins of that pastel rainbow named Celebrate Spring on my Letter base available.  But I'm going to guess they will go pretty quick.

This marks the beginning of posting a whole bunch of new colorways.  I'm very happy to be at the dye pots again and am enjoying creating something different!

Mexican and Ice Cream Cake. An Awesome First Birthday.

So my little dude turned 1.

The hell?  Wasn't I just born like yesterday?

We did lots of celebrating. 

Of course you did.

Opening presents was a family affair:

My sister got me a big green ball! She knows me so well!

Then it was onto the main event: Ice Cream Cake.

I don't know what that is but I want it.

Because my guy loves him some ice cream. We discovered this in Florida when he literally gave himself chapped lips diving headfirst into my cone.

 I'll spare you all of the many, many, MANY pictures that I took of him enjoying his DQ treat but they're all up on flickr if you want to ooh and aaah some more.  Ok just one more:

Then we did what any awesome parent facing two very sugar high and sticky children would do:

Threw them directly in the tub, closed the curtains, and let them splash out the sugar.

At one point the dog stuck her head in to see what was going on and came out SOAKED:

I've made a huge mistake.

For his party we just did a simple family affair...

...with a Mexican Theme.

YES.

You see the Dude loves Mexican food.  Seriously.  This is a video of him enjoying Chipotle. 
So I went with it and did a whole Mexican thing for his birthday.  Meaning margaritas for us and "tortilla and cheese" for them.  Or course there was cake:

My mom made him a ball cake.  BALL.  BALL.  BALL.  BALL.

And a cakesmash:

And also bubbles may have been involved:

All in all a pretty good first birthday for my dude!  Even if he did like the paper more than his presents:

Mom.  Wrapping paper CRINKLES when you shake it.  How do you not understand how awesome that is?