Take 1 – July Secret Subject Swap

Welcome to Take One of July’s Secret Subject Swaps. This week, 12 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado
The Momisodes
Just A Little Nutty
Follow me home . . .
Moore Organized Mayhem
Stacy Sews and Schools
The Sadder But Wiser Girl
Menopausal Mother
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
The Insomniac's Dream
Searching For Sanity
Evil Joy Speaks

My subject is: What do you like best about your home and what do you wish you could change the most? It was submitted by  Stacy Sews and Schools. Here goes:

 I have to say that deciding what I like best about my home is the hardest part of this prompt. After all, you buy a house because the vast majority of the features are ones you like and you can “see” yourself living there.  *Note: pictures of some of the rooms in my house were used in this post: Take 1 - December Secret Subject Swap

I love the size of my house; the fact that we have 2 guest bedrooms and as many bathrooms as people. I love the man-cave in the basement, where the kids can hang out with their friends. It has a pool table, large TV, poker nook, fridge, microwave and its own full bath.
 
I love the laundry chute from upstairs down to the laundry/mud room. And I especially love the built-in wooden lockers in there, perfect for shoes and coats and backpacks. All the boys’ friends walk into the house, straight into the laundry room and leave their shoes there, out of everyone’s way.
 
Of course, as a mom who bakes a lot I have to give a shout-out to double ovens.
 

Triple Layer Cupcakes

 

I love that the man who purchased our last house also bought all of the ratty old furnishings we’d had for years. I got to furnish this house from scratch; pick out things that felt right and fit right and looked just how I wanted them to in this home.
 
But what I love the most about my home is the Art Gallery.  The walls of the stairway to the basement are covered with framed artwork my kids brought home from school over the years. The window sill holds some of their crafts. I smile. Every time. Never gets old. At this point these juvenile pieces are sort of embarrassing to the boys. Added bonus in my book.
 
One of the deciding factors in the purchase of this house is that we back up to woods. But it’s in the back that we find the easy part of this prompt, what I’d change.
 
We have 2 sliders to the back yard. The lower one leads out to a patio from the basement and faces the woods. We have sky chairs that hang from the deck above and it’s the most serene place to take a book or a cocktail. The upper sliders, off of the kitchen, lead out to a deck right above the patio. The view is beautiful and we’re treated to wildlife as well.
 
 

Does behind the house

 

 

A pair of Hawks on the back deck

 

And when the kids were little, I could go out onto the back deck and hear recess at the school on the other side of the woods. Or I could watch the kids on the swingset or playing in the yard with the neighborhood kids. I’d smile and think to myself “this is what it’s all about”.
 
But here’s the problem. There are no stairs off of the back deck.
  
When the kids were little, on a hot summer day I’d bring out a bunch of those Flavor Ice tubes for a snack. The entire neighborhood would gather below the deck, calling out the color they wanted and I’d throw them down one by one to the kids as they called out their favorite color.  Then I’d have to throw a pair of kids’ scissors out onto the lawn so they could get them open. Not really ideal.
 
Most important though is that you can’t get to the kids if you need to. If someone were hurt or upset I’d have to yell “hold on, I’ll be there soon” then run in, through the house, out the front door and around the side to the back. Or I had the option of running into the garage and out the door at the back of the garage or all the way down to the basement and out the slider. Know how much blood a kid can lose while you’re running around the house trying to get to them? I do.
 
I don’t know what the family who built this house was thinking, but convenience wasn’t it.
 
And the day that my older son and his friend blew up the house for a school extra credit project? Luckily they were older (and agile), they had to jump off the deck. But all’s well that ends well, they got an “A”.
 

 

Triple Layer Cupcakes

                                         ©www.BakingInATornado.com                                                                                                            

Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients, 18 Cupcakes:
2 cups flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 ¼ cups sugar
½ stick butter, softened
¾ cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 egg whites
Food coloring of your choice
 
Ingredients, Frosting:
½ cup stick, melted
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
¾ cup baking cocoa powder
Approximately 3 cups powdered sugar
Multicolored jimmies (sprinkles)
 
Directions, Cupcakes:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 9 X 13 pans.
*Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Mix in the butter, milk, vanilla and egg whites. Beat for 2 minutes.
*Place 1/3 of the batter in a small bowl and add food coloring of your choice.
*Spread the colored batter into one of the 3 pans. Spread half of the white batter into each of the other pans.
*Bake until the center springs back to the touch. Start checking at about 15 minutes.
*Cool completely.
 
Directions, Frosting:
*Mix the butter, milk and vanilla. Carefully beat in the cocoa powder and 2 cups of the powdered sugar. Continue to beat in as much of the powdered sugar as is necessary until the frosting is of spreadable consistency.


Directions, Assembly:
*Line cupcake tins with cupcake papers (it’s easier to assemble in the tins).
*With a cookie cutter or the mouth of a glass approximately the same size as the bottom of your cupcake tin, cut 18 circles out of each cake layer.
*Place a white round into each tin. Cover with a dollop of frosting and spread to cover the top.
*Place a colored round on top and frost, then do the same with the final white layer. Sprinkle with multicolored jimmies.