Las Vegas Desert-Silent Saturday

Have a beautiful weekend!  

April Sponsor Love

Good Day beautiful people!  I hope this week has treated you well!  I wanted to send some love out to my lovely sponsors for April.

 This is the lovely Kristina from A perfect dose of Life

Sharing stories about her life, recipes, all things she loves. I love her quotes of the week.

The lovely Bernadette from Mom to 2 posh lil divas

Sharing adorable crafts with her beautiful girls as models, that I love to try, pictures, stories and reviews.

 

The Lovely Melody Mae from Melody -Mae

Sharing her amazing cool fashion sense.  I love checking out her outfits!

The lovely Brandi from Clean sheets on Sundays

Sharing some of the most amazing pictures, I love the pictures of her kids, their little faces are priceless! She tells her stories through her photos.

I love each of these ladies for different reasons, they each bring something different to the table for me to enjoy.  If you are looking for some amazing blogs to check out, these ladies are well worth the trip.  

Thank you ladies for being such great sponsors, I love you all!

Have a Fabulous Friday my friends!  

Easter Egg Cocktail

With Easter coming quickly, I thought I would share an Easter Cocktail, called and Easter Egg.


Ingredients:

1 oz. blue curacao                                                                

1 oz. white creme de cacao

half & half


1. Pour blue curacao and creme de cacao over ice
2. Float half & half on top to taste


Isn't it cute?


Simple and so yummy!  




I hope you all have an amazing Thursday and enjoy a cocktail this evening, it's almost the Weekend!!!!

Spring/Easter Centerpiece

Good morning lovelies!  I hope you all are having a beautiful week, or are getting ready to have one with beautiful weather hopefully taking over the country, or your country.

I decided to share with you a little project that I made for my table.  I don't have any centerpieces for my dinner table, but love them. I found my items at the dollar store, of course, hobby lobby and Walmart.  Total cost was $7.00

Here's what you'll need

Candle holder
plate with sides (dollar store)
moss (dollar store)
Candle
small flowers
Plastic Easter eggs (optional)

It's as simple as just putting it all together to your liking.  Here is my finished project.

Easy, breezy, and I think it's beautiful.  I would love to see yours!

Have a Happy Humpday!

Easter Bread

It has been a custom to make Easter bread in my family ever since I can remember.  My Nunny made it every year right before Easter, and we enjoyed every last bite of it.  It is tradition to use Anise seed for it's unique flavor.  If you've never had Anise, it takes like black licorice, since I don't like black licorice, I leave it out in mine. Either way it is delicious.

Not until I made it this year, did I realize how time consuming and special this bread truly is.  My little Nunny made this every year without help most years.  My mom and aunts did help occasionally, but usually she had it done before we even knew she was going to make it.  This bread keeps very well and can be frozen.

This recipe is a combination of several years of making the bread.  Most of the time it is made to your taste and is adjusted every year.  I wish I could show you my Nunny's recipe, but I could barely understand it from all the years of notes on it.  Every year, my Nunny would write what she did differently.  Add a little more of this, add a little less of that.  I hope you enjoy and make this one of your Easter traditions.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cakes of yeast (bought from a bakery)
5 pounds of flour (extra to add if needed so it doesn't stick to sides)
2 cups sugar
6 eggs beaten
2 tsp. salt
4 cups warm milk
6 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp anise seeds
1 cup warm water
2 tbsp of yellow food coloring

Place yeast, warm water and 1 tbsp of sugar in bowl to dissolve.
Beat eggs, butter, sugar and salt in mixer.
 Add food coloring to milk. Add luke warm milk.
Add 1/2 cup luke warm water to yeast to dissolve then add it to the milk.
Place flour, salt and anise (if using) in mixer and mix well.  Make a hole in the flour and add the liquid mixture and the beaten eggs in the hole.
Before you start kneading, be sure to make the sign of the cross over the ingredients.  Knead the ingredients until it pulls away from the mixing bowl.  Oil top of dough, cover with clean towel, and set in a warm place.  You may put it on top of a stove set to 200 degrees.
When the dough has doubled in size, knead down and let rise again.
Start getting your pans ready depending on what you want.  Loaves are easy and delicious.  They are much easier to slice and toast.
You may also use cookie sheets or round pans.  It is a tradition to braid your bread, but it does make it more difficult to toast.  We also make little knots, which I love, they are small and the kids love them also.
Once it has risen, weight out 1# dough to each bread.  It makes it more consistent.
Another tradition for the braided loaves is to put a raw egg in it, and let it cook while baking.
Preheated oven should be 350 degrees.
The braids and knots take about 20 mins, where the loaves take 30.  It is important to watch them, since all ovens are different, it may take more or less time.

Here are pictures I took from the other day.  It took a while to make, but this is tradition, and it tastes amazing!  I decided if my little Nunny could do it, I could too.  She was an amazing woman, and it is a tradition that I want to pass down to my children.  I hope you enjoy it too!

 My amazing little Nunny

My little guys love to help!

This is only half the batch

My loaf got left in the oven a little long, it should be the light color like the braids

 The braided loaf with the egg.

You could use a colored egg if desired

A birthday wish and a moment of self realization!

I want to start off by telling everyone that my brother Shane is celebrating his birthday today! I called and wished him a happy birthday and he sounded like I was not the first person to do so. I cannot tell you the amount of quality Mandays I would have missed out on if I didn’t have Shane as a brother. We have spent many days out having some good clean wholesome fun, some of which I have chronicled in previous blogs. 

I never really took the time to think about how important, and how big of a part of my life my little brother occupied until my wife asked me if I was ready for another child. My knee jerk reaction was “I don’t think that I will ever be ready for another one.” We talked about the complications of her pregnancy and how I didn’t know that I had diabetes, let alone that it was way out of control. Then she brought up the stress that we had to endure because we were building a new house and trying to sell our old one in the first few months of our son’s life.  This reinforced the hardships that I had to deal with during the pregnancy, labor and months to follow; as much as I tried to suppress them deep into my subconscious I still have vibrant memories of this trying time in my life.

Our talk continued and then she asked me what I would do with out Shane, my brother and partner in crime. It really made me think that I don’t know what I would do if I was an only child. I have such fond memories of my life with a brother. I couldn’t greedily steal away my son’s chances to have a wild eyed sidekick of his own just because I am scared to death about not being a great dad; or if I will fall short at being a husband.

I am now not totally against the idea. However, I do acknowledge that I am mentally unprepared to be a father of a new born and a 5 year old. I mean I can’t wrap my head around the concept. I need to get prepared and come to terms with my inadequacies before I can press on any further with this notion. Any help from my readers would greatly be appreciated. Let me know how you guys have dealt with this issue of multiple children and how the addition of a second child changed your life or your mind. Have a great day be safe and Happy Birthday Shane.  ~Barry

Palm Beach at 1,500 ft

Steve loves to torture me with pictures like these.  He gets to fly to warm destinations and chill for a few hours while leaving us in the cold crap!
Hope this brings you sunshine today.  Have a beautiful weekend!