How to cure hiccups fast and easy everytime

My family learned this trick to cure hiccups over 20 years ago but somehow the word never spread. It's ridiculously easy and works every time. I'm not kidding.

When you first read this you will probably think it's a joke. If so, try it anyway. Hiccuping doesn't make you look sophisticated either so what have you got to loose?

No more hiccups!

Step 1. Grab a glass of water or better yet a bottle that you can pick up with your teeth. 

Step 2. Plug your ears and nose. Easiest done by putting your thumbs in your ears and your fingers on your nose. 

Step 3. While keeping your nose and ears plugged drink at least half a glass of water. (It can work with just a mouthful of water but isn't as foolproof.) 

If you are by yourself and don't have a bottle, it is possible to pick the glass up with your little pinkies. Otherwise get someone to help you. 

Step 4.  Victory dance! 

(If it doesn't work, you probably didn't swallow often enough. Just try again with a bit more water. )

I don't remember where we learned this and have no idea why it works but it does so enjoy a hiccup free life!

Want to come to Disney World with me?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog that I love Disney World. It's right up there with the entire rocky mountain range (especially Canada and Boulder, Colorado. I would have loved to study there!) Luckily my hubby also likes both! The only thing holding us back is a lack of money. That might change if my blogs started earning dollars a day instead of pennies. Click a banner! go on, no pressure ;) (Kidding aside, I'm grateful to all of you who read this blog and I do not do this for money.) 

Though Disneyland Paris is just a 6 hour drive away, it is very expensive. In part because they put it right next to Paris. Once in a while I check how much it would cost and it always seems that just a few days Disney Paris is just as expensive as two weeks Florida! Excluding transportation costs. I always end up choosing to save for a big trip to Florida, even if it is years away, than spend it on a few days Paris.

 

You can imagine how excited I get when Disney turns on their webcam. They do this for special events and the one I like best is the 24 hour event they started having annually. It's going on right now so check it out:

A great view of Disneyland, though a little small on my iphone... Tiny people :D

http://www.disneylandevent.com   

This will get you no less than 6! Webcams in Disneyland California

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/watch-coolest-summer-ever-live-stream-main-street-u-s-a-at-magic-kingdom-park/   

This is Floridas webcam, it is not as good as those from California but you can watch the parades and fireworks really well with this one! 

Want to know when to watch the Florida cam, check this site for the scedule:

http://www.wdwmagic.com/events/coolest-summer-ever/news/20may2015-entertainment-and-attraction-operating-schedules-for-the-24-hour-'coolest-summer-ever'-event-at-the-magic-kingdom.htm

Wishes is awesome, as are the parades.

And the best part this year: the cams how sound now! Yay! You can hear the hustle and bustle of the theme park and all the beautiful music.

Have fun!!

Willow tree wedding cake and Scottish Outlander birthday cake

It's been busy lately and here are the results:

'All we need is love, and a little cake' wedding cake

This is a wedding cake I made for friends. I had to make it bigger than we agreed upon of course, which was quite challenging considering I was also their master of ceremonies (at least that's what they call it here. It might be more comparable to maid of honor duties.).

I also made some sugar flowers, you can almost see one at the bottom

This 5 tier cake has two flavors. The dark tiers are chocolate cake with mocha butter cream. I used chocolate ganache to crumb coat and the outer layer is a poured on chocolate gelatin.
The top tier has the outline of Austrian mountains painted on it with royal icing. I did this to correspond with their wedding rings. They incorporated the design because they look out on these mountains from the apartment they rent when they go on ski vacation, which incidentally is also where he proposed!

Setting up a cake in formal dress hahaha

The off white colored tiers are white chocolate cake with a champagne butter cream. It's also crumb coated with chocolate ganache and covered with natural marzipan (so no color added). The flowers/lace type design was made with royal icing.

A little girl helped me decorate, she is standing just off camera but she was so sweet!

The bride asked to have "All you need is love, and a little cake" added to the cake, maybe as a topper as she didn't want one of those traditional ones. I on the other hand had a (in my opinion) much better idea. I really love Willow Tree figurines and while getting inspiration for a sculpture I wanted (more on that some other time) I noticed they have cake toppers. They have a few but this one resembled the bride and groom the most and I loved the design. The figures are really intimate but actually only touch in three places and you can look at it from any angle giving "...a different understanding of their shared feelings". The fact that you can look at it from any angle makes it nice for a cake because it means you can photograph from any angle and the topper will still be awesome! 
The great thing about this topper is, they can put the figurine somewhere in their house and it will look gorgeous, which is why this was my gift for them.
(FYI: the topper is called Around You, by Willow Tree. It's tested to ensure food safety and comes with a little piece of plastic to put between the topper and the cake as the topper is not waterproof.)

Willow Tree on the mountain

I did add the phrase to the cake, but decided it would fit better in the theme to make it say "All we need is love" and to add the "And a little cake" on the base plate. It's funny but I really didn't want that to be too obvious. The fruit was also on request. There was supposed to be more of it, but I didn't have much time on location to set up the cake so I couldn't try it out.

Anyway, I thought the cake turned out awesome! It looked exactly how I envisioned it, no big problems and the bride and groom were happy. Good enough for me ;)

So on to the next one.

a Scottish/Outlander themed birthday cake

It was a bit too green but I loved how it turned out

The lady who ordered this wanted a Scottish/Outlander themed cake for her birthday. She wanted a stone circle, thistles and tartan, and the cake was only for 6 to 7 people! That's small!
I decided to make the thistles life size and use a base board to put them on. That way the circle wouldn't be cluttered. I made little tufts of grass and put tiny points of purple on them to represent tiny thistles. You can't even see it in the pictures but it really made a difference, just a little pop of color near the circles!

The thistles were fun to make

I wasn't too impressed by the tartan printed on frosty sheet. It was hard to handle and had been printed a bit too dark (in the pictures it looks lighter than it did in real life). I still liked the way it turned out though.
There was also a request to add a phrase on the cake. I'm presuming it's Scottish though the online translator didn't understand it. It basically said Happy Birthday Anna!

The tartan was a bit dark and hard to handle on frosty sheet.

It was a fun cake to make. On request it was a coconut cake with a pineapple butter cream filling. I crumb coated with chocolate ganache because I had a long drive and I don't have air condition. It's covered with marzipan but the rocks are fondant and the piped on grass is butter cream.

The client loved the cake so that was awesome! I hope she noticed I made the stone circle like the one on Outlander! I might have to mail her just to ask :)

Now on to my Dad's birthday cakes! They are going to be fun :D

So what do you think? Is the wedding cake extravagant enough? Did you recognize the rocks as those from Outlander?

 

Multitasking with awesomeness

The ultimate multitask: blogging while feeding a baby, cooking pea soup and melting coconut oil. Who doesn't love feeding pillows, without it I would be on the couch watching tv. (Which isn't too bad accept that the mediabox keeps getting stuck so I can only watch one channel.)

And that is...if the toddler isn't home.

When they are easiest but least funny

I must say whoever said babies are hard obviously does not have a toddler running around! When I had my first daughter I thought I didn't have time for anything. I felt like a cow (you know, the ones that give milk) and

Gorgeous children's beds for tiny bedrooms (yes I am still here, though it might not have seemed that way recently)

It's been a while... Ok a seriously long time, since I blogged. Most days I can be found searching the web for refined sugar free recipes, natural cleaning tutorials or crafting ideas. This leads me mostly to sites of stay at home moms who are apparently the super woman kind. They have huge sites with tons of recipes they tried and tested themselves, and then market like crazy with blogs, tweets, ebooks, seminars, etsy stores... While also having the time and energy to push out 5 kids, which they home school and keep mentally entertained with age appropriate awesome activities.

I am not that kind of mom.

Yes I have a blog, I think up, try and test (and fail miserably lots of the time) recipes, I have a 2 year old and am pregnant, but that is exactly why I haven't blogged in ages.

Going natural: quick, easy and not expensive at all

Happy Valentine's Day!

We passed a great milestone today, our dishwasher ran with the last toxic dishwasher soap cube. This means that the house is almost toxic cleaning products free! We still use conventional dish soap when washing dishes by hand but that is because we still have so much of it. I hate wasting stuff even it will kill you when you eat it. Does natural dishwasher do that? I honestly do not know.
(It's by the way very hard to blog and watch Hope Floats at the same time...)

My under the sink cabinet after removing (most) toxic cleaning products

It was surprisingly easy and quick to get rid of toxic cleaning products. I had already been changing our way of eating and the use of plastic over the course of a few months. This kept me online reading almost every day and then my in-laws told me there was a documentary on about products that are hurting our unborn babies.