Our families favorite dessert is a warm, ooey gooey chocolate cupcake or cake. I have doctored up a few recipes and have finally found this one to be a keeper. This recipe is very chocolaty, super moist and warms up well days after the cake has been made. The key, as with any cake, is to not over cook. The sour cream does wonders to make this cake moist and somewhat dense. Bring your eggs to room temperature when baking as they mix into the flour much better, the same goes for butter. You can quickly warm eggs by placing them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes.

Double Chocolate Cake Ingredients

1 package chocolate cake mix
1 package instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
2/3 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1/2 cup warm water
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (dust these in flour to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cupcake.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except the chocolate chips. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour batter into 24 lined muffin cups or bale in a bundt  pan.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, or until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

I usually make a cream cheese icing or chocolate cream cheese icing for the cupcakes. For the cake, I like to fill the center of the cake with fresh berries and drizzle chocolate over each layer. Once I have the fruit overflowing onto the top of the cake, I drizzle entire cake with both colors of cream cheese frosting.

Bon Appétit

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates!

Our family was blessed with a new iPad2 for Christmas so we have been learning as much as we can, trying out new apps and striving to solely use the iPad for educational purposes. As a homeschool mom, I love finding fun, creative ways for the boys to learn and the more they read the better!

So when I was presented with the opportunity to test out a new educational “Who? Comics” app for children ages 8 and up, I jumped all over it! Our boys love to read and they especially like reading comics but I have had a hard time finding the appropriate comics for their ages. Who? Comics are  biographies written about some of our most popular leaders and historical figures, they are both educational and entertaining.   Who? Comics did a great job of finding the balance between teaching the facts and keeping children’s attention through fun story telling. The comics are in depth and somewhat long, they read out more like a chapter book with around 150 pages.

My 9 yr old, Micah, choose two comics to read,  Walt Disney and Jane. Both comics were funny, sad, entertaining and fun to read for my son. There were a few times where the translation of the comic was  confusing and Micah  had to ask me for help or he was able to figure out what the sentence should have been and he moved on. I found my 9 year old giggling to himself as he read, he especially liked the Jane Goodall comic. I would suggest reading the comics before hand to make sure they are appropriate for your family. I did catch a couple pages of this comic having to do with chickens and where eggs come from that I made my boys skip because I thought it was completely irrelevant to the story and had foolish words that we do not encourage our boys to use.

The app was originally created in Korea, thus the problems with translation but it was not bothersome enough to turn him off from reading further.  Who? Comics is trying to correct any translation problems so that the comics are accurate and correct for English speakers.

The app is very easy to navigate once it is downloaded, you will have a bookshelf where you keep your purchased comics and you can purchase new comics within the app. There are also badges that children can collect through reading achievements and they can find hidden badges with each comic.

The illustrations are nice, my boys thought they were great.

We really enjoyed being able to reference the timeline when one of the boys had questions or for review.

My boys enjoyed the Who? comics, glad to have found another great resource to keep my boys reading. We are looking forward to reading some of the other biographies in the collection.

You can view a short video to learn more about Who? Comics here.

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates.  I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

Today, while my kitchen looks like an explosion of dirty dishes and books, with piles of laundry waiting, dusting to do, work to be done and dinner to be made, I take a break, let it all wait and sit with my coffee and a favorite poem….

Love in the Home

If I live in a house of spotless beauty with everything in its place, but have not love, I am a housekeeper–not a homemaker.

If I have time for waxing, polishing, and decorative achievements, but have not love, my children learn cleanliness–not godliness.

Love leaves the dust in search of a child’s laugh.

Love smiles at the tiny fingerprints on a newly cleaned window.

Love wipes away the tears before it wipes up the spilled milk.

Love picks up the child before it picks up the toys.

Love is present through the trials.

Love reprimands, reproves, and is responsive.

Love crawls with the baby, walks with the toddler, runs with the child, then stands aside to let the youth walk into adulthood.

Love is the key that opens salvation’s message to a child’s heart.

Before I became a mother I took glory in my house of perfection. Now I glory in God’s perfection of my child. As a mother, there is much I must teach my child, but the greatest of all is love.

Author Unknown

Now I’m off to go tackle it all!

.

We have had some lovely feathered friends at our feeders this month, mostly Goldfinch, Ruby-Throated Kinglets, House Wrens, Cardinals and one Hawk. {yes, a Red Shouldered Hawk landed on the fence in our backyard}  We are looking forward to the Great Backyard Bird Count coming up in February, this is a wonderful project to do with the children along with a unit study on birds. The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds. You can learn more below.

Can you see all 7 birds?

Goldfinch in winter.

This lil guy comes daily, at the same time every day.

Goldfinch

House Wren, my favorite backyard bird.

This is my oldest Micah, some years ago when we first started our birding adventures.

Participating in the Great Backyar Bird count is as easy as 1, 2, 3...

1. Plan to count birds for at least 15 minutes during February 15–18, 2012. Count birds at as many places and on as many days as you like—just keep a separate list of counts for each day and/or location.
2. Count the greatest number of individuals of each species that you see together at any one time, and write it down. (You can get regional bird checklists here.)

3. Enter your results through thier web page.

Feathered friends adventure Manuall

http://www.adventurer-club.org/Awards/FeatheredFriends.pdf

Here is a neat study that we use along with the GBBC.

Nature lesson birds - http://www.pathfindersonline.org/pdf/ayhonors/birds_a.pdf