Second Hand Saturday With Reading Teen

The lovely folks at Reading Teen have started a weekly giveaway where they are taking books off their own shelf to give to their wonderful followers. Every Saturday they will post the books available and specific challenge to complete. The following Saturday, they will announce the winner and the next challenge. The winner will get a choice from their book as their prize! To enter and win, you must be follower and complete the mandatory challenge. This week I’ve decided to link up them and offer one of my fabulous readers a chance to win a book, as well. I was going to have a yard sale, but this is more fun! Below is a list of books I’m giving away. If you click on the title, it will take you to an Amazon.com page that has the book’s description.

Books Available

Vanished by Kathryn Mackel

The Book of Jane by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt

Leave a Candle Burning by Lori Wick

The Breaking Point by Karen Ball

Be Sweet by Diann Hunt

The Will of Wisteria by Denise Hildreth

Where Heaven Begins by Rosanne Bittner

The challenge this week is to leave a comment telling me your two of your summer must-reads. This is a mandatory entry. Once this entry is complete, you can use any or all of the following bonus entries: Become a follower, Follow me on Twitter(leave username), Tweet about this giveaway(leave link), enter another one of my giveaways (one entry for each giveaway). Please leave one comment for each entry and include your email address so I can contact the winner. Good Luck and Happy Reading!

Update:  Radom.org picked Tara as our lucky winner for last week's giveaway.  Tara has already emailed me back and her choice was Vanished.

Recipe Corner: Black Forest Cake

After a lot of debate, I finally decided to try a new recipe for my dad’s birthday cake today. It sounds absolutely delicious, but I will leave a comment tomorrow after we’ve tasted it and let you know what everyone thought. If you decide to make it, enjoy!!

Ingredients

1 pkg. (2-layer size) devil's food cake mix
1 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (4-serving size) Cherry Flavor Gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
2/3 cup Sour Cream
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tub (8 oz.) Whipped Topping, thawed
1/3 cup drained maraschino cherries, divided
1 square BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate, melted

Directions

 - Prepare and bake cake mix in two 8- or 9-inch round layers as directed on package. Run knife or metal spatula around sides of pans to loosen cakes. Cool in pans 15 min.

 - Stir boiling water into dry gelatin mix at least 2 min. until completely dissolved. Add cold water. Pierce cakes with large fork at 1/2-inch intervals. Carefully pour half of the gelatin mixture over each cake layer. Refrigerate at least 3 hours.

 - Mix sour cream and powdered sugar; gently stir in whipped topping. Dip one cake pan in warm water 10 sec.; unmold onto serving plate. Spread with 1 cup of the whipped topping mixture. Reserve a few cherries for garnish. Chop remaining cherries; sprinkle over frosted layer.

- Unmold second cake layer; carefully place on cake layer on plate. Frost top and side of cake with remaining whipped topping mixture.

- Drizzle with melted chocolate.

- Garnish with reserved cherries. Store in refrigerator.

Movie Quotes Trivia

Can you guess what classic movie this quote comes from?  Bonus if you guess the character!

"Hearts will never be practical, until they are made unbreakable."

Take a guess in the comments below.

Last Day For Book Giveaway!

I just wanted to let everyone know that today is the last day to enter this week's Seond Hand Saturday Book giveaway.  Enter today for this week, and stop in tomorrow to enter for next week!  I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Fabulous Food Friday with Little Bishop Chronicles

Welcome to Fabulous Food Friday! While exploring the blogosphere, I realized that there were many great recipes to share. So every Friday, I am going to try to feature an awesome blogger with their great recipe! Today’s feature blogger is Jaime from Little Bishop Chronicles. When you get a chance, swing by Jaime’s cute blog. You’ll love her funny and insightful posts. Today I will be featuring her Mammaw's Milky Way Cake.

 Here’s a little blurb from Jaime herself:





My name is Jamie and I'm 31 years old with far too many gray hairs that seem to show up more and more each day. I'm a wife to an amazingly patient and forgiving man, and I am so thankful that God put him in my life. I have four incredible children whom we affectionately call the Little Bishops. Thus my blog name, Little Bishop Chronicles. Katherine is 9, Kaleb is 8, Abbey is 7 and Olivia is 4. As you can see, I had my first three back to back...three of them in just 2 years and 5 days. So there is a good dose of crazy going on in the Bishop household! Blogging is my way to express myself, share the funny things my kids say and do, whine and complain about things that annoy me (the list is endless!) and overall writing is the outlet for my incredibly sarcastic, high-strung self to stay sane!

Now for her yummy recipe:

Ingredients
• 8 regular Milky Way Bars
• 1 stick Butter
• 2 1/2 cups Flour
• 1 cup Walnuts chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking soda
• 2 cups Sugar
• 4 whole Eggs
• 1 cup Buttermilk
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 2 teaspoon Vanilla
Icing:
- 3 regular Milky Way Bars
- 1 stick Butter
- 2 teaspoon Milk
- 1 1/3 cups Powdered sugar

Preparation
For cake: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Melt butter and candy bars; set aside. Beat eggs, one at a time. Add remaining ingredients and mix together. Fold in Milky Way bars and butter mixture. Bake for 1-1 1/2 hours in a 13x9 pan (you can also use 3-9" round cake pans).
For Icing: Melt candy bars and butter. Stir in milk and powdered sugar. Add additional milk if needed. Beat until smooth and spread on cooled cake.

A Failed Challenge

I’m not one to usually quit a challenge, especially one I gave to myself, but I’m afraid that I have to bow out of my Chris Brogan challenge. I made the mistake of skimming the topic list and only really reading the top ten. I have just gone to get a new batch of topics from his site and realized that I was way over my head. The majority of the remaining topics focus on media marketing, social media, and working in a corporate business. I am unfamiliar with all of those topics and therefore my posts would be all research and no personal experience. So for the few of you who were following the challenge, I apologize for quitting. I just didn’t want to waste either of our times. After writing on yesterday’s topic, I realized how much I missed writing on the randomness of the day. I am excited to be able to get back to posting on topics that are important to me. Thanks for understanding! I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!