by

The First Day of Summer: June 9th, 2017

Hi! It’s Mara here, and today I have a post about what I did on my first day of summer. Enjoy!

I woke up at about 7:30 and went over to my best friend’s house for breakfast. She lives behind me, and we have a gate connecting our two houses. We watched our favorite TV Show When Calls the Heart and drank frozen chocolate (basically like chocolate milk with ice chunks in it) in two goblets. We also ate a whole box of doughnut holes from our local grocery store.

After that, we went kayaking at a big lake called Veterans Lake. It was a lot of fun and we decided to kayak behind two geese (we called them Gertrude and Gandalf) that were floating across the lake. I also ended up kayaking right through a willow tree, it hurt but it was fun.

For lunch, we went back to my best friend’s house and we put together a double hammock that she got. We ate lunch (grilled cheese and clementines) on the hammock. It was really fun until we accidentally flipped the hammock over.

Next, we walked a block to our community’s outdoor pool, which opened today. We were really excited until we saw some of our enemies from school (3 extremely annoying boys.) We ignored them and went over to hang out in the 12ft well with two of our other friends from school. I taught them how to do front flips, back flips, handstands, front walkovers, and back walkovers underwater. Then I tried to persuade them to go diving of the diving board with me but they wouldn’t and said they would just watch me. We all had a lot of fun at the pool, but most of us got sunburned in the end. We might have forgotten to put sunscreen on…

We went back to my best friend’s house and binge watched 3 episodes of When Calls the Heart while eating dinner (pizza.) Then we went to the park across the street to play soccer with one of her dogs. Then we went back to her house and went to DQ. She got a dilly bar and I got a blizzard.

It was a really fun 1st day of summer! I hope you enjoyed the post, keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

~ Mara

by

Lucky Broken Girl: Book Review

Hello! Today I have a book review on the new book Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar. Enjoy!

The book takes place in New York City from 1966 – 1967. A young Cuban – Jewish girl named Ruthie Mizrahi has recently emigrated from Cuba to Queens, New York. She is proclaimed the Hopscotch Queen of Queens of the neighborhood. That is until she is in a terrifying car accident and breaks her leg.

Ruthie is confined to her bed and is in a body cast. She longs to explore the world, yet while she lays there she meets many interesting people who tell their stories to her.

My personal favorite part of this book is all the multicultural characters in it and how it is so intriguing. I read this book in one whole day, I couldn’t stop myself!

I hope you enjoyed this quick, little book review. Stay tuned for more posts! ~ Mara

by

Chocolate Walnut Brownies

Hello! Today I have a link to a recipe for some amazing Chocolate Walnut Brownies from Cooking Light!

What I Did Differently

  • I didn’t use walnuts in the batter because not everyone in my family likes walnuts.
  • I sprinkled walnuts on top of half of the pan (before baking the brownies) for those in my family who wanted walnuts on their brownies.

I hope you will check out the recipe above!

by

My Favorite All – Time Books

Hello everyone! It’s Mara here with a post on all of my favorite books. Each book is linked to it’s GoodReads summary. Also, these are in alphabetical order. Enjoy!

I defiantly recommend all of these books to mostly girl middle grade readers! Next I put the books into order of my favorites (this was extremely hard to do.)

  1. Maybe A Fox by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee
  2. Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
  3. Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk
  4. The World From Up Here by Cecilia Galante
  5. The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
  6. Hour of the Bees by Lindsey Eager
  7. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall by Barry Denenberg
  8. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  9. Heaven Looks A Lot Like A Mall by Wendy Mass
  10. Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince
  11. Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret
  12. Saving Sky by Diane Stanley

I hope you enjoyed this post!

by

Deviled Eggs

Hi everyone! Today I have a recipe for making Deviled Eggs.  This recipe is for about 4 eggs, 8 if you cut them in half. You can adjust these ingredients to taste. Enjoy the post!

Filling the eggs.

Ingredients

4 hard – boiled eggs

Ingredients for the filling

Eggs yolks

2 tbsp real mayo

Dash of celery seed or celery salt

⅛ tsp of dried mustard

Few shakes of dill weed

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

⅛ tsp of vinegar

Paprika (used for decoration)

 

Method

  1. Take the hard – boiled eggs and use a knife to cut the eggs in half. Push the yolks out of each egg into a bowl.
  2. Put the mayo, celery seed/salt, dried mustard, dill weed, salt, pepper, and vinegar in the same bowl as the yolks. Then take a fork and mash it all together. If the mixture seems to dry, try adding a little bit more mayo.
  3. Use a spoon to put the yolk mixture into the hollowed out eggs. Once you have filled each of the eggs, sprinkle a little paprika on top of each egg for decoration.

I hope you enjoyed this post. This is my mom’s recipe, by the way and if you have any questions please comment below. Thanks for reading. ~ Mara

 

 

by

Honey Loaf Cake

Hi everyone! Today I have a post about how to make a honey loaf cake. This recipe is originally from the Everyday Easy: Cakes & Cupcakes Cookbook. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 cup butter, room temperature

⅔ cup light brown sugar (packed)

⅓ cup plus 1 tbsp honey, warmed until fluid

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

3 ¼ cups all – purpose flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

 

Ingredients for the icing

⅔ cup confectioner’s sugar

1 tbsp honey

1 – 2 tbsp hot water

 

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 ℉ (180 ℃). Butter a 9 x 5in (23 x 13cm) loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
  2. To make the cake, beat the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer or wooden spoon until pale and creamy. Beat in the honey. One at a time, beat in the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add a little flour if the mixture begins to curdle.
  3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon. Stir into the butter mixture. Spread in the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 – 60 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If the loaf is browning too quickly, tent with foil. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Invert and unmold onto the rack, peel off the paper, and let cool.
  4. To make the icing, mix the confectioner’s sugar and honey, then stir in enough hot water to make a fluid icing. Drizzle the icing over the cake, letting it drip down the sides.

 

What I Did Different

  • I had a lot of extra batter and didn’t have enough room in my pan so I made two extra muffins made from the batter with the extra batter.

 

Thank you for reading today’s post! Bye! ~ Mara

 

 

by

About Compassion

Hi! It’s Mara here with a post about the program Compassion International. Enjoy the post!

My Personal Compassion Experience

My family and I sponsor a 9 year old girl from Brazil named Eliane and a 16 year old girl from Kenya named Doris. We have only received 3 letters (as of April 2017) from Kananu because they take a long time to send. For example, we recently got a letter from her that was originally sent in December of 2016. We receive letters from Eliane more quickly because she lives closer by. Nonetheless, it is always very exciting to receive a letter from your sponsored child.

About Compassion International

This is Compassion’s mission statement

It’s a mission about love. We love God, and we demonstrate our love and live out our faith by extending care to others.
We offer our programs to the poorest of the poor, to the children in greatest need, without ulterior motive. We devote ourselves to helping children of all faiths, cultures, backgrounds and race — without imposing any religious obligation or conversion requirement upon them.
We simply aspire to be like our Savior, Jesus Christ, in who we are and what we do.

Compassion’s mission statement is very inspiring and definitely wants to make you help out the great cause.

How to Help Compassion

Next I was list 6 ways you can help this amazing organization.

  1. You can donate money to the following categories Where Most Needed, Disaster Relief, Highly Vulnerable Children, Unsponsored Children, Water Treatment Projects, and Medical Assistance.
  2. You can fundraise money by doing activities such as bake sales, talent shows, lemonade stands, etc. Then later donate it to Compassion.
  3. You can volunteer at Compassion Partnered Events, at the Compassion Headquarters, and in a leadership role.
  4. Pray for unsponsored families and children or for family in dangerous areas.
  5. If you sponsor a child try to make sure to write them often, children love to receive your letters.
  6. If you sponsor a child you can visit them in there country.

I hope you will try one of these activities to support Compassion!

How To Sponsor A Child

Finally here are some steps on how to sponsor a Compassion child.

  1. You can search for a child with specific information.

  2. Step 1

    Once you find a child that you like you can click on their picture to learn more about them.

  3. Once you click on their picture there is more information about them such as their hobbies, schooling, family duties, guardians, siblings, and family employment.
  4. If you decide to sponsor the child, you can click the select this child button.
  5. Each month you pay $38.0o to sponsor the child.

Thank you for reading today’s post! Bye! ~ Mara