Category: Home Life

City of mirrors and mirages ~ Venice, Italy

“Venice is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.” – Erica Jong HIGHLIGHTS Destination: Venice Getting There: ItaliaRail LOS: 3 days, 2 nights Lodging: Venice Times Hotel Highlights: Basilica di San Marco; Gondola ride; Murano Best Times to Visit: Shoulder Season – March/April; Sept/Oct I can understand why writers and creatives flock to Venice for inspiration. It’s a city unlike any other. Waterways instead of roads, boats instead of cars, floating homes and palaces, winding alleyways, bridges, and gondolas sluicing through the green canal waters. I won’t attempt to detail every attraction you should visit when in Venice, it’s of course impossible to hit all the stops in so few days (especially when traveling with kids). But I’ll provide you with our favorites and the inevitable “oh dang, we didn’t have time, but wished we made it there” list. GOOGLE MAP I’ve included a link to my Google map with the restaurants and points of interest that we either a) found to be the best OR b) wanted to see, but didn’t have time to. A great way of using this map, if you’re an iPhone user is to create a guide in your Apple map and download the map so you can use it offline, and sort by distance to hit the closest spots as you meander through the city. Everybody’s Fave! The Gondola ride – We saved this for last, and on the morning before our departure, we stopped at one of the many Gondola ‘Taxi-Stands’ and got our guide. These are easy to spot, you’ll usually see the gondolas docked in the water and the gondoliers milling around, waiting in their striped uniforms and hats for customers. The skill with which they maneuvered through the canals was impressive. We learned a lot about the waterways, the bridges, and the way of life for the locals. My favorite part about traveling is usually chatting with the service providers and trying to learn more about their everyday lives. While tourism is essential (especially in places like Venice), they are just people like you and me, trying to survive, while making an honest living, and enjoying the place they call home. Palaces and Piazzas Oh My! The Basilica di San Marco is massive and impressive. What was interesting to learn is that these monuments were not only built as a religious relic, but they are a tribute to the politics and the people. These structures are very much symbolic of the region’s wealth and power and a gathering place for the people. To simply sit and observe the facade of the Doge Palace and the Basilica is enough to fill your culture-cup for the day. Murano – The island of glass-blown treasures. Everywhere in Venice you’ll find trinkets and treasures boasting to be authentic Murano glass. While we got there late and couldn’t make it to see the process of creating these masterpieces, we were able to walk about and view magnificent works of art that started as a grain of sand. There were chandeliers that stood taller than a basketball player, with all levels of precise and precious details! Of course, when I got home I tapped into Netflix’s show: Blown Away and was even more mezmerized by the process and craftsmanship that goes into these pieces. What we missed – We chose not to visit the famed Bridge of Sighs, and Ponte di Rialto, I’m sure they are beautiful and worth seeing, but once in Venice I prefered to take is slow and meander at leisure and just take in the very different landscape and way of life. I really wanted to visit the island of Burano, but time did not permit. Burano is a picturesque island known for their lacemaking and their colorful, quaint houses. Let me know if you’ve been, and if I indeed need to visit again to get it all in.

A Very Spidey Birthday

A Very Spidey Birthday It’s the most peculiar thing, my son has never seen Spider-Man, yet he has a mild obsession with the masked man. So of course for his birthday his request was for a Spidey cake. Like any mom I worry that they eat too much sugar, especially with our YouTube Cooking Channel, I want healthier options rather than everything so sugar-laden (If you have recommended recipes for us please drop them in the comments below). My search for a recipe that included fruit or vegetables led me to this awesome recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes made with Beets from A Nerd Cooks. I took a chance on this recipe and it turned out great! If you didn’t know it was made with beets there was no way you would know! The beets colored the cupcakes beautifully and I filled them with chocolate mousse for a little extra oomph of decadence. I figured they’d be getting a fair dose of food coloring and sugar from the frosting, so I was able to eliminate coloring the cupcakes with the natural coloring of the beets and of course, beets also have a natural sweetest, so this also reduced the amount of sugar in the cupcake recipe by a smidge. Would you dare to give your kids beet-cupcakes as a birthday treat? Let me know in the comments if you do! This one was a super-spidey hit!

Living Room Makeover

Who doesn’t love a good makeover? Check out my living room transformation on the cheap!

Bonkers for Bath Bombs

My kids are bonkers for bath bombs, I got tired of forking over $5 each bomb and decided to take them to task on making their own.

Spiderman Red Velvet (BEET) cupcakes

Spiderman Red Velvet (BEET) cupcakes Who doesn’t love a themed birthday! My son Max recently turned 3, and in his few years on this earth he’s managed to develop an obsession with a web-yielding man who he’s never seen (on tv or otherwise). Bizarre but true. So to add to the Spiderman mania Willa and I baked him up some Spiderman themed cupcakes for his birthday. The mommy in me needed to combat all that colored frosting with some semblance of healthy and so I found a recipe for beet red velvet cupcakes by A Nerd Cooks (btw, check out her blog for some really amazing cocktails for the after party!) I’ve found that if you get excited about anything, the kids will too. So we played up the beets in a huge way and believe me (although I love beets on their own, or with some goat cheese…yummmmy but I digress) nobody will taste or know that there is a healthy serving of beets in this cupcake. And it sure does beat (beet, hahaha get it!) an unhealthy dose of red food coloring in both the cake and the frosting.

Orange Olive Oil Cake

Orange Olive Oil Cake I have memories of orange sponge cakes. My memories are long, crazy fun days spent at my cousins’ house, climbing trees, jumping from their porch into the grass, playing catch, and eating my aunt’s most amazing orange sponge cake. More memories, every family gathering at their house, I’d put in a request for that orange sponge cake and sure enough it was always made with so much love by my Aunty Shalay. Orange sponge cake, just a simple, beautiful, light sponge. I’ve asked for that recipe and it’s still pending hahaha! But I’ll have it soon. I’m sure my sister’s and my love for all things citrus desserts have stemmed from my Aunty Shalay’s orange sponge. So fast forward to present day, I often get tagged in every and all citrus desserts on instagram, yes it’s from my sister who expects that she has a personal baker 👩‍🍳 (no lies, she does!) Scrolling all manner of confections on social media is where you’ll find me, it’s my happy place. So when she sent me this @OliveandMango recipe for Orange Olive Oil Cake I promptly saved it, made some mental space for my grocery list and counted down the days to making it so I can share with my sis when I saw her for Superbowl Sunday. This recipe is THE easiest! Dry ingredients all dumped in one bowl, wet ingredients dumped in another, then mixed and married, poured and baked into perfection. In preparation of this cake I dehydrated some orange slices inn advance (I baked them at 150 degrees for about an hour) to garnish the cake. I didn’t have a 9″ pan that the recipe called for so I made a few small dome molded cakes with the overflow batter, just to be fancy, but cupcakes can absolutely be made with this recipe just shorten the bake time! I hope you try Olive & Mango’s wonderful recipe, I made the tiniest of tweaks* to the frosting which I added to the recipe below. Share photos and comments with me if you do! It received rave reviews and was the star of our Superbowl night.

Cheese & Herb Pull-Apart Bread

Cheese & Herb Pull-Apart Bread The holidays aren’t the same unless I dust off my dough hook and bake up a loaf to go with freshly baked ham. Growing up in Trinidad I think this was, and still is, a staple of almost every household in the days leading up to Christmas. Truth be told I haven’t been as diligent about keeping up with this tradition, but this year seeing that I started a blog with baking in its name I figure I had no excuse. When I told my husband that we were having ham sandwiches for dinner he seemed skeptical, as though it wasn’t a hearty enough meal, not stick-to-the-ribs-enough ya know! Boy was he wrong. Not only was he full, but he was so happy and satisfied. Home made bread is a different beast from store bought. It’s thick and fluffy and chewy and oh so satisfying. So much so that we finished the loaf in less than 24 hours (eek!) – Holiday calories don’t count right? What made this loaf even more special was the cheese and the herb, fresh out of the oven to pull a piece away was magic. Seriously my last meal request will have bread and cheese on the menu! So, you’ve never baked bread? Daunted by the mere mention of yeast? Just stop it! It’s so doable, it’s easy, and if you have a stand mixer, that dough hook does all the heavy lifting kneading for you. Here are my bread baking tips:1. If the yeast doesn’t froth up, it’s dead, try a new pack2. If your dough doesn’t rise on your first proof (that’s when you put it to rest while covered in nice warm spot), then your yeast is dead, try a new pack and start over.3. This was the first time I used my herb stripper, I’m really glad I had this kitchen gadget handy. Easy peasy, now let’s get to it!

Gratitude & Happiness: A bedtime routine

Gratitude & Happiness: A bedtime routine Sometimes, as parents it’s hard not to dread the evening routine. We’re exhausted and all we want is some alone time, sleep time, peace time. But then there’s the fight to brush little teeth, bathe dirty bodies and tuck tired heads in their beds. It’s probably necessary for me to say I’m horrible at strict bedtime routines; my 3 year old sleeps in bed with us, and I lay with my daughter until she sleeps and then I sneak out. But one thing I did do, was when my oldest was still in her not-so-terrible-twos, I started a bedtime tradition. After we read bedtime stories I wanted to establish a norm that this would be our time to chat, to ask questions and right before she sleeps to start the habit of a gratitude journal of sorts. Every night when the light goes off I ask, what was the favorite part of your day? It forces us to recall our day, to pick out the highlights, we even chat about the lows, but the focus is always on the highs! At the end we usually each pick our top 3 things that we loved about our day. Hands down my favorite one was when I prepared my daughter’s school desk and home-school area as we started virtual school this year. She said the favorite part of her day was that I made her desk so pretty and that I’m her superhero. All the feels!! These kids say the sweetest things, and you’ll realize that the things they treasure most is the time spent with their family and friends, the experiences and attention always wins out over the toys and even the snacks. It’s a great idea to also record some of the extra sweet ones, or even the mundane everyday ones, because these are the fleeting moments, the days we’ll look wistfully look back on. I’ll bet it’ll also be one of their most cherished childhood memories. According to an article posted by NPR, some of the benefits of having a gratitude habit, be it daily reflection of a journal include: Let me know in the comments if this has prompted you to start your own habit of gratitude!

Unicorn Cake Shortcut

Unicorn Cake Shortcut I have a little girl that loves unicorns, she also pretends all day long that she has a YouTube Channel. Her two loves magically came together and this was the start of our own YouTube Channel that we call Cooking with Willa; in reality you’re also cooking with mommy and 2 year-old Max. Since I started baking more thanks to the quarantine and Covid-19 pandemic, I got a chance to share this love with my kids. Cooking with kids require time and patience, one of these ingredients I had plenty of! As is my norm, I jump head first into an activity, I think it through and plan to a certain degree, but without perfecting and researching every single facet I pull the trigger and away we go. The way I see it “perfection equals paralysis” and “done is better than perfect”, I heard these soundbites some time ago and they’ve become my mantra for simply getting things done. So with all that said, if you have any advice to give us on our new venture of hosting a YouTube Channel, getting subscribers and growing our audience, please feel free to drop a comment below! So I digress, of course we got started with a Unicorn Cake, duh! To make it easy we used a Duncan Hines Sprinkle Cake that we picked up at the supermarket and some other neat shortcut materials for the horn and the eyes that you can find here. Our favorite line from the video that we laugh over and listen to on repeat…”That’s the favorite part of me!” Here is the full video tutorial, let us know how you like it! Happy baking 🙂