Cute Robot Valentine Box

While at my daughter's class Valentine's day party, I saw a boy with the cutest box. Each child was supposed to decorate and bring in a box to hold their Valentine cards. This one was by far the best. He used a small box, empty can, large beads, pipe cleaners, construction paper, ribbon, squiggly eyes, and tin foil. This was the result.

For the back of the robot, they cut out a small door in the box and attached pipe cleaners and foil covered beads to keep it closed.

I'm not sure what he used for the feet. I forgot to ask him about that part. Any ideas?

How to make a Tea Pot cake

-Grease and flour two 2 qt glass bowls well
-Pour the cake mix into bowls and bake according to recipe instructions. These cakes may take a bit more time than expected. Be sure to test middle of cakes with a toothpick to be sure the middles are cooked through.
-Turn cakes out of bowls onto work surface and allow to cool completely.
-If the tops of the cakes are bowed a bit, not straight, use a serrated knife to cut them slightly so they will be even all of the way across. 
-Carefully place one cake on top of the other with wide sides resting together.
-You can use any color icing you wish. Have fun with it. Try different colors and make it unique.
-Decorate the cake using

• Plain M&Ms for flowers
• Peanut M&Ms to go around the top and bottom of the tea pot
• Blow pop for top of tea pot
• Cut out a handle and spout from colored poster board. Be sure to make them longer than needed so they can stick into the cake very well.

How to make a Hello Kitty cake

-Grease and flour bottom and sides of a 9x13 glass dish very well
-Pour cake mix into dish and cook according to recipe directions
-Turn cake out onto work surface.
-Let cake cool completely. I found that if the cake is still hot it will crumble much easier. If you have room in your freezer, it is a good idea to freeze it a bit to make it easier to work with. 
-Cut cake into an oval shape saving side pieces
-Use two corner pieces of discarded cake to make the ears
-Apply white icing to entire cake
-Decorate cake using

• Black jelly beans for eyes
• Pink jelly bean for nose
• Bubble tape tied into a bow for ear
• Black shoestring licorice for whiskers

This cake is very easy and fun to create. Hope your Hello Kitty fan enjoys it!

A look into the past- My most difficult time turned into a blessing

About 2 years before I left my ex husband I started getting a strange flash of a vision. In the vision I was with a man ,whose face was not visible, and my two girls. Sometimes I was pushing a stroller. It was cool outside. We were walking down the street and it was around Halloween according to the decorations on the houses. This vision would come in a flash. As soon as it came, it was gone. What was more intense than the vision was the emotion it gave me. I felt intense love, acceptance, safety, and most of all happiness. I was convinced that this was a sign that I should continue working very hard on my very rocky marriage.

My marriage had not been good pretty much from the beginning. At this point I had been with my husband for 10 years. We had two daughters together, both unplanned. The first daughter came after only knowing him for a year. That's right, I became pregnant with her only months after meeting him. It wasn't a fairytale situation to say the least. I always tried to make the best of it believing that this man was the father of my children and I owed my family at least that much.

As time went on, he began to drink more and more. I tried to ignore it but it was difficult to do. After the vision, I worked very hard on my own happiness. I decided that I was going to be happy in this marriage no matter what. After all, we are all in charge of our own happiness. I knew that if I wanted to be happy I had to be happy. Period. I either had to accept my life how it was and make the best out of it or leave him and start over. I wasn't ready to leave. I had two young girls and was a stay at home mom. Looking back I realize it was more about me feeling stuck than trying to work things out. I was afraid to leave. Still, I forged on like a good wife and  loved my husband as I should. Things went pretty well for a few months. Then one day I woke up in the middle of the night. I had trained myself to do this. I would wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning to go check the computer. He would pass out after drinking all night and leave the computer on. It wasn't uncommon for me to find porn left up. I was always afraid of my girls waking before me and finding it. This made me furious but all I could do is wake up, check, and turn it off. This particular night I didn't find porn. I found his email. I know I shouldn't read other people's emails but I did. I read it. This email was from a woman. She talked about how much she enjoyed talking to him online and on the phone. How she always had a crush on him in school (they attended high school together) but was too afraid to say anything. She said that she never loved her husband the way she loved him. She also said some more graphic things that I will not go into right now. I stood there reading this email and I felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me. I printed it out and went back to bed.

I can't remember how long it took me to confront him about this. Maybe I did it the next day or I waited a day or two. I don't know. When I did confront him, he faced it the same way he did every confrontation. He blamed me. First he said it was my fault for not having sex with him enough, then he said I nagged him too often about drinking, then he turned it around and said I was crazy and didn't know what I was talking about.  This was pretty much the routine. I knew it well. I knew that any confrontation would lead to me feeling like I was crazy and making it all up. That's why I printed the email. I had proof I wasn't making it up. This went on for a couple of weeks. I was faced with her contacting me and being pretty rude as well as him not owning up to what he had done. I found that there had not been any physical betrayal. But it did still feel pretty awful to have another woman have a mental/emotional affair with your husband and fall in love with him. Especially when he defended it all.

A few months went on and  I pretended to be ok. He promised to stop talking to this woman and I agreed that would be best. I never felt the same as I did a few months before. I figured I could still be happy though. I didn't need him to make me happy. I could do it on my own.

One night in August, a few days after my birthday he and I got in a horrific argument. We had never argued like this before though we had argued pretty bad prior to this. We argued for hours. Probably 4 hours we argued. It started over his disapproval of my friends. He saw that I was trying to better myself. I was learning how to have a life outside of him and he didn't like it. Of course that's not what he told me but I knew that's what he was saying. I defended myself the entire time. I tried to stay calm but eventually lost it. We screamed. I cried. We said nasty things to each other. I was totally drained. Around 3 am I decided I had enough and I went to bed. I laid there in my bed in a state of exhaustion. I was too tired to fall asleep but almost comatose and couldn't move. Several minutes later he crawled into bed with me. I tried to pretend I was asleep because I had no energy to fight anymore. Before I knew it he was on top of me trying to have sex with me. I tried to push him off. I told him to get off. I said no. I cried. I fought as much as I could. I was weak. I had no more fight in me that night. I couldn't do much about what was happening. I was too drained. Finally i gave up fighting. I laid there and cried as he did what he had to do. When he was done I screamed at him to get out of my room. I got up and locked the door and cried myself to sleep.

The next morning was Sunday. I pulled myself together after a horrible night and only a few hours of sleep. I got my girls up and went to the only place I knew to go. I had been meeting some friends on Sundays for our spiritual group. It wasn't church per se though it was like that. We would get together for an uplifting, positive message and feel better for doing it. I told a few people what had happened the night before. It was difficult for me to say but I really needed support at that time. My friends were amazing. Several of them gave me the option of moving in with them or other things that I could do. I decided not to move out, not yet.

The next few months were just a blur. I went about the motions pretending to be married but in my heart the relationship ended that night he raped me. I began looking for a job that week, the Monday after the incident. I looked for 2 weeks with no luck. I was beginning to lose hope. One day while visiting my daughter's school I saw there was an opening in the cafeteria. I applied. It took a few weeks for them to run fingerprinting, get the paper work together, and drug tests, etc but I got the job. I was so happy to be working and knew it was a way for me to get out of the marriage.

In January I told him I was leaving. He begged me to stay. I couldn't. I didn't love him anymore. When I looked at him I saw someone totally different. It's amazing how someone can look different to you like that. One day I saw him one way and the next, a different person. He was ugly, disgusting really. I didn't like looking at him at all.

It took me four months to finally get out. I couldn't find a place to live that I could afford. My mom convinced me to move in with her. Although I didn't feel like it was a good idea, I did it just so I could get away from my husband. 

I moved in with my mom. I didn't like her boyfriend that lived with her. He treated her very badly. I tried to stay out of it. All I could do is try to make my mom see that she deserved better. One day it back fired.

Two weeks after moving in, I received a call at work from my mom. She told me that her and her boyfriend had been in a fight and the cops came. They took him away and she wanted me to come. I took off of work and went to support her. The following week it was apparent that she went to see him where he was staying. One night she came home and told me that he wanted to come back. She said he wouldn't come back if I was there. He told her that it was him or me. She chose him. She gave me until the next day to get my things, my girls, and move. I was at a loss. I had no idea where to go. I was heartbroken. I had to move back in with my husband.

I moved into the house I tried so hard to get away from. I was living in a haze. I felt as if I was watching a movie. I was numb. During this same time, the man I had been seeing turned out to be a total con artist, literally. I found out he had lied to me about everything including his name. This just added to my humiliation and depression. I became suicidal. I didn't think I could live with the pain I had any longer.

My best friend of 17 years must have picked up on this. We have always had a tie with each other. We are spiritually connected in some way. She called me and called again, and again. I wouldn't pick up. She left messages for me screaming to call her back. She knew what I was thinking. I did call her eventually. She talked me out of killing myself. Telling me that I had to be there for my girls. She was right. They were the only thing keeping me here. They were the only  thing I wanted to live for.

With her help I found an apartment and moved out of my husbands house within a week. It was a small apartment. Only one bedroom. I didn't care. I just wanted to get out. I did. It felt amazing.

Over the next few months the visions of this happy time began to appear more and more. They lasted for longer periods of time. Then began to be accompanied with visions of the back of the man's head. I still was not able to see his face but it gave me hope that I would once again be part of a family.

I was ok with being alone. I didn't need a man to take care of me. For the first time in my life I was happy just for me. It was wonderful. I still missed having a family though. I love being in a family. I knew that I had a family even then. It was me and my girls. I had days where I was very unhappy and days where I was on top of the world. Still receiving these images and feelings more and more. At one point they would happen several times a day. I longed for those visions. They made me feel so wonderful inside. I convinced myself that they were just my minds way of making me feel I could get through this rough time in my life. Deep down though I knew they were more.

Eventually I started feeling a presence of a man that was in as much pain as I was at one point. I could see the man and he was the same as the man in my vision.  He was hurting, sad, lonely. I would try to tell him to find me and that it would all be ok. I felt like I was crazy but I did it anyway.

Eventually I met a man online who was going through a divorce. He had been separated from his wife about as long as I was separated from my husband.  As we got to know each other, our feelings grew more and more. His divorce became final a month after mine. He came to see me about 6 months later. When he did, we hugged and I felt his energy. His loving spirit. It was then that I realized he was this vision. He felt exactly like I had felt all of these times when I got this flash in my mind. He had found me, we found each other! After coming to this realization it all made perfect sense to me. His sadness, loneliness. It was all around the same time he was having problems with his wife.

I don't know where those visions and feelings came from. Still to this day I know it sounds crazy and overly dramatic. Almost like it should be some stupid girly movie. Still I can't deny what I felt and saw. I can't deny that this man, the man I am with now, is the man from my dreams and visions. Because of him I was able to carry through so many difficult times in my life. His spirit came to me without his knowledge over two years before we ever met. I can't explain this but it happened. Whatever it was, I am thankful for it. I am thankful that he and I found each other. I am thankful that all of those rough times are behind me and that I'm a stronger person because of them.