Wireless Home

We've pulled the plug on our land line phone and ported the number to a cell phone. Recently we decided to leave AT&T after many years for both land line and cellular use. Our service with AT&T has been very good since we switched to iPhones almost three years ago. But T-mobile promised to reduce our monthly cost for cell service and provide unlimited data service and much better voice and messaging pricing in Europe. Even though we may only be in Europe a few weeks to a month a year, this is a nice bonus with T-Mobile. We are using one of our old iPhones for our home service and this is costing us only $10 a month versus the $45 a month the land line cost. Sweet. And, I purchased a device from Cobra, a PhoneLynx BT215 that allows us to use our old home phones via cellular. This is a neat device, I connected it to the cell phone via Bluetooth. Now we can call out and receive on the old handsets. A year of so ago I cut the cable and put an antenna on th house for TV. We still are wired for Internet access, I don't yet have an option to replace that.

Sharon and I now each have an iPhone 5S. A little longer and a little lighter than the iPhone 4 with some nice touches - like Siri and the touch ID. The camera is said to be better but I have yet to use it. The screen quality is better - more pixels? Sharon and I both think the sound quality during calls is better.

Enough with phones - on to SNOW! Yes, it is snowing again. Right now we have big, fat snow flakes coming down in Glen Ellyn. It is March 5th darn it! Enough with the snow and the cold. I don't want to go outside and shovel it or drive in it. I just want it to go away!

Did I mention Brady's third birthday in a previous post? No? Shame on me. We went to Davenport to join in celebration of Brady's third birthday. Everyone had a great time, especially Brady. Kathy put together a very nice little party and made all of us feel welcome and comfortable. I made margartias with my 1,2,3 recipe (1 part fresh lime juice, 2 parts orange liquor, and three parts tequila, add a little agave nectar to taste, throw in some ice cubes, pour and serve.) Kathy brought in Chik-fil-A to eat and bought an awesome cake!

 

 

Sharon's Best Ever Carrot Cake

Another recipe from the archives of ColbyJ.com

For the Cake
1 tbsp unsalted butter , softened
1 ½ cups plus 2 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
1 ½ tsp  baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp grated nutmeg
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 ½ lb carrots, peeled, trimmed, and grated (about 4 cups)

For the Frosting
12 oz cream cheese
7 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners sugar


For the cake: Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease two 8" round cake pans with butter, dust each with 1 tbsp of the flour, tapping out the excess, and set aside. Combine the remaining 1½ cups flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and salt in a large bowl. Add oil and eggs and stir until smooth. Add carrots and mix well. Divide batter between pans. Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Set aside to cool on a rack, then remove cakes from pans.

For the frosting: Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until smooth. Reduce speed to low and beat in sugar.
Put 1 cake round on a cake plate and spread on third of the frosting on top. Set the remaining cake round on top and ice cake with the remaining frosting.