Kids Against Hunger

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A few months ago my Bible study group did a little project together.

We met at Kids Against Hunger and packaged food that was being taken to Haiti the next day. It would be stuffed in suitcases and delivered by people from our church.

For a few hours and $25 each we packaged 800 meals! For many kids this meal will be the only meal of the day.

The mission of Kids Against Hunger, a humanitarian food-aid organization, is to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the U.S.A. and to feed starving children throughout the world. It is an awesome organization with local chapters throughout the country.

If you are interested in volunteering to package food or having a packaging party check out their website to see where your nearest location is and get on it! Or just donate money.

We tried a sample of the food and it was actually pretty good. Tasted like Rice-A-Roni. Not to be confused with My Tenderoni.

And we got to wear hairnets and used heavy duty machinery. Well, it was kind of like a glue gun/press on steroids. Still edgy and dangerous though.

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You're Pregnant. And you Have Cancer.

Pin It Now! You relocate from California to Texas at 18 weeks pregnant because hubby takes a job as a pastor at a church there.

Six weeks later you have some pains which you think are complications from your pregnancy so you go to the doctor.

Doctor finds a large mass.

It's cancer.

Stage 3 colorectal cancer.

You are 24 weeks pregnant. You have two other young children.

Meet Wren Horn. This is her reality.

She starts chemo next week. The goal is to keep the baby in until she is 32 weeks pregnant.

Then deliver the baby, more chemo, surgery.

This Totally Desperate Mom friend needs our love and support.

I met Wren in last year when I spoke at her MOPS group in Santa Maria. She is a doll. Upbeat, sweet, loving, encouraging, and she loves her husband . . . if any of you have heard me speak about "Taking Care of Mom" then you will remember my 30-day marital challenge. Wren did it. And then got pregnant with this little one :)

Please join me in praying and encouraging Wren as she kicks cancer's butt and welcomes a sweet little girl into a world.

Please go join Wren's support page on Facebook. Drop her a comment and let her know that you are praying for her and cheering her on. I know the encouragement will bless her.

You can also read updates about her situation on their new church's website.

And if anyone knows anyone in the band Gungor then send them a link cuz she really likes their song "Beautiful Things." Maybe they could call her and sing it to her over the phone or show up at her front door or something.

I see they will be on tour in Texas in Sept. and October. Somebody - hook it up! Pin It Now!

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Hollywood Days - Famous Fone Friends

Pin It Now! If you are new to my blog, on Wednesdays I post about my experience in Hollywood as a former child/teen actress. If you want to start at the beginning of these posts go here.

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Back in the day where most young Hollywood actors were not out jet setting to exotic beaches with their boyfriends, partying in nightclubs with their parents, or running from out-of-control paparazzi you could often find them at charity events.

When I wasn't flying home to visit my family (I lived with family friends when I was filming The New Lassie and my family was in Northern California) on the weekend I could usually be found at some sort of charity event. That was my weekend fun. And I am not being sarcastic. I really enjoyed going to various charity events, helping a good cause, and meeting new people.

At Christmas time one of my studio teachers, Linda Stone, organized an event called Famous Fone Friends. She gathered a bunch of celebrities to make phone calls to seriously ill children. And it looks like the organization is still up and running! Go to their website if you want to read more about it, get involved, or if you have a child who is seriously ill and would like a phone call from a celebrity.


Me with my friend Kellie Martin (Life Goes On), Scott Wienger (Full House and later the voice of Aladdin).

With Josh Saviano (The Wonder Years, not Marilyn Manson).

(From The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and one of the voices of The Ninja Turtles.)

And Yes, I was wearing a jingle ball necklace and jingle ball earrings. In preparation for one day being a Grandma.

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Realistic Cake Pop Recipe

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For Jordis's third birthday party I decided to make cupcakes and cake pops. Because I wanted to eat one or twenty. So I browsed recipes and got some tips from my Tweeps.

Here is the best of what I learned about cake poppin'.

But just know that to make picture-perfect cake pops like the ones you might see on a crazy baker web site or over at Crazy Crafty Christina's blog you will need a strong Type-A personality, special tools, the perfect dipping chocolate, and a fancy camera. I have none of those items, but I did borrow my sister-in-law's nice camera for the party.

So my recipe, if you will, is for . . .

Realistic Cake Pops

Good-Enough Cake Pops

Not-Necessarily-Perfectly-Round-or-Smooth Cake Pops

Most-Likely-To-Not-Be-Featured-on-Bakerella.com Cake Pops

Cake Pops for the Craftily Challenged

Here you go:

1. Make and bake a cake. Preferably not in an Easy-Bake Oven. Let your kids stir up the mix a bit cuz they will remember it fondly when they grow up.

2. Let it cool.

3. Take the cake out of the pan, bash it up, and put it in a large mixing bowl, not a fish bowl.

I did one batch of chocolate cake and vanilla frosting and one batch of yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Both of them were delicious and overly consumed by moi.

4. Add at least 1/2 of the tub of artery clogging, artificial everything frosting to the bashed up cake.

Special Tip #1 - Probably best to add a little more than 1/2 the tub of frosting. It makes for some good glue to hold the ball together and if you don't put enough in, they get a little cracky.

5. Mix the cake and frosting with a fork until you are bored. Then use your hands until it is thoroughly mixed and begging to be shaped into balls.

6. Roll that mixture into balls with your hands.

Let your kids help you with this, but don't expect the balls to be perfectly bally. But who cares? It's for a three-year-old's birthday party, not a magazine cover. Unless it's for a magazine cover - in that case just go buy the cake pops. Make the balls not too big, not too small. Maybe about the size of a walnut. Unless walnuts greatly vary in size (do they?). If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you.

7. Put the balls on a cookie/baking sheet lined with wax or parchment paper and put in your refrigerator for at least an hour.

Some internet peeps said to freeze, others said that freezing them was lame. Don't leave the balls in there for more than 24 hours or they begin to dry out.

8. Get some melting chocolates and put them on the stove in a non-stick pot to melt.

Special Tip #2: Don't use a stainless steel pot like I did with my first batch of purple melting junk. Because well, it just doesn't work and I had to toss it.

9. Dip the tip of fancy sticks you bought from a craft store or ones you collected from the tootsie pops your kids just ate, into the melted chocolate and then stick it about half way into the ball.

10. Stick all the balls (now with sticks in them) back in the fridge so that chocolate, (which acts like glue, but won't get you high), will harden.

10. After a few minutes, take out one pop at a time and begin the arduous dipping process. And by dipping I mean DON'T DIP!

Use a spoon to drip the chocolate onto the ball. Get it all over that bad boy. I am sure the unrealistic cake pop recipes have a fancy way of doing this so the chocolate goes on perfectly smooth. But I am sure that is more time consuming and stressful so just get the surface of the ball covered and move on with your life.

11. After the ball is unevenly lathered with the melting chocolate then shake on your sprinkles, chocolate chips, shards of glass, or whatever else you think would make a great topping for your pops.

12. Stick the pops in a flat piece of styrofoam.

We always throw away styrofoam when it comes in packaging because our cats eat it and then puke it up. (Who says styrofoam is not recyclable? Tell that to my cats.) Therefore, I had to buy a piece of styrofoam at the craft store . . . perhaps the most painful part of my cake-pop journey.

I made a cake-pop bouquet with some of the cake pops (on an $8 styrofoam ball!) and covered others with treat bags and ribbon as party favors.

Special Tip #3 If you make your balls too big or they won't fit into the treat bags and you will have to eat them right there on the spot.

The birthday girl loved the cake pops = success!

The birthday girl's mom loved the cake pops = cake pop booty.

The cake pops were time consuming to make, but if you follow my special tips and don't expect perfection then they are not difficult to make. My goal is to never to make them again simply because they tasted incredible and I ate too many and I don't want to get fat and have health issues.

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My Youngest is Three Today

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Happy Birthday to my sweet and spunky Jordis!

She is three today.

Sometimes she is so cute I want to kiss her face off.

We had a pool party for her at my parents' house yesterday. When we got there she skipped around the house singing "I'm ready for my birthday party! I'm ready for my pool party!"

I love her.

Fresh out of the chute . . .

One . . .

Two . . .

Yesterday . . .

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Totally Desperate Winner & Nuts

Pin It Now! There are two winners here today.
1. Rosie the Squirrel. She is digging into the bag of nuts that the squirrel rescuers left for the squirrel crew . . . just in case you were wondering how they were doing. Just fine.


2. The winner of a copy of my book on Kindle is . . .
#17 is Celeste!
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My Three Front Teeth

Pin It Now! Lydia has an extra tooth up top.

All she wants for Christmas is her three front teeth.

The extra tooth looks like a shark tooth.

When the dentist showed me the x-ray I started laughing hysterically (not in front of Lydia).

I laughed so hard I cried. I just envisioned her in her kindergarten pictures with this shark tooth rocking her smile and I could not stop laughing. I guess I'm no pageant mom.

I showed Lydia the x-ray and asked her to name the extra tooth.

"Sharky." Of course.

Last week she had to get one of her baby teeth pulled to make way for Sharky. When Sharky is halfway in, he will have to get pulled as well.

Do you or your kids have any funky teeth issues?

Here you have it in pictures . . .

Aren't kids so cute when they sleep? Or maybe not. Maybe creepy.

Tada!

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Hollywood Days - Guest Post by Carol-Ann Plante

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If you are new to my blog, on Wednesdays I post about my experience in Hollywood as a former child/teen actress. If you want to start at the beginning of these posts go here.

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This is a rerun but so what?

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Welcome my friend Carol-Ann! The first of my Hollywood guest posts!

Meet Carol-Ann . . .

I came to L.A. in 1989 at the ripe old age of 15 to try my hand at acting. I had done a lot of theater in NY, sang on tons of commercial jingles, but always had that awkward look that no one really wanted to put on any screen, big or small. I still can’t believe my parents took me here, thinking I actually could ‘make it.’ We spent our first month at the Oakwood apartments, where I hung out with a group of child actors from all over the country who had the same agenda.

I had a manager named Gary Scalzo. I met him in NY and he was the one that convinced my parents to stay here for a year. He said I had a good shot, being from NY, and that I had to give it more than just one month. He had a knack for picking talent, and also represented Elijah Wood, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Casper Van Dien. He put us all up in the same apartment building and our families all became friends. It was nice to have some other displaced people here that didn’t know anyone.


(with Casper van Dien…nice outfit, huh?)

I enrolled in 11th grade at Burroughs High School in Burbank, where they filmed a lot of the school scenes for Wonder Years.

(at my high school graduation party…with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Jonathan Taylor Thomas)

About a year after I moved to LA, I booked “Harry and the Hendersons.” It was a grueling audition process. I went back 6 times for call backs and then had to do a screen test at Universal Studios. I was so excited when I got the call that they had chosen me to play Sarah Henderson, the daughter. I could actually stay in California now that I had a job! Plus, I wouldn’t have to go back to regular school. I would be tutored for my senior year of high school. This is where I met Wendy. Our production was starting up just as hers was ending, so they kept a lot of the same crew, including the set teacher.

(Christina and I on the set with Harry)

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 of her story . . .

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Squirrely Seven

Pin It Now! I changed high schools five times because of my acting stuff. Can anyone top that?

But part of my freshman year and my entire senior year I spent at one high school.

The Squirrely Seven (we named ourselves that because . . . well we are not quite sure why) are the girls who I hung out with the most my senior year. I had been friends with most of them since elementary school. We had a ton of fun my senior year together and it was great to come back from Hollywood to graduate high school with them.

Here we are in high school our senior year before a dance.

Here are Toby and I at UCLA our freshman year in 1993. We were roommates for several years. We call each other Chachi because we can.

Here are Kendall and Kendra at my wedding in 1998.

And here are four of the seven squirrels now - Professor Kendall, Pregnant Toby, Chiropractor Kendra, and me. We had a little get together at my parents' house yesterday. Because of life and kids and where we live, we don't see each other often so it was so fun to reconnect with my squirrels! Love these gals.

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Totally Desperate Mom on Kindle - Giveaway

Pin It Now! I'm giving a way a copy of my book Totally Desperate Mom on KINDLE.

Simply because you are a mom. Or you are going to gift the book to a mom. Or because you are working on becoming a mom. Or because you are a mom at heart.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling me I am not the only mom who faces serious resistance whenever she tries to get a family photo.

For an extra entry you can follow me via google friend connect or just state that you already do and that you don't regret it.

Entries must be in by Friday, July 22nd 9pm PST. Random.org will pick a winner and I will announce it on my blog on Saturday July 23rd. Thanks!

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Hollywood Days - Teen Beat and Wet Seal

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If you are new to my blog, on Wednesdays I post about my experience in Hollywood as a former child/teen actress. If you want to start at the beginning of these posts go here.

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I wasn't sure where to put this photo because it could have easily made a Stylin' Saturday post.

This photo was from a weekend in San Diego that Teen Beat sponsored.

Me: The oversized Adidas jacket paired with the overall jeans and flailing purse.

Christina Nigra (Out of This World): I'm pretty sure that's Winnie the Pooh on her shirt.

Jenny Beck: (Paradise) Polka Dot sensation for sure purchased at Wet Seal.

Cyrstal McKellar (Wonder Years): Stone washed shorts and a crop top. Pure awesome.

Danica McKellar (Wonder Years and now author): She may have run into Jenny Beck at Wet Seal. That could have been when they decided to pick up the humongo earrings.

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May So Cal Trip

Pin It Now! In May we went on a family vacation/speaking trip and I am finally getting around to blogging about it . . .

My parents give us a timeshare week in Mexico every year for Christmas. We usually trade it for some place in Southern California. This time we landed a bit of a dumpy place, but the location in Capistrano Beach was great and the view (pictured) was to die for. Rather, if you die it afforded a great place to dump the dead body.

Our place was close to the beach and we couldn't afford a babysitter so we just buried the kids.

I spoke at Church of the Open Door's Moms' group that my friend from UCLA, Lindsay Willmer, started.

Brian (Lindsay's husband) and I have been buds since UCLA, but I had not seen him or Lindsay in years. It was so great to catch up with them in person. Brian is a football coach at Azusa Pacific University.

I also spoke at Shiloh's home church, Fallbrook First Baptist, at their "Mothers and Others" lunch.

We visited the cousins in San Diego.

With my sister-in-law Kate.

We went to church in downtown L.A. at The Bridge at Union Church where our friend Tim Yee is the new pastor. His wife is one of my best friends since high school.

The day we drove home was Mother's Day. I chose this hole-in-the-wall Persian restaurant for our Mother's Day lunch. We took over the joint. And it was good.

Where else but downtown L.A. could you happen upon a clown when you are walking down the street?

Elijah got me this ring for Mother's Day. I totally thought it was real gold and diamonds until after three hours of wear when the gold turned bronze. Maybe it's a mood ring?

The End

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