Blog Refresh + S'mores Trifle

Who else is loving all the videos for the new Weird Al album.  The man never seems to age and his song parodies crack me up.  Last weekend I was on a trip and my husband and I were listening to the 90's alternative rock station on Sirius XM.  A Nirvana song came on and my husband commented on how he is so tired of Nirvana songs.  I liked listening to it however because it made me think of Weird Al's parody "Smells Like Nirvana."  That is when I got the idea for a new Sirius station that would play songs and then it would play the Weird Al parody of the song right after.  Genius idea, right?  Anyway, I've decided that "Handy" (a parody of Iggy Azalea's "Fancy) is going to be my new blog theme song.

Now that my blog has a theme song, let's talk about some changes that you may have noticed on the blog recently if you are a frequent visitor.  Before I decided that I wanted to be a music teacher, I was a landscape architecture major in college.  It was a five year program at my university and I made it through 2 and half years before I decided it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was going through some things in the office the other day and found this drawing that I did when I was in the program.

I considered art, graphic design, and interior design when switching but ultimately decided on music education.  I don't regret my decision at all as I love my job but I do miss some things about the design field.  That is part of the reason that I started this blog.  All of the projects that I do satisfy my need to be creative.  This blog also allows me to work with photo editing software and get a change to do a little graphic design.  

I knew that my blog needed to be more unique and I thought that creating a custom header would be the perfect way to do this.  I started by creating a water color painting of my house.  

The great thing about this is that I can frame it and have some cute art for my house too.  Next I went into my photo editing software so that I could design a graphic for my blog title.  I have lots of experience with Photoshop but unfortunately I can't afford it at this time so I have been using a Mac program called Pixelmator.  I wanted to incorporate the little house around the word house because I knew that I could translate that into a graphic for my photos too.

I chose grey and teal as the colors because of our grey siding and teal door.  To make the header I just open up a canvas the size of my blogs header and laid out my text, house graphic, and house painting. To add my header to my blog I just went to the blog layout section of the Blogger dashboard and clicked on edit header.  A dialogue box pops up and then you can choose to add a photo and you can choose to use your photo instead of the blog title and description.

I am really happy with my new blog look.  Well if you read (or skimmed) all of that because you were intrigued by the S'mores Trifle recipe then you will be happy to know that we are almost there.  My birthday is this Sunday and last night I had a get together at my house to celebrate with friends.  In my usual fashion I made a ton of food.  I decided a taco salad bar would be fun since I have those perfect tortilla bowl things.  They are awesome by the way.  I made three types of meat, two types of salsa, guacamole, corn salad, and a dessert.  Trifle is one of my favorite desserts to make for parties because they look so pretty and fancy, there are tons of flavor combinations, they are so easy to make, and they are delicious. Here are a few of the trifles I have made in the past:

Strawberry Cheesecake Trifle

Red Velvet Trifle

Ever since Dairy Queen's S'mores Blizzard I have been obsessed with all things S'mores.  After looking at various s'mores trifle recipes on Pinterest I came up with my own.

So without further ado, here is my recipe for S'mores Trifle:

S'mores Trifle

• chocolate cake-I used a box cake but you can make it from scratch too-I used about half the cake
• instant chocolate pudding (1 to 2 boxes depending on how much pudding you want)
• graham crackers-I used one sleeve, so about 9 crackers
• 1 container Cool Whip or homemade whipped cream
• Mini marshmallows

Directions: To assemble break the cake into pieces and put half of the cake in the bottom of the trifle bowl.  Put half of the chocolate pudding on top of the cake layer.  Break the graham crackers into pieces and completely cover the pudding layer with half the graham cracker pieces. Put half of the Cool Whip or whipped cream over the graham crackers.  Then layer some mini marshmallows over the whipped cream.  I put a single layer of the marshmallows on a cookie sheet and stuck them under the broiler for a little bit.  This does not take long so don't walk away. As soon as they start to brown take them out of the oven.  I stuck the pan in the freezer after so that they would set up enough for me to remove with a spatula.  Repeat all the layers with your remaining ingredients.  For the top layer of marshmallows you could repeat the broiler step or you can use a kitchen torch to char the marshmallows.  I liked using the kitchen torch on the top layer because I like the blackened look of the marshmallows.  Place the trifle in the fridge and chill for a few hours before serving.

This trifle is so good.  The taste of the charred marshmallows was perfect and really evoked that S'mores flavor.  Next week I will have some more office projects to share with you.  Until then feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of today's post!