Adventures of the My Culture Moms

Coconut Cake Recipe

2008-05-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

For all of you that are interested in the recipe here it is:

Khmer Krom Coconut Pound Cake from Mott Chrouk(Chau Doc) province

4 eggs

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 Cups multed butter

1/2Cups cocnut milk

1/4 cup fresh or frozen unsweetened, shredded coconut

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 Tbs pure vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Directions

Preheat oven at 325 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time with butter & sugar. Mix well. Add vanilla, baking powder, salt and coconut milk. Blend in all purpose flour and shredded coconut. Grease cake pan with cooking oil and sprinkle some flour at the bottom of cake pan.Pour the cake batter in to the cake pan. Bake for 1 ½ hour. Remove from the oven, wait untill cake cools off before taking it out the cake pan.

1st Grade Adoption Talk

2008-05-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

So we have been on a little blog vacation..not for any particular reason...just haven't gotten around to it.

We are back because I(Sara) have something I would like to share. As you know my children are adopted. Emma is 7 and in first grade. Being a big first grader means that she is more aware of what being adopted means, and also is aware that she looks different from us and most of her classmates. We go to a great school, but unfortunately it is not very diverse.

Anyways...somehow her being adopted came up in her class with some of her friends, and it sounds like for some reason they wouldn't drop the subject once it was brought up. (It is really exciting especially for those kids who didn't know) When she came home and told me about it she finally said "I just didn't know what to say, mom" One great thing was that she wasn't upset at all, she just really didn't know what to say to them. Which kind of surprised me because I felt like I had prepared Emma for what to say to people/friends regarding adoption. Just goes to show even if you think your child is prepared they probably are not.

I asked her if she would want me to come to her class and give a talk on adoption and Cambodia. She was so excited and said "Yes" right away. So the next day I spoke with her teacher and she was open to it as well. So every day over the next week all Emma did was ask if I had set up the date to come to her class. She must have asked me 50 times. No, I am not exaggerating.

Finnnaaally as Emma would say, we got the time and date set up, so I went to researching what to talk about. I used to be a teacher so speaking in front of a room full of first graders did not scare me at all. But I needed to prepare and know what I was going to say. I wanted this to be a good healthy experience for Emma and her class. These are the kids she will be in school with until 8th grade so wanted to make them really "get" what adoption is. Plus our family thinks it is pretty special, so I wanted her class to feel that way too.

I went right to the Adoptive Families Magazine Website and searched....right away I found an article written by a woman who had gone into her daughters 1st grade class. How I Explained Adoption to the First Grade, by Amy Klatzkin. Perfect! It made so much sense, and the even better part is that it is so much more fun when the preparing is already done for you!

Just to give everyone an overview...

I started talking about different kinds of families. I wrote FAMILY on the board and then had many different pictures so that when a child volunteered that type of family they could come and place it one the board....single parent families, small families, large families, adoptive families, children being raised by grandparents, and so on.

Next I talked about the many things babies need and also the things parents give babies. This part I took from the article. The author of the article, Amy, used a doll (we named ours Sophie, after our good friend who was adopted at the same time Emma was) to talk about how her birthparents brought her into the world but couldn't give her all of the other things listed on the board. But how her forever family could give her all of those things. Also it touched on how the Sophie(the doll) has two sets of REAL parents (this term REAL is one the drives parents who have adopted crazy!) Her birthparents who brought her into the world (are REAL)and her forever family who adopted her and of course are REAL as well.

Then I talked about Cambodia, Emma and I showed them where it was on the map, and shared some books and pictures. I also brought in items that we brought home with us from Cambodia...chop sticks, money, oh and the Cambodian princess barbie we bought once home.

I let kids ask questions which were all very appropriate. Although one little boy asked what Emma's last name was. I asked Emma if she minded if we talked about her name and she did not. I told him how Emma's name in Cambodia was Mary and that we then added Emma to it. She she is Emma Mary. In which he said "Yeah, BUT what was her LAST name" I replied with Sullivan. Which he didn't really like. I did eventually tell him (and the class ) that she did not have a last name when we met her, which finally was a good enough answer for him.

I ended by making a yummy Cambodian bread. I found the recipe on line. The kids LOVED it and wanted more. Overall I would say it was a success. Now my next job is to get her teacher some resources on what to say to kids that continue to ask questions regarding adoption. Because we all know there will be more questions. And I need to get her the coconut bread recipe...so she can put it in the next class newsletter....yummy... now I need to go to the store and buy ingredients to make it again....

Of course I included a picture of myself and Emma, this was taken after showing the kids where Cambodia was on the map.

Thanks for reading!

Sara

Spring Fever

2008-04-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah we can be outside again! The kids are off of school today and having fun running from in the house to out of the house. Noah stops by occasionally (always an adventure)! When your windows are open Noah is slow at work. Sara remembered to pick Max up from school five minutes after school. (Good thing she lives close to his school) Heather requested for Shawn to grill out steaks tonight after soccer practice. When she started requesting mushrooms and onions he stated she was pushing it.(I do not think I was pushing it!) Today on Cafe Moms we posted to the international adoption group. We offered a ten percent sale for their feedback. If you don't know what Cafe Moms is check out our link at the bottom of the page. CNBC even talked about it being one of the biggest connections to stay at home moms. We look forward to seeing how many people find our sight from our post. Off to feed the kids lunch.

Have A Great Day!

The Moms of My Culture,
Heather & Sara
http://www.my-culture.com

Adoption World How do you find us?

2008-04-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well the website is done and now we are learning all about marketing. How do we get everybody to come to our website and buy something (of course)! There is a whole world of social media on the web that we knew nothing about. Is it worth advertising and where? So many questions to figure out. We sure have fun figuring it out and drinking our coffee. We have decided no one else would appreciate our thought processes as much as each other. Good thing we are similar in our random chaotic thinking otherwise we would get really annoyed at each other. We have sent out shipments. Here is a picture of us packaging our first order and ....un-packaging our first order because we realized we put the wrong shirt inside. Good thing we realized before we shipped. Anything you can do to spread our website http://www.my-culture.com/ please do so!

P.S. Can it really be so cold and gloomy once again. We will definitely not be taking the kids to soccer tonight!

Have a blessed day!

The Moms of My Culture,

Heather & Sara

Our Cute Kids

2008-03-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

It is snowing today and we are not getting much acomplished. Although we did speak to our famous local talk radio host. He said he will mention us as a new business in our county. We have also read and posted on some great mommy blogs out there. This is Maycee, Emma, and Mya having a fun time at ice skating lessons. (We are in WI you know! That is why it is snowing on March 27th! Yuck) Max is missing from the picture, no ice skating lessons for him. Off to pick the kids up from school more about them on future posts.

My Culture Moms,

Heather & Sara

www.my-culture.com

Blog post number 2

2008-03-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

So this is our second blogging post....

Today we have a local paper coming to do a "new business" story on us. Well, it is not a story exactly, it is called "A Spotlight on Business". They are going to take our picture and put our new business information in the paper. Well.... it is not exactly a newspaper newspaper, but more like one of those free papers that get put in your mailbox. Actually, the part of this paper that we enjoy looking at is the section that we are going to be in. It is a good thing, and we are glad they are featuring us. It will reach 80,000 homes and that is what we are looking for. Right now we are working on marketing and getting our name out there to the international adoption community.

It isn't as easy as it sounds, or as we thought. If people don't go to your site (or blog) then you don't come up in a search engine. This may be something that all of you knew, but we did not. We were not the most computer savvy women before we started all of this, but we are quickly learning to be. Thank goodness for all of the great resources that are out there on line, for us to utilize. (and we are using them all). We have also gotten to know...ummm....we would say 90% of the I.T. guys that are the helpline for our web hosting site. Here's a shout out to John, Julian and Mike...thanks for all of your support.

Our goal is to be THE adoption product store for the international adoption community. Therefore we need to get marketing.....and for us if that means starting out with the local community shopper/newspaper that is what we will do......

Sara & Heather....My Culture Moms

So we're Blogging....

2008-03-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

"So we're Blogging....."

On March 15th we (Sara and Heather) drove to Chicago to attend our second Country Living Women Entrepreneurs Conference. If we learned one thing this year it was that blogging is the way to go. So, as Heather said as we were leaving the conference this year,"I guess we're Blogging......"

We attended this awesome conference last year pretty much with just our business name and ideas. We were really there to learn more about launching a successful business and to gain some sort of direction on how to proceed with our business ideas. It was an amazing experience!

This year was a different story. We were on a mission. Months ago we had entered for a chance to "Pitch" our product in front of a panel of women and we won that chance. We had just launched our company's online store that same week and we were open for business. Armed with our shiny new business cards and some sample products we were on our way. We were feeling rather excited about our new business and anxious to hear how some experienced business owners felt about our creative ideas.

We really didn't know what to expect. We had three minutes to "pitch" and two minutes for the panel to ask questions. Our prior experience with "pitching" involved setting the microwave timer, pitching to Emma (Sara's 6 year old daughter who happened to be home sick that day), a Polly Pocket, and lots of coffee. That went well until Emma started rolling her eyes at the thought of listening to the pitch one more time. That's when the Polly Pocket took over as our practice panel. So, with Emma and Polly's constructive criticism and public speaking tips we entered the room anxious and confident????

We introduced ourselves:

Sara, has been married for almost 11 years, to Shawn. She has two amazing children (who were adopted internationally.) Emma is almost 7 (April 10) and was born in Cambodia. Max will be 4 in May, and was born in Nepal. She has a degree in education, but has been a stay at home mom for about 4 years.

Heather, has been married to Noah for almost 9 years. She has two beautiful biological daughters, Maycee 7 and Mya 6. She has also worked in education and has recently left her job to be a full time mom and entrepreneur.

We together have started My Culture, LLC www.my-culture.com

My Culture specializes in designing custom adoption products that will help a child identify with their birth country. We've designed our puzzles, clothing, glassware, and rugs by personalizing them with flags, maps and inspirational quotes.

We wore our company t-shirts (which are available to purchase online at www.my-culture.com) and brought our puzzles (also available to purchase) as our choice to pitch. The two women were extremely warm and kind and loved our puzzles. We left the pitch feeling successful and exhilarated. The pitch was over and now we had time to network, relax and enjoy the day.

We did enjoy the conference and felt we got some really helpful information. We don't find out about our "pitch" until the end of June. If we are chosen we will be featured in Country Living Magazine. Wouldn't that be great!

So please come back and continue to read our adventures about running a new business (out of Sara's house) and being mom's and wives all at the same time.

Heather & Sara.....The Mom's of My Culture