Happy Resurrection Sunday, Friends!

Posted on by Tammy

 

HAPPY RESURRECTION SUNDAY! HE IS RISEN!

I don’t know about you, but I do love Holy Week every year. From the start of the week at church for Palm Sunday, through the end of the Sunday morning service on Resurrection Day, I find myself tearing up with the thought of how much God loves us that He would provide a sacrificial lamb in His son, Jesus, to pay for our sins. My sins. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder. Then my gratefulness turns to Jesus, who knowingly took my sin upon Himself with knowledge of the rejection, torment and death He would endure. He still did it. He still died to wash my sins away.

Through the week between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday, I dig into His word, longing to be reminded He loved me that much. In my growing up years, I had strong rejection from family. Family that knew me, should have loved me and yet rejected me. I have a hard time fathoming that Jesus would willingly take on my punishment. We don’t “know” each other. I wrongly compare my earthly family to my heavenly family. Yes, heavenly family. Once I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I was immediately adopted into that heavenly family. And with that, so many other wonderful things were given to me from God—love, acceptance, forgiveness, and more. Things I didn’t receive from family. This wasn’t the case from either of my parents, they endured enough of their own from those family members. But this type of treatment made it very hard for me for the longest time that Jesus would do this for me. I’m so thankful and overjoyed that He did! This is the biggest reason I’m Tickled Pink! With the hope of heaven, it’s hard not to be joy-filled knowing where my eternity will be spent.

You, too, can have this feeling. If you’ve been through rejection in your life, come to the one who created you and loves you in spite of your flaws. Believe me, we all have them. But He loves us anyway. Want to know more about this? Email me, let’s talk.

If you’re not familiar with the Holy week activity, I suggest you pick up a Bible and read these accounts of the same event from four different people in scripture: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I do this every year during Holy week.

Matthew 21:1 through 28:20

Mark 11:1 through 16:20

Luke 19:28 through 24:52

John 12:12 through 21:25

May you enjoy this Resurrection Day in a new way this year!

Fourteenth Blog-Aversary!

Posted on by Tammy

Blog Post 1-11-25

Today represents the fourteenth year I have been writing or blogging in some way. As I was spending time looking through old blog posts in my computer, from my first blog I had on blogger over the years, I came to the conclusion that I love to write. I mean, I really love to write!

Whether I’m sharing a funny story, a deeply personal one or a post to encourage whomever would read the post—I long to bring a smile or two to someone who lands upon my posts.

We’ve all gone through some very rough years over the past few, myself included. Where I thought I’d be regularly posting here on my blog within my website, life circumstances have made that non-existent. Last year was a rather tough one for me. There were many blessings, don’t get me wrong, but there were some things that brought me to my knees. If you know me, you know I have a bum knee—those were not fun times!

While I’ve been in and out of writing on this blog, I’ve been busy writing as a Team Member for other blogs, managing book launch teams for authors, and even completing my very first book, then saw it published November 2023! Now, it’s time to come back to my writing…I’ve missed it here. 🙂

Next week I’ll be sending out my monthly newsletter. I’ll be sharing some of the highs and lows of the year with my subscribers, and as usual, will be dishing up some funny instances from the year. I’ll be candid on the not-so-funny, but offer up the good I saw after God brought me through it. Make sure you’ve signed up for the newsletter if you don’t want to miss the antics for 2025! The link is on the Home page of this website.

As for the blog posts for 2025, like the famous line from Independence Day …”Hello Boys (and girls!), I’m baaaack!” Looking forward to sharing with you and having some fun along the way this year. Boy, I’m ready for fun, how about you?

So – Happy 14th Blog-aversary to Tickled Pink Tammy, the name of my first blog address started on January 11, 2011! I’m still writing and my goal for 2025 is write even more. Hope you’ll come along for it all.

Tickled Pink Tammy

 

Time for Chocolate!

Posted on by Tammy

It’s February. It’s the Love Month. It’s the Every Excuse to Eat Chocolate Month. Okay, well that might be my hubby’s thought on February!

I’ve often wondered why it’s only February we celebrate love. Or chocolate for you chocolate fans out there.

But we’ll leave this with the chocolate is for all the time for this post! In my newsletter that went out today to my subscribers. Wait. What? You’re not a subscriber? Well, you could be if you pop over to the Home page and scoot over to the top right of the right side bar and sign up!

Sorry – squirrel!

In today’s newsletter, I gave a recipe for the Chocolate Molten Lava Cake you see in the pictures below. What I didn’t share in the newsletter, is how many of these I’ve made, especially right after cooking school and we learned how to make Molten Lava cakes. This recipe is a bit different than the school’s recipe, smaller quantity for our family.


 The funny story about these little gems is the year after learning how to make them, I think I had to have made close to two hundred of them. No, we didn’t eat them all. But I seem to remember people asking for me to make them for them once they heard I knew how. They were pretty popular at restaurants and everybody wanted them.

I’d always tell them how easy they were to make, but they said mine were better. Yeah, right! Better because you don’t have to make them. I’m not lying to you, though, when I say these are super simple to make and would be a perfect quick dessert to have with tea/coffee if a friend or friends popped in to visit. I’m serious.

I even had this discussion on how simple they were with our daughter’s friend one time when she dropped in to hang out. The two of them came up from the basement and were plundering around the kitchen.

“Mom do we have anything good to snack on?”

“You know where everything is in the pantry, go dig.”

Her friend was already in there.

“Kristen, we should go get a cupcake at the store. Oh, we had these gooey chocolate cakes at the restaurant last week. But I don’t want to go to Cleveland for that.”

“Do you mean a Chocolate Molten Lava Cake?”

“YEAH.”

“Well, I can make you some of those in less than 30 minutes.”

“No you can’t. Those must be difficult to make.”

“Nope, I’ll make them if you two get the ingredients out of the pantry while I get the stuff going over here.”

By this time, I had made them so many times, I rattled off the ingredients and they dug them out and set them on the counter.

Kristen’s friend set the timer on her watch to see if I could really get them done in less than the 30 minutes I said I could.

Thirty five minutes later they were scooping ice cream onto their slightly cooled Lava Cakes! BAM! And THAT’S Love, my friends.

I made these the other day for hubby (and for photos!) and you can tell in the photo below I didn’t wait long enough before putting the whipped cream on them, they oozed right down the side! There are regular strawberries as well as the new Pineberries – the white ones in the picture. In case you thought I fed my husband very underripe berries. The pine berries are like a cross between a pineapple and a strawberry. They are sweet, that’s for sure.

If you’re not a subscriber and didn’t get the recipe, just email me at tammy@tammykarasek.com and let me know. I’ll be glad to email it to you. Besides, it’s Chocolate Day, er, I mean it’s Valentine’s Day this month and you might need a chocolate treat for the loves in your home!