Happy Birthday Daddy

Just me and my Dad hanging out.

My mom baked my Dad his favorite Carrot Cake and wanted a little help decorating it. This is just something I literally whipped up. We made one batch of cream cheese frosting that turned out being no good.. We don't know why.. So we started a second and it was fab!
It was a cute fun shape too.. A square bunt cake.
It was a fun little party. REALLY good pork chops and stuffed potatoes (with ranch, interestingly yummy!) Treyden just couldn't quite grasp the fact that it was not his birthday again. Good thing "Papa" is so nice to let him help with the blowing of the candles.

three

Its my nephews birthday today.  I took it as a chance to practice a little more.  I think it turned out pretty dang cute.  Simple and fun.  Those squares are a lot harder to do than I thought.  They are a little crooked but its going to get demolished anyways!

fathers day

Here is a cake I made for my dad for Fathers Day. 

Its his favorite, Carrot Cake.

Happy Fathers Day Hallie! 

This is Orrins Dad on our Wedding Day.

Happy Fathers Day Sam!

This is my dad on our Wedding day.  He's excited.

These are two very great men.  Both HARD working and wonderful.  Thanks Hallie for raising such an amazing man for me to marry.  Dad, you did great!  I love you.  Thanks for all the love and support.  We sure love you both!

a lesson learned

I had my last class yesterday. This was the final product for Cake 3 and Fondant.

Until they bring us specialty classes or I want to take them again,
I am finished with classes according to Wilton.

I thought this cake turned out to be really cute. I wish I had bigger pans and the time to layer more so they weren't so scrawny! I showed it to my sister and she said, "I love it! thats almost exactly like how I want my wedding cake!" So a lot more practices, some baking lessons from Mom and I am open for. . . . making cakes for family. Give me a few more years practice until I open up for business!

flowers

Here is an egg carton full of flowers I did in class yesterday.
I really enjoyed doing the Lillies. Such a pretty flower.

My pictures aren't very good because I couldn't
get a good focus. Love, this is why I need a new camera!

The Poinsettias were and interesting one. They turned out really pretty though!
It will be fun to do a Christmas cake full of those pretty, red flowers!
I do not care for the Blue Bell. You can see it broke and I don't care.

We went to the movie Iron Man last night. It was a really good show. Orrin thought it needed more action and fighting. I thought there was more than enough! Gwyneth Paltrow is adorable. I read an article about her in Vouge yesterday and I think she is a really neat lady. So it was fun to see her acting again, and look at this picture.. she is just smokin!



We are headed to Ferron tonight to visit Loves family. Its always fun to go up there and visit. Relaxing. Which is just what I need after a week of being sick and working on top of it.

not as easy as play-dough

(Sorry for the camera phone picture)

This was my second attempt at fondant. Don't let the perfect shape of the cake fool you.
It was a cake pan flipped upside down.

My first attempt was interesting. We practiced 4 different styles and placed them on 1 cake. I will tell you one thing. Its not as easy as play-dough!
When I brought the cake home and Love ripped a little piece off and said, "Fondant doesn't taste very good." I just laughed. Its a fun class though. I need to invest in a good mat rather than the cheap one that comes in the class packet. Its got about 6 creases in it from being folded. If you roll out your fondant on that.. the creases show. no bueno.

We had the National Guard recruiter over on Wednesday. This was the second time he has come to grace us with his presence. I had my list of questions typed out and ready to ask. To make a long story short, here are the key points:

• Army man was trying to convince me that Love could die in Iraq but the chances of him dying in a car accident are greater. Each time he gave me a different scenario of how Love could die I would respond with "... so you're saying its a possibility?" He got rather annoyed. I had a good laugh.
• "I work for YOU."
  
• Basic Training is 10 weeks not 6. He would have to stay away from home for another 5 (at the very minimum)+ weeks to learn his "Job." One semester with out Love does not sound good to me.
• "Negative. I mean, No."
• the $10,000 sign on bonus just "poofs" if he takes the route he was planning on. ROTC has something do to with the disappearance of the money. Clever of them.
  
• No guarantees for him to get the job that he wants to be trained for. Although, school would be paid for.. that nice.
  

An hour later after I got through my list I told him I was done. His reply went like this, "Good because I am passing kidney stones and am in excruciating pain!"

Poor guy. I know how he feels. ouch! I hope he feels better. Although, now I feel really bad that he sat there in pain for an hour because we decided that the cons out weigh the pros for us. We're not going to join. So happy. I need Love at home with me. So its back to school for us!

cake 2

Picture #1.. kind of blurry, but you get the point.

Today was the last day of my cake 2 class. Nice little basket weave and

flowers, flowers, flowers!

It was way fun though. I am going to be hard core this next class and take 2 at a time.

Cake 3 and gum paste and fondant.

Other than my fabulous cake classes...

Orrin is looking (just looking, for now) into the National Guard or Air Force. Help me talk him out of it please! j.k. I just need to learn more about it. I am all for him serving the country, as long as he can do it from home! The benefits sound nice and they will send him through school. We love that idea. He will be set for a career. He took the ASVAB test today after work. I just got off the phone with him and he said "I could excel here Love. I could be really good at this." How can I say no to that. Especially since he has talked about it since he was in High School. I shouldn't hold him back should I? He told me before that the only reason he didn't join was because he knew he needed to find a wife first (yes Kyl, I realized that is the most "Mormon like" thing to say! haha). But it's sweet. So now hes found me, should I give in and let him do it?!

This is my cute little town from up in the air!

One of the pilots whose last week is this week came in and

asked "Want to take a ride?!" "umm sure!"

So we went.. just a 10 minute joy ride. I showed him my home and the 2 Wal-Marts. It was fun, but small planes tend to make my stomach turn. I found that out a couple years ago and haven't been since. I didn't forget I just hoped that since this plane was a little bigger it wouldn't be as bad. It was. So a couple hours after the ride, I ate some strawberries. That calmed my stomach. Could that be the food that make me feel better when I am pregnant too? hmmmmm.

birthday cake

It was my Leslie's (my sis in law) birthday on Sunday. She is married to my older brother Jeremy and they have 3 beautiful little boys. She is such a good mom and we love having her as member of our family. We are so lucky to have her. I wanted to do something special so I decided I would try to use what knowledge I have gained so far to make her a birthday cake. Her favorite color is purple and we just learned how to do Violets in class so I thought this cake was perfect.
When I asked her what kind of caked she wanted she said the kind with the pudding in it. Buy the "cook and serve" pudding and make it according to its directions. When its done, you pour it into your cake mix. However, you don't add anything else, ignore the cake mix directions. Cook it as normal and you have a very moist, spongy, tasty cake! It turned out really good on the inside.
After this cake I learned that anytime I make a cake I have to have natural sun light. You just can't beat that kind of brightness. I made this cake at night in the kitchen and the lighting isn't that great. The next morning I found a few little imperfections that I wish I could have fixed.
All in all, she loved it and thats all that matters. I will just keep making them and see what I can do!

cake #1

Here was my first assignment in my class. We were practicing stars.

I am pretty good at the stars. What I really need to do is better preparation. I came home from work and destroyed my kitchen trying to quickly make a batch of frosting and to frost the top layer of the cake. I didn't portion my frosting enough so I didn't have enough to do clouds, that would have made this cake the coolest cake ever.

saturday fun

This is how my Saturday went.

Woke up around 9:00. Cracked open New Moon (love it so far!) and read for about an hour. Made my hubby breakfast and decided that I wanted to go to my moms and cake decorate for fun (gotta practice so I can be good in my class).

I get home to find out that my sister has out a couple dresses so she could decide what one to take on the cruise (the cruise I was so excited to go on but later decided we dont have fun funds. sad.). That got me all excited to try on my old dresses just for fun. My favorite dress was my Jr. Prom dress. I designed it and mom sewed! It turned out great in my opinion. And almost 6 years later it still fits!!

I wish I could upload the picture from the dance but moms scanner doesn't like us too much.

In other news, Orrin and I went to Sues Pet Castle on Saturday too! How could I forget that. It was awesome. Orrin decided that he wants a ferret (no way!) and I want one of the cute puppies more then ever!! It was so fun to go and look. It makes it seem like its just around the corner until we make the dog addition to our family. Can't wait!