Coral Roses

Tonight was my last Fondant and Tiered Cakes class - here is my finale cake. The bottom layer is four batches of rice krispy treats, which, by the way, I LOVE working with. It was super easy to make it the perfect shape, and sticking the roses in was easier than the top layer, which is real cake. I made the fondant myself - it is marshmallow fondant that you make in your microwave. It tastes a thousand times better than the Wilton packaged fondant. The roses are fondant too - the whole thing is edible! Except for the toothpicks - OUCH. Anyway, my instructor was surprised at how my roses turned out and she kept saying how proud she was of me. I think I almost dare to do wedding cakes now, as long as they are simple like this. No five-tiered cakes with all kinds of string work and fountains. My next class starts next week - Fondant and Gum Paste.

Today was insane. I had the cake to do and I realized I needed more krispy treat to fill the pan this morning. HELLO - I had already gone through 5 bags of marshmallows between the fondant and the krispy treats. So I used some rainbow marshmallows I had in the pantry for the kids to make a little more, and the pan was finally full. Also a girl I visit teach had her baby the other day and I agreed to take dinner over today, not realizing what a hassle it would be to have dinner and a wedding cake (basically) ready by 5:30. So my standard of living was 'survive' today. Now I am finally sitting down. I keep sighing and Sean keeps asking what's wrong. It just feels good to be on my butt and off my feet!

Slideshow Below

Here is the fruit of my 4 lilac bushes for this year - but at least they bloomed!


Here are the Royal Icing flowers I made at my class last week. They aren't that impressive, but my second attempt was better than the first.


Here is Dodger Dog.


There is a slideshow below of our weekend in Richfield. We went down for my baby brother's high school graduation. So here are a few pictures of our fun! My grandpa having a tea party with my kids. It is so fun to see him with them. He was sitting on the bed at first for the tea party and then he moved into the kid chair, saying he wanted to get on Emma's level. I am so blessed to have my grandparents a part of my life. There happened to be a carnival in Richfield this weekend too, so we took the kids. The last picture of my girls is after they had stopped crying that they weren't getting a stuffed animal or cotton candy. We paid $20 for 30 tickets - which got the girls 3 rides and then the three of us a ride on the ferris wheel. I suppose we could blame the inflation of carnival tickets on gas prices? We went to Sandie's Drive Inn with my family (the Johnsons and Clarks) just before the carnival - that is a picture of my dad (Steve) holding Spencer. There is also a picture of my uncle Cory playing on the floor with the kids. On the way home we stopped at two graves (both grandmas of mine) to put flowers, and then we came home.

Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day. First I got to sleep in! Then Sean and the kids (okay, let's face it - just Sean) made breakfast burritos. My mom called to tell me Happy Mother's Day and Sean told her she needed to come for the day and stay for dinner. So it was an unexpected surprise to have her here. Then my friend Sarah came over for dinner, and Sean made us bbq chicken, pasta salad, and grilled zucchini on the bbq (which, by the way, was fabulous, and I don't think I'll ever eat regular old boring steamed zucchini again). Sean did a great job pampering me on mother's day, as he always has.




Here is the cake I made last night! I was scared to work with fondant but it is so easy. It doesn't taste as good as butter cream frosting, but it's better than a kick in the pants. I think next time I would put a regular thick layer of frosting on and then super thin fondant. (They tell you to put a thin layer of frosting on, and thicker fondant.)

And here are the fondant roses! They are super much easier than the icing ones, but don't taste as good, and I wasn't as proud of these as I was of my icing roses. It takes a lot more skill and technique to get the icing ones to look good. But these are easier!! I told Emma that by the time she gets married I will be ready to do wedding cakes. Hopefully.

The Caped Avenger

So Spencer has finally been christened into the girls' favorite pastime, DRESS UP. At least it's a cape and not a dress. Not yet, anyway. The girls said he is their prince. Now they don't have to take turns being the boy!

Here are the ladies in red, Mackenna and her friend Malary. Four-year-old playdates are so not as fun for me as six-year-old ones.


I had to take a picture of Spencer in this outfit; Emma wore it as a baby.




Today Emma came home bursting with excitement wanting to give me my mother's day present she made at school.

The flower is like a job wheel, with things like vacuuming, sweeping, setting the table, etc., and when I want her to do one of them I just tear off a petal and cash it in. She told me she made the petals blue because it is my favorite color. The pink book is a class cookbook. I opened it and read this poem. I only made it to the second line before I couldn't see through the tears.



I am on a total junk food run lately. This morning I made Amish Cinnamon Bread, and just now I got a mad hankering for brownies. My pants are fitting tighter. Dang it.

nothin' special

Not even any cute pictures. Just a couple tidbits from my day. Mackenna and Spencer have officially started fighting. Today Spencer was holding Kenna's pony house trying to heft it into the baby doll stroller, smacking Kenna with it in the face on the way. Our sweet four-year-old doesn't yet understand that his coordination isn't quite there yet, so she took it from him and hit him back with it. NICE. As if he hasn't been crying for 3 days anyways. He has a cold or something and is ornery as a bear after winter. On the upside he has decided he likes hot dogs again, but now, interestingly enough, has a newfound aversion to cup-o-noodles, which he used to eat at least once a day.

This may sound weird, but I was so thankful to actually get to sleep in this morning.....clear until 7. Our kids have always been early risers, but usually the girls play in their room when we wake up, and as long as they're quiet Spencer will sleep in a little longer. Since Dodger came to our family that is a thing of the past. As soon as he hears the first stirrings of life upstairs he starts yipping and yipping. He does sleep all the way through the night (sorry Heather!), so he needs to go potty first thing. It would be nice though, if he would go back in his kennel to sleep after! Since we got him we have been up between 6 and 6:30 every morning. This morning Sean left for work at 6. He took Dodger potty and put him back in his kennel, and I laid in bed half-tense, waiting for the onslaught of ankle-biter yips and yaps. I found myself praying, actually making a deal, that if I could just sleep until 7 I would be willing to do almost anything. I started to offer that I would not yell at my kids all day, and then I thought "get real". So I promised to try and stay positive and not let my mood get into that downhill plunge it takes so often, and also that I would spend 1:1 time with each of my kids today. So I read to Emma for a while today. I walked around the house with Kenna finding things that start with "J" for her sound box, and I put my book down (The Other Boleyn Girl)to hold Spencer, play peek-a-boo, and tickle him.

Tomorrow I get to start my next Wilton course, Fondant and Tiered Cakes!

Well, tonight was my last Wilton class. I finally feel good about how I am doing. I am discovering that most of the techniques just take a lot of practice, and you can't really get it in the 2-hour class. The next class is a fondant/tiered cakes class that starts next Tuesday. I am going tomorrow to sign up for it. Anyway, here is a cake I did a couple weeks ago. I ended up giving it to Dionne for her birthday.
The next cake, which I don't have a picture of, was a white chocolate cake with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream frosting. It was yummy. I will have to put the cake recipe on here. Here is tonight's cake.

I think my hand is going to fall off from all the roses. The icing is really stiff and you have to squeeze hard to get the petals out. Obviously not perfect, but better than I thought it would be!

Here is Spencer in his BBQ get up.


Anyone who has a 15-month-old knows that you can't possibly do dishes while he is awake or out of his high chair. So I had this brilliant idea.



He usually gets crayons taken away as soon as he gets them, so he was thrilled that I actually handed him one. I tried it again today, but it didn't work so well.

And here is Spencer's new favorite pastime.


Last but not least I have to describe my awesome girls night in Park City with Dionne. There is nothing like it! And I have to give my husband props. The house was cleaner than I left it when I got home. The kids ALL had baths the night before, and they were all dressed for church when I got home. Anyway, Dionne and I met at a nail salon in Holiday (SL) for a pedicure. It was so relaxing, and we just sat there in our chairs talking the whole time. Then we went to Wendy's for a quick value-menu lunch, where we waited probably 20 minutes just to order our food, and at least another 20 before we actually got the food. We laughed about it, and were glad we only spend three bucks each on lunch. Then we got in our separate cars and drove to Park City. Di missed the exit and ended up driving in circles for a while. I'm sure she loves me putting that on here! We finally made it to the outlets, where I learned the meaning of 'shop til you drop'. We didn't leave for the hotel until about 4 p.m. When we got there we crashed on the bed and rested our sore feet and backs before finally settling on a place for dinner. We decided on Ruby Tuesday's, since we already knew where it was and didn't fancy getting lost again. After dinner we went back to the hotel and changed into our suits and went to the hot tub. We wondered if everyone staring at us thought we were lesbians or something. An old man who was in our hot tub started flirting with us, and bragging about his granddaughter who was 5, and her IQ of 192. I have no idea what that means, but she spit water in my face later, and I figured she couldn't be THAT smart. After the hot tub we went back to the room and got comfy in our PJs and settled in to watch Becoming Jane. Or, we thought we were going to watch it. First we couldn't change the channel on the t.v. because we thought it was out of batteries. Called the front desk. Asian maintenance man comes and gives us a new remote, which looks exactly like the other one. We thank him. He leaves. It doesn't work. We call the front desk again. Maintenance man comes back and tells us we don't have the right remote. He comes back and brings us the right remote. We thank him, he leaves. We sit down to watch, and discover that we still can't find the right channel. We can hear the music of the menu, but can't see the picture. We call the front desk again. Maintenance man comes back and fiddles with the t.v., ends up pulling some cord from behind and plugging it into a different hole. Finally the movie starts. About 20 minutes in the movie freezes and we can't get the remote to work. Upon closer inspection we discover that the batteries are rattling around in the remote and some part must be missing. By this time we were both crying with laughter. We call front desk again, maintenance man comes, looking extremely annoyed. Without a word he hands me a new remote and turns away. By the time we finished the movie it was midnight. We stayed awake talking until 1 a.m., and then finally tuckered out. It was so fun and relaxing!

Life

This will be short, but I had to put it on here before I forget. This morning the girls and I took Dodger out to go potty. Emma came around the side of the house to the stairs where I was sitting, in my heavy winter coat, waiting. She announced that "Dodger wented one AND two". Without a word I slid our newspaper out of its bag and handed the bag to her for cleanup. She sighed heavily, as if the whole planet was sitting on her shoulders. I said "Emma, this is just life." She said, "I know, mom. I don't want life...." (walking away to scoop)"...it's so HARD." Amen, sista. Just wait.