Sammy Cake...

For Dave's birthday the kids and I made him a Sammy cake. Benjamin was so proud of our "Sammy cake" and Dave thought it was a hoot that Sammy actually made it into the photo with Benjamin and the "Sammy cake".

Decorated Cupcakes...

Each summer we have an activity called "Summerfest" for the 4-H kids in Turner County. This year I taught the 4-Hers how to decorate cupcakes. It was a lot of prep work and a fast hour but it was fun. Each 4-Her got to decorate 6 cupcakes. So I made almost 100 cupcakes for the class. I also made all the icing. I made way too much icing but the nice thing now is that I have icing in the freezer for spur of the moment cupcakes! These are the cupcakes that I taught the kids how to decorate. If I do any cake, cupcake, or cookie decorating with the kids again I will either have more time or split age ranges. I think these cupcakes turned out so cute and are so springy/summery in appearance.

Surprise 60th Birthday Party...

Since my dad was turning 60 this year we had a surprise birthday party for him. It was a great weekend! The weather turned out to be beautiful. And believe it or not all of us kids were able to come home for my dad's birthday party/weekend. To celebrate my dad's birthday I made him a dirt cake for his birthday cake. The cake turned out awesome and tasted great. While making this cake I learned that my blender can only handle a couple of oreos at a time otherwise it got to gummed up. I am hoping that the guest of honor had an enjoyable time.

Birthday Cake

We made Daddy a Yo, Gabba Gabba Cake for his birthday (Benjamin & Ada's idea). I think it looks pretty good. Benjamin told Dave, "wow, I get to take a Yo, Gabba Gabba cake to Dani's house to share with all my friends" and then in his next breath he said, "when are we going to eat the cake?". Between you and me, I think Benjamin just wanted to eat cake!

Dave and Benjamin learned about Yo, Gabba Gabba from our nephew Ethan (my kiddo's cousin). We don't get cable and we bearly get PBS so we would never have stumbled upon this crazy character. We have watched an episode or two on nickjr.com. My kids are big into animals and dinosaurs so they immediately liked this character (not that they watch the videos) but they like playing with the characters that I printed and cut out. They make up their own stories and games with them.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Making a birthday cake for baby Jesus is one of our (Dave & mine) Christmas traditions. Here is the Birthday Cake that Benjamin and I made for baby Jesus.

Birthday Celebration!!!

Since my brother's wedding was immediately following Benjamin's birthday we decided to hold a joint birthday party at my in-laws for both Benjamin and Ada. It was a beautiful day all around as the weather was wonderful and we got to celebrate with all of the great grandparents, cousins, etc. Everyone had a great time; although, I am not quite sure who was more tired--the kids or the grandparents!


Dave had asked me what type of cake I was going to make and I told him that I was going to make a pink teddy bear cake for Ada.
He then preceded to ask me what type of cake I was going to make for Benjamin. Silly me, thought I could get by with Ada's cake and Benjamin's decorations but Dave said, "Benjamin needs his own cake." So I ended up making a dinosaur cake for Benjamin's birthday. We had plenty of cake to go around!


While we were finding candles (I forgot mine) some of the kids sat at the kitchen table patiently waiting to eat birthday cake! I think it was a cute shot. Pictured below (left to right) are Benjamin (3), Hannah (3), and Harper (3).


I decided to do something crazy if the weather was nice for the birthday party and it was so we had a pinata. This pinata took a lot of beating before big cousin Ethan (9) finally broke it and got the goodies out. Note to self: never put kit kat candy bars in a pinata--they come out very broken! A hard lesson learned!




The kids really seemed to enjoy the pinata and the day turned out GREAT!! Happy Birthday Benjamin (October 9) and Ada!! We love you very much!!

Steph's bridal shower

Now only have I been busy with work, I was also busy helping plan and put together a bridal shower (with my sister) for my future sister-in-law. The shower was a lot of fun but it also was a lot of work. My sister was in charge of the food while I was in charge of the cake and crafts. We decided to have more appetizer type food than the traditional "meal". The food was good and everyone seemed to like it. My mom was quite concerned that we were not having a "meal" but after much reassurance I think she was happy how things turned out.

Benjamin is providing quality control with the cucumber sandwiches

Here is the "new" member of our family, Stephanie--Craig's soon-to-be wife

The bridal shower cake

My first fancy cake...

I made this stacked and tiered cake for my final cake decorating class. I made everything on this cake except for the pillars and cake board. The flowers are made out of royal icing. I left the aluminum foil on the flowers because I really liked how the silver added to the cake.


After making this cake I realize that people do not pay their wedding cake decorators enough!

Gift Wrapped Present Cake

I was excited to learn how to decorate cakes with fondant. Don't ever buy the pre-made Wilton fondant. It might be easy to work with but it tastes AWFUL! I make marshmallow fondant (MMF). This recipe actually tastes pretty good. You will find that you really get up close and personal with your fondant decorations. The secret to working with MMF is crisco and you must roll your MMF pretty thin. I had fun making this "present" cake. My bow's not perfect but the overall cake is pretty cute.

My Mother's Day Cake

This is the cake that I made for myself for Mother's Day. I love working with brush embroidery. It looks so pretty and elegant. Unfortunately, the pink color I used has a hard time showing up in the photo.

My First Clown Cake

I have spent the last few Monday evenings taking a cake decorating class. I have loved every minute of it! It was a lot of work baking the cake(s) to take to class, making the icings, icing the cake, etc. but I feel the class was well worth it. I made a birthday cake for my brother Craig's birthday using chocolate icing. I am not a huge chocolate fan so I was not overly impressed with the taste but it wasn't bad. If I were to make chocolate icing again I would definitely purchase some better quality chocolate. I think this clown cake turned out pretty cute! If you like frosting than you will love making and eating these clowns.

Ada's Baptism

Receivng a Prayer at my Baptism

Me, my parents, and Father David
Father David, my Godparents-Carrie and Matt, and my parents
Me and my great grandparents

back row left to right (great grandpa Curt, great grandpa Delmar, daddy, and Harry)

front row left to right (Nellie, great grandma Velma, mommy, and great grandma Orriette)

My cake that mommy made

We finally were able to have Ada's baptism. I never thought trying to schedule one thing would be so difficult. We wanted to make sure her arm was healed before we had her baptism so we chose to wait. Between the church being booked up in December and my gallbladder problems we decided to schedule her baptism in January. Well I ended up having gallbladder surgery in January so that took me out of the picture. Then throw my in-laws into the mix--they ended up going down south to Arizona for three months so the earliest we could have Ada's baptism was in April. So needless to say, after many months of planning we finally were able to have Ada's baptism on April 19, 2008! We ended up having a beautiful day. The weather allowed us the opportunity to be outside and not stuck in the house. This is something that the adults and kids both appreciated.

Ada's godparents were my sister Carrie and my brother-in-law Matt (Carrie's husband). They were both honored and happy to be Ada's godparents. We had a full house with both sets of grandparents, Benjamin and Ada's Great Grandma and Great Grandpa, Great Grandma and Harry, Great Granpa and Nellie, Dave's sister Connie and her three kids, Ethan, Hannah, and Harper, my sister and brother-in-law, and my brothers Corey and Colin.

Following the baptism we had a meal. I cooked a spiral ham to have for sandwiches. The ham was awesome but I find myself wondering why I didn't just buy deli ham for the sandwiches? My mom made potato salad and my mother-in-law made a broccoli vegetable salad and a macaroni fruit salad. My sister made cross sugar cookies (Benjamin helped her decorate them) and I made the cake. Carrie was my right hand girl all weekend and helped with whatever I asked of her. Thank you very much for that--I appreciated all your help.

Easter Prep

Benjamin and I decided that we needed to make some sugar cookies for Easter. I mixed up the cookie dough on Holy Thursday and baked the cookies on Good Friday afternoon (Thank you Governor Rounds for giving me the afternoon off). Benjamin and I frosted and decorated them Friday evening. We had a lot of fun. Benjamin helped with spreading the frosting on the cookies but I think he enjoyed putting the sprinkles on the most. Benjamin liked working with the pink and white candy circles. He liked putting those on the cookies. He would always help himself to some of them and then say "umm that's good stuff". We were both pretty proud of our handy work. The only trouble with these cookies is that you can't eat just one; especially, if they are frosted! For the family recipe go here.

Baking Ben

Today Benjamin and I made a cake. Well, actually we made the cake the other day we just had to make the frosting and frost the cake. I knew it was time to frost the cake when Benjamin crawled up next to it and said, "Ben hungry, Ben eat cake". Benjamin is always very interested in helping me cook in the kitchen. It usually goes like this, "I want to help, I want to help" and so he does. He will pull out the step stool to get up high enough to see what I am doing and help. He helped me measure the powdered sugar and vanilla. It was so cute watching him level off the measuring cup filled with powdered sugar. He would get so excited when he was done and able to dump it into the bowl. He also liked to hold the measuring spoon and dump it into the bowl. We then decided to tint the frosting purple (it was actually more of a lavender color). Some how Benjamin got side tracked after we made the frosting so I got to frost the cake by myself. I made a rookie mistake and tinted all the frosting instead of leaving some plain or tinting it a different color so the presentation is nothing to write home about but I had fun playing around with cake decorating. I am excited to try decorating another cake and hopefully I won't make such a rookie mistake! Dave and Benjamin both agreed that the cake was good; although, I think Benjamin liked the frosting the best. I saw him use his fork and take some frosting off of Dave's piece of cake! Don't you love Benjamin's juice mostache! He looks so happy.