Cake Decorating

I grew up with my mom always making our birthday cakes. We would start talking about what kind of cake we wanted months before our birthdays. She did some really cool ones, especially the Barbie doll cakes. I think she ended up making one for all my girl cousins at one point in time. I love cakes and the art of cake decorating. The Food Network cake decorating Challange episodes are my very favorite! I have their most recent competitions recorded on DVR, just waiting for me to watch. Chris likes watching them too, which is even more fun!

While I KNOW there is not any way I will ever be good enough for one of those shows, I decided a while ago I wanted to learn the basics. Thinking back, it was right before Zander's first birthday. We were deciding on a cake, and I was wishing I knew what I was doing as I decorated his monkey cake. So my dear husband bought me cake decorating classes at Michaels for my birthday, last October. I am JUST now getting around to taking them and am having a great time practicing! Tomorrow will be the last class in the first course, and while I am grateful I will have one less thing to do, I will really miss the practice and learning. Here are a few of the things I have done:

It may not look that great, because I took a picture after I cut into it. It started out with a really nice looking hot pink and purple rainbow on yellow iced cake. (still working out colors!!) I had extra frosting and wanted/needed to practice so I worked on piping letters (shout out to my Babe) and doing circles and stars. I love it!!

For our next class we learned clowns. The store didn't have any clown heads, so I didn't bother with taking pictures of globs of icing. They are cute and really easy, though. I made cupcakes for Chris to take into work the next day and practiced all the techniques I leaned. My teacher showed my how to use the flower tip to make a really cool looking ruffle. I took it further and made what I think is a rad looking flower cupcake. Anyone need a dozen flower cupcakes for something?? I will do it!! They are so fun and so cool looking. At least, I think!! Here is a shot from the top.

And here is one from the side:


Thanks for looking!!

Contractions

So sorry for the lack of blogging, not that any of you sit and wait for me to post something interesting, or anything. I have been very tired and overwhelmed by any and everything lately, and just have not made time to blog!

This pregnancy is kicking my butt!! For those of you who don't know, we are having another BOY!! We are thrilled that Zander will have a little brother, a little buddy to pal around with. And, logistically, it works perfectly! My only fear is that we will never get a girl, but even that could be OK! Think of how much money we would save on clothes/shoes!!

Back to the pregnancy. I never got braxton hicks contractions with Zander. Never even a real contraction until the pitocin kicked it after my water broke in the dr office. So it came as a real shocker last week when my belly would get really hard, and I would get super tired all of a sudden. On Saturday we were in Home Depot (it might have been Lowe's, actually. Both that day) when I really felt it. I told Chris to feel my belly and he was surprised at how hard it was, the whole thing, not just where the baby was!! Holy cow. I didn't have pain, really, just tightness. Of course I called my BFF, the pregnancy guru in my book, and told her and she confirmed it was braxton hicks. Such a weird thing. I have gotten them here and there, and find that if I am doing too much or not drinking enough water they are worse. So water I am drinking. Whew. They wear me out. Sure I have to pee ALL the time, but I guess its better than not having any energy. Or going into labor at 26 weeks. Yikes.

I guess I should start taking pictures of my baby belly. I took a few with Zander in the last few months, because I didn't really start showing (baby, you could always see jiggle!) until the last few months. Haven't taken any this time. My Mom thinks this baby is going to feel left out if there are no pregnancy pictures of it. Well, it will just have to get used to it, because sadly, the first child always has more baby pictures to look at. Its just a fact of life. Right, all you first children?? And even you second and thirds, you got over it, right? Just accepted the fact that your oldest sibling was more loved as a baby than you?!?! JUST KIDDING. My sister would be throwing a fit right now if she could read this. Shout out to the Weezer.

My resolve- to post more pictures and blog a little more. I have tons to write about!! Thanks for reading!

Easter Ideas

Hi. So we are having both sides of the family over for Easter on Sunday. It will be about 14 adults and 4 kids. We are skipping the traditional Ham dinner because we have 1 pm Church and don't really have time to put it all together. Plus, Chris isn't crazy about a ham dinner. I am not really, either, actually. We decided to have ribs. Yum. (kind of) Here is my delima- what to have with it?? Everyone is going to bring stuff, I just have to make suggestions.

And, what are some fun activities to do with everyone? Just about everything and everyone in this group revolves around the kids; our own source of entertainment! Any easy, cheap, decor activity ideas would be great! Thanks guys!

Zander Update

Some of you know, our little Zander man is still not walking yet, and has mastered his scooting technique. He can even get up and down stairs (closely supervised) on his hiney. It is pretty entertaining. The orthopaedic surgeon scheduled an MRI for last Friday and we saw the dr. on Monday of this week. The MRI was of his spine and is looked really good. Which is great news, except we still don't know why he isn't walking at 19 months. The ortho is not worried and thinks that with some physical therapy he will be fine. So we enter the world of PT. We have been warned by both the ortho and our pediatrician that we can easily be sucked into doing several different therapies every week, and they could make very little difference. Almost like when you go to the dentist to get a simple cleaning and before you know it you have been talked into spending thousands on veneers and tooth whitening kits. I mean, really!! What is necessary! While I have tons (well, a normal amount for a 21 week along pregnant woman) of energy now, I won't have all the time in the world when the baby gets here to be in therapy all week. Lets just hope the therapists are miracle workers and we only need 3 months of help!!

He finally learned to sit up on his own in his bed, which is great, except now he fights sleep more. Yesterday was dramatic. After letting him scream for 30 minutes, i went in to check the silence. I found him asleep, hunched over. Had to take a picture! Well, my camara/computer is being lame right now so I will have to post later.

He is talking quite a bit, too. His favorite words are oh no, uh oh, NO!, dog, what's that? here I am, and others. He will say thank you SOMETIMES, when we don't prompt him. We are working on 'love you' now, as well as 'thank you.' Two importants, i think!!

Girl Scout Cookies

I was sad to see this morning our supply of GS cookies is running low. And I think they are done selling them for the year. . . whine. HOWEVER- today while perusing the lovely world of blogging, I ran across a lady who figured out the recipes for some of our favorites!! I am SOO thrilled!! I am very tempted to try one of these recipes, like, right now, but need a few ingredients. I think I am going to make the Samoas tomorrow, as a suprise for Chris. They are by far his very favorite, and will totally dig them! Here is the site. Enjoy!

QUILTS

I LOVE QUILTS. I think I always have. My mom started me off young on loving the textures, colors, and patterns of fabric and quilts just always seemed like art to me. BUT, I knew what kind of time, patience, and precision it took to make quilts like I had seen and knew I would get bored before I even had the pieces cut out. So for years I would just admire them from afar. THEN, a friend introduced me to strip quilting, explaining it was so much easier because you cut out long strips of fabric, sewed them together and then cut out smaller pieces, thus eliminating sewing together a million 2x2 squares of fabric. We set out on making a quilt for my brother Joel. Mind you this was early 2004. She started dating someone serious and our quilt project sort of disolved, although I had the pattern and the basic concept. For the next 3 years, I would sew bits together to give to Joel as his gift with the promise that I was going to finish it that time, and it never happened. FINALLY, my dear husband, knowing what motivated me, challenged me to get it done for Christmas 2007, but sort of put a little doubt in my head to really motivate me. I told him I would not buy one inch of fabric for the entire year if I didn't get that darn quilt finished before Christmas. SO, needless to say, Joel opened a great looking quilt that Christmas morning!! Ah, inspiration and motivation!! I didn't take any pictures of it, but want to use it for an exhibit so I will snatch it back and take some pictures. Its pretty darn cool.

This last fall I decided I wanted to learn how to 'quilt' quilt, meaning quilt the top, batting and bottom together, like in real quilts. (Versus tying them together). So I read up on it online and decided that pink and yellow fabric I had been collecting would make a really cute quilt for my mother in law, Sheila, and that would be a great time to practice!! I set out on it, deciding to use large blocks to minimize lots of small cuts. Plus I only had a month to get it done, and knowing HOW long it took to get Joel's done, I needed to hustle. Looking back I wished I would have just taken more time and used more interesting blocks. Oh well. I even stippled it on my machine, which once I got going was so much fun! Its like drawing with thread on fabric! NOW, this was my first stippling, so its not perfect and I have learned soo much in doing this project. But here are the results:

The first picture is the front of the quilt. Told you it could have been more interesting:


Here is the back, which I kind of like better than the front!!


And here is a close up of the stippling. I think I needed to do it closer together, then it would have puffed up a little more. Plus, the pattern was not consistent at all, which I know is ok to some degree, but I took it a little far.


So, that's my first ever stippled quilt. I have wanted to make one for Zander and his big boy bed for a while, and think i have decided on a pattern. That's my next project! This is the inspiration for Zander's quilt: . I am going to do it a little different, using slighly larger pieces. I have been collecting different shades of brown and blue fabric for this very purpose and am really excited to get going on it. Just hesitant, you know?? Wish me luck! Oh, here is a picture of the fabrics I want to use. Ah, I will post that later. Zander is asleep and I don't want to go digging through my stash and risk ruining nap time!!

More on Zander

I know- I go weeks without posting and here I am, twice in one day! Just had to update everyone on Zander's progress. He is officially a toddler! He turned 18 months old on Sunday; his half birthday is his uncle Joel's and cousin Jameson's real birthday! Anyway, we mentioned to his ortho doc in September that we were slightly concerened he wasn't walking yet. He told us walking under 18 months old is normal and only after 18 months is it abnormal for a child to not be walking yet. We were told to report back progress at 16-17 months and if he wasn't close they would run some tests. ( some of you know this story, sorry to bore you again!) Well, about 4 weeks ago I decided I had better e-mail the dr because he wouldn't even pull himself up, take steps as we held his hands, or even try to stand, even supported. The dr. decided to go ahead and schedule and MRI. It is scheduled for mid-March.

Just a few days later, what do you know, we grabbed his hands and he pulled up to standing! YEAH!! You would have thought he hung the moon, Chris and I were so excited! About a week and a half ago, he started half-way pulling up, by getting on to his right foot, and left kneee. And just the other day, he started pulling himself all the way up! At first it was only on the ottoman, but now he uses everything to pull up on. It just warms my heart. Yesterday I was gettting ready in our bathroom and he was playing around in my room. He came in the bathroom, slid the door open and just pulled himself up like he had done it for years. So fast! I had to take a picture- here it is!

One more quick story- Zander is gaining in his independence. A good thing, but also a very messy thing, as he really likes to feed himself. Now, if the food of choice is crackers or pretzels, fine, no worries from mommy. But when it is spagetti?? Holy cow,, what a mess. This was last nights dinner. EVERYWHERE. Cute, (again a little possesed) pictures though!!!