Nesting

I guess I'd say I've hit the send phase of nesting. I got all of the closets organized a couple of months back and now I've moved on to sewing. I just can't seem to get it out of my mind lately. I've been working on making Easter dresses for the girls. They aren't quite finished yet but I'll be sure to post a picture when they are. I think that most of my drive comes from the blogs that I've been looking at lately. I found a super easy pattern for a baby dress on http://www.polkadotchair.com/that I just had to try. It only took me a couple of hours one afternoon, which is saying a lot for me because I am not the fastest or most efficient seamstress. Then once the dress was done I made some little shoes and a hair clip to match. Won't this little girl be a cutie in her summer garb?

I'm excited to say that we got a new camera this weekend. We've been considering this for a while because while we liked our other digital SLR, there were some things we wanted to improve upon. So we bought this Sony something-or-other and a portrait lens to go with it. Hopefully this means that I will stop being so lazy and using my point-and-shoot camera all the time and my pictures will be at least a little bit better. It's sad how my brain doesn't seem to retain much information when it comes to photography. I took classes in high school and in college and I'm afraid I always just revert to using "auto" mode all the time nowadays. I just can't remember what all the functions do and half the time I'm trying to take pictures of impatient little girls anyway. So my goal for the year is to brush up on my photography skills and start taking real photos again. If anyone is interested in buying a Pentax digital SLR camera complete with a couple of different lenses, hood, flash, remote, etc. let us know!

And now on the new cakes. The first was a cake I made for my friend's little girl a couple of weeks back. She was having a birthday party with a unicorn theme, so my friend sent me pictures of the plates, etc. and I made the cake to match. I thought I'd "girly it up" a bit by putting toule around the cake base. It looked pretty cute.
And here is a close up of the little unicorn. She's a bit on the chubby side because I used fondant to sculpt it, which I really shouldn't do. But I did invest in an extruder this time for making the hair so that I wouldn't have to roll out a million little "snakes"...lifesaver!
This next one turned into a true cake disaster. I knew it was just a matter of time. It was for Drew's nephew Logan who was turning 1. His mom requested a teddy bear cake and so I tried to make a tattered, well-loved looking bear but it went a little too far. I thought that using Rice Krispy treats for the head would make it easier to sculpt and more sturdy but boy was I wrong. I guess I didn't use enough marshmallows and his head started to crack in half just as we were finishing up. I also neglected to put in a cake board between layers because I thought the buttercream was light enough but again...wrong! His body pretty much collapsed. So in a desperate attempt to save the little guy we had to remove his head and reposition some things on two different occasions. He made it just long enough to arrive at the party and have his picture taken before he bit the dust. I wish I would have had my camera with me. His head literally crumbled to pieces. Whoops! Luckily the recipient is only 1 and was not bothered by his cake being headless. And my sweet sister-in-law is far too kind to be upset by the ordeal either. I think I handled the catastrophe better than might be expected. I just wanted my five hours of the day back!
Notice that countdown in the corner? You might be saying "Oh, only 50-something days left." I'm afraid I don't share that opinion. I'm ready to have this baby already!

Valentine's Day

Oh the day of love...what a wonder holiday! To prep for the big school parties, we spent Saturday afternoon filling out valentines and attaching candy for all of the girls' classmates. Then we put together these little bouquets for their teachers. They are Hershey's Kiss roses which looked simple enough but caused me a little stress when the floral tape kept coming off the stems. I was glad when they were done and they turned out pretty cute. I just hope they made the trip to school safe and sound in their backpacks. Guess I'll find that out later this afternoon.


I've been thinking about what to do for Drew for Valentine's day for a while now. When Carly and Abbie were young (before they started school) I used to dress them up and take them into Drew's office to take him a Valentine's surprise. For some reason or another I haven't done it for a few years so I figured it was time to get my rear in gear. My mom gave me the idea to dress Savannah up as a Hershey Kiss this year. (I know... it kinda turned out to be the theme for today) So this morning around 8:30 I spent a good solid 20 minutes sewing this little beauty of a costume together. It didn't have to be high quality...just enough to last for 15 minutes or so. Savannah was not all that happy to wear it so there was a little bribery with cookies involved, but it all turned out in the end. Drew got to show off his little cutie to his coworkers and Savannah finally got in the Valentine's Day action.


This past weekend I was asked to make a Gru cake topper for a friend. She was going to make the cake and the minions, but just needed help with Gru. So we decided we would make him standing on a little moon and go from there. I of course recruited Drew's help on this one. We spent our Friday night sculpting him and after starting over a couple of times, I think he turned out great. Can I just say that sculpting with gumpaste is next to impossible? It dries so darn fast that it borders ridiculous. I think I'm going to have to see if I can find modeling chocolate for sale somewhere around here.

Despicable, Xanadu & Peachy Keen

I've decided it's a little funner if I give each cake an actual name, hence the title of this blog post.

The first cake I did was actually last weekend. It was by request of the birthday girls, Chloe and Mimi. They are Carly and Abbie's best little buds that live across the street. They come over to the house all the time and see me making cakes so I think they were excited when their birthdays finally rolled around. They wanted a minion from the movie "Despicable Me" and luckily chose a one-eyed guy rather than two (a little less work for me). This was the first cake that I attempted to actually raise up off the the cake stand. We made supports out of PVC pipe that we covered to look like feet and then hot-glued the bottom cake board to them. It worked out so-so. He was leaning backwards a bit but made it through the party, which is really all that matters in the grand scheme of things.
The next cake was this last Friday for another friend of my girls that lives just a few houses up the street. She wasn't sure exactly what she wanted so I took some creative liberties on this one. Her party invitation was "Wizards of Waverly" place but I wasn't really sure how to capture that in a cake. Her party was at Classic Skating so I decided to make a rollerskate cake and then added a little magic wand. And therefore I give you the Xanadu cake! How could you combine magic and rollerskates and not come up with Xanadu?! (By the way...hope you all are enjoying the music update).

And finally on Saturday we went to a party for Drew's wonderful grandma Jackie. I won't tell you how old she is, only that she is amazing and we love her very much! :) For this cake we went pretty basic. Drew quilted the sides for me and I tried my hand and making some gumpaste roses and carnations. I've only ever made daisies out of gumpaste before so I figured it was about time.
Here is the close up of the flowers from above. I could use a little more practice, especially since I'm going to be making my sister-in-law's wedding cake in March.
So that's what my last two weekends have looked like. I suppose one of the good things about staying home and making cakes on the weekends means I'm not out shopping! The weekdays, on the other hand....

Two new cakes

Since I'm no longer doing my "official" cake blog, I thought I would just post the pictures here on the family one to keep you all up-to-date. I have also added the cake slide show over on the right for your viewing pleasure.

The first cake was for our nephew Sean's 8th birthday. It is Heimlich from the movie "A Bug's Life." It was a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. The word "Sean" is supposed to look like it is spelled out with watermelon seeds but I'm not sure it worked out quite like the vision in my mind. That always seems to happen to me!


The next cake was for our niece Katie. She loves the Disney Fairies and I found a picture of a super cute cake online that I wanted to try. I cut down the size and had to cut out a lot of the detail that the original cake had, but I think it turned out pretty cute anyway. This cake was yellow with raspberry and lemon cream filling. Yummy!
I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Years. I wish I had some good pictures to post but unfortunately I got lazy (imagine that?) and used our little point and shoot camera instead of the SLR and the pictures were horrible. Just know that we had a great time and the girls have especially loved all the new video games we got for the Wii and DSi.

Baby #4 has yet to be named. It may be surprising since this is our fourth girl, but we actually seem to be having a harder time narrowing down a name this time. I thought I wanted something one syllable but now I'm not so sure. So far we like Brooke, Emma, Reese, Sloane (is that with an e or without? Don't know), and Kennedy. But the list seems to keep growing instead of getting shorter. Luckily? I have another 16 weeks left to decide. My pants are all getting a bit tight and I'm afraid I might have to give in soon and start wearing maternity clothes. Boo.

Tis' the Season!

Before I can even start on Christmas I have to rewind a bit because there's some serious catching up to do! So let's go back to October when we took another trip to Disneyland. This time it was just Drew and me and the girls. While it was nice to spend time with just our little family, it proved much more difficult to actually ride things because we have two whimpies amongst us. Carly and Abbie refused to ride Tower of Terror, Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain Railroad...and the list goes on! Hopefully when we go again in a couple of years they will have a more "adventurous" attitude.
Drew and the girls on our first day at the park. It rained in the morning but cleared up after the first hour or so. The Halloween decorations are so fun!
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is my daddy's favorite so I had to get a picture there for him. (Here you go, Daddy-O!)
Don't you just love this one? Could that little face hold any more joy? Savannah had a great time on the rides. She loved this one in Bug's Life and also the Casey, Jr. train. In fact, we had a hard time convincing her to get off when the ride was over.

So next up is Halloween itself. I was a bit of a slacker and didn't actually make a single piece of the girls' costumes this year. However, we did have a family night carving pumpkins. Here are the results:


Baby #4 is doing great. We have received confirmation that it is indeed another girl. No too much of a surprise, right? I suppose our house is just meant to be full of drama. I just hope Drew can hold out! This ultrasound was actually done at 13 weeks and I am now 18 weeks, but I thought it was a good one. Isn't it amazing how far technology has come? Just look at those little arms and legs!

And that brings us up to the present...ah Christmastime! How I love it! I love everything about it...the music, the smells, the food, the shopping, and of course the spirit. This year has been the year of the advent. I have always loved advent calendars and wanted one for a long time. This year I bought this little premade one and we have filled all the drawers with either candy or an activity to do together as a family.
This next one I saw on a blog and had to make one. Each of the pockets has a different ornament to take out and hang on the tree to decorate it. It's been a lot of fun to sew all the little ornaments, although I am not quite done yet. I only have four more to go and I figure as long as they are in there by the time the date comes up I'll be fine. The girls have been trading off who gets to open which advent each day and Savannah just empties them all out and eats whatever candy she can find when no one is looking! We are super excited for Christmas and spending time with our families and friends. We hope you all have a happy holiday season too!

It's official!

We are expecting baby #4 on May 5th. I'm feeling pretty much the same as last time, so my bets are on another girl. But to be honest that is fine with us. What on earth would we do with a boy?

It's Great to be Eight!

Our little Carly has officially turned 8! Hard to believe how quickly time goes by. It was her year to have a friend birthday party (we try to ration those out at our house to spare my sanity) and she has had a plan in the works since last October! That's right, October of 2009. That is when we went to Disneyland for the second time and she was tall enough to ride "Indiana Jones." She loved it and soon thereafter started planning an Indiana Jones birthday party.

When everyone arrived we decked them out in an Indy hat, messenger bag for collecting various treasures, and a licorice whip. Aren't they cute? Too bad my girls have such a difficult time keeping their eyes fully open for photos!

Hidden in one of their bags was the first clue for the treasure hunt. It said something about splitting into teams and making mummies. So we split them into three different groups, gave them each a roll of toilet paper and had them race to see who could create their mummy fastest and find the clue. It turns out that buying the cheapest toilet paper you can find is not the best idea for this game because it kept tearing. Whoops!Next they did a holy grail relay where they had to take turns dipping the grail into the snake pit to fill it with water and then run the water over to a bucket. The idea was that they had to fill the bucket so full that the bad guy (Drew) would drop it and release their next clue. This clue was cut into a puzzle so they had to put that together first and then move on.

They had to go to the archaeology dig to search for the next clue and also some treasure rocks! We made them by wrapping little prizes in tissue paper, then in tin foil, dipping it in plaster of Paris, and then spraying them gold. The kids had to hit the rock on the ground to crack them open and find out what prize was inside!
The last clue sent them back inside the house where they had to search through three dishes at the banquet (monkey brains, snake guts & eyeball soup) to find the golden idols.
It all wrapped up with presents and cupcakes. Drew made little snakes, whips, and Indy hats as toppers and they turned out really cute. After all the kids went home we pretty much headed straight out the door to go have dinner at the Mayan with grandma, grandpa, great-grandma & cousin Mekenzie. It fit the theme quite nicely and was a great way to end the day!We're so proud of Carly. She is such a kind, responsible, and mature little girl! She will be getting baptized on the October 9th and we can't wait for that day!