Oh my stars! Cake!

Here is this weekend's cake practice. This week I was attempting the 12 inch layer on the bottom. I also wanted to try some different flavors, so I did a butter cake on the bottom and red velvet on the top. The bigger the cake, the harder it is to cover, I am sure. I also did not split the layers on this one because my knife is not big enough. It turned out fine. I think on the wedding cake I will bake all the layers separately, however. I also have these star cut outs and since I had not done too much of that, I used them this time. I also wanted to practice coloring fondant. But I did the easy thing and only colored small amounts! I think it turned out pretty cute. The girls were making all those little bead balls and then doing all different star cut outs with the extra fondant. We had a slice from each layer and then put the bottom layer in the trash (I know, so sad! But I just cannot have that stuff sitting around!) Here's the photos. The lighting is really bad here. I need to take a food styling class!

Madison's Mother's Day Video

Madison made this video at Animoto for me and sent it to me for Mother's Day. Too cute! Click the link below to watch!

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day for Me

I enjoyed a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. We spread out the fun and festivities in between Friday night and Saturday errands and the girls babysitting jobs. We had pizza together Friday. Saturday the girls made dirt cups for me-- all by themselves. We watched a movie together (Confessions of a Shopaholic) while I worked on Lisa's wedding invitations. We made some awesome ribs in the oven for dinner. The girls gave me some great gifts-- a favorite movie (The Last Holiday starring Queen Latifah) and some desperately needed commercial grade cookie sheets. Love it! I also got some tulips. Sunday morning Gabrielle made muffins and bacon for me for breakfast. Lisa sent a text to say Happy Mother's Day. I was able to add a rose to the tulips arrangement after church on Sunday (thank you, Bishop!) We had a delicious steak sandwich on Texas Toast (Madison is ready to go to work at Sonic with her Texas Toast grilling skills!) with the yummy potato wedges. We watched Merlin Sunday night to close down the weekend. Now I need to exercise and work off the Mother's Day weekend calories.

I would just like to say that I used to think Mother's Day was a joke, that when my kids were little you still had to do everything you did every other day of the year. But I guess this was the magic year for me! The girls did everything and were so wonderful. I am so so happy to be the mother of these girls! Thank you so much! There should be a holiday called Daughter's Day.

Award Band FInal Performance

For their final performance, the all-city 7th grade award band was outdoors! They played a pre-festivities concert for the partners in education flag celebration and parade in courthouse square in downtown columbia last Thursday evening. Jared accompanied the girls since I had Relief Society, which turned out great because they were able to go Mother's Day shopping after!

Gabrielle has now gone full circle with this event, as she was the flag bearer for her school in fifth grade for the parade of flags and now finishing up with Award Band. It has been a great experience for her to play in this ensemble. Here are a few pictures that Madison snapped during the activity:

Sunday Memories for Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, Rae Ann. I am posting this picture because I wanted to tell her thanks for one specific thing she did. She took us to church-- with a smile on her face! Every Sunday growing up she made sure everyone was dressed in Sunday clothes, shoes shiny, hair all fixed, piled in the car (the tiny car in this picture) and drove us to church. There was never a question that we would go or not. We went and we were happy about it. It was a privilege.

What did this do for me? It made me see what was important to her. It made me see that she put the Lord first. I am sure she could have thought of many other things to do on Sunday, but we always had this time set aside to worship. I am so lucky that I was raised in the church. I watched her serve in so many capacities and callings. And again, she was happy doing it. She showed me as we serve others, we are truly serving God, And as we love others, we are really showing our love for our Heavenly Father. She taught me that the true symbol of our religion is our practice of it. She is an example to me.

Now that I have gone through getting small children ready to church, I realize this is no small feat. I remember one Sunday morning we were driving to church (I was probably 7 or 8) and we were listening to the radio. The Commodores with lead singer Lionel Richie came on singing "Easy Like Sunday Morning," to which my mom replied, "If he thinks Sunday mornings are easy, he's never tried to get everyone in his house ready for church on time!" Then we all laughed-- I still remember that!

Just a note about the picture: I was probably 2, my sister Sarah 12, and my brother somewhere in between 7 or 8 years old. He's obviously looking at something more interesting than the camera! I love our matching ponchos made by my grandmother, I am sure. And there's mom, very happy to have her family all together going to church. Thank you, mom, for all you did for us, especially teaching us by your example to go to church and worship with our family.

Trash Day

So the cake below-- is now in the trash. Going away with my fabulous city's sanitation workers. We did eat some, with some help. We ate the top tier completely, and then part of the middle chocolate tier. The bottom tier went in the trash with one piece cut out of it. It was pretty sad. But a good learning experience! I had to make cinco de mayo cupcakes (and more buttercream!) for Gabrielle's spanish class, so worry not! The scent of cake batter is still in the air! No cake for Mother's Day though, please. We will pick it up again for graduation.

Who Wants Cake?

Ok, here it is: the first three tiered fondant covered cake. This is just more practice for the wedding cake. For the real wedding cake, I think there will be another layer, and fresh flowers instead of the bow, but this was just to get an idea. The wider ribbon is probably going to end up being silver, with red fresh flowers. Jared did most of the structural stuff. I baked, made frosting (and more frosting and more frosting), and did the decorating. Someday I will do one totally on my own, but I believe it will have to be when everyone is out of the house. And it will probably take me 79 hours. So, who wants cake? We have a little bit to spare.

This is the cake before piping the dots on the fondant (more simple option)


Here is one after piping. I like how it looks, too. I need to measure and actually get the straight, but I think my dots are better than my last one I tried it on.