From the mouth of babes...

My kids always cracks me up. I think its my absolute favorite thing about being a parent actually. Getting to hear all the silly things they have to say and the thoughts that they have. And so that I don't forget I thought I'd better write some down from the last week.
Parker loves his new bed, unfortunately its a little harder for me to lay down next to him and snuggle when he goes to bed. But the other day I squeezed my way in and this was how our conversation went...

"Mom, I just love this tent bed. It is just my favorite cool bed. When you were a little girl did you have a bed like this?"--parker
"Nope, I didn't have a cool tent bed when I was little"--me
"Oh, that's too bad. Cause when I was a little boy I had one just like this and it was my very favorite"---Parker

Parker is really starting to wondering what I did "when I was a little girl" He really likes his back rubbed, and in turn he likes to rub mine. The last few days that I've been sick he's been rubbing me a lot. Its so cute, his little hand rubbing my back so softly.
Anyways last time I rubbed his back I thought this was pretty funny.
"Mom, when you was a little girl, who was rubbing your back?"
me--"When I was little grandma would rubbed my back"
Then shocked and worried he replied "Oh mom!! Why didn't your mommy rub your back?!! My mommy rubs my back. You should tell your mommy that her was supposed to do it.!!"
Oh Parker, you just make me laugh :)
I tried to explain that grandma is my mommy, but I think it was lost on him. After all, you only get to be one thing, either a mommy or a grandma.

Here's a little thing that makes me laugh, but is kinda sad in way. My poor kids, I must be depriving them. This morning Parker was looking for a snack, which he is ALWAYS doing!!! Drives me nuts, I have to hide everything. Anyways I told him all the reasons why I didn't think he needed a snack right then and her is the reasons he thought he did. It always starts with
"Uh, wait Mom, I just have to tell you something" with his finger pointed at me and a seriously annoyed look on his face :)
"I think I can have a snack right now because I just was eating all my cereals, and I didn't even spill it. Aaannndd.. I was just thinking about getting some of my play clothes on aaannnd cleaning my room all by myself. SO I think I need to have a snack so I have lots of energy. And I will pick it out all by myself. And mom, you just need to be good because we don't get to have snacks with sugar in it. Just some healthy ones. okay. And then if you still are being sick I can give you some of my energy that I have from my snack and then you can just play with me."

So you might not find them as funny as I do. You just have to hear Parker when he says these things. He just always has an answer for everything and never stops talking!! But I seem to talk incessantly too so I guess he gets it from me. We can't wait for preschool to start next week!! Its going to be so good for him to have another outlet for all his smarts :)

Carrie's Cakes Class

WOW!!!! The last few days I got to go to the most amazing class! It was absolutely incredible and I definitely recommend it to anyone that does cakes, or wants to learn. She is the nicest lady you could ever meet and she totally opened her kitchen to us. We got to look in all the cupboards, ask her any questions we wanted, and see everything in action. She even shared her recipes with us!!!!! That was amazing, because not often do bakers want to share their recipes. So I know it sounds mean, considering she told us all hers, but I don't plan to share the secrets she taught me :). After all I did pay nearly $400 to learn them :)!! Well, I might share a few :).

She told us where she gets all her supplies, and where to get the best prices etc. And told us we can call her anytime if we have questions. She even asked me if I wanted a job!!! At the end of the second day she was looking at everyones projects and she told me she really thinks I have the right touch for this and asked if I ever want a job!!! That was such a huge compliment from someone so incredibly talented. She often calls former students to come work for her when she is in a busy season, or wants a little more help. Let me tell you, it is sooooo tempting!

Anyways, everything was great, I learned so much that otherwise would have taken years to figure out all on my own, and I meet some great people. There was even a mother and daughter there from Kuwait!! They came to utah just for her class. Pretty cool huh. I made some good friends and look forward to getting to know them better through other things, like the cake decorator club starting up here in Utah. They are having a convention in october and having starts from the food network come and teach!!! It will be so cool!! Now I just need to save my pennies so I can join the club and sign up for the convention :). Its a pretty expensive hobby, but there are so many incredible things that can be done.

Here are some pictures of my cake. We learned a lot of different things so its kinda just a lot of different things. I wanted to just do one complete cake so I could put it on my website, but it was too much fun playing with everything, and I can never decided on just one design :).

There was one downfall of the whole event. I came down with the stomach flu!!! On tuesday my friend and neighbor Camille, who is just awesome, babysat my kids. All day! Aaron ended up coming home sick after just a few hours so the kids ended up back and forth between Camille's and our house most the day. Thanks Camille for all your help. You are so great!!

So anyways, on my way home from class I was soooo tired! I could hardly drive, and I had been having a hard time standing up all day at the class. I figured I just needed a good nights sleep. When I got home I pretty much went right to bed. I tried eating dinner, but that made me feel worse so I hit the sack. Within a few hours I felt so awful. I was really afraid I wouldn't be able to finish my class. The next day I woke up feeling pretty much the same, but I wasn't throwing up, so I gathered up the kiddos, still in their pj's, and headed to my moms. She tended the kids all day. THANKS MOM!!! And I went to class. It was kinda hard to do things because I felt pretty week and so my hands were kind of shaky, but I made it through the whole thing. After I got back to moms she tended me for a few hours until we went home. I got even sicker once I got home. I am thankful the worst held off until after my class. Today I'm still pretty sick, but thanks so a lot of medicine I seem to be managing. Anyways, I'm sure you love hearing all about my sickness :). Here are the pictures!!!

New furniture

Here are some pics of the other new things we got. Mom and Dad were so awesome to give us their old couches when they got new ones. They are so nice and comfy!! They make everything in the room look better.

We also sold our old dresser, that I've had since high school. and got some new dressers that match out bed. Here's a pic of the bed too so you can see the color of the wood, sorry its not made :).

I feel like I graduated in a way and now I get to have pretty, matching furniture. Its so much fun!!!

Parkers New bed

WEll, here it is, the new bed. For those of you who don't know, I'm feeling the change bug. You know when you just get antsy and need things to change. In the past I would move, or break up with someone, or just do something crazy and stupid that would create a lot of needless drama in my life. But now that I am the new and improved version of myself, those other options are no longer available :)

So Now I reaarange the house, get new clothes, a new haircut, and yes sometimes a baby :) KC and Parker both have the change bug to thank for their exsistence in our family.

Well, this time, since I don't want another baby just yet, I've decided to sell off all the furniture I no longer love, or really use and with the money but some new furniture. Obviously I can't get the same amount of stuff for the money I can get for the old, but I can get a few things that will be fun.

So awhile ago we got Parker a bunk bed from someone for free. It was really big and took up a lot of room. IKEA had this great little bed that I absolutly love. It was a loft, but very small. And you could have the bunk part on the top or turn it over and have it on the bottom. It even had a tent top you could get.

So last night, after selling Parkers bed that afternoon, we set of to IKEA to look for the fun new bed. The one I had been telling Parker about ALL day to get him excited.

But then we looked everywhere, no bed!! We asked about it and turns out its been discontinued. I was so mad. Luckily Parker liked everything he saw so he didn't care too much. But I had his whole room rearranged and redecorated in my head al around this new fun bed. We were going to out him up high, and then put his toys underneath in in a fort. And get the tent for the top. It was going to be sweet.

The thing that makes me the maddest is that it is featured in the new 2008 catologue. Why have it in there if you just plan to get rid of it???

Anyways, this is what we ended up with.

He loves it. It even has a little cat and dog on the frame. Its so small! But seems to fit him well, with room to grow so I guess thats okay. And it was half the price of the other bed. We were still able to get a tent for it, and I think thats his favorite. The good thing is his bedroom seems huge now so there is a lot of room to play now, so thats a plus. And it was really really easy to put together.

Anyways, I still wish we had the other bed, but I guess I'll survive. :(

Oh and I lost another pound!!! This means since we went on our family vacation to washington in May i am down 11 lbs!!!. 6 since starting weigh watchers. Whohoo!

Jennifers Cake

I made this cake for my friend Jennifer. Today is her birthday and she's moving away next week :(. Not to far so thats nice, but we'll still miss her. Happy Birthday Jen!

A star!

After a really good start, and then a hurt foot that threw me off track for a while, I'm finally getting back into the game. My ankle is doing a lot better, I decided it just had to heal and I was sick of worrying about it. So I took off the brace and just dealt with it. And since then it feels way better. I think I just needed to use it , it was getting kinda weak always babying it.
So I'm excited, I finally got my 5 lb star!! I had gotten close, but then after not really exercising very much for a few weeks and getting lazy with my diet it went back up. Not all the way though so that was good. But I'm back on track now and down 5 lbs!!! This is exciting because it is the lowest I have weighed since before KC.

Cake Class!!

Today I signed up for a class at a Professional Bakery in SLC. I am so excited I can hardly wait!!! Its costing a ton, but I think I'm going to learn sooo much. They provide all the supplies, plus lunch, etc. Its all day for 2 days. We get to learn more about working with fondant and chocolate clay. we'll do embrodery and lace, ribbons, bows, gumpaste flowers. Anyway I saw online this morning that there was an opening and when Aaron gave me the go ahead, since its so much $, I called immediatly and signed up. I even get to bring home a fully decorated 3 tier dummy cake. So stay tuned for pictures :). I think this is going to be a great opportunity to develop my talent so I can really get my business going sometime next year.
Oh, and for those who go there and don't know. Shepards Cake and Candy store is closing at the end of the month. They are having a big sale right now to get rid of everything. I haven't been over yet to check out the deals, but if you want me to get you anything let me know and when I go I'll pick some stuff up for you. I'm sad they are closing since its the only place in utah county to really get supplies. But at our class next week the lady, whos name is Carrie :) is going to give us a list of places that are good to get supplies, so that will be nice.
Anyway, thats all the excitement for now :)

Dinosaur Museum

Today we took the kids to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was really cool! We'd never been and figured it was about time and we'll definitely be going back. There was so much to see it was hard to do it all, especially since we had tickets to the Dino movie also and so we only had an hour to look around. We watched a 3D movie about Dinosaurs, we got to wear 3D glasses and everything. Although Parker said he could see just fine and didn't need to wear glasses ;). It was pretty blurry w/o them, but he didn't seem to mind. After we got home we were exhausted and all took naps until after 6:00. We topped it off with some yummy waffles for dinner. It was fun to just spend the day playing and doing stuff with the kids. I'm glad all my cakes were done and picked up and there was nothing to worry about :)

Preschool!!

Today we registered Parker for preschool. I was a little hesitant since he is still so young. But he is so bored and its hard to keep up with everything that he wants to do all day long. So starting on the 4th he'll be going to preschool 2 days a week in the morning. I met his teacher and she was fabulous. I'm really excited and I think he'll really like it. And I'm excited for the alone time with KC. He gets so overwhelmed with Parker always in his face when he is trying to play so it will be fun to have a chance to play without anyone stealing his toys :) The other good thing is that we'll meet some other kids for him to play with. Right now out of our friends he is the only little boy. Everyone else has girls or the boys they do have are starting kindergarten and will be gone all day. So I hope there are nice kids in his class that we can have for playdates sometimes.

High School Musical Cakes

Here they are. You wouldn't believe the stress trying to get these done. I almost burned down my kitchen! But other than a ruined burner on the stove there's no permanent damage :) Anyways I had a meltdown this morning and called my mom. She came over and helped with the kiddos, and just having her here helped me feel better. Moms are so good at that. So thanks Mom. You might not think so but you really did a lot for me.

So here are the cakes. I'm not that crazy about them. They turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, probably because I got so stressed about it, but the big cake I redid about 3 times. Finally I decided it just had to be the way it was.

I wanted them to go together more, but it didn't work out that way. Oh well, they are for separate parties.

3 down, 2 to go

Heres a few of my cakes this week. I still have 2 to make, one is baked and shaped, just waiting to be decorated. The other still needs baking. I guess I know what I'll be doing tonight.

The first is another flower cake for a first birthday. I decided the only thing wrong with having pics of my cakes is people just want the same thing. So I made some different flowers for this one and changed the colors on the butterfly to make it a little different. I have another order for this cake in October. But its cute and fun to make. I love the girly colors :)

This other cake is for the same family that is getting the HSM cakes. They are also celebrating their sons b-day at their family party so they wanted a little cake just for him. Only the football is cake, but the field is made of fondant.

I'll be sure to get the others on as soon as they are done. I've decided to make the other cake HSM cake a megaphone, then I'll make some little basketballs and baseballs to out around it and some pompoms. We'll see how it goes. :)

Paranoia or valid concern??

Now I've never been the type to be overly paranoid about my kids, at least I don't think I am. I know a few people who freak out about everything, and I mean everything. Every little speck of dirt or even the idea of not knowing a persons entire life story is enough to disqualify them as a potential babysitter or playmate. The thought of a germ will send them running with their kids and keep them away from everyone for a week.
Don't get me wrong, I want my kids to be safe. I don't want to knowingly expose them to terrible sicknesses or bad people. I want to be aware of whats around them so they can be protected. But I also think they need room to be kids. To run and play, even if that means a scrapped knee occasionally or being around someone with a sniffly nose. I don't think you should follow right behind them constantly and hover over everything they do with the fear that they could drop a cookie on the floor and heaven forbid put it into their mouth afterwards. If you are one of these super over protective moms I don't mean to offend you, I just think somethings are a little extreme. But we all want to protect our kids because we love them and some of us just go about it in different ways.
So anyways, this brings me to my latest concern. We've all seen the numerous toy recalls in the news lately. And this has me a little worried. If I just had Parker I would worry so much as he doesn't put much in his mouth these days unless its edible. But with a little one that constantly is tasting his toys it freaks me out a little. One of the most recent is the Cars toys. Right now its just Sarge, but who knows if the others are tainted too and they just haven't found it yet? So this morning I found myself going through all our toys looking at where they are from and pulling out everything, and I mean everything made in China. This seems crazy to me, but I would just hate to think that little KC is chewing on a toy covered in lead paint that could do permanent damage to his development. Urhg!!!! I don't know what to do.
So I'm curious about how everyone else feels about the recalls right now and the safety of their toys. Its awful to think that you would buy a fun toy for your kids that they just love, and unknown to you it is actually hurting them. Do you think I'm beeing paranoid? How worried are you about your kids toys? Thanks for wieghing in on this, its always nice to get some more opinions.

Sarah and Regan I need your help!!!

Okay guys, I need you!!! I've been asked to do a hghschool musical themed b-day cake for this friday. It's my first repeat customer other than the office so I'm really excited about it. And since she just order it a little stressed. But since I've never seen the movie I need some ideas. Maybe we'll rent it tonight :).
She wants 2 cakes, one small one and one larger, They need to go together so they can display them both, but they will serve them at seperate parties. So I've been searching ideas online and not coming up with much. Any ideas would be great! Thanks a million!

My Favorite Cake Ever!!!

I finally did it! I made a cake that turned out just as I imagined it. This cake is for my brothers b-day. His birthday really isn't until the end of the month, but since hes in town we are having a b-day dinner for him tomorrow at my parents house. So I think the cake is kinda supposed to be a surprise, but I'm way to excited about it to wait and post it. So if you see this don't tell Kelly. :) And if you are Kelly, pretend you didn't see it. Kelly is in love with his IPod. So I thought it be fun to make him an IPod cake. This is a 11x15 chocolate cake with a choc/raspberry filling. Covered in vanilla fondant. All the details are edible and made from fondant.

Our fun day :)

Today we babysat for a good friend most the day. We had 3 extra little ones, but had a fun fun day with them. They came over around 10 and Aaron played soccer with them all in the backyard, which Parker loved! Except when the ball got kicked away from him, then he'd get mad and tell you that "that's not the way you play it!" After the boys were all exhausted we had lunch and then finger painted. Parker usually won't put his hands in it, he thinks its yucky to have his hands so dirty :). But with the help of the bigger boys he learned how fun it was to be dirty and just play.

Then since we still had a few hours before the boys went home we went outside and played in the little pool and on the slipn slide. It's so funny when they don't know how to slide on it. They just kept running back and forth on it and running into each other.

After that the kids just played. But after they went home Aaron took us out to Goodwood BBQ. It was soo yummy ;). And the best part was I didn't have to cook it or clean it up. After a long day with a hurting foot, and Aaron having Migraines it was just what we needed. Parker and KC were even pretty good. KC kept wanting to eat the fries off of Aaron's plate, even though he had a whole pile of his own in front of him.

Then we went to Maceys and got food storage, not that fun really, but it feels good to know we are getting a step closer to having what we need to be prepared. The store was having a sale all week on their Family Preparedness items so we took advantage and stocked up on a bunch of stuff. Then we had to figure out were to put it all. So if you look under our beds and in our bedroom closets your bound to find wheat and dried eggs :).. I can't wait until we have a storage room for all this stuff.

Office Cake

Here's this months office cake. Sheet cakes aren't my fav to do since you can't get as creative with so many different peoples b-days, but its fun to make little things for each person. And it gives me good practice with my recipes and layering the sheet cakes. This month there were 3 bdays, one person likes weight lifting, one music and one bonsai trees. So I made little pictures for each of them.

This cake is a yellow cake from scratch, thanks Cory for the great recipe. I think it will be really yummy :). It has chocolate icing and Bavarian cream filling.

I've been tagged...

Regan tagged me with this. I usually don't so them, but we'll give it a try.





Jobs I’ve Held: I have a lot of jobs, to many to really count, but heres a few...

1. Customer Service Manager at Harmons

2. Tracker (paraeducator) at Pocatello High School

3. Phone surveyor

4. Too many restaurant jobs, Chiles, Red Lobster, Lone Star, Gradys

5. Barista at Coffee Angels and Barnes and Noble

6. Intern at the Veterinarian



Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:

1. I am Sam

2. hmmm, sorry can't think of any others right now..


My Guilty Pleasures:

1. Sleeping in

2. Checking my email way to often, like every hour. Don't ask me why, I don't really get any exciting emails.

3. Swimming with no kids hanging on me or splashing me :)


Places I Have Lived:

1. Denver Co, from the time I was 4 till I was 20

2. Pocatello Id, Rexburg ID

3. Orem and Provo Utah


TV Shows I Enjoy:

1. The Office

2. ER--my favorite!!!

3. Law and Order


What were likely the 1st things you thought when you saw your significant other for the first time?

1. WE met on a blind date that Shelia arranged. When Aaron came to the door I was so excited to see that he wasn't dorky looking. He was tall and handsome.

2. Aaron brought a home cooked meal over on that first date, which I'll admit I thought was pretty funny, but we had such an awesome time that by the end of the night I thought it was sweet, not lame. :)

3. After our date I called my mom and told her I was pretty sure we would get married..she thought I was crazy

Places I’ve Been on Vacation (other than the U.S.):

1. Germany

2. Mexico

3. Germany and Austria in another trip




Favorite Foods:

1. Chocolate

2. Grilled Cheese and Tomato soup :)



Websites I Visit (almost) Daily:

1. Blogs

2. Hotmail

3. Yahoo Groups


Body Parts I Have Injured:

1. Broken arms when I was 2

2. My stupid ankle :(!!

3. Broken pinky toe


Nicknames I’ve been called:

1. Karbear


Now I get to pick 4 other Blog buddies to do this! Tag, you're it:
1. Annie
2. Ann
3. Diana
4. Mom

Just an update

Nothing really exciting to post about today, but I thought I'd just do a little update on what we've been up to the last week or so.
For starters my foot is healing very slowly. Its driving me crazy. I finally went into the Dr. and he thinks I tore 2 of the tendons that connect your ankle and foot bone. So I have to wear a brace when I'm walking and keep it wrapped the rest of the time. If its not feeling better by the middle of next week I have to have xrays to look for a fracture. They said it can take a few weeks for small fractures to show up on an xray so that's why they haven't done one yet. So we'll see, it does pretty good when wrapped, otherwise it hurts. Urgh.
But we have a nice slow week!! I only babysit this Friday, oh yeah, for those who don't know I worked everything out and am still doing daycare. So anyways they only need me fri this week so that's nice. And I have only one cake due fri morning.
The rest of the week we have just been taking it easy. Playing and coloring and painting. We got Parker some new coloring books and art supplies, taking advantage of the back to school sales. He got a book full of mazes, that I thought would be really hard for him, but he loves it! Its so cute, he traces it with his finger to determine where to go, then after he has it figured out he used the crayon to do it. He does really well and has already done half the book. We also got a paint with water book. I've decided this is my favorite type of painting :). No mess!
We went out shopping for a while yesterday morning and the rest of the day my foot hurt, so I think we'll take it easier today. My mom is coming over so that will be fun :).
The main thing I'm working on right now is completing my database of recipes. I've decided that if I really want to do this cake thing I need to be legal so I don't get myself into trouble. If I knew enough people that needed cakes I wouldn't worry about it right now. Since you can do cakes for friends and family w/o a licensed business. But since I've been advertising to try to find more opportunities that complicates it a little. So I either need everyone to convinced their friends to let me make cake for them :) and I can charge just for ingerdients and then if they want to donate for my time :) Or I need to have a real business. In order to do that I have to get a cottage licence. This means that I need to write down all my recipes and processes and submit them to someone to make sure they aren't potentially hazardous. Then there is a long list of requirements, not as tough as I thought, but still a pain. I think it will make our renters insurance higher :(. I also have to have a letter from the city zoning saying that I can have a home based business here. Lots to do, but its not to expensive and would be nice to be able to advertise more without worrying about getting in trouble :). I guess I'd better check my lease too and make sure its okay. Anyways for starters I'm going to just get all my recipes together and organized. The cool thing is my program that I use has a new feature that saves all the costs for individual ingredients. That makes it much easier to figure it all. And right now I pay $5/month to use it, but they've changed it so you can just pay once and have it forever. Its 100$, but I don't have to pay it all until my year subscription expires. And then I'll only owe $29 more. So I'm excited about that.
Anyway other than that not much is going on. Gotta get this foot better, but it is nice to have an excuse to just relax and slow down a bit.

My boys

Here are some new pics of my boys. Grandma got them some new duds so we had to take some pics.

KC was sitting side ways in his booster, Can you see his little foot on the side? I love it when they match!!

In this one Kc is looking at his Daddy off to the side. He absolutely adores him. He hardly notices me when Daddy is around. Its the sweetest thing ever.

We loved Sarah idea with the pizzas so we tried it out and Parker loved doing it! Although I think he ate half the olives before they ever made it on the pizza :)

Butterfly Garden for Addison

Here's the latest cake. I did it today for a little girls 1st b-day tomorrow. I did a sheet cake for the party guests and a small "smash" cake for baby Addison.

The flowers and bugs are made from royal icing.

I'm really excited about it because its the first time I didn't feel like the writing on the cake makes it look stupid! I'm not very good at writing with icing so I'm happy this one turned out well.

The bib is a picture the mom sent me to try to match the cake theme to.

Comments

I added a new page to my website where I can put customer comments. The girl I did the last wedding cake for sent me an email telling me she loved the cake! I thought it would be good to help build my business if I added these comments to the site. Too bad I deleted the other girls already, but oh well. So I just wondered is anyone else that's had my cakes would add their comment too? You can email it to cakeventures@hotmail.com then I can put it on. Thanks guys!!

Toy Recall

Hey just thought I'd pass this along since so many of us out there have little kids. This is a recall from fisher price for dozens of toys because of lead paint.
http://www.service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod