Mad Respect

I have 3 friends that I know of who decorate cakes on a regular basis. I, on the other hand, have designed and decorated exactly two cakes in the past 6 years; one on Kiersta's first birthday and one on Kyle's first birthday. Now that I've done those two, I'm done. I don't know how these 3 lovely ladies do it. All I know is that I have mad respect for their amazing talents.

I'll let my pictures do the talking of my cake making abilities:

I made two cakes. The first was a lemon cake that turned out just fine and didn't require photographic proof, though maybe I should have just to show that I am capable of baking a cake. This is a white cake that didn't like coming out of the pan. A little frosting will hide the problem, right?

So I took one layer of lemon cake and one layer of white cake and cubed them and added frosting between and around. The frosting was going on too thick so I microwaved it and made more of an icing. I still had difficulties. Just so you know, I'm attempting to make a pile of blocks, can't you tell?

I piped on blue decorating icing and that actually gave the cake a little dimension. You can kind of tell that they are blocks, though the blocks may be in the middle of falling down after being kicked over by a deranged baker.

With green icing I decorated each side of the blocks. You can tell they're blocks but they are definitely falling over.

Here's the birthday boy with his cake and his big sister blowing out the candle. Kyle really doesn't look like he know what to make of this monstrosity.

Kyle figured things out. He decided to destroy the cake, well at least the one block we gave him. He looks a bit like a crazed clown in this picture.

Luckily I had ordered a back-up cake from Safeway. Safeway gives a small cake to kids for free on their first birthday with the purchase of a quarter sheet or larger. We were expecting about 45 people for this party and I wanted to make sure I had enough cake to go around. Plus, my husband, Brian, really only eats chocolate cake. He was horrified that my cake did not have a speck of chocolate in it. I ordered a chocolate cake with a fudge center and buttercream frosting. I asked for a blue cake with a block theme (to go with my block cake) since it was a boy's birthday. Here's what they gave me:

That's right a pretty yellow cake with pink icing, pink butterflies, and purple flowers. It just SCREAMS boy cake, doesn't it? I didn't get a picture of the larger cake but it also was pink and yellow and said in pink: "1st Happy Birthday Kyle." About the only thing they got right was the block!

What a bunch of blockheads!

Committment!

Summer is here and I have plans, big plans. I love blogging but I rarely find, or make, the time to write. So goal #1: Write more often. I'm not going to put an actual number of times per week/month, because I don't want to write unless I actually have something to say, but hopefully that won't be a problem, especially if I meet the rest of the goals.

Goal #2: Get my a$$ to the gym on a regular basis. Kyle will be starting back in daycare two days a week starting tomorrow and Kiersta will be attending various day camps for about half the summer. I should be able to find an hour or so a day to workout. If I'm not at the gym, I can workout by going hiking, playing on the Wii, or going for walks. I could even pull my bike out for the first time in nearly 7 years and go for a ride.

Goal #3: Letterbox more! I need to find 28 more boxes in the next 3 weeks to meet my annual goal of 100 per year. I then want to make a good head start on the next 100 for next July.

Goal #4: Get the house under control. My home certainly isn't as bad as those seen on Hoarders, but I'm still not happy with the state of things. I want to do a little each day, with the husband's help, to clean, organize, and get rid of.

Goal #5: Finish Kiersta's babybook. The child is 6 years old. I have done little to no scrapbooking since she was born. This is unacceptable! I love scrapping and I want to find time and space to working on my albums again. At the rate I've been going, Kyle will be nearly 50 by the time I even get around to starting a babybook for him.

Goal #6: Finish reading the Harry Potter books. I'm 2/3 of the way through book #2. I've read a few of the books in the past, but never read the whole series, so now that they're all out, I'm reading them all, one after another (and watching each movie as I finish the book).

Goal #7: Have fun! I want to go to museums, amusement parks, swimming, hiking, and what not. I want to spend time with my kids, my husband, my family, and my friends. I also want to spend time on my own, because I need that.

That's all I've got right now. I'm sure I'll think of more later, but this is a good start.

School ended on Thursday of last week. So far I've worked on goals #1 (with this blog), #2 (hiking over the weekend while camping), #6 (reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), and #7 (gone camping with fabulous friends). I'll be working on #3 later today when I head out on the road for a few hours.

So folks, please hold my feet to the fire and help me be accountable to myself.