Le Wedding Cake

Melissa and Steven Adams are a couple from church who just got married August 1st and their reception was the 3rd.  I decorated their wedding cake, which looked and tasted as follows:

The cake table

"And they lived happily forever after"

The wedding topper, which was entirely too heavy for the cake. No, I didn't make it.

Oh, hey! There's the bride and groom in the background.

Red Velvet Cake

Buy your own box mix. Holy cow, watch out for the batter though! This is only my second time working with red velvet, and first time eating it. I didn't realize how much dye is in there! Not a fan.

Orange Creamsicle Cake--the popular favorite

One box white cake mix (substitute orange juice instead of water)

One box orange jello

1 tsp orange extract

Combine and bake as directed on the box.

Almond Poppy Cake

One box white cake mix

2 tsp almond extract

2.5 tsp poppy seeds

Prepare cake mix as usual. Add extract and seeds, and bake as directed.

Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

1 tsp vanilla

2-4 T milk

4 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter and shortening. Add vanilla and sugar. Add milk to desired consistency.

Cream Cheese Frosting (for red velvet and orange creamsicle)

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla

8 cups powdered sugar

4 T milk

Cream butter and cheese.  Mix in vanilla, sugar and milk. And more milk 1 T at a time to get desired consistency.

Slideshow of Cuteness

Shad's been having fun taking pictures of his kids lately.  Namely, his mobile daughter.

Pretty sure no one has ever successfully made safety glasses cute before.

Busy July

Oh boy, am I glad July is over! Now I  have the rest of this month and the first two weeks of September to  get through and then life should settle down.  We were out of town, then had company, Tom's birthday stuff sprinkled throughout the month whenever we could fit it in, the fair, a wedding cake, company again, potty training, out of town again, and now prepping for company again, and another wedding cake.  Holy rusted metal, Batman!

The kids have been great with all the housework to do in between all the fun.  They help me with the laundry cleaning and dishes.  That's Tom in the laundry basket and Katie is rocking him back and forth.

Now he's inviting me to get in for my turn. I told him I'm too big.

They like being sisters until somebody accidentally sits on someone else's face.

Tom has discovered that he likes being upside down.

And Katie applauds him.

Dancy smiles and coos.

Katie starts lots of wrestling matches.

We've had loads of rain and love playing in it.

Dancy is a popular person in our house.

She LOVES the bear mobile on her pack-n-play!

All the 3D movies we've been to lately have left us a collection of kid's 3D glasses.  Katie wears them around all day.  I've popped the lenses out so that they don't hurt her eyes.  Shad took a picture of her reading with me one night and told her to smile.  We didn't know she was capable of making such a nerd face!

County Fair

The last week of July means Norton County Fair.  We didn't go to much of the day time activities, but we went out for the rides a couple nights.  Tom and Katie were ecstatic when I explained on Friday that they were getting special bracelets that would let them ride all the rides as much as they wanted to.

They tried out the flying animals.  Tom could barely reach the button that raised the animal, and didn't have the concept of holding it down to make it go up. So he'd just push the button and release, making the dragon bounce.  He and Katie would shriek with laughter!

Tom chose to ride "The Table Ride."  Given that we had no idea what that meant, we asked him to show us the ride.  The spinning Rugrats ride is what he meant, OBviously, because there's a 'table' in the middle of the cup.

 We spent as much time as possible at the bouncy castle.

And I got to cuddle with my baby.

No fair is complete without a funnel cake.

Would you believe it, Tom remembered his green tractor from last year and bogarted it again.  He turned his steering wheel furiously side to side the whole time, and showed Katie behind him how to do it.  Once when she was in a car on the opposite side from him, he suddenly stopped steering to look around.  When he came around again, he called out to me asking where his Katie was.  I told him she was on a different car and, deciding that was okay, he continued steering.

Katie was happy with her car.

Then they got to ride the flying animals again with this kid that we know from the library. He knew how to operate the button. 

When a Boy Turns Three

July was such a busy month that we hardly had time to celebrate Tommy's birthday, so we did it piece by piece throughout the whole month.  All the elements were there, just not at the same time.  He had an ice cream cone at Grandma's, and a brownie with a candle in it.  The day of his birthday was not only a Wednesday (meaning Shad had to go to Phillipsburg for youth activities in the evening), but it was our week to clean the church, and that night was the only night we had available to do it. My aunt Suzanne and her family had just arrived at our house the night before to spend the night on their way east on a summer road trip. So after I helped get them on the road, I had to do something special for lunch. We were already wearing birthday hats, so I packed us in the van and we picked up lunch from McDonald's drive-thru, got Shad some Dairy Queen, then hit Dollar General for Tom to pick out a birthday dessert and candles.  We had a picnic lunch with Shad at work.

With dessert first.

I didn't even have time to wrap his presents.  He finally got those a couple weeks later.  He got The Incredibles and jumbo lego blocks.  We had a family dinner movie night to watch The Incredibles. He loved it, naturally.  To my knowledge, this boy has never heard jazz music before.  All of the score music for the movie is jazz style, and during the credits, he started dancing.  Oh, my goodness, was I impressed!

http://youtu.be/0Gsv5qiwXdU

We also took him to the movie theater again for Despicable Me 2.  I gave up on trying to plan him a party, which turned out to be a good thing.  All of the friends we were going to invite were out of town on the day I had picked! He loved all of the birthday mail that he got, and Katie was jealous.

We went to the Mexican restaurant one night. Mostly it was because we were painting our kitchen and dining room, and not because of Tom's birthday. Katie took one of my tortillas, bit a hole in the middle, and gave it back to me.

Since it was close enough, we them it was Tom's birthday.  They come and sing Happy Birthday to you in Spanish, put a hat on your head and smash a napkin filled with whipped cream into your face.  And you get free sopapillas. We weren't sure if they'd still cream a 3-year-old, but they did!  I think the guy on the left is getting his phone ready to take a picture, and the guy on the right has the cream.

And they laughed along with us as Tom cried:)

Tom doesn't like to be messy.

Mexico wishes you a happy birthday, kid.

And then he slowly got over it as he got to eat sopapillas.  He does think it's funny now.

And Katie got to try on the hat.

And then I finally got to make him a cake.  He kept talking about how I was going to make his green happy birthday cake, so I decided to make it a monster.  I forgot the horns, but Tom didn't care. 

Tom and Katie thought it was cool that they got to lick the frosting off the candles.

The cake was orange creamsicle flavored.  I needed to test out the flavor for Steven and Melissa's wedding to see if it was good.  It passed the test.  While I was decorating, I had problems with the frosting being too soft.  It was warm in the house and I thought it was just because i had used the oven. Then we saw the thermostat...and that we had left the step ladder out in front of it.  It was 86 degrees inside!  But, having done the cake, Tommy's 3 week long birthday celebration was finally over.  We love our boy and all that he is!