This is for a friend. My kids are getting tired of not being able to eat my cakes. Luckily I have no more cakes on my schedule. Time for a break! I need a good book to read or a sewing project. Or I could do my laundry.....hmmm. Any one wanna recommend a book?
I have been doing tons of cakes lately. About 1 a week for the last few weeks, with one more next week. It's fun, but occasionally stressful. The most stress comes after they are done and waiting to be delivered/picked up. With 40 little fingers in the house, one almost always finds its way to the cake. I'm getting better about time management though. I usually get a huge head start and then finish early. Now I'm better at knowing how long something will take so it's done right before it needs to be. Leaving less time for mishaps.
This is from a long time ago, I don't think I ever posted it, but maybe I did. Kiara's birthday cake. She loves the show iCarly. It was going to be a lap top, but I couldn't figure out the top so it didn't happen.
Cookie Monster!!!!
I can't see!
Phew! That's better!
Completed cake. For a 1-year-old. The present was the smash cake for him to dig into. Fun, fun!
That's a treat, not poo. Although.....sigh new puppies, I don't need to say more.
We've had her a month or so now so she is bigger than in these photos, although without a point of reference it's hard to say how big she really is anyway.
Baby quilts are my favorite kind to make. 1. You can do whatever you want, they don't have any preferences to consider. 2. They are always cute. 3. They are small so they only take from 3-10 days, depending on how complex and whether you do laundry and clean the house while you are working on it... ;)
This was for my friend in our ward having her 3rd little girl. I mostly used scraps I already had, so bonus!
And since it was the 3rd girl the older sisters needed some doll quilts to match so hopefully when those moments come when they want to be a little 'too' helpful they can be diverted to the dolls...
This was for my very best friend who is having a little boy after 2 girls. Ever since I heard it would be a boy I've had the idea floating in my head that I wanted to do a quilt based on the poem What Are Little Boys Made Of? This is what I came up with. It was so fun to make because I got to do lots of different quilting methods. Regular piecing, paper piecing, applique, and embroidery, then I machine quilted it. I love the way it turned out. I had a small mishap when my embroidery machine gummed up on the last line of the poem, but luckily it resulted in only a small tear that I was able to patch. No way did I want to start over, it took FOREVER to get it all centered and stitched!
A close up of the cute doggies on both of the quilts. I love the little 3D feet that hang off. Fun fun!
This was for friends from law school having their first baby. Josh, the dad, and some other friends threw us a baby shower when we were expecting Kegan, even though we'd only known them a month or so. And they even got presents for Kiara, which is incredibly thoughtful. So I knew I wanted to make something special for them when we heard they were expecting.I got to make this cake for a friend in our ward. Her son's birthday was the same day as his farewell, so if you look close, Happy Birthday is written on one of the stripes of the tie. This combined my clothing making skills with my cake making skills since I had to figure out how to make the collars 3D.
My niece is in town and I decided to make her and Kiara some matching outfits, just for fun. We had a photo shoot when I was done. So fun!
Playing around with Picasa 3 (free photo editing program)
They are almost 'twin cousins.' Only 12 days apart! 
This is a dress I made for Kiara - just because...my friend wanted to see it, so here it is.I think many moons ago I mentioned I was working on a big project. Well, as often happens with big projects....I lost steam. I got one quilt finished and the other three quilt tops sat on my sewing table waiting for me to get a Round Tuit. Well, I decided to give myself some rules. I have a few friends having babies soon that I want to make stuff for. I am also into some good books (culinary mysteries - right up my alley!) and have been spending every free moment reading them... So I told myself no more trips to the library until all three quilts are done. Also, no new baby projects until they are done. Sooooooo. The last three days have been spent at my sewing machine, and here they are!!!!
guest/stuffed animal bed
Payton's bed
Kegan's bed
Zander's bed
And the color coordinated closet. My niece had a Wizard of Oz birthday party. So here is her cake! Complete with rainbow, ruby slippers, yellow brick road, shrivled up witches legs, poppies and lollipops. Oh, and I had a moment of genius when I was picking up the foam core board for the cake plate. What if I glued scrapbook paper on it to make it prettier? And lo and behold, they had some that was blue gingham! (The pattern on Dorothy's dress). Too perfect!
Some darling child stuck his fingers in it before I got a picture. GRRRRR!!!! Considering it takes much yelling and shooing away of my kids to keep cakes perfect before delivery, I was very frustrated when some other kid got to it. But it still looked great and tasted great, so all was well in the end.Awwww! moment:
So a few weeks ago the kids and I were at the dentist getting our biannual teeth cleaning. Kiara came out in tears. "I have two cavities mom! I knew I should have brushed my teeth when you told me to instead of playing around." I wisely refrained from the I told you so and just comforted her. Well today was the day for the fillings. She has been worrying about this ever since. Payton also had some cavities, but he could care less. So on the way to the dentist this morning Kiara (who was quite pale) asked me to turn off the radio. "Why?" I asked. Well, she wanted to say a prayer! What a sweet girl! She went back quite calmly and did wonderfully. She was only slightly shaky when she came out declaring that it was only like a small pinch and she shouldn't have worried about it!
AHHHHHH!!!! moment:
At the dentist I decided to read a parenting magazine after I read the newspaper and caught up on all the Lincoln County shootings and accidents (my home town dominated headlines today). Well, one article caught my eye. It was about talking to your kids about puberty. I skimmed the article thinking "glad this is not eminant in our house yet, but it'll be good to see what it says." Well, it gave an age range of when different things start happening. Ages 9-15. "Hmmm." I thought. "Nine seems a bit early, but ok, whatever." It wasn't until in the car on the way home when Kiara reminded me that we need to plan her birthday party that it hit me. You see, this would be her NINTH birthday. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Parenting is full of questions. When is it time to __________? is a common one. One I am once again contemplating is "When is it time to end naptime?" For every child it has happened at a different age, but I do have an answer that is universal.... When it takes more than 5 minutes to clean up the mess they made in their room while they were supposed to be sleeping....
For example. If they empty all their drawers and sort their clothes into piles by color, that's a quick clean up. If they convert their bed to a slide (move the mattress half off.) That is a fairly quick clean up. If they found a crayon and very artistically decorated the walls/dresser, that a quick clean up, (if you have a magic eraser, and they are magic). If they line up 100 or so diapers into a train, that's a quick clean up. With these examples you must continue to insist on nap time. For everyone's sanity!!!!
However, anything requiring you to get out your carpet steam cleaner and clean the ENTIRE carpet (a spot clean would be different). Well, perhaps nap time is no longer worth the battle.....
100 miles into the ride.
175 mile into the ride
Just before the finish line - 200 miles
THE END of the ride! 
Kegan loves all sea life due to Grandpa Thueson and of course Sponge Bob. So we took tons of pictures for him. We had to include the Jellyfish thanks to Sponge Bob...One kid asked his mom is he could bounce on the tops....thanks Finding Nemo!
the shark and sting ray tankWe had an extended family reunion at Bear Lake with Paul's family. There were about 60 people and we only missed 1 husband who had to work and 1 mother and newborn baby. We had a ton of fun catching up and playing on the beach. Everyday was a different holiday. We had Halloween and Thanksgiving (complete with the tradition meal) and Christmas. (We had Paul's BBQ pork instead of another turkey/ham dinner.) We made a Christmas video of a Christmas story from one of Paul's ancestors which I had a role in...not my favorite thing being in front of the camera....I much prefer being behind it!
Normally pictures of me do not end up on my blog, but today is an exception I guess....
Bear Lake is famous for its raspberries....which happen to be my favorite berry...so we snuck off one night to get famous raspberry shakes. They were delicious. There were two fast food places across the street from each other. One had Famous Raspberry Shakes and the other had "Famous" Raspberry shakes. We had the Famous ones and some other cousins got the "Famous" ones. The ones with quotation marks were MUCH better. Weird.
We stayed at a HUGE lodge with 15 bedrooms. We got two of them, one with a king size bed and one with two bunk beds. The bunk beds were very tall, I had to stand on my tip toes and raise my arms to get this picture. Sleeping was rare on this trip.
A Halloween pinata instead of trick or treating....
Beach time!
Sleep time!Today is the day I catch up on blogging. So a month + ago was Zander's 2nd birthday. His favorite things at the time were trucks so that is what he got for his cake. A Truck! He was so excited for his " 'ruck cake."
A fun time was had by all.Urgh! Does anyone else hate how blogger puts your pictures on backwards??? Oh well.. First is the R2D2 cake I did today... Pretty cool, but compared to my inspiration done by a pro, well, not as great....
This was a super hero cake for my nephew's third birthday. I love those boys!
Both cakes featured my favorite cookies and cream buttercream frosting covered in fondant. Cute and delicious, which is my goal with every cake!
These are the cakes for my niece's birthday. They were inspired by some cup cakes I saw on Cake Central. (Love that website!) I did three mini cakes instead of cup cakes though. They were super fun to make and pretty easy too. I haven't done fondant for a while. But I found a great new recipe on Cake Central that tastes fantastic!!!! My niece wanted a strawberry cake. I obliged and did a Classic Strawberry Buttercream to go with it. I tinted half the cake batter purple, and swirled it with the pink batter. The cake was pretty inside too!
Where to start.....Sometime in the last month or so Zander has changed from a kid that would run excitedly to the tub when bath time was mentioned to one who screams in fear and runs away...He also screams bloody murder when having his hair rinsed. I have no idea what happened to cause this change, but I've tried to be extra gentle and reassuring. Until yesterday. My fury at the Vaseline incident may have scarred him for life....
He found a container of Vaseline that I haven't seen or used since he was an infant. And washed my couch cushions with it. And smeared great globs of it in his hair and on his clothes. The clothes are in the trash. So is most of his hair. The cushions have been scrubbed, dried and then turned over. (Thankfully it was the old ugly couch.) Turns out shampoo will not wash the stuff out. The first two photos were taken after scraping as much stuff off as I could and then shampooing twice. I then tried dish soap, thinking, "Hey, this stuff removes baked on grease, it should work on Vaseline." Nope. Tried twice. No improvement. I decided the hair would have to go. So I combed it all up and took the clippers to it. Too greasy. I chopped it mostly off with scissors then went to the tub for more washings. Finally I got it out, but I had to use some Goop Off stuff we had to get paint off the wood floors....(Don't worry, I read the label, and it was safe, I just had to avoid his eyes-which I begrudgedly did.) Then I used the clippers to even the hair out, and then it was back into the tub for one last rinsing. Poor kid, but he got what he deserved!!!! Then I had to scrub the tub of the hair ring caused by the Vaseline now in the water.....sigh.
Love Payton's face in this....although he didn't get the stuff on his clothes or hair, he did help smear the couch and I suspect he opened the jar for Zander.
The new look. Little booger has no right to look so cute! 
