The return of...

Fun Fact Friday!

1. I am not able to fall asleep without either a tv or radio (ipod) on.  Absolute quiet has me thinking too much.

2. Pizza is the only leftover I will ever knowingly eat.

3. I have offically crossed the line into preferring beer and wine over mixed drinks. Hope I never go back.

4. I can not bring myself to get rid of a pair of shoes until they are completely unwearable. It doesn't matter if I bought them years ago and the pricetag is still on them. My husband is not a fan of this trait.

5. In honor of my upcoming Disneyland Halloween trip: My favorite Disney villian is Ursula. She makes being a hidious monster sexy somehow. This woman is amazing.

Decorating Class 3

I know I complained a lot about the first decorating class being so expensive, but actually the last couple of classes were relatively cheap. And fun, surprisingly fun. Class 3 we got to decorate cupcakes and make little flowers on them. Here are some of them:

This one here was probably the easiest and arguably the most impressive. Just iced a cupcake with blue frosting. Then make 3 white dots on either side for the clouds and attach them with a sour rainbow strip. It looks complex but is quite simple. 

This one here I over did a bit, the bottom petals are supposed to be a bit smaller, but you get the idea. The teacher also told us a cool way to alter it to make it look like a christmas tree, so I'm set for the holiday season now!

This is one of the roses I did. I did this one with a star tip which is not the "wilton" way to do a rose, but lets be honest, it gets the job done and as you'll see below turned out a bit better. It was much easier to do  as well. The leaves were really fun to make too and I think really gave the flowers life.

This is the rose, not impossible, but hard to do when the icing won't go out evenly through the top. I think if I wanted to fix up the petals with decorating brush I could.

To the left we have a shaggy mum, very easy and fun, kinda like playing with the play dough fun factory again. Above we have tiny rosests, like my big rose, but smaller. Makes for a good border.










These are probably my favorite. They remind me a bit of those flowers they have in Hawaii. I used them a lot in my final cake.

Here are all the cupcakes I brought in to the library. It's amazing how many different looks I could get out of a few bags of frosting. I'm definitely trying out new looks once I have a reason to make cupcakes. I guess the holidays are coming and these are so much easier to make than a full cake.

Baby Fever

So I know I'm supposed to give an update on my decorating class, but I don't have the energy for that right now. It's going well though, and I'll post pictures and stuff later. I'm very jittery from drinking a whole pot of coffee by myself this morning. Why a whole pot you ask? Good question. I'll get back to you on that one. It was one of those good ideas I have like finishing the bottle of wine by myself or eating all the pasta so I don't have to throw any out.

Last night, I had not 2, not 3, but 4 dreams about taking a pregnancy test to positive results. First off, I hate dreams where I pee, it makes me really scared when I wake up that I'm gonna wake up in a puddle. Second off, I know I'm not pregnant. Like positive I'm not. So what's the deal? I may just have babies on the brain. Last night Ken and I went over our friends house to have pizza with their two and 3/4th kids (she's due in December). Their oldest who's almost 3 loves me. She was following me around all night, constantly sitting on my lap, giving me hugs, really pushing on my biological clock. Ken said I'm not allowed to visit the kiddos til the dreams subside.

I don't know, I mean I'm almost 27, I'm married to my partner of 3 years, I have a house so it's not completely out of the question to have kids, but do I really want them? Ken's great with kids, like really really awesome with them. We had people over to the house a few weeks back and he was playing with the kids in the backyard as if they were his own. He's a father, he just doesn't have kids yet. When I see him light up with kids there's no way I can deny him that.

This will change both our lives significantly though. It means less vacations, no more afternoons at the wineries, at least not for a while, and no guest room (though that's nothing new).I feel like I just got my adult life, am I ready to start my parent one? I feel like this is the time, but I'm enjoying life so much right now I don't want that to change. Is there a way to freeze time for the next year or two where we won't get older? I suppose it's not out of the question to put off having kids for the next couple of years. My parents didn't have me til 30 and even if I waited two years I'd still be ahead of them. But Ken's ready now. I know he is. And having kids might take a few years of trying too. Maybe I should just see what happens. *Sigh* how does one know when's the right time?

The World's Best Puppy

I experienced arguably the biggest loss I've ever experienced in my life this last week. My 15 year old puppy had to be put down last Friday. For the first time in my life I've experienced heartbreak.

I was lucky enough to get Morgan as a Christmas present when I was 12. My mom put a dog bone in my Christmas stocking and told me that we should go find a dog that would enjoy it. This led us on a 6 month journey to find the perfect dog. On May 27th, 1997, our journey was complete. We followed a C.A.R.E. listing to a home with two puppies born on March 25th, a boy and a girl. We had wanted a boy. Had a name all picked out (Homer). But when we got to the home, this baby girl was placed in my arms and immediately started licking my face. We were told she was the smarter of the two. She was not the prettier of the two, as her brother was black and adorable. It didn't matter though, I was sold. I turned up to my mom and said I want her. And then we got to bring her home.

The naming process was a long one. We made a big long list of all the names we would want to name her and then had to pick our final 2 which we would vote on. Mom's was Amore and something else equally lame. Mine were Cookie and Pebbles. Dan's was Kimberly (after the pink power ranger) and Morgan (after Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island). Mom though naming a dog after the town you lived in was cool and therefore won. At first I vowed not to call her Morgan, but eventually I came around.

Morgan was my dog. She was the family dog, but she was really my dog. She slept on my bed every night. She would always come to me when my brother and I would have a contest calling her to each of us seeing who she would go to. I took her on walks. I took her to the dog park with my friend Brian. I gave her baths. Hugs. Flower leis as collars.



One time when I took her to lake with my friends I was swimming across it I look back and saw Morgan swimming after me. She couldn't bear to be apart from me for that long. Once she caught up she tried to climb up on my back. It was hard but I got the both of us over to the other side. It was one of those times that I realized how much she cared about me.

Whenever I was upset, Morgan had a sixth sense about it. She would come up next to me and let me know she was there for me. She came up next to me and just sat as I cried. Not begging for attention or anything, just letting me know she was there. It was the most amazing thing.

Then Morgan starting getting old. We were scared there wasn't much time left for her. To help ease the process we adopted Butters, a maltipoo. This actually helped breath new life into her. She was playful again. Running around. Youthful. It was wonderful. For this reason alone, I will always be thankful for him. It was not meant forever. Slowly she was losing ability to walk. On Friday when I went to visit she had gone from 3 working legs to 2. She could barely hold her head up. Mom told me she'd been whimpering the last few days and wouldn't come in from outside. We knew it was time.

We got a vet appointment and took her in sobbing all the way through. In the waiting room my mom talked to the front desk as I made hazy eye contact with the cataract filled eyes of my once playful pup. She gave me one last kiss.I held on to my sweet puppy as the vet gave her something to put her to sleep. She said after she fell asleep we could leave her there and they'd finish the job. I told her we needed to be the through it all. Morgan slowly faded to dream land in my arms, my brother Dan petting her head, and my mom crying at the door. The vet put in the fatal needle as I wanted to scream I changed my mind and wanted to keep her around. I didn't though. I knew that would be selfish. I knew Morgan needed to move on.

After she had past we put her on the table. Staring at her lifeless body, tears running down my face I was glad I didn't wait til this site awaited me at home. Her death involved her favorite person holding her and her other favorite petting her and staring into her eyes, both of us repeating over and over "Good girl. We love you so much." It's the kind of death I want to have when I'm 105 (which is what she was in dog years). I'm so lucky I haven't lived with her these last 3 years. When I come home to work I'm still greeted by 3 kitties, one of who is laying on me as I type this. I can still pretend Morgan is happily playing at my folks house. I'm sure she is in Doggie Heaven. And when I go, I know I'll see her again.

I made a promise to her on her death bed to never love another dog as much as I loved her. That's a promise I feel confident that I can keep.

Decorating Class #2

This class we actually got to do stuff which was fun. I got to use pretty much everything I bought which made me feel like my money was well spent. It was a little stressful because I got wax paper to smooth out the icing like the teacher suggested. Parchment paper is what I think the teacher meant since wax paper was not affective. Due to this it took me longer to get my cake iced and it didn't turn out quite as fantastic  as I was hoping. Still here's the finished product:

Today I was off by 12 so I gave it another try and think it turned out much better. First split the cake and filled it with chocolate pudding:

As you can see, I made an icing dam with green icing that was left over from the cake I made yesterday. This not only holds in the pudding, but also helps the keep the cake together when I add the top layer:

Now the cake is ready to be frosted! I mixed blue dye with just a little bit of green and it came out with a lovely Tiffany's turquoise:

I was then able to smooth out the lines with parchment paper so it looked rather nice. This would be a great cake to do a stenciled design on, but I didn't feel like mixing up piping gel for it so I just went with the Tiffany theme and added with accents to it and here's the final product:

Now what will I do with this cake? I'm not sure. I already have a decorated cake at home that I don't really want to eat so I'm thinking of bringing it into work and letting people go crazy. The problem of course is if I saw a cake this pretty in the break room, I would not cut into it. And I really want my cake board that's underneath back. Oh well. I'll figure something out.



The most expensive $20 class ever

Tonight is class two of my Wilton cake design. I bought the supplies for it over the weekend and am now another $100 poorer, this was after the other $100 I spent on it already. I hope I actually get use out of these. On the plus side though, I made my frosting and cakes yesterday and they turned out fantastically. Tonight I'm going to have to ice the cake and put a pretty design on the top. This could turn out to be a pretty fun skill to learn as I'll be able to put any design on a cake. The only ones that are coming to mind are team logos, but I'd be happy to make those kind of cakes. I'm also relieved the only two family birthdays coming up are my own and my husband's, that way both cakes can come out looking awful and it won't matter. Anyways, pictures will come later. Wish me luck!

The quest to become even more awesome

As you might have figured out from previous posts, I'm trying this thing where I'm uber awesome and skilled in all things. This journey took me to Michael's where I signed up for the Wilton Cake decorating class. I'm not sure what the real point of taking this class is other than fun bragging rights, but I'm glad I did. The first class was pretty boring as we just waiting around watching the teacher ice a cake while telling us all the new stuff we'll need to buy to do it right. But by the end of class we got to frost cookies which was fun enough.

Next week I have to have a ready made cake brought in along with two kinds of frosting and a whole bunch of new decorating tools. What's worse is I'm not sure if I actually own any cake pans which means that I may need to buy a few of those too. Oh well. I wasn't really that attached to my money anyways. Stay tuned for more cooking updates!

In addition to the decorating class, I have also decided to take up acrylic painting. I've never taken a paint class so this is going a little slower than I anticipated. However, the nice thing about putting paint on a canvas is no matter what the finished product looks like, it's still art. In an attempt to spend quality time with the husband that wasn't video game or tv related, we decided to paint pictures. Like what usually happens when I put my mind to art, I drew something I thought was pretty and could stand looking at. Here's the work in progress:

Stargazer lilies are by far my favorite flower, which is why I had a bouquet of them from my wedding and am attempting to grow them in the backyard. It seems only right that it be my first attempt at art. For my next project, I'm thinking of trying the Sharks logo, but only if I can do it well enough. Gotta show respect.