Pic(s) of the Week - Warm Fuzzies

There are just no words for these...

We're Back!

Finally! We are up and running! Our new fancy schmancy computer came in the mail yesterday. LOVE IT!

Anyway, I have lots to share. Don't be surprised if there are a couple of posts per week, or even per day!

I hope we didn't lose too many of you with the long wait.

Stay tuned!!

Technical Difficulties

Our computer suffered a fatal virus this week. We are in the process of ordering a new one. I hope to be up and running some time in the next week.

Please stay tuned.

Regular programming will resume shortly.

Pic(s) of the Week - Visiting Grandma

Last weekend, our little family flew down to Houston, TX to see my parents. Being Mia's first flight, we did not know what to expect. But she did amazing. No meltdowns, no ear problems.

We had a great weekend with family. Houston is hot and sticky. But to keep our new walker happy, we went on lots of walks...

On Saturday, we visited the Aquarium downtown...

Mia loved looking at all the fish. Small...

...and large...

Time for lunch. She is getting to be pretty good at feeding herself...

But then she had a meltdown, and we had to high-tail it out of there, lickity split...

(Turned out she was teething. She has two more teeth now-total of 8)

After Mia was in bed, we were able to relax and have some adult fun...

Grandma time was short, but sweet...

It's great to be with family...

But, quick as a wink, it was time to say goodbye...

Until we meet again.

Cakes

A few months ago, I decided to take a cake decorating class. Wilton cakes offers classes through craft stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael's. Since I was taking the semester off of school, I thought I would use the time to finally do this. I have been talking about it for a long time. I love to bake and really wanted to gain the skill to properly decorate.
So, I embarked on a new hobby. And I love it!

There are four courses in the series. Each course has four classes - one per week. The first course is an Intro course where you learn basic decorating. How to make the proper consistency of frosting...etc. Now, I love frosting, so this class was murder on my diet. Luckily, after 8 weeks, I am getting a little sick of frosting.

The first cake we made was this rainbow cake:

We had to bake and frost the cake at home and decorate it in class. I have to say, the "at home" piece was like an I Love Lucy episode. Thank goodness for my dear friend Cindy, or I would have never made it. I won't go into details, but lets just say we had to scrape off all the frosting and do it over again. Even then, it was far from smooth. Turns out there is a trick to getting your frosting smooth.

This cake was great, because we learned how to do the star technique that you see on a lot of character cakes like Elmo and Dora. It was embarrassingly easy. However, you have to have the proper consistency of icing for it to turn out well. I would have never pulled it off on my own without that piece of information.

The grand finale cake for this course was this one that I made for Easter:

I got the frosting a little smoother this time. I surprised myself that my roses came out so well. Practice makes perfect for those suckers. And my writing is seriously lacking....but again, perhaps with practice I might get better.

After the first course, I was totally hooked. So I took the second course: Flowers and Borders.

For this one, we spent three classes learning to make all kinds of flowers. These take a different frosting than basic buttercream. For these, you use "royal frosting" which is just powdered sugar and water. This stuff hardens like a rock and will never go bad. So you can make the flowers in advance.

Over the weeks, we stocked up on flowers to make the grand finale cake:

I had a blast on this one. I could pipe flowers all day long. On the last day, we learned how to do the basket weave technique. I was really proud of this cake. By this time, I was getting much better at baking and frosting.

I am no artist, but I fell in love with cake decorating. I am really excited to apply my new found skills.
I start back to school this summer, so I won't take the next course for a while, but I can't wait to go back. The next one is Fondant and Gum paste.
Some day I hope to be as good as my cake decorating idol.
I would love to make Mia a birthday cake like this:

Or this:
And frost cookies like this:

photos by The Good Apple

If any of you think you might be interested in taking these classes, I highly recommend them. The classes are very inexpensive, but all the equipment added up to well over 100 dollars. Also, as I mentioned above, if you don't want to gain 5 lbs, I would give your finished cakes away. My husband wasn't happy that I gave my flower cake to our neighbors, but he will thank me later. :)