Gum Paste Flowers

I'm taking a Wilton class at Michaels, learning how to make flowers. Last month we did royal icing flowers and this month we are doing gum paste and fondant flowers. It is so much fun! First...every week I get to play with cake stuff for 2 hours. It's great. Second...they are actually turning out really pretty. I'm kind of impressed with myself. :)

 Roses

 

 Carnations

 

 Calla Lily

Cinco de Mayo

I know this was a few days ago but I left my camera at my parents house. Anyway...Natalie had her very last soccer game on Cinco de Mayo. She has gotten so good this year. Really! I'm not just sayin that cause she's my kid either. :) She is so focused when she is playing and she is always trying to get the ball. She runs like crazy and hates it when she has to sit out so another kid can play. It's so much fun to watch her play and I just love that she loves it so much!

 Before the game started Heidi and Nokie practiced with Nat

 Natalie just being goofy

 Shane ended up being the coach this year. He was so awesome! The kids loved him and he really helped keep them focused. Natalie thought it was pretty funny that her Daddy was the coach. :)

 

Shane was telling the kids what to do and Natalie was waving to us on the sidelines

 

 

 This is my favorite Natalie face. She just started doing that the last couple games. When the season started she was pretty timid but after making her first goal she went crazy! She is such a determined kid!

 This is the Natalie I know and love...waving to her momma as she runs by. She doesn't do that nearly as much this year! :(

 After the game with their new medals. Rylan, Savannah, Natalie and Gabe. It was a really good team this year!

We had a few extra medals so Shane gave some of the siblings medals too. This is such a sweet picture!

After the game we headed to my parents house for a Mexican feast! It was soo good. Seriously...really good. Dad smoked a pork butt the whole night before. For those of you who don't know that is what you make pulled pork out of. But instead of making pulled pork he put Mexican seasonings on it and my mom made taquitos. The best ever.

 Getting the pork ready

You can wipe the drool now :)

 Home made pico, guacamole and the yummy taquitos

 Dad took the first bite...I think he liked it. :)

A Really Perfect Day

Today was so nice! Heidi slept in so we got to sleep in. Yay! Natalie spent the night at my moms so it was just the three of us this morning. We went to Einstein Bagels for breakfast. Even though we had to drive across town to get there, it was totally worth it!  We got the house cleaned up, caught up on American Idol and BOTH of my girls napped. Seriously...I could stop there and it would still be a perfect day but it even got better. 

I took Heidi to Target with me to go shopping for Natalie's birthday presents. I didn't find anything there so we went to the Learning Junction. Heidi played with all the toys while I looked around for a good gift.  They do cute personalization on things there so I got her one of those lap desks with her name on it. I think she's going to love it. :) When we got back to the house Shane and Natalie were just finishing planting our new cherry tree in the front yard. The last one died. We kinda have a problem with killing trees at our house. I have no green thumb at all! We got some tips this time and hopefully this one will work out. :) Anyway...Shane and I sat and the bumper of the van and just hung out while the girls played in the front yard. The weather was perfect...the girls were happy...so nice!

 Nat and Heidi went to the top of the little hill and ran down fast...they thought they were pretty cool. :)

 Then they played on their scooters in the driveway.

 

Just makes my momma heart happy :)

My Baking Trial and Errors

So I have been trying to make a good normal vanilla/yellow/white cupcake with buttercream frosting but I am not having success. I have made lots but they are just not turning out how I want them too. They don't taste bad but they aren't amazing either. Maybe I am just too used to the white cake mix out of a box with the yummy white tub of white frosting. It's sad I know, but that's what I like. Nothing has the same kind of flavor...they just seem bland to me. Dane loves them though...maybe its just cause I'd rather have chocolate cake. Who knows? Hopefully I will find one that I like, otherwise I'll just have to trust Dane's taste buds. :)

Right now I have just a few that I am happy with. I have the Coconut Lime one that I posted a couple days ago. I made a really good chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream but I forgot to take a picture. I have the Pink Champagne one and the White Chocolate cupcake with raspberry filling that I made at my cupcake tasting. I made this banana cupcake that turned out really awesome.

 This is my Banana Nut cupcake. It's a banana cupcake with cinnamon buttercream and walnuts sprinkled on top. This got the best reviews so far. :)

This one needs a name but it is a banana cupcake with chocolate filling and a banana buttercream.  Everyone liked this one too. They were really surprised that the flavors went so well together. I got the idea from James...thanks James! :)

I'm making cupcakes now pretty much every other day. I'll keep posting the ones that turn out good. Let me know if you have any suggestions! :)

The Last Few Days

It has been so busy around here lately. We had a great Easter. We spent the weekend with family, decorating eggs and doing Easter egg hunts. I really wanted to make sure the girls knew that Easter was WAY more than eggs and bunnies so we talked about Jesus a ton. It's kind of hard explaining Jesus' death and resurrection to a 2 and 3 year old but I tried. :) Here are a few pictures...

 The girls loved being able to decorate eggs

 At Grandma and Grandpa's house for an egg hunt...all the grand kids but baby Joshua

 All the grand kids with their Grandma and Grandpa

 Finding eggs at our house Sunday afternoon

 

 All the girls did really really well

 

Then Monday, the girls and I had a cleaning cleaning cleaning day. They both wanted to help so I gave them little projects around the house. Natalie really loved helping me clean. I gave her a baby wipe and she went to town cleaning the cabinets. I will definitely have her do that again...they look great! :)

 Today was dollar Tuesday at Baskin Robbins so we took the girls out for ice cream. Heidi took her nap today so I let her get her ice cream on a cone. Nat, on the other hand, didn't take her nap and had a complete melt down when she found out she didn't get a cone. Thankfully I told her at home before we left for 31 Flavors. :) Once we got there she was happy just to get ice cream in a cup! Heidi made a huge mess with her cone but she really loved it.

 The picture on the right is Heidi doing her new frowning face. She does it to make you laugh...it really is funny. She will frown at you and then give you a big smile and then frown and then smile...all in a matter of seconds. It is so hard not to laugh!! Such a cute kid!

I've also been baking cupcakes pretty much every other day. I'm trying to perfect my recipes. Thankfully I have a ton of people to give my cupcakes away to or I'd be a hundred pounds heavier!! :) Right now I have banana cupcakes in the oven.  I'll post pictures of those later!

The Best Cupcake Ever

So after making all those cupcakes none of them stood out as a really good cupcake. Today I made this cupcake and it was so awesome! Super moist and really yummy. It made me so happy! :)

Coconut Lime Cupcake

Cup Cake Tasting

Shane and I have been talking about me starting a cupcake business for a while now. Nothing crazy...not Cup Cake Wars or anything. :) But I wanted to try out a bunch of recipes and see what people thought before I started selling them to people. Which brings me to the other reason these past few days have been crazy. Since Colie was here she wanted to be here for the tasting. After getting my awesome new mixer, I spent Saturday night and all day Sunday making cupcakes. Big cupcakes and little cupcakes. And way too many to finish in that amount of time! 

 A whole table full of cupcakes

 Just thought this looked cool

 Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

 White Chocolate Rasberry....white chocolate cake, raspberry filling and a white chocolate cream cheese frosting

 Lemon Raspberry...a butter cake with lemon added, raspberry filling and a lemon frosting

 Chocolate Peanut Butter Twist...chocolate and peanut butter swirled cake, and chocolate and peanut butter swirled frosting with a baby reeses cup on top

 Triple Chocolate...Chocolate cake, chocolate cream cheese frosting with chocolate chips on top

 Pink Champagne Cupcakes

 Vanilla Cupcakes with a royal icing flower on top

 This one didn't turn out like it was supposed to. Its a S'more cupcake. Chocolate cupcake and marshmallow frosting with graham cracker crumbs and chocolate on top. The marshmallow was supposed to be really fluffy but I ran out of time. :)

 Heidi really liked the cupcakes. :)

 I passed around the baby cupcakes and had everyone critique them for me. It was really fun.

Last night I was completely exhausted after making so many cupcakes in such a little amount of time. I made 9 different cake batters, 9 different kinds of frosting, 11 total cupcake combinations,  216 baby cupcakes and 132 big cupcakes in 12 hours with one mixer and one oven. Totally crazy!! Lets just say I slept really good last night. :)