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Can you guess what this post is about?! That's right, my first wedding cake is DONE!!!! It wasn't without its bumps along the way, but overall a HUGE success. Levi's sister was the bride, she wanted something unique, and chocolate and her colors were hot pink and turquoise. the florist didn't do the flower topper she promised so me and my WONDERFUL sous chef improvised.


Without further ado

The top "first year anniversary" layer is a chocolate chip cookie cake recipe with vanilla buttercream that my  sensei Randi Van helped me create.  The middle layer is a Red Velvet cake with the classic cream cheese frosting. and the bottom layer is Chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream outside and my fresh strawberry buttercream inside. The outside is not fondant its modeling chocolate and its "Hoboken style" Baby!
This was fun and a great learning experience and I consider it a great compliment that the couple couldn't wait the year and dug right in!

I'll blog more about the wedding later and post cute pics of the girls but I know there's a few of you who are dying to see the end result!

Spring has Sprung!

Spring has finally arrived in Saratoga Springs! Its been a while since we have posted and we are blaming it on the weather. The weather has been wonderful, the flowers and trees are in bloom and we have been out and about alot.

Torrie took this picture from our balcony. The evenings are beautiful. As the sun goes down we open up our windows and get a nice breeze blowing through. It makes it a perfect temperature in our apartment, it almost makes the miserable winter weather worth it ;)

Torrie made another delicous cake to celebrate

Emma's 3rd birthday. It was so yummy it was

almost gone before we could get a picture.

For Family Night we went to Congress Park with the Petersons to taste the spring water, but it smelled like sulfur so we chased the ducks instead.

There were lots of different colors of tulips,

and of course Emma wanted to smell them all.

Before we went left we went across the street to Coldstone for ice cream. Emma and I shared our uber chocolate ice cream in a sprinkle cone. Who would have thought Emma would have more energy... we should have stopped by here first.

The most exciting news from our family has to be that Charlotte has begun to crawl! For a few weeks now she has been really frustrated when laying on her tummy. Now she is able to scoot herself along and everyone is much happier!

And last, but not least I had to post a picture (actually 2 pics) of what Torrie has dubbed "my mistress"... While she and girls were back west she kept me company. For this bike season I have dressed her in new threads (a much needed drivetrain upgrade). Torrie's only request (so far) has been that I keep her in the garage rather than in the bedroom (where she stayed while I rode the trainer for a few weeks). I have happily complied since spring has sprung!

Recent Events

Okay this is going to be a long one but I promise the pics and the videos are worth it. We have to get caught up on a few of the happenings around here. First off , we finally summoned the courage and put Emma in her big girl bed. we were just too lazy and a little too sick to do this any earlier. Things have been going well and even Charlotte is close to sleeping through the night, :) Here's Emma working hard while daddy poses for the picture. Here's the resident big girl in the finished product, complete with Disney Princess bedding. It was a family affair and we had lots of fun. Emma is quite the taskmaster as we found out, if she wants something done she does her best to make sure it happens NOW. I think it was lucky Levi was so good at assembling the bed, I don't think she could have waited for anyone else to put it together. Those years of long hours and being supportive of his engineering degree paid off for me in this occasion.

The girls are getting along better by the day, which is always a good thing for a mom to see. Charlotte is one tough kid and its a good thing since we all know that even adoring toddler siblings aren't the gentlest people. This picture was from this last Saturday, the girls were cuddling with Levi watching cartoons and I was trying out a sippy cup on Charlotte, it turned into a game of "peat- repeat" with Charlotte being "peat" this time.

On another note, I finally finished Wilton cake decorating course 2, yea!! The finale cake was covered in a basket-weave and was topped with Royal Icing flowers. Royal Icing stays harder than butter cream and is used for stuff like flowers. Over the last four weeks I have learned 6-8 new flowers. However the real triumph of this class was learning and completing the basket-weave in two hours despite some very soft butter cream, Ugh! I wanted to go buy some sugar and fix it but I had to keep going, and there was NO WAY that I was going to disassemble to fix it at home. Oh well its tastes the same and I think its still pretty impressive for a first time. Along the lines of cake decorating is my last story. This is what happens when mom gets caught up in the rush of the hours before class starts and is frantically trying to finish the prep work. Little sisters get baby-napped! I was in a flurry in the kitchen pulling stuff together for class when I realized the front room was WAY too quiet. I turn the corner and they're both gone! My heart just sank, I headed for the hall hoping Charlotte had learned to instantaneously crawl and they were playing in Emma's room, but fearing I was going to find them unconscious at the bottom of our stairs, but I hadn't heard any screaming.... Sure enough they were both fine and in Emma's room. I asked Emma what had happened and she said she needed Charlotte's help picking out a shirt. Then I asked how she got her in there and she showed me. I almost died laughing. Of course the video is a re-enactment but just as funny. Charlotte is one good sport. and the baby gate is a permanent fixture.

We party just as hard......

So it was one of the biggest hang-over days of the year..... Die hard Saint Paddy's day celebrators slumped into work today with black coffee in hand.....

OH WHAT THE HECK DO I KNOW?! I am not one for bubbly or hard stuff or anything in between, I have a feeling even if I did I wouldn't be able to "hold it." In this house we don't need no stinkin' liquor, just bring on the SUGAR!
Per request I sent a festive cake. It was a white cake that was turned BRIGHT GREEN, of course about the color of the dark frosting you see but a few shades brighter! I sent a disclaimer taking no responsibility for any change in any digestive system of any participating eater.... I can't help it, it was fun using a whole bottle of green food coloring! The filling was a chocolate raspberry ganache and while it was a little on the fudgey side, a little hard to cut through... it was still really decadent.

The girls and I weren't quite as festive, we got to spend our day taking 6 month old Charlotte to the Pediatrician for her well baby checkup and immunizations..... So not only is she teething and miserable, but as my kids have a tendency, she got sick from the shots, I can't blame her, 4 is a lot. A "Bright green nose"showed up, oh, I guess she was festive...:) Our saving grace was the teething biscuit which she thoroughly enjoyed as well as some after dinner entertainment. The girls love it when Levi comes home and so while I may get more of the dramatics during the day, the theatrics come out at night. We have a couple of divas in training. Emma has an uncanny way of making us all forget our stresses, even Charlotte as miserable as she was got a kick out of her sister.

Don't worry as weather gets warmer we will find better activities......We hope everyone had as much as we did on this very green day.

A little more time, please.

So I know I was supposed to post pictures of my Valentine's Day cake, sorry I forgot to get any. My last few decorating endeavors have been a little disappointing. I got butter Crisco in hopes of make my butter cream icing taste better, totally forgetting that it was YELLOW! I don't know how I forgot that, guess I hadn't used it enough. Anywho, so the Happy V-day cake was yellow (the inside was a red velvet cake with blackberry filling, Yummy!) instead of white with pink heart outlines, not the cute puffy hearts I was trying to master, sad:( But at least its moist and tastes good. Luckily my errors are appreciated. Here is my clean up crew, a little "drunk" with sugar. In course 2 I haven't had to make a cake every week, since we're practising different tips with different icing and not just trying to master the basics. However, the Demand for a weekly cake is still there, so I've tried to be accommodating, but my timing is goofed up. Last night I attempted to make another cake. I started way too late and finally got to bed around midnight. I had frosted it with a gorgeous blue color and planned on adding a few cute brown polka dots on it in the morning, since it was still setting up. My cute Charlotte has impeccable timing, and I spent my precious frosting time feeding her while Levi was getting ready. I thought that if I added enough brown to the blue I could make it a dark brown. I obviously wasn't paying attention in grade school! It turned out a little different. What would you call this color? I call it "BABY POOP GREEN!" And there was no way that was touching my masterpiece! I ran out of time to fix it and had to send Levi with the plain blue cake, maybe they'll think I'm on a Smurf kick... I'm sure Levi thought I was the frosting Nazi, especially since I intentionally ruined some of the flowers from the last class that I had been practising. He went to put them on the cake and I broke them in his hands. Maybe my artistic flair has driven me insane? I was so upset with myself, for not taking the time. And I have a huge cake with lots of flowers to put together for the class next week. I will definitely be posting pictures, because its going to take me all weekend to put together. Now I know why you can charge crazy amounts for wedding cakes, I'm not even doing a cake close to that caliber and yet they are sooooo time consuming! Until next Wednesday!

This is only course 1, this is only course 1

Well I had good intentions.... .I actually baked the cake and got the crumb layer on, on Sunday evening. This was quite a feat considering our Sunday... but that's another story! Back to the cake, this time I was daring and did a chocolate cake. Dark cakes likes chocolate as you can imagine are harder to frost because you can see the crumbs so much easier. However the class has been helpful and my crumb layer was pretty impressive. I have been receiving requests from Levi and his coworkers and I gave in and added banana pudding ( yucky:}) I don't like it but I don't need to eat it, so those were the flavors. I even got the decorating frosting ready on Tuesday afternoon, I was proud of myself I was actually prepared well before class time.
And then.....

Emma had been acting funny all day, she was saying her eyes were " all better" which is the coined response I get when I want to change her diaper or investigate her nose or in this case her eyes. However, her eyes have looked bloodshot for a few days now and they weren't getting better with rest. I was concerned that it was pink eye developing and so I called and talked with a nurse. I explained and she wanted to see her since it was her eyes, of course I didn't have a car and had to wait until Levi got home at 4:40. The walk-in clinic at our pediatrician's office is open from 5:30-7 pm and my class starts at 6:30 in the other direction. So we were tight on time. Levi ended up taking Emma early in hopes of being there right when the clinic hours changed and I stayed to prep for my class and make dinner. They were the first to be seen however it all just takes time. They left the office at 6:00 and took them 15 minutes to get home, I was trying to be all ready to walk out the door but Charlotte had other plans. Okay sorry that was the scenic route, long story short I was late for class and was very rushed. I had also washed all my tips and spatulas and conveniently left both spatulas at home. That was a problem, I am an artist and I need my tools :) I was late and a little frantic and didn't have everything I needed so this class was a little bit of a disappointment. My cake wasn't as nice, the teacher tried to help me finish and she didn't realize the one of the frosting bags had a hole, and so tiny squirts of green frosting ended up all over the cake. I was a little discombobulated and at one point one of my classmates' daughter told me that I had frosting all over my arm! Sorry no pictures of that, I forgot. But it was a fun class and despite this last cake I satisfactorily completed the course! I have quite a bit to practice but I am excited to learn lots more.

As fun as this class is, its hard for me to be away from my cute little family. I think that they have more fun without me! I hear these stories when I come home of the girls playing nicely together and being cuddly and cute. My favorite story is one about Emma, she'll kiss Levi and Charlotte goodnight and then turn to where I am "supposed to be", kiss the air and say "I kiss Mommy!"

You've been good sports I know that this has been a long ol' post but here are a few funny pictures for you! They really do adore each other, Emma now reads and cuddles with Charlotte. And Charlotte just watches Emma the whole day long, I'm sure just counting down the days, as I am, til she can crawl and then run to follow her. This last picture I don't know what happened but it was too funny not to post !

I am headed to Utah and will miss the first class of the next course, but I might practice when I get back before the second class so be sure to tune in for another cake late next week!