Hailey's 1st Dance Recital

What an exciting day. Hailey's 1st dance recital! She did a ballet-style dance to the song, "I won't grow up" from peter pan. Her little costume looked similar to tinker bell...and even though not pictured in the single shot....you'll notice her wings in the other pictures. It was a fun afternoon. All of the dances were cute, the smaller and more clumsy the little girl was-the better the dance seemed to be. I was quite frustrated at the fact that we had to pay...yes, pay to see our own child in her recital. 10 bucks!!! Yikes! The stupid theater didn't even have good air conditioning either! It was so miserably hot in there-we were all just sweating to death! Hailey did well in her dance, but I could tell she was nervous. The best part of the whole night was the curtain call at the end. All the classes took their own turn bowing for the audience and then lined up to let the next group go. At the very end, the owner of the dance company got up and said a few words. During this little speech of hers , Hailey managed to find her way out of line and wandered up to the front so that she could be seen. She was standing near the owner on stage. The owner wanted to recognize the special competition team of the studio, so she asked them all to come up to the front to take a bow and be recognized and then began to talk about how hard they had been working for their positions on this team. Hailey decided that she must have been on the team, and went up with them to take her special bow! I was laughing so hard!! She didn't belong up there! She had no cares or worries....just wanted a special applause from the audience. It was so funny to see how sure of herself she was, and she honestly thought she was supposed to be up there! Hilarious! We were sure proud of her. She did a great job and we are looking forward to more fun things in the future. WE love you peanut!

(Hailey is 2nd one in)

June cakes 2010

Things have been super busy lately. June is the craziest month for us. We have my Dad's birthday on the 11th, a cousin's(niece) birthday on the 12th, Hailey's birthday on the 13th, and our Anniversary on the 14th. To top it off, Father's Day is the Sunday afterwards! Busy month! I had the opportunity to make some cakes this month. Not only did I get to do 2 of my kids birthday cakes, but I had someone order a cake in between! Unfortunately for my Dad this year things were too crazy for his own special cake. I made a stacked cake for Hailey's birthday party and used the top portion for her party, and the bottom portion to celebrate both my Dad's and Hailey's birthday with family the next day. I might have to blackmail my Dad with those pink cake pictures sometime!

Hailey's cake was funfetti cake with buttercream on the top portion, and chocolate cake with a whipped cherry filling for the bottom portion. Both were covered in pink fondant, and decorated with white sugar pearls. Yep....edible pearls. They were good...and really crunchy. The kids all wanted more and more pearls to eat.

This cake was ordered by my friend Rachelle. Her Mother in law was celebrating her 60th birthday and the party was a casino theme. This cake was a blast to make. The new thing for me was the cards. I wasn't sure how I was going to do them...but started looking around and found some card edible images. Edible images are so easy to work with. They are just like stickers...and they look so good! It was easy and a new and fun thing to try! Cake was chocolate with a whipped strawberry filling, covered in vanilla buttercream and wrapped in white fondant. The cake was then decorated in black and red fondant with playing cards and poker chips (made from fondant as well). Thanks Rachelle for giving me this opportunity!

Parker's 1st birthday cake. Where do I start with this one? Whatever could go wrong DID! The cake didn't bake the way I wanted it too, and my frosting kept melting! Believe it or not the frosting was going to be stars all over in white, and then large dots with the colored frosting and number 1 in the middle. The frosting was NOT working with me. No matter what I did I couldn't get it to stiffen up! The stars ended up looking like melted ruffles-SO not boy looking! The large polka-dots turned into big melted blobs of goo. My "red" frosting ended up more pink looking but I didn't notice until after it was already too late. All in all I was disappointed in my melty blob of mess I was supposed to call a cake. It ended up tasting good and I guess that's the whole point. Frustrating to say the least. Oh well. Happy Birthday anyway!

San Diego 2010

Over Memorial Day we took a trip to San Diego. My sister-in-law and family are there just for the summer....and we thought it would be fun to go and visit. The cousins had so much fun playing together, papa and lala came along to enjoy the festivities too. We ate a bunch of yummy food, had a picnic, got to stay at a beautiful hotel, play with family...and the highlight of the trip was going to the beach. The kids loved playing in the sand, and the weather was perfect that day. The girls helped Daddy build a sand castle and Hailey collected seashells along the beach to decorate the castle. Parker enjoyed playing in sand for the first time. The whole eating sand thing grossed me out-but I couldn't stop him from doing it. We had so much fun over our short visit to San Diego and can't wait to go back there someday.

(I was able to go to the San Diego Temple for a sealing while there, didn't take pics because temple was under construction....but it was beautiful!)

Hailey and whit in the sand

The car ride to San Diego
Mommy and Whit enjoying Mexican food

Parker and Papa (his legs) at the beach

Mommy and Hailey

All smiles!

Daddy and girls building sand castle

Parker and cousin Josie playing together

Having a dinner picnic

Papa, Lala, and Parker at lunch

Dan, Merritt, and Stacie enjoying the picnic

Stacie and Josie- 2 cute girls!

Boys will be boys!

Family picture at the beach

We had so much fun and the weather was so wonderful!!

Recent cakes

Here are a few cakes I've recently made. All are buttercream-no fondant. I've really needed to practice my buttercream smoothing...all cakes are chocolate cakes. My favorite! The first 2 were for friends birthdays, and the last one to welcome a baby boy into this world. I had fun with each of them and am forever learning new things with each cake!For Nicole: chocolate cake with vanilla flavored buttercream in layers and to frost cake. Used some luster dust (edible glitter) to brush a little color on top. Piped lines going up and down on side of cake from top to bottom to add some texture.


For Kinslee: Chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream in layers and to frost cake, also peanut butter cups in layers for extra crunch!

For Allisons new baby boy Maxim: Chocolate cake with cream cheese buttercream in layers and vanilla buttercream to frost cake. Used a textured towel to smooth cake...and create a cool design if you look closely. Blue dots and stars and writing done in same buttercream. I made this cake in 2 hours flat! That's mixing, baking, cooling, cutting, layering, frosting, and decorating-I was kind of proud!

Kay's bridal shower

Back in April my mom and I threw a bridal shower for a good family friend. She is getting married on May 29th in San Diego, and then having a reception here in Arizona in June. We played games, got to know each other, chatted, and ate lots of yummy food. I couldn't wait to make a cake! I wanted to try my skills at smoothing buttercream. I haven't done a tiered cake since Dan's birthday...so I thought I'd try the 2 together. Dan gave me a gumpaste flower set for my birthday a few weeks prior to the shower....I had to try something new. The bride-to-be wanted Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting. I thought chocolate sounded good too-so I did both! The bottom tier was red velvet with cream cheese buttercream in the layers, and the top was chocolate cake with cream cheese buttercream in the layers.....both covered in a vanilla flavored buttercream. Decorated with royal icing swags and gumpaste flowers. The topper was also made out of gumpaste and has both the initials of the bride and groom. It was challenging to get the buttercream smooth-but that's something I wanted to practice. The flowers were a new learning experience too-but fun! All in all everything turned out well!

Parker 9 month pictures

This is late. Parker is almost 11 months now, and growing so fast! He has already changed since these pictures were taken! I haven't been uploading pictures since my computer crashed, so I finally decided to use Dan's laptop so I could catch up on blogging. I'm so excited to show off these pictures, we just love this little guy!