Nice Croutons

The theme for this month's cooking group is salads. I decided to make a traditional green salad with ranch dressing. Well actually it's not that traditional since it's made out of cake. I had a lot of fun with this one. The little croutons are my favorite part. I was asleep before Dave got home last night. As I was getting ready for work, Dave woke up and said "have a nice day at work, and I love the croutons." Then he fell back asleep. I thought that was pretty cute.

Wrapping Station

I love ribbon. I like to buy presents just so I can wrap them. I've been wanting a way to organize my ribbon and paper but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Pottery Barn makes a wrapping station, but it isn't really in my price range and it wouldn't hold all of my paper. So I came up with this inexpensive way to store all of my supplies.

I bought two totes and drilled 1/2 inch holes into the sides. I put 3/8 inch dowels through the holes and strung on my spools of ribbon. Inside of the totes, I secured the dowels with little wooden balls with 3/8 holes in them.

So simple.

In the tote with the lid, I am able to store my scissors, tape and gift tags.

Sneak peak at my new wood floors

Last week we had our hard wood floors refinished. Two bedrooms, the dining room and the family room were all moved out. Most of it's in my kitchen. I love love love my new floors but I am so ready to have my house back. We have to wait 5 days to move heavy furniture back in while the finish is curing. I'm going nuts. My piano is in front of my stove so cooking is out of the question. Luckily I pulled out the electric skillet before we barricaded the cupboards.

Tonight I'm going to paint the baseboards and Saturday we'll move all of the furniture back. Here is a sneak peek of the floors. This is the cowboy room. Above the stars there is a funny boarder with bucking broncos and cowboys with chaps. I've been using this room as a closet for the last three years since our 1950's home is lacking in closet space. I moved my closet downstairs and think I'll use this room as a craft room. Even though the cowboys inspire my artistic side, I think I might change it up this fall.

Spud Day

Every year my home town of Shelley has a celebration for the beloved potato. I haven't been for years and was excited to find out it happened to be the weekend that I was in Idaho anyway for my Grandma's funeral.

Between bursts of rain, we headed out to the city park for the festivities. I was looking forward to seeing the spud tug (tug of war over a pit of mashed potatoes) but it was delayed because of the rain. I did get a free loaded spud and a strawberry funnel cake which I have been craving all summer.

Spelunking

My grandma Jensen passed away on Sunday. The funeral was in Idaho on Wednesday. I took the rest of the week off work to hang out with the family. It was hard to say goodbye to my Grandma but it's been nice to get the whole family together.

On Thursday we all went to Craters of the Moon. It's a national park in Idaho that is covered in Lava rocks. Here I am sitting in a huge green rocking chair with my nieces and nephew at a cute little restaurant in Arco.

I absolutely love my parent's dog Boone. After lots of persuading I talked my Dad into letting me bring Boone on the trip. Here's Boone in the back of the Explorer trying to sneak out of his crate.

Boone and I had a great time hiking around looking at the craters.

I had never been to Craters before and I was really surprised that there were such cool caves to crawl around in.

Here's my dad taking a look around Scout Cave.


When I was taking pictures I wasn't really sure what I was capturing. It's crazy that I can see more of the cave in these pictures than I could see when when we were actually in there.

Lazy Sunday Morning

Dave and Katie basking in the sun after breakfast.

African Violet Cake #2

I have a church party tonight and I was asked to bring a centerpiece for one of the dinner tables. I wanted to make a cake that didn't necessarily look like a cake but something you would expect to see as a centerpiece. I decided to give the African Violet cake another try sans the lumpy pot.

Cooking Class

Last night I went to a cooking class taught by Kelsey Nixon from The Next Food Network Star and Nicole Hill (A Little Sussy). We watched a grilling demonstration on the back patio of a beautiful house in Orem. It was fun watching the girls cook and hearing the dirt from The Next Food Network Star. I was expecting the class to be a little more hands on or to have more challenging recipes though.

I did gets some ideas for the next time I host a party. They made grilled pita with three different dipping sauces. The Pesto, White Bean Purée and Olive Tapenade was very tasty and looked so pretty. I'll definitely give that a try.

Kitty Cat Cake

If you were to ask me what cake I'd make for my own birthday, I would have to say this little cat on yarn cake. I saw this cake in one of my cake books and I've been dying to make it. My friend asked if I would make a cake for her cat lover grandma's birthday. I knew it was time to give it a try. Now that I've made it I guess I need to choose another favorite birthday cake.

Shower Invitation

I brushed up on my Flash skills this afternoon and made a shower invitation for my friend. Click here to see an interactive version. Be sure to mouse over the flowers.

E.A.T. test

My cake made it to Idaho without any problems. TSA kept making comments about preforming an E.A.T. test on the cake to make sure it could pass through security. I told them, "Go ahead, it's made out of Styrofoam!"

Here it is buckled in the seat next to me.


We went straight from the airport to the Fair to drop of the cake. I was the first one there so I wasn't sure what to expect from the other designers.

Turns out my cake was just too little to compete. The winning cake was beautiful though. There were a lot more details than I put on my little cake. I really wasn't sure what to expect. Next competition I think I will be a lot more prepared and hopefully have more time to make my cake special and BIGGER.

Award Winning???

Here is the Little Duckling Cake I made for the cake competition this weekend. I wish I could have spent more time on it. It's been a busy two weeks. I'm not sure what I would have done differently but I don't feel like it has the "wow" factor.

I'm worried about taking it on the plane. Most of the cake was airbrushed so if anything breaks I won't be able to replace it and get the same color effect. Can you tell I'm a bit nervous? Man this post is a downer.

Wish me luck?

Quads

I took a day off of work and hung out with my nephews. We took the quads out and let the kids loose. Here's Grandpa laying down the rules. Stuff like, "I know it feels really good to go fast, but keep it under 15mph" and "If I see you going over jumps too fast, I will come and haul your butt back to the truck."


This was my first time driving an ATV. I was a little nervous at first but got the hang of it before too long. I was out by myself and kept entertained by chasing the huge jack rabbits around the trails.

I always love it when Dave's brother Shayne and his family come to town.

Debbie's Wedding Cake

The wedding turned out beautifully Saturday night. Debbie looked gorgeous and the party was lively.

So here is the wedding cake. The bumble bees were added last minute. Debbie thought they would be cute. At first I wasn't so sure, but when the cake was put together I thought that it worked.


I wish I had a better picture of Debbie and Kylie cutting the cake. I snapped this one really fast beacuse I didn't want to get in the way.

I think we can make it through this

The wedding cake is done! Yeah! I'll post pictures of it after the wedding.

Surprisingly, besides the bird incident, I didn't have any problems putting the cake together. It only took me twelve hours from baking to adding the finishing touches. I'm sure twelve hours seems like a long time, but I was pretty happy that it didn't take longer.

Katie and I are on better terms. She spent the last two days in her impromptu hang out in the garage. Yesterday morning I went to check on her. She was laying on her little bed with the saddest look on her face. I went to pet her and she wouldn't even look up at me. I made myself a tuna fish sandwich for lunch just so I could give her the left over tuna juice (her favorite treat). After I finished the cake and put in a safe spot, Katie was aloud back in the house. It only took her a few minutes to warm up to me again. I've forgiven her for dropping a bird on my cake and apparently she has forgiven me for locking her out of the house for two days. I think we can make it through this.