A great relaxing weekend!

So, with this being my last weekend before finals... I probably should have been doing some studying, but after spending all last week scrambling over final projects and stuff I needed a break. Friday I had off work, and Mike came up here. We went and bought footloose and got Chinese takeout from my new favorite place! And just came back to my apartment and hung out. This is something I use to do with my Mom at least once a weekend (chinese and a movie), and it is so relaxing and enjoyable to me. So we had a ton of fun doing that, and then the next morning Mike got up early to do his triathlon. We have had GREAT weather the whole week until this morning it was snowing and raining and just gross. I'm really proud of him for doing it. I worked all morning and after I got off I went down to honeyville so we could watch the jazz game. To my suprise Ava was the one who opened the door for me, with Mike's help, the rest of the night we hung out, watched the game and some TV and played with Ava. It was really nice.

When it was time for Ava to go to bed, she just went around in a circle laying on each one of us trying to get of actually going to bed. Mike was trying to trick her into sleeping here. She is such a cutie and so funny. We had a fun weekend playing with her, and she did really good for it to be her first over-nighter away from home. I hope that Jake and Tina had a great time for their aniversary! And thanks for letting me spend time with your daughter to de-stress myself this weekend!

I just took one final... which I did well on... now only three more to go!

Blackboard is down!

So right now, of course, blackboard is down. Which to those of you who don't know what that means... I can't access any of my classes sites where all the information for my two final projects that are due TOMORROW are located, where I have to submit those projects, and where I can actually email my teacher with questions or concerns, because since blackboard is down, that means that aggiemail isn't working either. I don't have any clue when it will be back up so it's pretty ridiculous!!!

So in sh0rt, I CAN'T WAIT FOR SCHOOL TO BE OVER! I have two projects to do, and four finals next week and then I am DONE! Well, for the semester at least, I am very far off from being done with school alltogether. I think that next semester I won't take so many classes though. I am taking 6 classes, and working full time and honestly, my grades SUCK, at least for me... I hate getting bad grades when I know I can do better, but the free time I do have... which doesn't feel like much I don't want to be studying, I want to relax, and enjoy that time. So I think I may have overloaded myself some this semester. Oh well, we live and we learn!

In other news, I got a new bike last weekend it's pretty sweet! I love it! I have been riding it to school and work all this week and it is so nice and refreshing! I'm so happy it is finally getting warm!!! And the greatest news for me today! Grey's Anatomy is a new episode tonight... the only concern I have is that Mike is suppossed to be recording it... and I really hope he didn't forget... eeek! I love that show! I know it is dumb and stupid, and drama... my mom actually calls it "doctor porn" even though she thinks it is a decent show and watches it sometimes... she just likes to be funny! haha. And Mike won't admit it, but he likes it too. ( He watched it alone for like 5 hours one day... but he says he did just so he could tell me everything and spoil the episodes for me!)

Well... I guess I'm going to drive to Honeyville now since I can't work on my assignments anymore!

Aaarg! Pirate Cake!

So for those of you that have been waiting to see what Simon's "Pirate Cake" would look like, the day finally came to do it! Yesterday I spent the whole day working on it and it was so much fun and exciting! I was really nervous and anxious to start it! I was pleasantly surprised at my cake decorating skills and really happy with the final project! I took pictures as I went, and here they are!



So the cake was actual a 14" yellow cake, it should serve 74 people Amy so I hope your family has a large appetite for his party! I put it on cardboard cake boards covered in a blue cellophane.

The fondant was really fun to color. You basically start out with a white blob and have to knead in the color. It actually turned out the perfect color and really looked like water because it had a marbled effect in it! However, when i went to put it on the cake I found out that some of my edges weren't long enough to touch the board. I fixed it pretty easy by using the sand though.

This was actually probably my favorite part! MESSY! But so fun! I crushed up graham crackers for the sand and it turned out looking so cool!

I put frosting on top of the fondant so that it would stick to it.

You can really see the marbled effect here!
These are some of the extra pieces before I put them on. The shark fins were just made out of fondant and formed. The ship is a bunch of rice krispie treats stacked and smooshed, with the pretzel rod as the mast. The palm trees are pretzels, with green fruit slices cut in half for the leaves and chocolate covered peanuts for the coconuts!

I covered the boat with chocolate frosting and added root beer barels on it, put pretzels on the side, and used tootsie rolls as the cannons.

I really loved the shark fins, they were perfect!
So I had a little bit of a disaster with the palm trees which is why they are gone in this picture. I kept messing with them and broke them so I had to remake them. But this was after I covered the sides with the fish and seaweed and coral.

Here's a better view of the side. Everything is icing, except for the fish which are colored Swedish fish. There are also starfish on the top on the beach.

A detail that I think added a lot was the little waves around the shark fins and the boat, gave it some real dimension.

Here is the final product! This was after I gave it to Amy! The only things that aren't edible are the lego pirates, and the flag on the ship is foam. The treasure chest was a caramel with yellow frosting as the "gold".

Here you can see the ship better. There is also a gummy seahorse on the front of the ship.


Amy and me with the cake! I'm so glad she loved it so much! I loved how it turned out. It was so much fun! Thanks for letting me do it Amy! I hope that it lived up to Simon's dreams! (For those of you that don't know... he really did dream about his pirate cake... haha)

Happy Birthday Simon!

Homemade Fondant

So my new adventure the past couple of months and interest has been:

Cake Decorating

I have been taking classes at Hobby Lobby for the past two months and really have been enjoying it! Well, Tuesdays are usually my day off from work AND school, so it's my free day, and probably my favorite day of the week! Last week, I spent that day practicing some cake stuff and tried making my own homemade marshmallow fondant! It tasted great and I ended up doing it twice because... well the pictures speak for themselves...

Fondant Try #1 SOOOO STICKY!

Just part of the HUGE mess that this made!

Fondant try #1 vs #2

More mess, and another shot at the second fondant, I still didn't get it perfect and have to work with it some more but it was much better! It was way fun making though and a lot cheaper than store bought fondant!

I can't wait to do Simon's birthday cake next week though! It's going to be Pirates! And I have a good idea for it I just hope it all works out!!!