Cake Decorating

So I've decided to take on another hobby. This is something I've wanted to do for awhile but never got around to it. Then a few weeks ago, Karen (our niece) called and asked if I wanted to take a class at Hobby Lobby with her and Rochelle. It meets once a week for 4 weeks on Wednesdays. This worked out perfectly for me so I said yes. It's a lot of work, because we have to bring frosted cakes to class so there is some homework but it's worth it. I've been very happy with the results from the first 3 classes. Next week is our final one and I definitely feel like I've learned a lot.

Here's my cake from class 2:


And my cupcakes from class 3:




We learned how to do these cute little clowns in class3:


Callie loved the one I let her have for her 5th birthday:
No, she didn't eat the whole thing. Just licked a bunch of frosting off. She has a huge sweet tooth, just like her mommy. :-)

7 Random Facts

I was tagged by Lan to list 7 Random facts about myself so here goes:

1. I have 6 toes on my right foot.
2. I can not keep house plants alive no matter how hard I try. Amazingly I have 2 right now that have made it 4 months...has to be a new record.
3. I get very grouchy if I get hungry. People who know me well, know to find food for me when I say I need to eat.
4. I'm a librarian who is very organized at work but can't keep my scrapbook organized no matter how hard I try.
5. I can communicate very basically in Spanish.
6. I am a very passionate car seat technician and instructor. (Yeah MI passing the new Booster seat law!!)
7. I love listening to audiobooks on my Mp3 player. I never listened to them on CD or tape but love them in this format.

I know I'm supposed to tag 7 other people but I think everyone who reads this has already been tagged so this one will stop here. Thanks Lan for tagging me!

Random Pictures

From my Shack Trip in mid-March. We had a great time and I got a ton accomplished:

Me scrapping at my table. Not a great picture. Have to remember to find something thinner to layer under that shirt!

One of my favorite layouts I did while there:

A very cute picture of Gabriele that Randy took while visiting the butterfly exhibit at Frederik Meijer Gardens:

And finally two of Callie and Teddy playing:

Putting a paw on Callie's head is Teddy's way of keeping Callie from attacking:

Didn't work this time though. Almost looks like they are hugging if I didn't know they were play fighting with each other:

Easter

Just a few pictures from Easter:

Me and John at Lisa's House:

Gabriele (Randy's Daughter) with the Easter Bunny:

Ice

Here are the long promised pictures of the ice at the end of our driveway. Thankfully the ice is now gone, but when it first started to warm up, we decided it would be a good idea to start chipping off all the ice that had built up. We had no idea how thick it actually was. John started chipping at it and it came up in large pieces that were over 4 inches thick. While we did get all the ice off the driveway, quite a bit was built up on the road, so we had a large drop off when pulling into the driveway. We had to pull in really slowly or we would bottom out our cars.

Driveway with pieces of ice chipped up:


One of the thicker pieces of ice:


John removing some of the larger pieces:

Happy Easter

We just got back from our Easter celebrations and it's after 10 p.m. here but as promised to SANDY and all our Californian family, I give you Heath Dessert:



Ingredients:
2 packagees of lady fingers
2 8oz containers of cool whip
1 package of Heath Candy Bits

Combined cool whip and Heath bits together in large bowl, setting aside a handful of heath bits to garnish the finished dessert. In a 9x13 pan, layer one package of lady fingers. Put half of cool whip mixture over the lady fingers. Layer second package of lady fingers on top followed by remaining cool whip. Sprinkle heath bits to garnish. To irritate second cousins, particularly Karen, offer to put chocolate pudding in the middle or garnish top with words spelled out with chocolate. :-)

Next blog entry will include ice pictures a hopefully a few more pictures from Easter.

Unity Tour Scrapbook

I made a scrapbook for an officer I do carseats once in awhile to help her raise $$ for the upcoming unity tour. She was thrilled with it and while I was very happy to give it to her, I had to take pictures to remember it by.

http://www.slide.com/r/QiWXL79M2j9OUnoctHT9xqWZ0JTc42vs?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

It never ends!!!

Snowed in again. Temps are -25 with wind chill. There is a 100 degree difference between us and our cousins in California. John is just starting to shovel out the driveway. He can't stay out long due to the extreme cold temperatures but he's managed to get a few of the drifts out of the driveway. The State Police have closed different sections of the highway all day. At one point I-96 was closed from here to Muskegon. Over 40 miles! They are advising people to stay home unless it's an emergency. I can't remember when it's been this bad. I've stayed inside all day working on the Police Unity Tour scrapbook which is slowly getting closer to completion. I would help John shovel but I conveniently broke my shovel yesterday. :-)

Pictures from today:

Getting ready to tackle the drifts

The drifts. These are knee high on John. And if you look just above and behind John's car you'll see the very top of our mailbox. That is how high our snow piles are right now and that's before John shovels that part.

Making a little progress.

And a few of John's car which hasn't moved all day. Our winds have been really strong and the snow has frozen in a couple inch overhang off the side of the car.

Going down to one...

One job that is. After working two jobs for almost 5 years now, I have decided that it's time for me to give up my job in Holland. I've loved being there and love the people there but it's time for me to slow down a little. The driving this winter has not been great and it's not fair to other staff to have me calling in all the time. Plus this will open up my schedule to more opportunities as far as my car seat stuff and also my scrapbooking. Looking forward to more time at home with John as well.

And to leave you with a picture for the day:


This is from Dad's Pizza party on the 13th for his birthday.
Back row is Joe, Marie, Julie and Laurie
Karen and Lisa are in front of them.
Me with my back to the camera (my hair acutally looks nice though if I do say so myself)
And of course Dad with his Cake
Oh and Mom is the one on the very right edge of the photo.

Do you want one??

John was very excited to bring home this M&M that he got from a merchandiser at the store.


(Please excuse John's hair do..it's courtesy of Teddy.)

Don't you want one for your house?

A few new favorite pictures & Knitting

Two new favorites of Callie and Teddy:





And my new hobby...knitting. So far I've completed a baby blanket, a scarf for my sister and am working on a scarf for myself.

Don't you wish you were here?

Lovely weather we are having today. Looks like it's going to be a white Christmas much to my dismay. This morning we started with thunderstorms, pouring rain, sleet and maybe some hail. Now we have snow coming down and really strong winds. The local news website says 74,000 are without power right now with an estimated restoration time of midnight Christmas Eve night. My parents lost their power for about an hour but have since gotten it back. We are just praying we don't loose ours. Thankfully most of our power lines are underground so unless they loose a transformer (which is entirely possible) we should be okay. Winds are between 20-30 mph with frequent gusts up to 40 mph. Trees are down all over the place. Snow is suppose to start coming down harder at any time now and continue until morning with up to 5 inches by us, more in some areas. Here's a few pictures from our back deck.

This one was taken earlier and shows our neighbors trampoline standing straight up thanks to a gust of wind. Amazingly it hasn't flipped over yet. Wind must have planted it pretty good into the ground when it set it upright.

And then about an hour later I took these. Visiabilities way down already and you can see the wind gusting. Notice in the first one ou can't even see the trampoline through the blowing snow.

Don't you wish you were here??

Thanksgiving

Just a few photos to share from Thanksgiving.

This was the view from my grandparents house...very appropriate for Thanksgiving.

Then a few from dinner at Steve and Lisa's.

Me and John:

Julie and Gabriele

Looking for toothpicks lost in the Heath dessert...again.

Randy cleaning off the turkey

and his new best friend..Karen and Joe's dog Beasley

I know it's been forever...

It has been a long time since I've blogged but I'm going to make a renewed effort again as not to get in trouble with certain CA cousins. :-) So without further ado I bring you...Turkey Cookies!

Right before Thanksgiving I had Gabriele over to help me create these. The recipe is on the Pillsbury website and was really pretty easy. A little difficult to squeeze the orange frosting for small hands but Gabriele did a great job and we both had a lot of fun.

Up next is Christmas cookies and Gabriele has asked for Elvf cookies. I'm still looking to find such a cookie cutter.

THANK YOU AUNT GENNY!!!

I came home from work today to find a package containing this:





It's a cricut!!! My own personal die cutter. So exciting. I had been debating about getting one but had held off and my aunt just sent me own. I was shocked!! Haven't been able to play with it yet but I'm definitely going to need some cartridges now. It comes with the George one which looks like a great font and has some shapes like flowers as well that you can cut out. Can't wait to start creating LO's with it!! Thank you so much Aunt Genny! It was a great surprise.

LO's from the Shack

Had a wonderful time at my annual scrapbook weekend at the shack. It was wonderful as always, much need and tons of food and fun.

Here are some of the 17 pages (a new record for me) that I created.

This was John's favorite from the weekend:

My favorite: