Another Birthday Cake

Devin's Aunt (I am so grateful that this means she is now my Aunt too!) had a birthday right before we left for Dallas. I offered to make a cake for a little get together Devin's dad had for her. Aunt Diane is so gracious, humble, generous, loving, and not to mention stylish. She is always thinking about others and is such an amazing example to me. I couldn't decide on a theme so I just went for YUMMY!


I filled this three layered triple chocolate fudge cake with two different types of chocolate mousse (between each layer). I then iced it with a homemade whipped cream frosting (I personally believe that it is THE BEST TASTING FROSTING EVER. I used Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies around the edges and garnished the cake with raspberries and chocolate shavings.

Books

I have built up my library over the last four months in preparation for this summer. I frequented good ole DI and Savers in order to find crazy deals. Over those few months, I spent about $50 and got 35 books! All of them are newer titles that I have been wanting to read for ages. Thrift stores are the way to go to get great deals on books! I've decided to write a little bit about each book I read throughout the summer so that if you're trying to find a good book, you'll have my opinion.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
(For a summary of the book: click here )
The little girl in the book is raped and murdered and it broke my heart. However, this book is precious because it is from Susie's view in heaven, she can see and hear everything that is happening on earth. The book follows Susie's family and close friends as they learn to cope with her disappearance, the gruesome evidence of her murder, and the discovery of who the criminal is. This book is written so well that you can feel the intense grief that the family feels, but you can also feel the peace that eventually comes to them when they come to terms with the reality of the situation. You can see how they carry on with their lives after Susie's death and see how many people were effected as a result of her death. Each member of Susie's family dealt with her death differently and the way that they each coped with the tragedy affected the rest of their lives. This book is very powerful.


Harry Potter
I know I'm a little late in the game, but I finished all of the Harry Potter books last week! I listened to the first Harry Potter book on my 30 hour solo drive to Georgia last year. I read books 2-5 throughout the summer (among many, many other books). I planned on reading books 6 and 7 during the school year but I laugh at the thought of having time to actually read for fun either of my last two semesters! Book Six was GREAT, but it wasn't very action packed. It gave a lot of much needed detail and background leading to Book 7 and it was suspenseful in the end, but Book 7 was my favorite by far. I read all 828 pages in two days. I'm excited to start a Harry Potter Movie Marathon because I have not watched any of the movies. I guess I knew that I would read the books eventually and I didn't want the movies to give away the plot!

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
(For a summary of the book: Click Here)
While on Earth, Eddie felt like his life was unimportant and a waste. He always wished he had moved away and amounted to more. After his death, he is scheduled to meet 5 different people that his life effected in order to help him come to terms with his life and make sense of his death. This book is really short (200 pages) and can be read in a day.
I highlighted my very favorite quotes/ideas from the book:

"No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."

"...He wakes up in the morning and he has a fresh new world to work with, but he has something else , too. He has his yesterday. The way I see it, that's what we're getting here. You get to make sense of your yesterdays." (I love this. Today is the day that you makes sense of your yesterday. Take the mistakes that you have made in your "yesterdays" and help them make your "today" better. Learn from yourself.)

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."



If you have read any of these books, let me know what you thought of the books!
The next book on my list is "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "The Secret Life of Bees," and "The Lost Symbol". If you have read any of them, let me know what you thought!!!

Pax's 2nd 1st Birthday Party

Pax turned 1 on May 15th. Because of this whole "summer uproot your life" thing, Dane and Stephanie decided to throw a party back in April so that all of Pax's family and friends could be there to celebrate. Stephanie planned a huge breakfast birthday party so a cake was unnecessary. Well, Pax just so happened to be visiting Dallas on his actual birthday so I was able to make a birthday cake for the little guy and he was able to have a second birthday party with all of the wonderful technicians of the Vivint Dallas office. Stephanie and I turned to Hobby Lobby (my favorite store in the world) for inspiration and she decided on a Pirate theme. The theme was perfect for his pool party!

A Pirate's Life for PAX!




(I made 12 cupcakes but only pictured a couple)


Stephanie, feel free to take any of these pictures :)

Homeless in Dallas

We arrived to Dallas late last night after an uneventful (that's the way we like 'em) drive. I can say that I am beginning to lose my voice from an all out jam session in my car last night and talking for hours to different people. It definitely made the drive through no-man's-land a lot more enjoyable. After our horrendous drive to Georgia last year, I was very nervous for another cross country drive. The weather channel definitely didn't soothe my nerves because Dallas has been all over the news for tornadoes and other craziness. Needless to say, we packed up anyways and headed out. We left at about 7 pm (what kind of crazy people start a 20 hour drive at night, right?) and drove about 6 hours to the middle of nowhere to stay in a "podunk" little town. We woke up at about 8am the next day to shove off by 9 and drove the rest of the way until about 11:30 pm (12:30 local time because of the time change). Overall, we drove through about everything, a little bit of rain, hail, snow, and a lotta bit of wind. Nothing we couldn't handle!
Anyways, we arrived in Dallas late last night to our extended stay hotel. This is because the company still has not found us apartments to stay in! I was a little bugged about the whole situation but knew there was nothing I could do to hurry the process up. The extended-stays are actually very nice suites. The only downfall is that we had to unload both of our cars because we didn't want to get anything stolen. In a week or so we'll have to load everything back up and re-unload everything into our actual apartments. Luckily our suite it on the first floor right next to one of the exits and right by the pet area for Rush! Definitely the best-case for this specific scenario! Other than the fact that we have to pack, unpack, repack, and unpack again, there is nothing to complain about! These suites have kitchenettes, a nice little gym, a big pool, courtyards, internet, housekeeping, etc.

So this will be our home for the next little bit! I'll update you with our actual apartments!

Family Pictures 2011

I feel so blessed to have Greg and Mckenzie (photographybymckenzie) as in-laws. They are so great to us and we just love them. Not only do we hang out pretty much all of the time, we have a hootin-hollerin good time when we do! It's an added bonus that they are both the most talented photographers around. I asked them if they could take some updated pictures of our little family because it's been a year and a half since our wedding (crazy, I know) and it's always nice to have great quality pictures to look back at. We decided to make a trip out of it and went to the Great Salt Lake. Mckenzie wanted to take Ellie's 4 year old pictures out there and wanted another reason to justify the long drive.

Harrison Danger Deakins

Harrison (Devin and my nephew) turned one on February 22. He is the freaking cutest kid around with the biggest brown eyes and the sweetest smile. If you don't believe me, you can find out yourself!

This is a video that the talented Lilly McDowell made to commemorate Harrison's first birthday! It's so precious that I've watched it several times (mainly because Ellie has been slightly obsessed with it and thinks that it should be played at her house non-stop).

http://picketfencefilms.blogspot.com/2011/03/harrison-day-in-life.html

He's such a stud and he's ALWAYS happy! Lilly is in my Bunco group and I'm proud to say that she did my wedding video as well! Her work is never a disappointment!

Anyways, Harrison, birthday...back on track! McKenzie trusted me enough to make the birthday cake for Harrison's first birthday. It was a monkey theme and I wanted to make something other than a tiered cake. I've done that tons of times before and I never seem to have time to make cakes anymore so I wanted to challenge myself. I found a cake online that I thought was too cute for words and wanted to use that cake as the inspiration for Harrison's Monkey Cake (I'm not going to post the inspiration photo because it was professionally done and would definitely put my cake to shame)

Here's the end product :)



This was my first attempt at shaping a cake, meaning I made a bunch of cakes, put filling between each layer and then had to carve the shape of the monkey's body out of the tower of cake...not as easy as it sounds but it went off without a hitch! I was surprised at my undiscovered shaping skills.

The problem was in trying to cover the head with the fondant. The head was obviously a circle and gravity wanted to remind of its continual pull on everything including monkey heads made out of cake. The head was one of the last things that I created for the cake so it was late and I was running out of patience. I felt defeated when the head eventually crumbled in my hands. I knew that baking another cake would take close to an hour and I knew that even if I baked a whole new cake, gravity would still crumble that darn head. I sank defeated into the couch and watched an entire episode of Ugly Betty before I had an epiphany. I used to cater weddings and I remembered all of the people that had a layer of their wedding cake made out of Rice Krispy Treats. (Note: this is an EVIL thing to do to caterers or whoever plans on cutting the said Rice Krispy Treat layer because 4 inches of rice krispies simply shouldn't ever be cut!)Bad idea for wedding cakes but GREAT idea for Monkey heads! I knew that I could probably go outside and play baseball with the monkey head which meant that covering the head in fondant would be a "piece of cake." (lame, sorry-I had to!)I was right. The rest of the cake went off without a hitch and I was very proud of the end result considering all of the obstacles I ran into!

The only thing that I would have liked to find out ahead of time would be that the homemade chocolate fondant is a lot drier than the regular marshmallow fondant that I usually make. This made it a lot more difficult to roll out and cover the giant cake. Also, the spots that seemed fine when I covered the cake dried out and cracked a little over night...no biggie but just made my heart hurt a little bit.
It was also good to know that (homemade) chocolate fondant is SO good. McKenzie and I decided that it tasted like tootsie rolls. I may just have to make an extra batch just to make little bite-sized balls of goodness.

One of my favorite sayings about making cakes is, "There's no such thing as a perfect cake, you just have to know how to cover up or fix the mistakes." So, don't get sad when things don't turn out perfect, just get a little creative. I did have to do some damage control. The head was pretty lumpy because the rice krispy treat head was a lot bumpier than cake would have been. I covered most of it up by adding a little baseball cap for the monkey to wear. I also covered up some of the cracks in the chocolate fondant by making a little blankie to drape over the monkey's shoulder.

I'm Game...(pun intended)

I seriously would play board games all day, everyday if someone would play with me. I think I might have burned Devin out so I'm available for new board game buddies. It's probably one of my favoritest (yes, I know it is not a word, but I think it truly expresses how I feel about the subject) things to do. I've decided to post the most recent additions to my board game collection so that all of you potential board gamers out there will know my opinion on them. Let's get real, no one wants to spend $30 on something that might be fun. Another reason for posting I guess would be so that you know which games I have so that you can go buy other games. Then you can call me over and I play with you (night or day, I'm there).

Monopoly Deal ($5)
Your house is not a home without this game. You don't have to like Monopoly AT ALL, you just have to like something called "fun." For $5 do you really have an excuse not to own it?


Monopoly-Electronic Banking ($24)
Throw your old board away and upgrade. I have never in my life had so much fun playing Monopoly. I've never been a fan of the tediously long game, but when you have debit cards instead of cash, it is SO fun. Also, all of the properties are US landmarks, the utilities are now cellphones and internet, and the railroads are now airports. It's my newest purchase and definitely one of my favorites.


Ligretto ($10 each set)
This is on my wishlist. Even though I don't own it, I've played it enough to know that this is another game that no one should live without. I've only been able to find it online. Each set is a different color and can accommodate up to 4 people. The more sets you have, the more people can play at once!


Blokus ($20)
This is up to 4 players and is only 20 maybe 30 minutes per round. This game is a slower paced game and definitely makes you think strategically. We played it the other night with a 5 year old (the youngest listed age recommended to play) and she did pretty well considering her age. So all of you with kiddles, it definitely gets them thinking! Love it!



Parcheesi ($8-Walmart)
I grew up playing this game but Devin had never heard of it until I brought it home a couple of months ago. I've always loved this game and it's SUPER cheap at Walmart. It's fun with adults and children catch on pretty quick with a little bit of help. I played with my nieces and nephews (ages 5-8) and they all loved it. Adults have just as much fun! 2-4 players


Cranium ($25)
I got this for my birthday and I love it! I'd played it a ton before but I was so happy to get one of my own. I also love party games that a lot of people can be included in. The best part is that out of all of the friends that we know of that already has the game, we have the newest edition with brand new questions and a cool new board. The board can be folded three different ways to make the length of the game longer or shorter.


Imaginiff ($13)
This game is such a fun party game. You need to play with people that you know, but lets get real, you play games with people you know, right?




Okay so...who wants to have a game night?


(I think I should get some advertising money for all of the good things I said about all of those board games!)