Bryn's Baby Shower

Thursday after work I headed up to Utah to hang out with friends and family and to go to Bryn's baby shower on Saturday. It was great to see so many of my friends that I don't get to see all too often. The shower went very well and I was also able to check off another one of my 101 goals: Design and sew a baby quilt. Thanks Laura and Ryan for letting me stay with you guys, you're the best!

Bryn, her mom Jan, and her sister Ashley

The baby quilt I made for Bryn.

Bryn's having a little baby girl!

Lake Powell Take II

We finally got a boat that could handle Lake Powell, so we had to take it out before the season ended. The weather was perfect, but the water was a bit chilly. Since this boat has a cabin (with a bed) we were able to sleep on the boat. It was nice to not have to spend extra money on a hotel room and take the boat out each day and put it back in each morning. It was a great trip.

Meet my new dog

I swear...life is more about cake for me. But I've been doing all these fun classes and I'm so excited about all the stuff I'm making that I can't NOT share. So...here is my most recent cake. The body is made from cake, the head and legs are Rice Krispies and the rest is fondant...yep, you can eat the entire thing!

My Cake Final

I can't believe it has already been 4 weeks! My cake classes are officially over!!! As much as I enjoyed getting out and learning and meeting new people, I am SO glad that it's done. Two nights a week I was driving to Henderson for the class and then two to three nights outside of class I was spending my entire evening baking, making buttercream, icing cakes, making flowers...it was a part time job. Only I was paying THEM! So now that I have a good foundation, I think I just need more practice until I'm really comfortable with everything.

This was my final cake:

A whole lot prettier than the fish cake, if you ask me. It's a four inch cake, covered with buttercream and fondant with gum paste flowers. I'm pretty excited about it. I love how the marbling turned out. And that just kind of happened by accident. I love when accidents work out even better than the original plan.

Pillow Give-away

Wanna win a fabulous new pillow? So do I! Check out Jori's give-away and enter for a chance to win a new pillow.

The Subway

I have seen pictures of "The Subway" in Zion National Park for years and always thought it looked like a pretty cool place. So when my friend Tosha got a permit and invited Rhett and me to go, we were pretty excited. It's 9.5 miles and took us just under 8 hours to complete and it was absolutely worth every sore muscle that I have today. A portion of the hike is through water and some parts you have to swim, so I brought along a waterproof camera (that doesn't exactly take the best pictures). I would have LOVED to have had my nice camera there, to capture the amazing colors and feel of the place. But I would be too paranoid that it would get wet somehow. Here are a few of the passages throughout the hike:

Fish Cake

So...I finally decided to do it. I've been wanting to do it for years, but it has just never worked out. And now that I'm living much further away and have even less spare time, I decided that there's no better time.

So I called up my local JoAnns (which is an hour and a half away) and signed up for TWO cake decorating classes! Each Monday in August I'll be learning how to decorate with fondant and gum paste and each Tuesday I'll be learning basic cake decorating (mainly with buttercream icing). I pretty much already know the basics, but the instructor has so many useful tips and tricks and it's great getting together with others who share the same interests. It makes for two very long nights each week, but it's only for a month. I can handle that. The instructor has been decorating cakes for 20 years and owned her own bakery for years. She even holds advanced lessons at her house. This weekend she's teaching how to do a topsy turvy cake. And in September she's teaching how to carve a cake, add rice krispies, and then cover in fondant. Plus she's going to show us how to use an air brush to add cool colors. How awesome is that?

Last night we learned how to do transfers. We traced our image with piping gel on wax paper and then transferred it to the cake and then outlined it and filled it in. It was simple enough, but I had never done it before.