Let's hear it for music!

So far i've made two cakes that had a music theme of some sort. One was a guitar cake for the worship leader at our church. He's a good friend of mine and an amazing musician. The other was also a birthday cake for a friend. She a bassoonist and is going to school to be a marching band director. Lucky for me when her mom ordered the cake she specifically said she wanted something simple and round. I don't think I could have made a cake in the shape of a bassoon. = ) The guitar cake is a marble cake. The bottom cake is covered in cream cheese frosting and the guitar itself is covered in a chocolate fondant and decorated with modeling chocolate. I really wanted the guitar to have a wood look to it.

The music notes cake is a rainbow chip cake (the bday girl ALWAYS has a rainbow chip cake on her birthday) with buttercream frosting. The decorations are made with both fondant and modeling chocolate.

A Precious Kitty and A Curious Monkey

This Hello Kitty cake was a cake I made for my brothers girlfriend when they came to visit. (She's a HUGE fan.) It was a chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream frosting and then covered and decorated in fondant. This was actually the first time I made a strawberry buttercream. I sliced up and pureed fresh strawberries and it was delicious! I've seen recipes that offer quicker and easier methods but I don't think I could ever do it another way now. I was eating the leftover frosting on graham crackers for a few days. So yummy! = )

The Curious George cake was for a 4 year old's birthday. It was fun trying to create George flying through the air but I think the puffy clouds and cupcake balloons did the job nicely. This cake was white chocolate cake as well as white chocolate buttercream, with a chocolate buttercream monkey.

I was a little nervous about trying to duplicate well known characters on a cake. I mean, it can't just look like any cat or any monkey. I had to get it right. But overall, I was very pleased at how these two cakes came out and i'm excited about trying more characters.

First Two Weddings

To date I have only done two weddings. The first was cupcakes and the second a three tierd cake. They both were fun and challenging in different ways. And go figure . . . a shade of purple was the main color in both. The cupcakes were a mix of vanilla and chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and little sugar pearls. The topper cake was actually a spice cake with cream cheese frosting, (the brides favorite cake) then covered in fondant.

The three tier cake was a white cake with white chocolate buttercream and then covered in fondant with a fondant ribbon. And I really love the look of the round and square cakes together.

8th grade cheer competition

So I finally have a reason to post another blog. I started this blog about a year ago as a way to share with friends and family all the wonderful and crazy things that my "bugs" were up to. So much for that idea. :-) Since its conception i've posted a whopping 4 blogs!! Woo hoo! And that's not to say that we had some wonderful and/or crazy moments either. So for those of you who actually care and wish I would keep you up to date more, I am sorry.

But now, on to the reason why I finally decided to sit down and create this post!

Isabelle just had her 8th grade cheer competition. Again, just like in 7th grade, it was the one and only for the year. But unlike last year . . . NO PERM RODS in the hair! (Thank you Jesus!) Not that there still wasn't the brushing and pulling and spraying. Heck, you could get high off the hairspray fumes radiating from the house where the girls all got together to do their hair this year. And I think it took a solid two or three shampooings before that smell came out of Isabelle's hair.

Anyway, enough about hair. This year the girls took FIRST PLACE!! It was incredible! They had been practicing for months, including Saturdays. And then, the week prior to the competition Isabelle had to be at practice at 6 in the morning before school. As well as practice again after school, some nights as late as 8:00! It was miserable. I felt so bad for her. Especially considering I honostly believed it was too little too late. I had, had an opportunity to watch them perform about a week prior to competition when I went to pick her up from practice. It was NOT good. And I wasn't the only parent who thought so. There was lots of "chatter" among the moms that were there watching. (Dang cheer moms, notorious gossipers.) :-) The consensus though was that there was no way the girls were gonna place this year.

So competition day came and I showed up just hoping that Isabelle would at least have fun. (Well, that and not get hurt.) As I sat in the stands watching the other teams give incredible performances my heart began to sink. If there performance looked anything like it did the week before . . . UGH! Finally our girls took to the mats and for lack of a better term, they BROUGHT IT!! It was amazing! I was so proud of them. Those long hours of practice actually paid off. (A fun side note about their victory; the only team to beat them last year is the team that got second place this year. And apparently this was the first year that team didn't win! They were NOT happy. Heehee.) :-)

This year Isabelle also competed in an individual stunt group. Something Heritage hadn't done before. I was so nervous for her. She was originally only a base but 4 days prior to the competition one of the girls from the group got suspended so they had to bring in someone else to replace her and now Isabelle had to base as well as fly. The routine had to be completely reworked. And even though she was so excited to finally have the opportunity to fly she was incredibly nervous because practices hadn't gone well. I had yet to see this routinue so I had no idea what to expect. I just knew that my baby was nervous. My baby, who thrives under the pressure and loves to get out there and perform. But again . . . they brought it! Their stunt team got 2nd out of around 15 squads. Some schools even had 3 different teams. They were incredible!!

So now, i'll stop telling you how great it was and let you see for yourself , ENJOY!!

It's a bird, it's a plane . . .

. . . No, it's Wondermom!!! Wait, what's happening?! There's smoke! She's going down!! Aaaahhhh . . . CRASH!! Well there you go. That pretty much sums it up for me. One minute I'm on top of the world. I've got things under control (or so I think.) Laundry is done, the house is picked up, there's food in the pantry, and all is quiet. I've fed the dog, ran my errands, got dinner planned, and I even look pretty good today if I do say so myself. But then, catastrophe strikes and down I go. Sometimes it's a big catastrophe, like . . . ok, who am I kidding. Usually it's not big. In fact, usually it's a teeny tiny catastrophe. Like, I realize that Isabelle din't make her bed again, even though I've told her a bizzilion times to get it done before she goes to school. Or Cheyanne wants to argue about when she's going to get her homework done. Even though she knows it needs to be done right after school. Or Noah decides to scream at and punch one of his sisters for watching tv with him (I swear i'm not making that up. He's very possesive of the tv.) Or (ooo, and this might qualify as a big one) I go to pull the laundry out of the dryer and I realize that SOMEONE left gum in their pocket. So now I have to clean up the gum that has melted all over the place.
Whatever it is though, I go from Wondermom to raging lunatic in a matter of seconds. "I'm sorry, Wondermom is no longer with us. Her part will now be played by her sinister, evil twin Psychomom." Who freaks out, slams doors and screams at everyone incoherently. This chick is just a couple wire hangers short of Mommie Dearest.
And Psychomom isn't the only villian that shows up to take my place. There's a few others that just pop in whenever they darn well please. Hormonalmom. Good grief, I can't get her to stop crying no matter how hard I try. Lazymom. She's completely useless. The kids are hungry, too bad. The house is a mess, oh well. And then there's grouchymom. Don't ask me what that woman's problem is, it's best to just avoid her.
But no matter which mommy shows up one thing remains the same. She loves her kids, ooodles and tons!!! She might want to blast them with her laser vision, but she still loves them.
So, every morning I wake up and I thank God for those 3 adorable little twurps. I pray for the strength and courage to be "Wondermom," a true superhero. Then I tie on my cape and strap on my boots and off I fly.

Finally, my cuddle bug

Wow seriously? How awful of me. It's been two and a half weeks since I posted my last blog. Which I guess really isn't that big of a deal except for the fact that my little man has yet to have an entry dedicated just to him. In my defense, I was waiting until I had some video stuff of him too, but that's not working out so well. What can I say the kid just isn't a performer like his sisters. Shocker! So instead of a video, we'll go with pictures.

I can't believe my "baby" is going to be five years old in five days. Ouch. It's so neat to watch your kids grow up. To day by day see them learn new things. But man alive, it really kinda sucks at the same time! I'm officially no longer shopping in the toddler section at stores, the training wheels are gone, and i'm getting ready to buy my son his first backpack cause he'll be starting kindergarten in the fall. Noooo! I'm not ready yet!!

Thankfully, he is still my little cuddle bug though. That's one thing he still hasn't grown out of yet. He's been a cuddler from day one. Even at the hospital after he was born. Because it was so crowded that night, they had to move Noah and me to the pediatric wing . . . where there is no nursery. Which means, I had to keep him with me the entire time. And he didn't want anything to do with that stupid plastic box. But as long as he was cuddled in mommies arms he was fine. It made it a little difficult for mommy to sleep, but what else are you gonna do when 7 pounds of wonderful just wants to cuddle?

And to this day, he still has his moments when he just wants to be wrapped up in mommies arms. I might be sitting down watching TV, working at the computer, or busy in the kitchen. And he'll just come up to me and say, "Mommy, I love you. Do you wanna cuddle?" What else can you do when 47 pounds of wonderful wants to cuddle? So I wrap him in my arms, thank God for this moment, and pray that there will never come a day when he's too grown up to say, "Mommy, do you wanna cuddle?"

hugga bug's turn

My last post was entirely about Isabelle so I figured I better get busy and post again and focus on one of the other two bugs. So this post is all about Cheyanne. She's my little hugga bug. (A name she picked for herself.) For Isaac, Isabelle has always been his "baby girl" and Chey has always been his "Sweets." And then somewhere around the age of two she told me she wanted mommy to have a bug name for her too. And I was happy to oblige her...what was I thinking not having a special name for her as well. So I asked her what kind of bug she wanted to be, and a hugga bug was what she chose.

Now along with being a "sweets" and a "bug" she's also just our "Chey girl" or "Chey." (That 's what we usually call her.) And it's always been fitting because she is our shy one. She still can't order her own food at a restraunt because she's too embarassed to talk to the server. But put any type of camera in front of that girl and goodbye Chey, hello diva! And just like Isabelle, she LOVES to perform. And of course, what little sister just wants to sit back and let her big sister hog the spotlight? Well, NOT this one! So now it's hugga bug's turn!!