family dinners

For Christmas, one of my favorite gifts was a book called, The Family Dinner, by Laurie David. I love our family meal times. In fact, it is my favorite part of the day when we all gather around the table and share in a meal together. It's been more fun as the boys have been able to bring their interesting conversations to the table. It is a special time of the day when we all can share parts of our day with one another and David can hear all about the things we did while he was away at work and vice versa. I love the idea of cooking together as a family. The boys already help me prepare many of our meals but when David is able to join us the evening is so much more special. One night we did breakfast for dinner. Asher and David were in charge of cutting the fruit and preparations for omelets and Jonas and I prepared the waffles.

valentine's day celebrated

We had a busy Valentine's Day, going around town and delivering our Valentine's. Because we were so busy making Valentine's for others, I didn't have time to make the boys a special treat. So, I told them we would get cupcakes. We tried to go just before lunch time and the line was out to the street and you couldn't park anywhere on the street. On our second attempt, we thought the line wasn't bad until of course we unloaded and approached the line to see it was wrapping around the porch. Needless to say, we had a long wait....40 minutes!! But, the boys and I could smell the cupcakes and there was no turning back. We all waiting very patiently and hoped that they wouldn't run out by the time we got up to order.

As you can see, they were worth the wait! Jonas was cracking us up making the most hilarious faces while he ate his cupcake.

Asher savored his.


Cards from the boys with the warning from David that they picked them out so it may not say exactly what they mean.

For instance....

And Jonas has expensive taste, picking a card with the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse song when opened. Jonas carried his card (again, for ME) around all day and just kept opening and closing it!

pre-valentine preparation

The boys were busy last week finishing up their Valentine's for family and friends. They poured out their creativity on paper with paints and used various painting tools-blocks, small and large brushes, sponge brushes. They added cut-out hearts to their paintings for some Valentine flair!! Asher is especially enjoying trying to write his own name.

3 girls, 4 cakes, 1 birthday party

I have been busy cake making/decorating so have been absent for awhile. This last cake order was fun to do and brought new challenges to what I have done in the past. The party was for three girls with birthdays all within a couple of weeks of each other so instead of three parties, they decided on one party with the same theme and same friends. The theme was gymnastics and I really didn't know where to begin with a design. But, thankfully to Google images, I was able to find a cake that fit the description and we altered the colors to match their party theme. I matched the girls' hair color with the girl on top of their cakes. The most challenging part was making the fondant gymnastic girls. I had difficulty with keeping their legs, arms and faces from not falling off. You will see that I had to repair the girl on "Ellen's" cake so her leg isn't as straight as I would have liked. Thankfully, Ellen and her mom were very forgiving and layed back with the it all and were so fun to work with in the design. Each girl had their own 8"round cake to take home with them for their family party and then we did one sheet cake to serve their friends at the the party.




If anyone has had prior experience to working with fondant in this situation, would love to hear any feedback!!