February Cakes

I absolutely adore making cakes. Actually, that's not true, I love decorating cakes. Baking has never been my favorite. Hopefully when I go to Culinary Arts school, I'll learn how to actually make something yummy to put underneath all the layers of frosting and fondant and food coloring and such. But till then, the cuteness will have to make up for the boring old boxed cake mix. Speaking of Culinary Arts school, I'm going. In the Fall (or maybe Spring). In Utah. And I can't wait! While I'm there, in Provo, with so many crazy Mormons getting married left and right (p.s. I too am a crazy Mormon), I hope to make a little extra money by making wedding cakes. But since I've never taken a class or anything, and I've only experimented a few times, with mixed results, I think I need a little practice first. So starting now, I'm going to try to make at least 2 cakes a month. Maybe 3 or 4, if I can find enough people/events to make them for. And once a month, I'll post pictures. So, without further ado, here's February's cakes:

Actually, this is the one and only cake I've ever made not from a box, but that was mostly because I didn't remember I had to make it until the morning of my sis's surprise birthday party and had no way to get to the store to by a mix.

It turned out to be quite a fiasco—not at all because of the recipe, which is marvelous—but by some miracle still ended up tasting alright even after cooking for almost twice as long as it was supposed to.

The weekend prior was my nephew's 5th birthday. He specifically requested his cake to be "Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head holding hands because they're in love." Just disregard Mrs.'s ear falling off and Mr.'s wonky eye. The frosting was quite runny and slippery. Again, a fiasco with the actual cooking side of things. Hmm, I'm not sounding like a good candidate for cooking school, am I? I promise I do an ok job when I actually know what I'm doing, I just have a nasty habit of trying new things that go completely wrong with not nearly enough time to fix them on the days when it actually matters, like for birthdays.

But the kiddos didn't seem to mind.

Ketchup

I know, I know, two more months without a single post. But this time I'm gonna be good, I promise. I've been newly motivated by the many blogs I've started following, you should check them out, they're amazing. There are so many super cool bloggers, some people even make money doing it. Wouldn't that be nice? Someday I'll be cool like them. Until then, here's a little of what I've been doing since November or so.

Dean and Eden (and I) discovered the amazingness of Fraggle Rock.

Dean liked it so much, he decided to recreate the characters.

I organized my sister's craft room...

...and my clothes...

...and the freezer—my sister asked me to do this because she wanted me to make sure we had enough boneless chicken breasts for lettuce wraps, we had 42 breasts, about 25 pounds.

Dean was caught red-handed, literally, trying to get his fingerprints with some pink ink.

I found out that Hunky Dory fabric is the cutest thing in the world. If I could be made into a fabric, this would be it. (Sadly, I think it's since been discontinued, which is extremely depressing.)

I helped my sis make her 4th annual "A Day in the Life of Dean and Eden" scrapbook.

I made some pumpkin cheesecake, fresh from an actual pumpkin, with a friend of mine.

We started out with a pumpkin, unfortunately not pictured, but about as ginormous as this completely unrelated pumpkin found in a pumpkin patch on the complete opposite corner of the country. (Okay, so I just wanted to show you how adorable my other nephew is. He doesn't get on my blog much since he's six states away instead of in the bedroom across the hall.)

We completely overestimated how much pumpkin pulp this pumpkin would make. So after roasting, peeling, puréeing, and squeezing every last drop of water out, we ended up with only two cups.

Can you believe that this much purée...

...when strained...

...makes this much water...

...and only this much pumpkin? It's a slow process.

Dean made a beautiful temple for his toys to be married in, complete with an Angel Moroni made of blocks.

For Christmas, I got to go to my dad's house in Utah, where my three siblings and I were all in one place for the first time in about three years.

And us four plus the two brothers-in-law were together for the first time since my sisters wedding, over seven years ago.

A gorgeous bald eagle landed in a tree in my dad's backyard.

And I discovered how great the zoom on my sister's camera is. All the way zoomed out...

...all the way zoomed in.

We played in the snow

And on our super fun and way-longer-steeper-and-scarier-than-it-looks-from-the-bottom sled run in the backyard.

I got pink eye for the first time in my life.

Eden helped me wrap some presents for Dean, who turned five.

The kiddos made some tasty snickerdoodles.

And I started dating my first ever boyfriend, right around the same time I stopped blogging. Hmmm... coincidence?

***In case anyone is wondering what any of this has to do with ketchup, it was just my lame attempt at being clever with a pun, but you probably already figured that out.