The blog is full of nifty crafty things that I would love to try if I had the time. Between cakes, studying for my teaching exam, Katie, knitting, work and everything else I’m in the middle of, it’s hard to find time! (Did you notice that I put work last?? haha)

She has a new book called Crafting with Kids. It looks positively fantastic. It reminds me of some of the craft books we used when we were kids on the days we had off from school. My favorite was one that had all kinds of different kids costumes. My favorite costume? The Uncle Sam complete with KFC bucket top hat!

Anyway, everyone should head on over to her site and check it out. They are giving away a free copy. To enter for a chance go to her site and leave her a comment about your favorite holiday.

Or, if you have my kind of luck, just put it on your list to go out and buy a copy this week so you can craft with you favorite kiddos!!

I’m pretty sure no one reads here anymore since I’ve been absent from posting so long, but just in case, I decided to show a few of the cakes I’ve worked on recently and a couple of pictures from Katie’s first visit to the state fair!

I’m still planning on uploading my sister’s senior pics, but there a quite a few and I haven’t had a chance to do it yet. So keep your eyes open because those will be on their way (before too long, I hope!)

So, here we are. Cakes and Katie. Could it get any better? I think not.

And here is a link to Emily Anderson’s photography blog where you can view pictures of Brodie and Katie both. Hopefully there will be more pictures that I contribute cake to in the future on her site!!

emileeandersonphotography.blogspot.com

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted! Life has been very very busy!

Today I’ve got two new cakes to show you. The third I’m posting tomorrow. I was up late making these, so just remember that when you see them.

They turned out alright, I think. I was proud of my buttercream work even though it melted just a little bit.

Before I show you these pictures, I just want everyone to promise me that they won’t send these pictures into Cake Wrecks? Promise? Ok.

The star cake is a white cake (tastes very good   ) with a lemon filling and buttercream icing. I made it for our cousin Erica. She is throwing a baby shower tomorrow with a “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” theme.

The small blue cake is a peanut butter cake (DELICIOUS) filled with chocolate ganache and iced with chocolate buttercream. It is decorated with marshmallow fondant.

The small cake is going to be sold at the Okfuskee County Republicans pie auction and candidate forum tonight. If I didn’t think that everything was going to sell for a lot I would try to buy it myself just so I could eat it. I tried a little of the trimming and some ganache last night and it was fantastic.

I made another small cake topped with white fondant. It is a red, white and blue cake on the inside, filled with lemon filling and frosted with buttercream. It is decorated with hand made gumpaste roses and small flowers. I think it turned out ok….it was a little lumpy because of the buttercream melting on me as I tried to frost, causing the cake to go a little wonky in the fridge. But we’ll see. I’ll post pictures of it tomorrow

And most importantly a big shout out to the POWELLS! We’re so excited for the new arrival. I was going to give a shout out the baby directly now that we have a name, ect. but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone who might not know yet!!

We’re so excited for you guys and the little cousins are going to have so much fun together! Love you guys

Katie is 9 months today! I just can’t believe it. My little baby is almost walking now…it’s been kind of hard to deal with her growing so fast!

Matt has been gone during the week and coming home for a day and a half to 2 days each weekend for two months now. It’s been hard not seeing him everyday and just getting to talk to him over the phone. I know that he’s had a terrible time being away from Katie. She changes so much while he’s gone!

I also made two cakes this past weekend for one of my co-worker’s granddaughter’s 8th birthday party. They really loved the cakes I think. She sent me a nice e-mail that made me feel great about the work I did and that they enjoyed the cakes so much:

Good morning Callie! I was too busy to contact you yesterday.  Cakes were terrific!  Taylor loved them both and several people asked who made them. Taylor was fascinated by the chocolate art and wants me to learn to make chocolate boots and horses.  The details were awesome. Thank again, Susan   PS. Miss you being here.

Wasn’t that nice of her? I was so excited to have the opportunity to make them for her. So I suppose now I’ll show you the pictures.

Now remember, these aren’t the most fantastic pictures of these cakes. The chocolate one looks a mess in several of these, but in real life they looked pretty good! haha

Also, the bandana cake looks orange in these photos, but it was actually red. I don’t know if anyone knows this, but it is HARD to use food coloring to make WHITE buttercream RED! haha

 

 

The horses, coyotes, cowboy boots, and Taylor’s name on the chocolate cake are made of hand-piped white and milk chocolates. Apparently they were Taylor’s favorite part. This was my first time experimenting with melting chocolate and then piping it into different shapes, but I think they turned out ok, and I figured if they could do it on TV I could too!

I’d love to know what everyone thinks about these, so please feel free to leave any questions or comments for me!

OH! And I completely forgot to post the pictures of the fantastic cupcakes that Katie’s big cousin Kirsten made a few weekends ago at Claudia’s!

Kirsten's fantabulous Cookies N' Cream cupcakes!

There were like a gazillion of them. They were all equally pretty and delicious!!

Don’t these look fantastic? Kirsten decorated them all too. She did an awesome job and they tasted just as good as they looked!!!!

We got to spend our day at Claudia’s with Katie’s big cousins Kirsten and Kevin (she loves them soooo much!), her Erica, Gary, Claudia and Bill. It was a wonderful Saturday filled with great cooking, lots of sweets and some great family time!

We’re really looking forward to this coming weekend when we’ll get to see all of them again for the Palmer dinner. I know Katie can’t wait to play with her cousins and I can’t wait to see everyone!!!

It’s Wednesday. And I. Am. Glad.

It’s already been one of those weeks. It seems like I can’t quite get anything right this week. It all started last weekend and it seems to have rolled over. Blech. -_-

Anyway, got some news to report that should have been reported on Monday.

Katie is now officially 8 months old!!!!!

Is anyone but me having a hard time believing it? My little girl is growing up so fast!

She now has a full repretoire of tricks up her sleeve as well: waving, clapping, standing up, crawling forward…it’s just too cool! As my dearest mom-in-law would say, Katie is just the one!

Anyway, she also (not so officially) weighs a whole whopping 17 lbs! (I weighed myself then Margaret handed Katie to me….probably not super accurate, but it works! haha)

Also, I weighed myself yesterday morning and I have officially lost:

15 pounds!!!

Whoo hoo!! I now weigh 179 lbs. Good stuff. It’s nice to see that all my hard work (not excercise, but keeping myself from becoming a hog…) has paid off.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to Wednesday now. Hope your’s is going better than mine! haha

Last week I said I started my weight loss at 193. That was wrong. I started out at 194.

So, today I weighed in at:

181 pounds!!!!

Isn’t that cool?? That puts me at a total weight loss of:

13 pounds!

The best part about it is that I am continuing to lose weight.

The other best part (haha) is that I’m able to fit into clothes that I haven’t worn since I was a sophomore in college! I’m so excited to be losing all of this weight. I’m also slowly losing my katie-induced stretch marks (I’m probably most excited by that! haha) Anyway, I guess that’s really all for today.

I hope that everyone has a fantabulous week. Peace to yo momma!

Today is Monday, as I’m sure you’ve already realized. I know my body sure realized it when I woke up this morning! haha

First things first. I’ve got to do my accountability for the day, since I didn’t last week. I felt really bad all week since I hadn’t updated like I’d said I would.

So here’s the rundown:

As of Saturday I weighed 183 pounds. I believe that makes 5 pounds since I started weighing after I’d been on Weight Watchers. When I weighed myself about a week or so before I started I weighed 193. So depending on which way you look at it, I’ve lost between 5 and 10 pounds.

That’s pretty exciting. I already feel a lot better, even though I don’t think I look much different. My clothes are fitting a little better, though not a ton.

My goal is to lose 10 to 15 more pounds to put me around 170 or 165. Hopefully it won’t take me too much longer to get there.

On a completely different topic, this morning I saw about 4 or 5 cars with customized license plates. It seemed strange that I would see so many in one morning, so I decided that one of two things were going on this morning:

1. People in Oklahoma simply LOVE customized license plates and they all seem to live in or around the Seminole area.

OR

2. I was being divinely inspired to discuss customized license plates with you this morning.

So, all of these customized license plates were unique, which, of course, is the point of them in the first place, but one of them really caught my attention.

I was nearly to work, sitting at one of the three stoplights that is positioned between me and my office, when I noticed that the black SUV in front of me had a custom plate that read:

JUSTUS3

Now for some reason this just struck me as very cool. I was sitting at the light, deeply pondering if there were in fact, three members of the SUVs family (a mom, a dad and a child perhaps?) when I noticed something else on the back of the SUV.

In the bottom left hand corner of the back windshield was a somewhat small, white window sticker that had two tennis rackets and a tennis ball with the word SEMINOLE forming an arch over them and the word:

JUSTUS

Beneath. I laughed out loud when I read the sticker.  I thought that was the funniest thing, and it really perked up my Monday morning.

(For those of you who may be a little slow this bright and beautiful Monday: the license plate said “Justus” and I thought it meant “Just us”, when in fact the family name is Justus. Get it? Isn’t that hilarious?? haha)

Stupid explanations you probably didn’t really need aside, isn’t that clever? Now I was still inclined to wonder if the family was simply made up of three people or if the Justus’ possibly had three children.

This all brings me to what I really wondered this morning. What would my customized plate say if I had a choice? You want it to make a statement, for sure, but you don’t want it to be too rediculous.For instance, having the name Jessica, you thinking you’re extra hott (yes folks, there is an extra t…to emphasize the extra hotness! haha), and getting a plate that reads:

GORJESS

If you’re gonna get a vanity plate, people, don’t get one that is conceited or a blatant flag for “Check me out!” because who really likes to be stared at while they’re driving? Do you want to be pulled over??

I still haven’t made my mind up what kind of plate I’d have though. I thought about just having something cheezy, like:

AWSUM

But that contradicts the above statement about GORJESS. So, I’m torn and I need a little time to think.

What kind of plate would you have? Let us know!

I did my weekly weigh-in this morning and great news! I’ve lost 4.5 pounds since starting weight watchers last Monday. That’s pretty exciting if I do say so myself.

I didn’t get an initial weight, but weighed in last Wednesday at 189 pounds. I had weighed 194 the previous week (I don’t remember what day). This Wednesday I weighed in at 184.4 pounds.

Isn’t that exciting? It’s nice to see some progress this soon. It really encourages me to keep on trucking and stick to my diet. Hopefully it will not only help me trim down, but help my baby-induced stretch marks to shrink and disappear. I’d really love to FINALLY get to wear that bikini that I bought right after the Husband and I got married, but never got worn.

Anyway, I’ll be gone for a conference until Friday afternoon, so I’ll be back next week! Have a wonderful and blessed Easter holiday, and never forget that Jesus died to save you because he loved you that much.

I’ve declared today “New Pictures of Katie Day” since it’s been so long since I’ve put new pictures up.

The newest ones are from this morning before she left for daycare. I hope you enjoy em.

I’ve also thrown in a few pics of the cake I made for Erica’s birthday. It turned out pretty well, but best of all TASTED DELICIOUS!

For some reason, wordpress won’t let me put these images in order like I’d like to, so they’re just kind of scrambled around up there! Have fun looking around!

So I promised I’d hold myself accountable to you, so here’s what I weighed first thing yesterday:

189 lbs.

Ick. Wasn’t happy about that at all. My target weight is 165 to 170, which I was at when I was in college/high school.

On a lighter note (haha, get it? Lighter?) I tried a few new things for lunch this week, and I have some mixed feelings. Yesterday I tried KFC’s new grilled chicken.

Let me tell you folks…it was AMAZING. I loved. Even more than I love fried chicken. AMAZING. The best part is the meal only cost me 6 points for a chicken breast, mashed potatoes (no gravy), and green beans. It was well worth the money, and I’d eat it every day if I had too! haha

Here’s the breakdown:

KFC Grilled chicken breast  4 points

Mashed Potatoes  2 points

Green Beans 0 points

It was a fantastic meal. I was very impressed.

Now, I also visited McAlister’s. All of their choices are pretty high in points. What I wanted was the 1/2 Sandwich 1/2 Soup special. I needed to have either Chicken Noodle or Country Vegetable soup and a French Dip or a New Yorker sandwich.

They didn’t have the right kinds of soup, so I decided to get the French Dip and a cup of fruit on the side. No tea   just a glass of water.

First, the fruit tasted terrible. I’m not sure why it was so bad, but it tasted like it had been mixed around with other things it shouldn’t have in the kitchen, like pepper, or vegetable oil. haha

The sandwich actually didn’t taste much better, and for the amount of points it took, it definitely wasn’t worth my trouble. Here’s the breakdown:

French Dip Sandwich  10 points

Au Jus  0 points

Fruit Salad  1 point

So, in all, it was a rather unsatisfying lunch. It was such a busy day though, that I didn’t have much time to worry about it.

That’s all for me today. My work day is just about finished and I’m looking forward to heading home. Hope you guys all had a wonderful day, and have a supercalifragilisticexpialadocious (I think that means fantastic!haha) Friday!