Playing Catch-up

It seems this summer I just can't catch much of a break (a bit of foreshadowing here.). :P As I mentioned last time I posted I was going to be spending that week getting ready for my little sister's wedding. That Wednesday as soon as I got off work I went to my grandparents' house to work on the cupcakes and cake for her wedding. Thankfully we had a lot of help. Not only were my mom, grandma and sister there, but we also had my sister's future mother-in-law, our Bolivian sister, her sister and mom helping. It still took me until about midnight to get everything done. We made 23 1/2 dozen cupcakes! :O Half of them were white velvet with a vanilla buttercream decorated with ivory pearls. The other half were chocolate fudge with a cheesecake mousse filling topped with a vanilla buttercream and sprinkled with purple disco dust. I heard there were rave reviews on them! :) After showing a few of them how to do the frosting swirl on top it was time for me to start working on the cake. I had a lot of first working on this cake. It was my first time working with cake dummies, doing a square cake, painting with luster dust and using an impression mat. Check it out... (the feathers on and under it are from my brother's peacock, too!) 

Photo courtesy of Sara Dawn Photography. 

Thursday night was her rehearsal. We thought all the hiccups were behind us finally since the next day was the wedding. Little did we know I was about to have the biggest one of the entire event that night. :( We had had troubles getting her invites done since I was without my computer for so long. The pastor they originally had planned on doing the ceremony wrote down the wrong date and was on vacation. I ran out of ink while printing the front of the programs and was going to have to finish printing them that night when I got home (hadn't had time to pick up ink anywhere before that). The guys' outfits didn't show up until Wed afternoon and quite a few of them were the wrong size and they didn't know if they could get the right ones there in time. Plus just a few other little things here and there. Rehearsal went great and everyone was looking forward to the next day. After having the rehearsal dinner, I helped get some of the decorations up in the church and then we decided we better get home so the kids could get to bed and not be so tired for the next day. Paul and the older two had headed out already and I was finishing up a couple last minute things. I was carrying Kailee out to the car because she was starting to get tired. There was a set of steps that we had to go down to get to the car parked out on the street. Unfortunately the motion light outside the church didn't turn on and while I was going down them I thought I was on the last step but I wasn't. I went down, but managed to keep Kailee from getting hurt. I on the other hand was not quite as lucky. :( As soon as I hit the ground I knew I was hurt bad. I called for Paul telling that I had broke my leg. He sent Michaella into the church to tell them to call for an ambulance. I was in so much pain. I was still sitting there holding my leg off the ground because my foot was hanging at a ninety degree angle from my leg. The local rescue squad came but unfortunately they couldn't give me anything for the pain. I had to wait for the ambulance to come and transport me to the closest hospital. Once there they gave me pain killers that knocked me out because they had to put my ankle back into place since it was dislocated and set my leg because it was broke in 4 places. From there I was transported to one of the large hospitals in our area where I had surgery the next afternoon to put in a couple plates and screws. This also meant that I was unable to go to my sister's wedding. :( I was just coming out of the anesthesia shortly before the wedding started. They had set up a computer in the back of the church and my dad had run a laptop to the hospital so I could watch it over Skype. I remember talking to my sister and my kids and then the music before the wedding started, but after that I don't remember seeing any of it. I got out of the hospital that Sunday.

Paul hadn't used his week of vacation yet this year so he took that first week off so he could stay home and help me get around a bit. That first week was pretty rough. I'm still not able to put any weight on my foot for at least another three weeks and the pain comes and goes yet. I have felt like doing absolutely nothing the last three weeks, which is probably good since I really can't do a whole lot yet either.

I have had a couple new releases since I last posted that I haven't had a chance to show you. First up is this fun collab I did with Jady Day Studio and Down This Road Designs. I was so excited to get a chance to work with these fabulous ladies! Love the way this kit turned out! You can find it under the Twice as Nice Collab category at ScrapMatters.


Image is link to the store.

Here are some of the great layouts the SM CT made with Fair Days.


Next up is this alpha that was part of the Mixed Matters grab bags that were released last week. This week it is now available in my store.


Image is link to the store.

Here is a layout by Melinda using this alpha with my Pretty as a Peacock kit.



ScrapMatters is having a Designer Call! This is the first time in over four years that this has happened. So if you have ever wanted to sell at ScrapMatters make sure to hurry and get your applications in. Image is linked to the blog with more details.



Until next time...Happy Scrapping!

Sneak Peek and Some Catch-up

I finally got around to uploading the pictures from off my camera to my laptop tonight from Paul's cake. It didn't come out quite like I had wanted it. Part of the problem was the fact that I ran out of icing. I had enough to get the grass done, but not to do the details on the train. It took more frosting to get it all frosted than I had expected. It might be do to the fact that I was working with a 10" cake base instead of my usual 8", or it could also be due to the amount of layers I had. Needless to say we had plenty of cake to eat and share. It was the same amount of cake that would make five dozen cupcakes. Thankfully my parents, brother, sister & future sister-in-law came over to help celebrate. So I sent half of the base cake home with them because I knew there was no way the five of us would (should) eat all of that. lol. Paul was pretty happy that he finally got his train cake, so I guess that is what counts.



I can't believe it's already a week into March. We have started our busy time of the year again. It was nice to have a bit of a breather in the month of February between everything. Michaella started volleyball practice last Thursday night and is enjoying it as much this year as she did last year. They have enough girls in her grade out that they are their own team this year, so that helps. We start going to tournaments next Saturday. This year they are every other week instead of every week, so that will be nice. Hunter thinks we need to fill those empty weekend with going to Tae Kwon Do tournaments, though, so we'll have to see what kind of weekends we have coming up. I'm thinking we will wait until the end of the month after he has tested for his orange belt to start going to those.

Dance recital and competition season has also started here. Michaella's winter dance recital was a couple weeks ago and afterward Kailee has decided that she wants to dance, too. Guess next year I will have 2 dancers.   Good thing she will be old enough to start next year.

We are headed up north for competition this year. Since we will also be around several of the rabbit breeders that have the breed that Paul thinks we should get the kids to show for 4-H, I said we could maybe get the kids' bunnies that same weekend. Right now the plan is to get two of them (and yes they will be the same sex because no I do not need little baby bunnies hopping around. ;) ). We already picked up the cage for them last weekend and one of Michaella's friends said she would help Michaella litter box train them. While looking at new campers during the camper show, the kids were looking at them and deciding if they bunk house was big enough to take the bunnies with us. :O

Thankfully just this week my brother and future sister-in-law moved into their new house that is only about seven miles from our house now! My brother has already offered to take care of the rabbits for us while we are camping, so that means we don't need to find a camper that will be big enough to take them along much to the kids' disappointment. lol. Though they are super excited to have them living that close and already have big plans on being able to go over to their house and "hang out". (I think my brother is just as excited about living so close as my kids are. Of course it's not because of being close to me...It's because of Paul. lol.)

And now for what you all probably are wanting to see... :) I'm so excited to show you my next mini kit in my A Year in Pictures series, that I decided to give you a little sneak peek of it tonight.



See you on Friday with the full reveal! :)

A Year in Pictures series

Another birthday... another cake done! :) Actually it was 2 birthdays, 2 cakes and 7 dozen cupcakes. Michaella was born on my mom's birthday. So that meant a cake for each of them, 3 dozen cupcakes for my mom and aunt (who also has her birthday the same day) to take to work, a dozen for Michaella's friend party and 3 dozen extra to put in the freezer for later. I had been asking Michaella since December what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday, but she didn't give me any ideas until about a week before her birthday. She handed me a post-it note with several ideas. One of them just happened to match with what I had been planning on making for her, so that worked out great.



Not have only have I been busy making cakes this past month, I've been working on getting the first kit and other starter items for my A Year in Pictures series finished. When I first started digi-scrapping in 2006, I was only going to do it to create photobooks for my parents and in-laws of the kids each year for Christmas because I was a die hard paper scrapper. Little did I know at that time what it would eventually lead to becoming basically digi exclusive. :) I did great the first 3 years getting them done and printed in time. Then I had Kailee, and I haven't been able to get another one done since. My plan this year is to change that and surprise them with another photobook at Christmas. That is how the idea for A Year in Pictures was born. I came up with a palette in a full rainbow of colors and decided to use that as my base for all the kits and pieces. What's great about this is if you are working on a yearly album or calendar when you are finished it will all be coordinated! The pieces all mix and match, too, giving you numerous options with what you can create. This series would also work great for all of you doing P365, P52 or P12 this year. And with that I reveal to you my new releases for this week.









Also if you are a Disney fan and haven't checked out MouseScrappers yet make sure to head over there on Monday and check out the weekly scraplift challenge hosted by Aussiegirl. The participation prize is by none other than yours truly. :) Hope you like it.

Until next time...Happy Scrapping! :)

My New Store

Happy New Year everyone! Hope your year has started off great. My husband and I rang in the New Year with one of best friends from college. It was nice to have an adult evening. My kids had their own little party at my in-laws that night. lol. Grandpa and grandma took them out for pizza and then they got to go to the video store and pick out a bunch of movies to watch. Something they don't get to do very often now that we have been getting our rental movies through Netflix.

We also had Kailee's 3rd birthday this past week. She was so excited that morning when she woke up. She spent a good part of the day going around the house singing "Happy Birthday to me". She has come such a long way in the last year with her speech and I am so proud of what a hard little worker she is when we go in for her speech therapy each week. She has gone from only being able to say "ma" last Thanksgiving to singing "Happy Birthday" and a whole lot more this year. Her speech therapist is absolutely awesome and Kailee just loves going in to see her each week.

This year she has fallen in love with Rapunzel from Disney's Tangled. Though The Princess and the Frog still holds a very high place in the line up. So of course I had to make her cake for her birthday Rapunzel themed. When my mother-in-law went to the Mall of America in the beginning of December I had her pick up the Rapunzel play set from the Disney Store for Kailee's cake. Kailee was so excited when she seen the finished cake.



Sorry I didn't get this announcement posted earlier. We had a death in the family this weekend and so my computer time has been minimal.

And now for my big news...



It's official! I am now exclusively at Funky Playground Designs. My store opened there on Sunday. So excited to work with the great designers there.

I will be working on getting things moved into my store there in the coming weeks. This week I have my Tea for Two kit and coordinating cardstock in my store. Click on the images to be taken to the store.





Look at this adorable layout that Dawn made using Tea for Two.



I have also moved my Gingerbread Lane collection to Funky Playground Designs.











And now to announce the winner of the $5.00 coupon for my new store...

Ghislaine

Congrats! Please email me your email address so I can get you your code.

Until next time...Happy Scrapping!

Hunter's Cake and Template Freebie

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day yesterday. :)

Last weekend we went camping for Hunter's birthday. Man, what a wet weekend it was, too. :P By the time we came home on Sun we no longer had a black & white Shih Tzu. Instead we had a black one. :O Thankfully on Saturday when we had Hunter's birthday party with his friends it was dry until it got dark. We had the pleasure of setting up and taking down in the rain, too. lol. Unfortunately with all that rain that meant no sitting around the campfire at night too. Good thing we had packed games in the campers to play instead. The kids had a great time as usual, though, so it was all good. :)

For Hunter's birthday we decided to go with a Super Mario Bros. theme. I made funfetti cupcakes with red, green and blue frosting for his party with his friends and a funfetti cake for his family party. The decorations on his cake took me quite a while to make, but I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. Everything on it was edible except for the Mario figurine on the top.











This week I'm thinking about trying a strawberry lemonade cake and cupcakes. I found a recipe that sounds pretty good and it's a flavor Lisa would like to try for her wedding. So I'm going to give it ago. Will try to remember to take pictures so I can post them here. :)

I'm hosting the Tuesday Template challenge at ScrapMatters today. :) You can snag this free template from me in this thread. Since it's the end of May, you have until the end of June to get a page completed!



Here is the page I created using The Design Girl's Fairytale and Erica Zane's If You Give a Girl a Castle that inspired the template.



It's been a fairly productive month scrapwise for me, too. Here are some of the other pages I managed to scrap. :)


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I've got some fun things I've been working on the last couple weeks, hopefully if all goes well I can show them to you soon. :) Until next time...

Happy Scrapping!

Cakes and cupcakes!

Over the last few months I have really gotten into cupcake and cake decorating. I think I've mentioned it before that I started doing them to practice for my kids' birthdays since my youngest can no longer have bakery cakes. It's always been one thing I'd like to learn how to do, too. In January my sister and I also took the first Wilton cake decorating course. Would really have liked to take the one that starts in March too but with Michaella's activities schedule it's not possible at this time. Hopefully I can take the one they have in June, though. Not only have I been practicing for the birthday cakes, but my little sister got engaged in November and is planning on having me do cupcakes and their cake for the wedding. So my kids (and everyone else) have been enjoying eating all my trials. lol.

For Kailee's birthday, I decided to go with a Princess and the Frog theme. She loves frogs and that seems to be her favorite movie at the moment. Whenever you ask her is she wants to watch a movie that is the one she will dig out. I was very happy with the way it turned out. She liked it too because every time she seen it she would go "ooooooooooo". :)

Michaella wanted to have an animal print themed party. So for her's I went all out. Everything matched from the invites to the cupcake wrappers. Even the cake matched. ;) She had also been looking over my shoulder when I was looking at different cake designs awhile ago and spotted the topsy turvy style cakes. She decided that was what kind of cake she wanted. No small orders for this one. It took me forever to get the decorations done on her cake, but it finally got done. I even used two colors of frosting on the cupcakes. Love how they turned out!

Hunter's already got his thinking cap on trying to decide what he wants me to do for his birthday. We'll have to see if he comes up with a more complicated design. lol. At least I have until May before I have to do his. Right now he is talking about wanting a Super Mario themed party.

So along with all the birthday cakes I've also been trying out different cupcake combinations. Whenever we have a family get together I have to try a new combination. I tried to take pictures of them but forgot a few.

In October I made a pumpkin spice cupcake with cream cheese frosting (decided I didn't care for these) and chocolate cupcakes filled with dulce de leche frosted with caramel buttercream (so yummy). For Halloween, I made purple & orange colored vanilla cupcakes with the left over cream cheese frosting from the pumpkin cupcakes.





For Thanksgiving, I did another chocolate cupcake with dulce de leche and whipped cream frosting. Christmas was chocolate cupcakes with peppermint buttercream and vanilla cupcakes with Oreo buttercream (both of these went over very well).

This one was a chocolate cupcake with a marshmallow cream filling and a whipped frosting.



Also gave making cupcake wrappers a go, too. I used my Tea for Two kit to make these.



I had never had red velvet cake before but after seeing it used about every week on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network  I decided to give it a try. So what better time than Valentine's. :)



Of course, how can you make so many cupcakes and not have a little taste tester. lol. Kailee was definitely up for the job! Now whenever I get the mixer out she is right there at the counter with her little mouth open pointing at it, waiting for me to hand over the beater or spatula. How can you say no to such a cutie? ;)



Can't wait to try some more cupcakes (and neither can my family. lol. ;) )

I also decided to give the Design Star contest a try again at Scrap Matters, but unfortunately I didn't make it past the first round this time. :( But have decided to continue to play along to work on my designing. You can find my first round mini here. Tomorrow the second round gets posted and I'm so excited to show you what I came up with.



Until next time...

Happy scrapping!