It's OK to eat the cake!

Many people have told me that they would feel guilty eating one of my cakes. It's true, a lot of time and love goes into my cakes, but if you DON'T eat them, they will rot, disintegrate, and just be nasty in a month or two. So PLEASE, EAT THE CAKE. After all, it's meant to be eaten. If you are still finding yourself a little nervous about taking the initial plunge, may I provide a brief visual tutorial.

Part 1. Seeing the cake for the first time, and feeling a sense of guilt knowing that it will soon be destroyed.






Part 2. The Birthday Boy


Part 3. Deciding what to eat first... (Mater or McQueen?!? It's so hard to choose, Mom!!)


Part 4. THE PLUNGE, YUM!


Part 5. Basking in the Deliciousness (No, he's not hemorrhaging from the mouth, it's food coloring)


Part 6. The casualty


The End.
Hopefully this little tutorial has settled some of your nerves about eating these cakes. I promise, they really are very good, and as long as you get a lot of fabulous pictures, you won't feel guilty for eating the cake.

Despite Ashton's grumpiness and refusal to smile for any of the pictures, his birthday was a success. I can't believe my little boy is already one! Happy Birthday, Buddy!! Mommy and Daddy love you tons!

Trip to IDAHO

Last week the kids and I went up to Idaho for a much needed love-cation. Since the move to Vegas, I have been a bit upset about my new surroundings and have really been missing my family. I knew Adam could use the time to work in some overtime or study, so we took off to the cold but oh-so-wholesome land of Rexburg. We had a fantastic time while we were there. Hallie and Tate got along great and rarely fought, Ashton eventually warmed up to the place and Hallie found her new best friend, the "kitty" (apparently my family doesn't wish to become too emotionally connected to the cat, which is why she doesn't have a name). We also got to meet our new cousin/niece, Sydney! What a CUTIE! (and such a nice baby)
It was just wonderful to be with my family and to know that they're always there for me, even if I am far away.



Sydney... love that expression, looks like she's trying to embrace her inner Elvis.


You can never get them to all look at once, so this is about as good as it gets. GO TRIBE


Hallie and Tate doing their favorite exercise... jumping off the fireplace. However, this exercise appears to be a gateway to other, more dangerous practices, such as jumping off the table, jumping off the couch ONTO the table, and so on, so close attention is required.

We had such a wonderful time! Thanks family, for such a great trip (hopefully the kids didn't destroy the house too much)! Can't wait to see you at Christmas!

BYU v UNLV 2009

So, I was able to go to the BYU/UNLV game this w/e. I had a pretty good time and awesome seats. My dad was able to secure 2 row seats on the 35 yd line! ...not too shabby.

Anywho, I brought along my parents uber-camera, unfortunately, I failed to bring the uber-lens. I got a couple decent snaps here and there, but being a night game, the lighting wasn't ideal enough to get some good action shots.

ENJOY!

Game ON! CHALLLLLANGE!
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaBTaok3qG0 )
 

Here’s some ACTION FOR YOU! This was the best, non-blurriest action shot of the night for me…what a budding photographer am I!
 

UNLV’s coaching staff has recently decided that recruiting high-school students wasn’t nearly as effective as recruiting Wild BEASTS! Yeah…and this one is lickin’ his chops. He must be hungry, like Julius PEPPERS!
 

Another recruiting strategy UNLV adopted, Mr. T! I got no time for the jibba-jabba!
 

Who needs Mr. T, when you can have KISS!
 

[meow]
 

Jake and Matty...Matty is pretty much a celebrity at the football games. He frequents the scoreboard with his wicked sick dancing movezzz.
 

-ADAM

50th Birthday!

My dear father-in-law just turned 50! My mother-in-law asked me to make a cake for his birthday in exchange for watching the kids all day for me. That was a fantastic trade-off for me, so how could I say no (I LOVE my kids, but it's just nice to have a break occasionally, ya know)? Anyway, he's quite the runner, he just ran St. George last week, so I made a cake to show off his talent.

A new 'do?

I need a haircut, BAD. Haircut time is always exciting for me, I like to try new things. However, I still don't know of a good stylist in Vegas and I don't want to pay more than $30 for a cut. So the first obstacle will be finding a good stylist (I prefer people that specialize in shorter hair) that fits my budget.
So until I figure that out, I need to find a cut!

Should I go with the trim and keep the cut I have?





Go back to the Victoria Beckham asymmetrical cut?



Try out this cute cut?







Or grow it out? (Not likely, I have no patience)

The Chaos Continues

I told myself I wouldn't post until my life settled down a little bit. Then I realized today that that will probably never happen, so I post now as I have just cleaned the entire house (it's still not perfect, but it's "clean"), haven't showered, and have a to-do list 8 miles long.

The move went well! Thanks so my awesome uncle and aunt who were divinely inspired to call us to see if we needed help moving, the process went quite smoothly. We left apartment living on Tuesday, August 5, and moved into our house on Thursday, August 7. It's so different having 2.5 times more living space than we're used to, and our own yard. The house is never clean (I'm so glad we opted for a smaller home) but I love the extra space. We've become quite the DIY-ers by painting the front living area... twice (didn't look so good the first time around), painting the banister and front door, finishing our kitchen table, putting in under cabinet lighting (still in progress) and painting our new entertainment center (also still in progress). I've been shopping like a crazy woman trying to make the house look more like a home and things are starting to come together nicely. Here's some before and after shots for ya.

BEFORE


AFTER

The stuff on the end table in the corner still needs a home and I need some drapery on the windows, but otherwise, it's lookin good!

BEFORE



The whole table was finished in this light color (not my favorite) and had a lot of dings and chunks scraped out, but after our little staining escapade...

AFTER




BANGARANG! Love the darker stain. We still have to do the chairs, but I'm saving that for when I have more patience (this project takes A LOT of work)

The Banister and Door
BEFORE
White and colorless (sorry, I don't really have a good before picture, you can see a little bit of the railing in one of the above "before" pictures)

AFTER

Beautiful chocolate brown railing and green door. Yes, we're missing a white banister piece, and no, I can't seem to find them anywhere.

And finally, just some other pictures...

The color I'm painting my new TV stand and hutch. I'll also be putting a brown glaze on the edges to give it more depth.
P.S. if you're ever shopping for an entertainment center, buying a TV stand and hutch separately will save you some major money. If they don't match, like mine, just repaint or refinish it yourself.


I LOVE that the fridge came with a water/ice dispenser. Divine.


My refinished coffee table that I found at DI. Love the old antique look it has.

Next, we had our friends Kristin and Cameron visit us last weekend! We had a blast with them, they're the greatest. Since I'm a terrible picture taker, I didn't get any pictures with them, but I did get some of the kids at the Town Center playground/water park.





We went to an outlet mall on the border of Nevada and California which had some AWESOME outlet stores... Gap, Old Navy, Children's Place, Banana Republic, Hollister, Williams Sonoma, and there were more, we just had to please the kids. Anyway, best outlet mall I've ever been to (even better than Patomac Mills in VA, which is supposedly THE OUTLET... sorry Patomac Mills, you've been demoted). Anyway, I saw a really cute cake mold at Williams Sonoma that would be perfect for Ashton's birthday, but my inner budgeter told me not to buy it. The last morning Kristin and Cameron were here, Cameron disappeared (telling me he was going to get something to surprise Kristin) and came home with the mold!!! I couldn't believe it. Not only was it super nice of them to get it for me, but the outlet was 40 minutes away!!! ONE WAY!! That's almost an hour and a half of driving! That's love. You guys are too awesome for words.



Finally, Monday night Adam asked me if I would make his 15 yr old brother a birthday cake since his mom was out of town. Problem was, his birthday was the NEXT DAY. But I never turn down a decent opportunity to make cake. So I thought and looked around for ideas. For those of you who are blog stalkers, you may know where I got this cake idea, and since I was in a pinch, I felt no remorse for copying someone else's creativity. The kids were pretty neglected on Tuesday as I tried to finish the cake, but they put up with me pretty well. You should see the mess I made though. It was IMPRESSIVE. I'm not the cleanest person by nature (I like to blame it on a creative mind) so if I think something's messy, it must be pretty bad, and it was just about the worst. Ashton found an "empty" can of frosting (yes, I cheated and bought the boxed stuff, I only had 20 hours to put together an entire cake, get 8 hours of sleep and take care of 2 demanding children), but he seemed to clean out the dregs pretty well. Here's what I found after 10 minutes...



After cleaning him up and putting on some finishing touches, I ended up with this beauty...





Yay! It was fun to make. Anyway, that's been our last 6 weeks in a nutshell. Now I need to go prepare my talk for Sunday, ahh!
Ciao

Angels & Spray Cans

Well, you might think this is the third installation of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code...sorry, not quite that suspenseful.

But, after a fun afternoon in Park City we had a trusty nail or two place itself in our back tire, and it was cause for celebration!...or not, b/c our tires still have acorn wheel locks on them (at least until tomorrow morning), and we are without key (a special keyed lug-nut puller). Add that to the fact that we were in Heber, UT on a Monday evening at 8 PM =]

...actually, I'm rather grateful we made it to Heber, about halfway between Park City & Heber, our little tire pressure indicator went off, so I pulled over and sure enough our back tire was hissing out air at a pretty decent rate. We still had decent tire pressure so I figured we ought to try and get down the hill. And with a prayer or two, we did. AFter seeing that there was ZERO chance of finding any auto-shop open, or at least still occupied by workers...I was able to procure one of these bad boys at Smith's.


Long story short it worked! I just don't want to be the guy that has to fix the flat in my tire tomorrow, I'm going to bet it will be a nasty job. I don't recommend these little cans if you can avoid it...but since I couldn't take my tire off to put on the spare, and there was ZERO chance of getting a mechanic to look at it, this worked very well.

So thank goodness for Angels & Spray Cans!

Family Pictures!!

My awesome cousin Breanne just took some pictures of the fam. They turned out great! If anyone comes to visit us in Vegas, these pictures will DEFINITELY be up around the house.






Look at that cute husband I have!


Haha, I love this picture of Hallie.