Very important and fascinating things

I know you all keep coming back to this blog because I am so fascinating and witty and I do exciting things like come in contact with poop and fold laundry and make sandwiches. So here’s some more of that adrenaline-inducing stuff, illustrated with unrelated pictures of our annual Rake Up Leaves And Jump In Them photos. You’ll be excited to hear that this year, not a single leaf or bug found its way into my bra. And also, it’s snowy and longjohns-cold outside, so don’t think this is what it’s like here right now.

First of all, in exciting and earth-shattering news, I’m caught up on my blog reader for the first time in literally months. It took a lot of skimming, ‘mark all as read’ on some blogs, unsubscribe to others, etc. Any blogs that posted as many advertisements, Todays Deal At This Deal Site Is, etc as regular posts in a week got the boot. I was sad to see some go, but some of the blogs I unsubscribed to were craft blogs that posted once or twice a day with half of that trying to get me to buy something. Drives me loco. I totally understand that getting free stuff and/or money is enticing, but if I want a shopping blog, I’ll sign up to a shopping blog. I even have… Bargainmoose.com anyone? :)

Equally exciting – okay, more exciting – is that I have been focusing on my health and fitness since the end of October. When Olivia weaned herself (aww, I wasn’t ready, but she dropped one feeding after another and eventually lost interest entirely.) I gained about 8lb in one month… ouch!! ! ! ! !!! and was suddenly pushing it in size 12 jeans. I’ve been eating clean and working out two to four times a week and I’m nearly in size 8 jeans now in early December. About 7 weeks, nice! (I can button the size 8 jeans but have muffin top.) I’m focusing on health and strength, rather than weight loss, and while the weight loss excites me I am treating it as a byproduct/reward for healthy living. And oh yes… I graduated high school as a size 12. :) I’m so proud that I can barely do five REAL pushups, when I could barely do girly pushups to begin with.

I recently read something in a fitness magazine from a mother who had turned her lifestyle around from couch potato to fit, and she said something along the lines that it suddenly occurred to her that by being obese, she was modelling to her children that it was acceptable to be obese and to not care about your body. That really struck me. I have thought a lot about health for the last few months, and I think it’s so important to teach your children how to love their body no matter what their body type, but also how to take care of their bodies. Nicole and I have a big bone structure. I always thought of it as big boned as in destined to be fat, but recently I’ve been thinking it’s more like an athletic build! My husband and his brothers are all built that way too, and they are big STRONG men. I want to be a STRONG woman! I want to dance in my kitchen with my kids for a solid half hour without losing my breath or skipping a beat! I want to race my daughter up and down the hill and only PRETEND to let her win. And I want to teach my daughters to be passionate about their HEALTH rather than their SIZE. If my daughter asks me why I exercise, I tell her its because it’s good for me, NEVER because ‘I’m too fat.’ Exercise isn’t a punishment!

I actually quite enjoy going to the gym. Nobody there expects me to wipe their bum, ever. Utopia. I only make it out about twice a week at the moment, but I try to make the most of the equipment when I do. When I’m at home, it’s pushups, lunges, squats, etc… all while being attacked by small human projectiles. It’s exciting and painful simultaneously. Ask Nicole to show you how to exercise and she’ll do strange random repetitive motions while grunting like its taking everything she’s got. Flattering indeed. I find many little home-workouts on Pinterest or bodyrock.tv for free! Then I get a lot of variety in my workouts, my body never knows what's coming, and I feel like that helps get results.

Whew! I got a little excited there! I have been doing a lot of reading, and thinking, and thinking, and reading. I haven’t really had anywhere to channel that except internally, though! I’m not always sure how much I can say without coming off as a jerk ;) No judgement for anyone else… these are just my thoughts as I feel like they apply to me! Other people’s perspectives have inspired me and I hope mine is either inspiring or boring, rather than getting anyone’s undies bunched.

Lets go back to these photos… Olivia was not too impressed with her first Leaf Pile Jump. The above picture is her trying to run away.

This above picture is a little bit more accurate. See those arched brows? Not impressed. Now watch her run away again.

Don’t worry, we were watching her the whole time, and my brother was loitering behind the scenes (he was not being photographed because his hair was not pretty. My brother is kind of Maintenance, lol!) so Olivia The Adventurous was supervised quite well.

I really am making progress on this whole ‘back to blogging’ thing. I have some projects ready to be photographed and blogged, and I’m about 80% done clearing out my horrifyingly messy storage room craft room as of today.

I literally iced Olivia’s birthday at 9am for her 10am birthday party. Whoop whoop!  I did a bit of a faux-ombre, I have seen all these lovely ombre cakes floating around on pinterest. I just iced the cake in the light pink, then mixed more red into my icing to darken it up. I put some darker pink icing around the bottom of the cake and then went around a few times with my icing spatula to blend it in the middle a bit. And then I took it back down a few notches by randomly spewing icing doodles on the top like a pro.

Faux-ombre. Fombre. I think it’ll catch on. Remember where you learned the word. That’s right, the ever-fascinating and rarely long-winded blog of Laura V. PS, do note the fruit platter. If you only buy one snack food for your next little kid party, buy a fruit platter. Or make one. I was trying to be healthy, and we put the fruit platter down and this tiny little hoard of small children descended on it and made it vanish. They wanted it more than the cake. I wouldn’t joke about something like that.

Unrequited Love

No words required as long as you play this as background music.

and then the sad ending….

Cake, sad, lonely, and alone in the dark.

lol. Okay, the cake left and was eaten, by neither Nicole nor myself. Construction husbands are prone to leave you high and dry in summertime at the last minute, but the cake made it there and I understand, so I wasn’t upset. Plus when I make a cake it takes hours and then I get anxiety in the final hour and hate it, and this one in particular was very ‘wing-it’-ed, all I knew for this bridal shower was the wedding colors, (and I only have the primary colors so this was pretty ehehe, I hope this works) and I couldn’t ask the bride to be since it was a surprise, so I was okay with not being there in case everyone was like, “Niiiiiiiice caaaaaaake….” *awkward silence* But the bride-to-be, who is marrying my cousin, said she loved it and it was delicious, so I’ll take it that Nicole’s unrequired love and extreme self-control were not in vain. (she only touched it once, and it was so gentle she didn’t leave a mark, not bad for a three-nearly-four-year-old who has to watch a cake get made off and on all day)

If anyone feels the need to tell me the cake is an offense to nature because the buttercream is not smooth, I know. It wouldn’t smooth. I don’t know what happened to the buttercream. Apparently making buttercream frosting is absolutely nothing like riding a bicycle. Now don’t I feel silly for wearing that helmet.

Don’t feel too badly for Nicole, she got the cake tops, iced generously with flowers and her favourite letter. (N, of course)

Every once in a while I remember about this thing and ask you to click it. Today’s the lucky day!

Wedding Cake

 

A much more fun version of the progression photo video, with a little video demo of the roses and some cake cutting photos.

coffee break!

So, are we liking the new banner pictures and suchlike? I wanted something bright and cheerful. Spring is nowhere in sight until March April May so now’s the time of year where I brighten everything up and start wearing spring clothes and thusly never leaving the house.

Here’s some glimpses at what I’ve been so absent over… no, not showing the flowergirl dress until it’s being put into action, or the finished cake for that matter, not that it IS finished right now, but we’re getting there. Here’s some WIP shots. I’ve been making good use of my mom’s roomy kitchen and my siblings’ helpful Nicole-wrangling. I’m thinking of adopting my sister Tiffany because she’s been following behind me washing giant cake pans and such. She doesn’t turn 18 until next Saturday so maybe there’s still time.

half of bottom tier of cake. giant can of Crisco. one of the three double-batches of icing that was involved in this process. To match the three double-batches of cake also involved. Also, 30 eggs, 12 cups of sugar, 12 cups of butter, and more than 15 cups of flour went into this monster. And that’s just the cake. We aren’t going to talk about the icing because I’ve been sampling and I just don’t want to talk about what’s in it. It’s buttercream. If you know, you know why. small can of icing for size reference on this crumb-coated cake. I know, a generous crumb coat. Cry me a river.
(I use the Wilton can stuff to pipe roses, for the smoothitty-smooth texture.)

bottom and top tiers. I’m glad the bottom tier is the bottom cos I’m seriously not in love with the icing. Yay for the fact that there will be ‘pearl’ dots of icing all over this thing. We’ll try not to think about how long THAT will take. Middle tier, waiting for it’s crumbcoat, then icing, then on to stacking and decorating. wheeee. Speaking of which, off I go again!

have a little class

So, I'm taking a cake decorating class. You'll have to excuse the following pictures, by the way, as they're taken at night. You'll understand why later. Anyways, I'm taking the Wilton's cake decorating class, Level 1, along with my friend Di. As you MIGHT recall, maybe, my mom got me the cake decorating class for my birthday.

So, first up, for class number two, we have to bring a light blue cake, iced to our very bestest ability. It took me forever because I was using the tiny little 8" angled spatula that I had in my drawer, girlfriend gots to go get herself a 13" spatula, cos DANG. This part took the longest!

How nice, you can't even tell that there was a point at which my darling Nicole was eating my cooling cake and then started bawling and ran to tell on herself. Baby has a conscience. Finally.
Will you please pretend you can't see the black line. We spent so much time practicing technique we had only ten minutes left to actually decorate our cakes. It's kinda crummy but for fifteen minutes I'm proud. And I learned some new techniques, and I feel confident that I could turn any sheet or circle cake into a character cake now. Cos I learned TRACING. It's like art all over again.
Here the colors are a little more true-to-tone on the rainbow. You can also see the reason the pictures were all taken at night. Well, the first one was because I didn't finish icing the cake until it was already getting dark outside. But the reason I couldn't wait til the next morning to take a picture of the cake is because Chris was WAITING. For like, two weeks. Because we didn't make a cake last week, we just took notes. Somebody is gonna get FAT off this course. Or both of us, maybe. There is like a brick of lard and a pound of icing sugar in that cake. In the icing alone. Ew. Ewwww. Tastes like storebought. EWWWWW. But whatevs, it's just for the class, and then I shall do some playing.

See if you can also spot the following in that picture.

a) a creepy hairy foot. b) Evidence that Chris doesn't clean up after dinner when I'm not home to supervise. c) a "Safeway Bingo" card. d) a santoku (santuko?) knife about to be used as a cake cutting and serving utensil.

Today I am making Apple Butter, inspired by (but not exactly following the recipe of, because I'm such a rebel) Beckie over at Infarrantly Creative. Which reminds me I need to go ask dictionary.com what infarrantly means because I actually don't know that one and I'm kind of a word junkie. Anyways, I'm snorting apple-flavored oxygen like an addict. My house smells so delicious. MAKE APPLE BUTTER. JUST TO MAKE YOUR HOUSE SMELL GOOD. And then invite everyone over and they will think you are Suzie Homemaker because your house smells so good but it's actually sick-easy. Or at least if you have an apple peeler/corer/slicer. Which I do. Envy me, it was a thriftstore find.