so this past monday i had another cake decorating class at Michael’s. this week we learned the second part of making a rose and let me just say i HATE roses. that is going to take some serious practice. we also learned how to make a much easier flower, as well as, making teddy bear faces, that can be easily changed to a pig, lion, mouse, puppy, ect…by just changing your icing color. so that part was fun. and let me just say i am a pro at DOTS. ha! they are the easiest for sure!  i am having a blast.

the cake i made this week was a clown cake. we do not get to decide on how to decorate our cakes each week. instead we decorate the tops of our cakes like we are instructed to do. however, i am finding ways to rebel against this in subtle ways. like this week i tinted my cake icing a light yellow. i was the only one that didn’t have a white cake. others were jealous. ha.

 

i donated this week’s cake to a floor i frequent quite often at the hospital called “C5″  which is a medical-telemetry floor. i love the people i work with on this floor. they are all around my age and i really enjoy working with each of them. they loved the cake. i even had one lady ask me how much i would charge to make her one. my plan is working! yea! now i just need to decide what i will charge if i do indeed start taking orders. wow! i never in a million years thought it might actually work even though it was a hopeful thought of mine to start a paying hobby.

so i have decided i wanted to do something different. cake decorating. i love to entertain and this last halloween i got the chance to have a lot of people over and entertain. i went all out with “themed” snacks and food, as well as a pumpkin shaped cake. i had a blast. so recently i was thinking about what i could do with my time off, when not working, and cake decorating came to my mind. at first i was going to see about some kind of internship with a local bakery, looked up classes online that offered baking classes, and then i came across the Wilton class, hosted by Michael’s arts and craft store.

 i was excited. and sure enough the first course was starting in a few weeks. so i bought all my stuff and started decorating. classes are on monday. so needless to say i procrastinated and didn’t start preparing until monday morning. i first had to go to the store and buy the rest of my stuff. bake the cake. let it cool. prepare the pounds and pounds of icing. color it. make sure it was the right consistency for decorating different parts of the cake. then ice the cake before class.

   i went to class at 7pm and that is where we learn how to actually decorate the cake. so here is my finished project. my first offical decorated cake.

since chris and i have been on weight watchers we can’t eat cake so i gave my first cake to my next door neighbors as a thank you since they kindly mowed our grass a week ago when we went out of town. they were surprised. i think this is a good way to bond with your neighbors and get to meet them, and it keeps chris and i from eating it and defeating our weight goals. ha!

this last weekend (aug 10-11) i headed to waco to visit the family and see some friends. friday, i got to eat lunch with my mom and nenaw at a cute little sandwich shop, amelia’s. it was great to visit with my nenaw. i went shopping later that afternoon with my mom for my friend’s, brandi, bridal shower present. went to eat dinner with my parents later that evening and then to starbucks to meet up and chit-chat with my friends, melanie, brandi, and her fiance,j. it was fun to catch up and visit with them.  saturday i went to brandi’s bridal shower. she got a lot of nice things. the other girls where there and we secretly started planning brandi’s bachlorette party. get ready brandi! party time. then i had to leave to go to a 40th anniversary dinner for my great aunt mary and uncle garland. we ate at the brazos river steakhouse. it was yummy. then the fam headed to my cousin, garla’s house for cake and punch. the most exciting of news of my visit was when my cousin, garla, announced she was having a BABY! the whole family is excited. it will be the first baby in a long time in our family. yea! i can’t wait to find out if she is having a girl or boy! she is due in march. i wish her the best. i had to then jet and drive back to ft worth for work early sunday morning. yuck. but my visit was fun and exciting.

chris and i decided to go along with our friends richard and brooke to san marcos for a weekend of fun. we left friday after the boys got off of work to head south. we stopped in waco to eat at Kitok’s to grab a burger and some yummy oriental fries, then back on the road. the boys had fun singing very loudly to old ridiculous songs and then put their own twist on them. it was quite funny. brooke and i talked about her wedding stuff in the back seat. we were going to be able to go to a cake tasting with them on sunday after church before heading back to ft worth. i was excited.

saturday we woke up sooo early to go to a flea market thing, kind of like canton. it was very interesting. i found a hillarious t-shirt i couldn’t live without. it states “you can’t scare me i, i’m a nurse” and it had a big syringe on the shirt as well. can’t wait to wear that to work. richard bought some fresh roasted peanuts that a vendor was roasting. they were quite tasty. next we headed to the san marcos outlet. way cool! a lot better than hillsburo for sure. we ate lunch and rushed to the san marcos river. and the “tragedies” began.

first the changing rooms were locked. so we had to change at the car. richard was standing in between two open doors with his hand on the bracing in between both of the doors. brooke was on the cell phone and accidently shut her door without noticing where richard’s hand was and SLAM! suprisingly richard just yelled “brooke!” he never cursed or hit anything else around the car. his thumb was the victim of the accident and the nail had already turned black. it was not good. and you know it hurt, bad! well we continued to the river and…  the river was FREEZING. it literally took your breath away! no lie. we rented tubes and headed down the river. second tragedy, the waterfall at the end. chris and i both fell off of our tubes and scrapped up our knees and feet on the 2nd waterfall. ouch. and chris lost his hat. richard went a second time and he too lost his hat. the boys were sad. we then decided that was enough and loaded up on the trolley to take us back to our cars at the beginning. we thought we would jump in a few more times and then the third tragedy hit. richard forgot he put his car key in his shoe then went to rinse them off and bye bye key. we had to recruit swimmers with snorkeling gear to help us find the key. we had the locksmith on hold. luckily the key was found and we went back to brooke’s parents house (where we were staying) and we were pooped for the rest of the night. we headed back to ft worth the next day. we had fun with our jam-packed weekend of excitment.