Still Reading

The Diviners by Libba Bray

 

Read my review here.

New Year

Since it's more like Chinese New Year, I thought I'd finally share what we did to ring in 2013.

New Year's Eve, we headed to my parents’ house to par-tay with my siblings and their families.  It was especially fun, since this is the first year in quite a few that Kevin hasn’t had to work, so we got to spend the whole night together.

We had a blast playing games and sharing good food.  

This classic fishing game was a hit with the kids.

And, of course, no party is complete without Headbandz

It was really late, so everyone had a riot when Kevin drew this card.

Midnight came and the kids celebrated by popping confetti and streamer fireworks all over my parents’ front room floor (which my Dad was thrilled about, I’m sure).  Well, all the kids except Abi.  She just screamed with her fingers in her ears because she didn’t like the noise.  We stayed up pretty late after that, and some of us (myself included) began to lose our “sportsman-like conduct” while playing games.  That’s when we decided to call it a night and head for home.

The next day, around noon when we rolled out of bed, we had Japanese lunch at our house with Kevin’s siblings.  The food was de-lish and I ate way too much.

We hope that everyone’s 2013 has started off on a good foot and wish you all of the best for the rest of it!

Reading, When I Should be Blogging...

I finished some more books.  Check out my reviews.

Uglies Series by Scott Westerfield

Review

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

  Review

Christmas 2012

I hope everyone had a good Christmas this year.  I know we did.  Here's a few pictures.

Christmas Eve

Keeping to our Christmas Eve tradition, we had our Armitstead family dinner and opening of gifts.

 As you can see we made a giant mess.

 Abi and Savannah posed for a couple of pictures for me in their jammies.  Those two are such hams!

Christmas Day

Santa did find his way to our house, and here's the proof.

 We had to wake up Abi, but went we did, she dragged her sleepy self (blanket included) over to the Christmas tree and just sat by it staring at the presents.

 After we ate breakfast (and after Abi woke up a little more), we dug right in.

 Even Oakley had a couple to open.

As we were getting ready to go over to Grandma and Grandpa Schmidt's house, Abi could resist trying out her new toy.

Future super-star!

At Grandma and Grandpa Schmidt's house there were plenty more gifts to open...

Abi loved her new homemade dress from Grandma

...but when it was all over Abi was a bit disappointed. (And anyone who was actually there knows that is a huge understatement.)

Again, we hope everyone had a good Christmas and wish everyone a happy New Year too!

Halloween 2012, Finally

So, it's a little late (okay, a lot late), but I wanted to share some pictures from Halloween this year, and I only just now have got around to doing it.

A few days before Halloween, Abi was invited to a party at a friend's house with some other little kids.

As you can see, it was a lively bunch.

Abi did make a new friend, though.

 She and her friend held hands as they watched the movie together.  It was really cute.

Then they decorated cookies to take home.

Abi had lots of fun.

The night before Halloween we carved pumpkins we picked at the pumpkin patch a week before.

Abi's Kitty Pumpkin

Mine

Also Mine

Aaron's

We went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood for a little while, then went to Grandma and Grandpa Schmidt's house for food and fun with cousins.

Bridget- Pumpkin Princess, Riley- Cinderella, Abi- Purple Fairy, Rowan- Capt. America

Karina- Super Girl, Savannah- Ladybug

Aren't they adorable?

Books!

I haven't posted a book review in a while, so... how about four of them?

Delirium and Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

 

Review 

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Review

Caster Chronicles series by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Books in this Series: Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos, Beautiful Redemption

Review

Divergent series by Veronica Roth

Books in this series: Divergent, Insurgent, and third book (untitled) to be released September 2013

Review

The Evolution of Cake

I've recently started developing an interest/hobby of cake making/decorating.  I've learned most of the basics from books I've read or YouTube tutorials I've watched, and I have to say, I think I've come a long way ( though I still have a long way to go).

Let's start at rock bottom, shall we?

This was a cake I made out of the blue one day that turned into a total disaster.  There are so many things wrong with this cake that I won't even discuss it.  (FYI, it did break apart like this all on it's own.)  I would probably be more ashamed if it weren't so hilarious.

Next, I started making birthday cakes for Kevin and Abi from good ol' box mixes and canned frosting.  Not amazing, but definitely an improvement from "Grand Canyon Cake" above.

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME I SPELLED "BIRTHDAY" WRONG?

Then I decided to dabble in fondant and made Sarah this graduation cake.

After that I started to be asked by family members to make cakes for their kids.

Here's the first one I made for my niece, Riley.

That was last year.

This year, after Sarah got engaged, she told me I was making her wedding cake. I thought I'd better get in some practice, espcially with the stacking part, since I'd never done that before.

Here's another cake I made for Riley.  I decided to also try sculpting with gum paste.

It looks okay, but the supports were not cut evenly so the back of the top layer was leaning back.

Horton

The Lorax

Sneech

 I loved sculpting, but thought that the gum paste dried too quickly and had too many cracks in it for what I was trying to do.  My nephew Rowan's birthday was next, and he wanted an "Angry Birds" cake.  I decided to sculpt with fondant this time.  Here's the result.

The figures turned out so much smoother and the fondant was a lot easier to deal with.  The cakes even stacked level this time, though the icing job could use a little work.

I could not get over how cute these pigs turned out. Ask Dorthy.

 My niece Savannah's birthday was next. 

I sculpted the Hello Kitty out of fondant, made homemade buttercream and tried a basket-weave design on the side.

Adorable, right?

Then we (my mom and I) made a cake for my grandpa's 75th birthday party.

The curly bow was made from gum paste.

The wedding was getting closer and I still didn't feel comfortable enough to whip up a wedding cake, so I decided to make a small version.  It was, in a word, discouraging.

The fondant would not go on smooth, no matter how much I tried to smooth it out.  By this time, the wedding was only a week and a half away and I couldn't show up with something like this.

I watched a couple more videos on YouTube and tried putting the fondant on again.

It looked oh, I don't know, a million times better.  I was feeling a little more confident after this.

The day before the wedding came and I was busy baking cakes.  I had one minor hiccup in the morning when Oakley ate one of the cakes I left out to cool.

She knew she was in trouble and felt pretty bad about it.

Other than that, the cake went together really smoothly and looked nice.

It's far from perfect but Sarah liked it and I guess that's what matters the most.

My most recent cake is one I made for my niece Karina a few days after Sarah and Colton's wedding.  I have never piped flowers, ever.  So I thought I'd give it a try with Karina's cake. They turned out pretty cute.

I didn't have a rose nail, but found this video on how to pipe roses using a wood dowel.  It took a little practice, but after a few tries I really started to get the hang of it.

I love making cakes and I think it's fun to see my skills improve with every cake I make. Now I just need to learn how to not make a huge mess when I do it.