Hoping my 2nd turns out like you.......

Abby is my brother McKay's 2nd child. Abby is a teenager. To some that means she probably doesn't listen, knows everything and is too cool to talk to an adult. But from what I have observed Abby is not like that at all. She is quiet, calm, helpful and very polite. I have no idea if she is like that with her parents but she seems to be an angel when we have family gatherings. At least this is what I have observed. But rewind to maybe when she was 2 or 3 years old and there was a time of day that she was not so nice.

I remember when she would come out of her room after waking up from her naps. If looks could kill you would be running for your life. And don't even think about talking to her for a good while. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed was the norm for her at that time. Then her parents, McKay and Lois would say "oh she is just like her Aunt Natalie". Come on not nice. :)

Now that is all of the bad behavior that I remember about Abby and so I am hoping and praying that my 2nd child and 2year old will grow up to be such the lovely and sweet teenager that Abby is today.

Happy Birthday Abby!!

Phineas and Ferb is among some of the favorite shows that Abby likes, she also loves Psych, (which is totally hilarious) Harry Potter, Merlin and other shows on the BBC.



She is a lover of music and uses her iPod often.



And to her parents dismay she is a lover of animals. They have a dog but I am thinking that my brother wishes that the kids would take care of her more than they promised they would. :)



And Abby and her sister Lindsay do vaulting. If you don't know what that is well, it is doing gymnastic moves while riding on top of a trotting horse. I have seen them preform before and it is pretty amazing that they can do that with out getting hurt. GOHA stand for Gymnastics on Horseback Association. If you are interested in learning more click here. Abby happens to be on this page!





So sorry Abby for spelling you name wrong with the cookies. I told your Dad to eat the "e" before he got home. How lame am I that I didn't have your name right. You are even one of my friends on Facebook. I should have checked that first. Duh!!

What I did Wednesday

So Wednesday was another sugar filled day. I saw this cake a couple of weeks ago on the Partiologist site and I really want to try to do it.
So I searched how to cover a cake with a sheet of chocolate and then had to wait a week and half to make it. Why well because I needed to have a reason to make it and so Wednesday is when my friends were coming over to watch Vampire Diaries. We use to get together weekly to watch but it was off air for a month and then their were some scheduling conflicts but we got together last night to catch up on the last two episodes. Perfect for me to make this cake and to share it with my girl friends. It was yummy!
I even put in some wheat flour and ground flax seed to make it "Healthy"!! :)




Chocolate and berries so good together!




Tuesday night my friend called me and asked if I could make 10 cookies for a presentation she had to do because she is running for Student Body President at the college she is attending. She is representing the fine arts program and so on the limited time 24 hours this is what I came up with. Would have been easing to make royal icing transfers of the masks but did not have enough time to let them dry so I used gum paste and fondant. Sure wish I would have had a cutter for the mask but just did it by hand, not the best work but she was happy with them.


So that is what I did on Wednesday what did you do?

Present Cutter Contest

So a cookie blog I follow, Lila Loa is having a contest being creative using the present cookie cutter pictured below.

This is what I came up with...........

An octopus



An old fashioned hot water bottle.



A Fish



And Sonic the Hedgehog which was my kids favorite!

Flower Basket Cake

So I have been taking the Wilton Method cake decorating classes at my local Michaels. It has been fun. Course 2 makes a bunch of different types of flowers out of royal icing and then we had to use our flowers we had made for 3 weeks and decorate a cake covered in basket weave on our last class. I think it turned out pretty good.

Picky eater plays sports and shows off legs!

Caiden is the youngest child of my older brother Alvin. He just turned 15 and he is a teenage boy through and through. He is a skinny kid but that does not mean he is weak. He is strong and very athletic as the cookies will show.
I love the story of how when his family would go to Kanab to visit Grandpa and Grandpa that he asked the question, "are we in Grandpa's world yet?" I am sure I did not get that exactly right but I sure hope that it was Caiden who said that and not his older brother Tanner.
The fun thing about Caiden is he is not afraid to where some out landish stuff or even sport girls apparrel and the best thing he put on was at our family reunion last year where we honored my Dad turning 80. We had family dress up as Dad in different decades and Alvin's family had the 1940's. Well there was this picture below of my Day when he was a senior in high school. They were out in the creek swimming or possible skinny dippin.

And here is Caiden dressed up like Grandpa, I wish is was closer up but he looked just like him, it was hilarious. Caiden is such a good sport!

Caiden is quite the sporty guy, his sports of choice are football, soccer and basketball where he was honored as the offensive MVP a month or so ago.




This kid a picky eater, so his mom is such a sport and makes him a ham or turkey sandwich everyday for him to take to school. Below is my attempt of making a ham sandwich cookie. I used gum paste to make the ham and cheese and then just sandwiched it between two cookies.

Holy Batman!

Some Batman cookies I made for my friend sons birthday party.
I printed out a coloring page made a template out of a plastic lid cut them and here is the Dark Knight!

Swimming Smarty!

Dear cute red headed Kelsey. Happy Birthday to you! Even though I got your cookies done two days early I am a little slow at writing this post. Sorry. ;)

Kelsey is the second child of my sister Kanani. When you think of Kanani's family the first thing that pops into your head is SPORTS, more accurately swimming and soccer. The whole Wells clan is pretty athletic and Kelsey is no different, she was an amazing swimmer in high school and I am sure she still is, just not sure if she is doing it as much as she did in the past.
She is also a brainiac and she is majoring in mathematics at BYU Idaho. This summer she is doing a internship in Northern NewYork State where she will be doing research in the areas of Modern or Abstract Algebra, Graph Theory, Stochastic Differential Equations or Topological Graph Theory............um yeah whatever brainiac!! :)

One of my favorite memories of Kelsey was when she was 5 years old. I was in college at the time and was at their home for a visit. I have no recollection of what we were talking about, but Kelsey says to me "Hey why don't you have a husband?" I was probably around 25 at the time and to the world that is pretty young to be married already, but in the LDS world 25 and single is teetering on becoming an old maid. jk
But at that time in my life I really did want to be married so I am sure I my reaction in my head was like, thanks Kelsey for rubbing salt in my wounds. It's not her fault, she was just a cute little kid who just says what she thinks. I serious never held a grudge. I mean I didn't get married till I was 32, so I would have held a bunch of grudges with a whole slew of children. :)

Now to the cookies representing just a few of Kelsey's favs.
The pi symbol to show her love of math.

Dumb bells to show her love of working out.

Not sure what this heart is referring to but maybe Kelsey does. wink wink
Kelsey's favorite colors are green and pink.

A few swimsuits to show her love of swimming, boating, and slalom water skiing.

And a couple of shots of the whole gang.


Love you Kelsey, hope that your Birthday was filled with fun, gifts and cute boys!!

The B post

Blushing Brooklyn Barton, Boisterous Beiber, Bouncing Balls. They may not have broke baby birds balloon but it was fun to come up with that little line. :o)

My nieces birthday is this next week and I got her cookies done a little early. Brook is the only daughter of my sister Kristine. She is a fun, bubbly, dramatic and impressive teenager. 

Yes this 16 year old is impressive to me. Why you ask? Well for starters when she was only 14 she had a full time babysitting job in the summer. After telling me what her job entailed I was glad it was her and not me doing the job. You have to be a very responsible girl to be given that much trust.

Also last year I walked into her bedroom and I was blown away by how clean and tidy it was. I asked my sister if she always had a clean room and she said "pretty much". Kudos to my sister for teaching her kids to be clean and kudos to Brook for being obedient and respectful.!!

Of course she is the typical teenager when it comes to BOYS! Oh yes she likes boys. She reminds me of myself as a teenager when it come to boys except for the fact that unlike me she is way more outgoing and actually talks to them. Way to go Brook, I wish I would not have been so afraid of boys when I was her age.

Now onto some of Brooks favs. 

When I talked to her Mom to ask her what some of her favorite things were she said that she was her favorite thing. She said from the moment Brooklyn was born she has been attached to her hip.

So I figured that if Brook was ever the kind to get a tattoo that this popular "MOM" tattoo would be the one she would choose. 

I had a winged heart cookie cutter and I tweaked it into the tattoo.

Pretty sure that my sister hopes that she never gets this tattoo or any for that matter.

So Brook is an athlete as well and she really enjoys softball and volleyball. I am grateful for the n&n's who are interested in sports because they are pretty easy cookies to do.

Now onto the Beibster. Yes Brooklyn is a fan of Justin Beiber so I searched for a coloring page image of Justin and yes there are coloring pages of him.
Then I cut it out and traced the hair and face outline onto the cookie to give me a guide.
He looks a little sad in the results, but I think it is the hair that makes it believable.

Happy Happy Birthday Brooklyn, I wish you many many more years of boy chasing!! :o)

High Heeled Fondant

So it was my friends birthday this last week and I have been wanting to try out covering a cake with fondant. I had never tried it before so I figured I would give it a shot. As you can see it was not very successful.
Let me tell you that professional cake decorators have to have some upper body strength, cause I sure did have a hard time rolling out my fondant thin. Pretty sure my problem was that this was too thick but once I had it on I could not take it off with out ripping it to shreds so I just did my best with trying to hide all the flaws.
I saw a tutorial on how to make a high heel shoe here and template here.
I thought it would be perfect for Michelle. I changed it to an open toe shoe but was happy with my first attempt at the shoe and it seemed to be a hit at the dinner celebration.
I will continue to practice and learn and hopefully one day it will improve.

Welcome Home

Our neighbors from our previous neighborhood recently moved into a new home and the kids and I finally got over to visit them last week. It was fun to get to see them and we are excited that they are only 10 minutes away from us now.
The kids had a great time playing and it was nice to get to visit with Angie. I had to make some housewarming cookies for them.
My curtains don't look to hot, but oh well.

Rainbows, shams and pots

St. Patrick's is about here and I have been busy making cookies for birthdays, making cakes, taking clients , teaching at night and taking two Wilton classes. Those are my excuses for not doing Patty cookies this year. I felt a little guilty and the kids have been wanting me to make THEM cookies and not for everybody else so I quickly whipped these up today so that they could enjoy a couple.
I went to the package the Wilton cookie cutters came on for inspiration for the rainbows and pots. I did my own thing with the shamrock.




Here is the kids enjoying them they had to wait until the pics were taken. :)