Would we need pink or would we need blue?

"Would we need pink or would we need blue? 12 months ago none of us knew! It's hard to believe our little boy is turning 1! Staton is having a BLUE birthday-it will be lots of fun!"

These are the words on the birthday invitation for a sweet little boy I know. His name is Staton and he has the sweetest parents. You see, I taught school with his precious moma until she decided it was best for their family for her to stay home with this little ham! By reading the invitation, you can figure out that they didn't find out if they were having a boy or a girl when she was pregnant. All of thier baby showers were decked out in gender neutral colors due to this fact. So, when it came time for his 1st birthday, Summer and Drake wanted it to be "all boy"! She asked me long ago to do the cake and she knew then that whatever we did, she wanted it to have LOTS of blue. I went over to visit one afternoon and we brainstormed many blue ideas. Finally, we came up with the idea of making Staton's smash cake a 3D number 1 iced in blue buttercream icing with blue fondant dot details. The cake was homemade chocolate. Then we decided cupcakes would be fun. I baked a dozen vanilla cupcakes and a dozen chocolate cupcakes both decorated in white buttercream icing and blue fondant dots on the top. I hope he enjoys every bite!!!

I plead insanity!

On the first week of school, one of my teacher friends asked me to bake an "over the hill" cake for her sister's 50th surprise birthday party. At first I said I couldn't do it because I knew I'd be so busy, but then I got to thinking about how much she helped me with scheduling and I felt bad turning her down. So, I did this tombstone for her to take to Birmingham.

Help! There's a racetrack in my kitchen!

Lightnin' McQueen broke into my kitchen a couple of weeks ago and raced all around my kitchen. Powdered sugar, almond buttercream icing, and fondant were everywhere!!!!!!!!!!! I had so much fun making this cake for a sweet friend of mine- Parker Thames! His mom, Carrie, sent me a text a little while before the "family" party and asked if I'd like to do the cake for him. Would I like to? Of course, I would! Parker was to be the one to decide between Curious George, Cars, and Toy Story. During a conversation between Joel and Parker (Joel is Parker's dad), Parker made it very clear that he was having a Cars birthday! So, Cars it is. That Saturday morning I met up with Joel and Carrie along with the rest of the Sunday School gang for our church's annual Run for the Son 5k. Some of us ran while we walked this year. I sped home quickly to put the finishing touches on the race track and let Mater get in position in the pit.

Food, Fireworks, and Family...

I'm a little late in posting this, but we've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off! Crazy busy around here!!! On July 4th, my family usually travels a little past Wiggins, MS to a HUGE mud hole!!! Madeline, Stephen, Moma, Poppie, Daniel, and I all pack up a weekend's worth of groceries, four wheelers, and our most stained shorts and t-shirts that we don't care about getting dirty again. We stay in a cabin for the weekend and thoroughly enjoy each other's company IN THE MUD! It's always a good time.

This year was a little different in the fact that we decided to spend our fireworks weekend on the lake. I tried to learn how to slolam ski this weekend and almost managed to master it before the nice "lake patrol" decides to check our boat for the proper amount of life jackets(check) and a throwable(not check-ticket instead). The "lake patrol" gave my parents a ticket because they couldn't find their throwable that is supposed to stay on the boat at all times. Needless to say, that ended our weekend with a BANG. A $150 bang at that.
What I don't understand is why he let the three young girls go park their jet ski because they were driving entirely too fast, gave them no ticket, but busts us on the first offense. Why is it that the people who always try to do things the right way always seem to get the short end of the stick?

Either way, we had a great time grilling out with family and playing in the water!

leftovers...

Have you ever made too much of something and let it go to waste? I certainly have since there's only two of us eating dinner most of the time. Well, not anymore! With mashed potatoes anyway. If I ever have any left over mashed potatoes, I always save them in the fridge for a day or sometimes two at the max just to let them get stiff. I will cook hamburgers or something fun that mashed potatoes would taste good with once my leftovers have had a chance to stiffen. I then take my cookie dough scoop to scoop small round balls of mashed potatoes to be fried in a skillet. I dredge them in beaten egg and cruton crumbs and throw them in the skillet. Once in the skillet, I take my spatula and "mash" them into a small pattie, fry it for a few minutes on each side-just enough to brown the breading. Take them out and place them on a plate covered with paper towel to soak up the extra grease and serve them! They are so good and EASY!

Retro Birthday topped with Red Velvet

Rachel's birthday was this past Sunday and she turned 29 + 2! As I was putting the finishing touches on the wedding cake for Daniel's paralegal last week, "ding, dong!". It was Rachel's mom at my door waiting to ask me if I'd bake Rachel's birthday cake. I was honored to do such. Mrs. Deborah said to do something funky with almond flavoring. So, I baked a white almond cake (round bottom, square top, with a cupcake topper) and iced it with almond flavored lime green icing. I decorated each layer with what I like to call 'retro circles'. The circles were made out of homemade fondant. I topped the entire cake with a BIG cupcake and retro flowers on top of it. Rachel said it was tasty!Also, way back in April or May, my good friend, Cindy, asked me to bake a bridal shower cake for a shower she was hosting in June. Of course, I agreed. After much discussion on flavors, we decided on a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and cover the cake with homemade fondant. I decorated each tier of the cake with different "swirlies" and put the bride's monogram on the top tier. I also included fresh cut flowers to add more umph! I had a bite of this one...

Mmmm... good!

I've always enjoyed my mom's caramel cake simply because she makes the icing from scratch! No, seriously. She does just put a little sugar and other stuff in her black skillet and scratch it around for a LONG while and voila'! Caramel icing that is so yummy it makes you want to slap yo mama! I never really slapped my moma, but I sure did gobble up that cake. My moma's the best at cooking and I've learned everything I know from her and well...just throwing stuff together. Yesterday, I was making a dear friend a cake and had some extra batter left over and you can't throw out the extra batter. It has to be eaten. So, I pulled out my BIG cupcake pan and made three big cupcakes. As the cupcakes were smelling up my house, I tried a "different" kind of icing than what I normally top the cupcakes with. I pulled out a small sauce pan, a can of sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, and half a stick of margarine. I just wanted to see if it would work. It's for sure not as tasty as what Moma does, but pretty dang close. Voila'!

Poppie

I have lots of men in my life who are very special to me; my sweet husband, papaw, Dad(Daniel's dad). These men have influenced my life in so many ways, but none can hold a candle to my poppie! You see, this is my daddy and besides him teaching me everything I know about cars or anything else mechanical/electrical, he's taught me a good deal about kindness, patience, and strength. He's also taught me about how to make all three of those attributes work together. I think he is the smartest man in the world. Four years ago, he had knee surgery due to a work related injury. He had hoped this surgery would 'fix' the problem and make the pain in his knee go away. Well, four surgeries later, we hope the problem is fixed. I write all of this to say that even as I waited today with Moma for him to be brought up to recovery, during recovery, and even when he "hoisted" himself in the truck to go home, he displayed such strength! This man will give you the shirt off his back and every dollar bill in his pocket just because that's who he is. That's how he treats others, and that's how he shows he cares. He can be pretty goofy at times too, and always wears his best smile! Guess what, Poppie? I love you!!!!

A Dead Snake is the only Good Snake...

That's what I always say! I am deathly afraid of snakes and we've already seen two in the past month! One was a chicken snake that showed up next to our garage dooor after we'd cut down a dead tree. We saw it after returning from a nice and relaxing dinner. Daniel and my dad took care of it since the fire was still hot from our work with the tree all day. The other one decided to show his face as I was stooped over in my flowerbeds today. With one hand I was holding up my lantana plants, and with the other hand I was spraying the weeds when this snake nearly slithered over my hand. Those of you who know me know that I dropped everything and ran squealing to the neighbor's yard. Our neighbors are just as scared of snakes as I am. So, we just stood there while our other neighbor looked for the snake in my flowerbed. She poked around amongst my elephant ears and daylilies until we hear, "There you are! Come on out here." I'm thinking at this point if this lady is really talking to this snake!!! Well, then she blinked! The snake got away and ran to the corner of our back patio as she cooed over it. Finally, she killed it with several chops of a gardening hoe. I guess from now on I'll have to have the kaiser blade close by when I'm on the patio drinking my coffee and reading my book. Gracious me!

busy weekend in Memphis/Olive Branch

Four years ago, I needed someone to be my right hand gal. Someone to tell people where to go, kind of order them around so our wedding would run smoothly. Who better to play that part than my best friend Lindsey. She told ushers when to begin seating wedding guests. She told the wedding party when it was their turn to walk down the aisle. She even cut the cake at the reception!!! What can I say? She's the best!!! So, Lindsey and I were talking months ago (We do talk more often that months apart.) about her sister's wedding and the things to be done and that were already done. We were getting excited for her sister, Megan, when Lindsey said that I should be there and do "her job" from my wedding since Megan and Lindsey's moma was a little worried about making sure the bathrooms had enough TP in them. Ha!!! I agreed because I knew it would be a chance to get to see Blake and Lindsey again as well as their cute son, Gus. Daniel and I arrived Saturday afternoon ready to work. Daniel and Blake strung floating candles on fishing line in the pool while Lindsey and I went over all my "duties" and cleaned up the downstairs rooms that guests could be entering soon! Then time came to get ourselves cleaned up and dressed for the wedding. Rush, rush, rush!!! I quickly ran a brush through my hair and a washcloth over my neck and arms, threw on my wedding attire, and began ordering people around. Now, certain people knew I was there to do that job and were very thankful because they could not; others were not so thrilled with the idea of me asking politely if they would go ahead and get seated because the wedding is going to start in FIVE MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone was seated right on time, even though I thought they wouldn't be, and we began sending out the wedding party. Now, keep in mind that even though this wedding was beautiful, it was also a June wedding OUTSIDE. So, it was HOT!!! Blake told us later that we had been under a heat advisory.

As soon as the ceremony was finished, more family pictures were taken and we got the party started. Megan had the cutest 3D glasses that made you see hearts when you looked at lights. Pretty cool!!!

We sent the newlyweds off in style with our sparklers in hand.

After they were gone, we shut the music down and began the clean up process so we could all chillax in the pool with the leftover wine. So much fun this whirlwind weekend was! Now, Lindsey and I are planning our girls trip in August! Nashville here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Date night

At least one night a month Daniel and I try to have a date night. Each month is different. For example, in December we go get hot chocolate and ride around to find the best Christmas lights. In March, we take a drive down the Natchez Trace and have a picnic on the way home. Daniel is in charge of planning February and June due to Valentine's Day and our anniversary. The other months are usually "fly by the seat of our pants" kinds of dates, which are the most fun anyway. October we always have a date night just before Halloween where I pick up a couple of pumpkins on the way home, Daniel picks up dinner on his way home and we carve the night away. Sometimes we race to see who can carve faster or we sometimes take our time to see who can handle the most detail. This year we took our time and clearly Daniel is the one who can handle the most detail. Check out our jack-o-lanterns!

graduation fun...

baby shower/christening cakes

Dum, dum, da dum...

Wedding cakes and groom's cakes!

kid's birthdays

These are kid's birthday cakes I did for friends of mine or friends of friends.