The kiddos

The little stud posing

The big girl being her goofy self

Two decades!

My beautiful sister Rachelle turned two decades old yesterday :) I made this cake to celebrate the occasion with her friends. It was fun to make, especially because she didn't care what I did with it and she loves pink and brown nearly as much as I do! We love you Rachelle!

Landon's cupcakes

Landon gets to bring a treat to "school" tomorrow since he's one of the showcased students for this week. Since I've been on such a cake kick lately (side note: I'm in the process of making my sister's birthday cake, which I'm pretty excited about), I decided to try some fun cupcakes. No theme really, except that I was only working with green, pink and tan fondant (so not too colorful).

Halloween

Happy Belated Halloween! Our camera died after a couple of pictures, so here are the only ones I have of the kids. I was pleasantly surprised that Landon really got into trick-or-treating! We weren't even going to take him, but glad that we did because he had the time of his life following Madisyn and cousin Joshua.

*we're not even U of M fans... I just thought that having a cheerleader and a "football player" would be a cute idea :)

Updated with pictures from Dave and Kate (Rob's sister and brother-in-law).

Guilty...

Madisyn got our attention the other day after Landon had made this mess on the floor. All I know is that we're really in for it once he hits the "terrible two's!" He's already a little trouble maker!

Another Cake Adventure

This past weekend I decided to mix things up a little and attempted to make chocolate butter cream frosting. That gave me a good excuse to try a few other things... this time it was marble cake with a chocolate pudding filling, chocolate butter cream frosting and fondant decorations (decorations only, versus covering the entire cake as well). Luckily we had a small get-together Saturday night, so we didn't end up eating all of the cake (it was actually gone by the end of the night) :)

Oh, and the chocolate butter cream frosting was delicious!

Happy Belated Anniversary, My Love

Thank you for being the best husband I could ever ask for! I am so blessed!

Rob planned a wonderful surprise night away for us this past weekend. We went to the Rockford football game (something that I desperately didn't want to miss), checked into the Marriott downtown, went out to dinner, went to bed early, and slept in :) Then we did a little shopping before heading home Saturday afternoon. Although I missed the kids dearly, it's so wonderful to spend quality time alone to reconnect!

Lesson learned

I've been trying to contain my excitement... but I just can't do it anymore :)

Rob's cousin and his fiance asked me to make their wedding cake! No less than two days before they asked me, I told Rob (half jokingly), that I wanted to start my own cake making business. I LOVE decorating cakes, but I know how much time it takes (and because I'm a perfectionist, it often takes at least twice as long as any normal person!).

So I have this plan to make small cakes as practice trying different techniques. This weekend was my first and I definitely learned something... buy brown fondant, don't try to make it! The base was supposed to be chocolate brown, turned out gross tanish, so I added orange and it turned out burnt orange. Oh well... lesson learned.

Here's the cake from this weekend:


Some of you have already seen the next two, but I'm thinking of making a tiered cake (likely three) for the wedding.
Madisyn and Landon's cake this past year:


Madisyn's second birthday cake:

Children's Museum

Rob's work sponsored a recent exhibit at the Children's museum, so I made a trip with the kids, and they loved it (of course)! (Rob sells emergency vehicle lights and sirens)

Our little stud...

Did anyone know that there are not only wide shoes for kids, but also EXTRA wide shoes? Well our 'little' boy has very chubby feet and needs very expensive shoes to accommodate them! Luckily we got away with Crocs all summer... Seeing that it's cooler out, we've invested in one wide pair (they didn't have them in extra-wide) and one extra-wide pair (which fit him the best). Hopefully his chubby little feet thin out as he gets older so that we don't have to spend $50/pair of shoes every couple of months!




Texting?! (with his extra-wide shoes)