I told you the posts would be sparse...

Life has been pretty busy around these parts. I just got back from a spring break vacation to North Carolina. Since Lincoln didn't have enough vacation days to cover this trip and our two summer trips we have planned, I took the kids and went without him. Spring break fell at the perfect time- the weather in NC was perfect, and the weather here was miserable.
Now that I'm back, I have only a few days to get ready for a garage sale this weekend. They are so much work! But on the bright side, I am doing some major unloading of clutter and unused items. Nothing is coming back in. If it doesn't sell it goes to Goodwill or the dump. I'm done.
Next weekend I have my first large cake order. I'm doing four cakes for a dual sweet sixteen party with 75 guests. I'm nervous, but excited. These two projects should keep me pretty busy. I have lots of plans swimming around in my mind of projects I am itching to do on the house. I can't decide which to do first. Hopefully I'll have something to show you soon!

Today is my birthday and Lincoln got me one of these:



...a grain mill attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer. We've been organizing our food storage lately and decided it was high time we got a better grain mill so we can use our wheat. I can't wait to share pictures of our new shelves, and I can't wait to start canning produce from our garden to fill those shelves!

Spiderman Cake, and Apologies

This past weekend I did a cake order for the boy I babysit. It's especially fun to do a cake for someone I know well. It becomes a lot more personal and lots of extra love goes into it. When I do birthday cakes for my kids, they are entirely works of love. Carson had changed his mind many times about the theme for his cake. It started as Spiderman, then went to Kung Fu Panda, then to Megamind. His Mom and I were both having more success finding ideas and decorations for the Spiderman theme, so we talked him into going with that. I let him look at cake ideas with me online and he found one he really liked. He was most excited about the fact that it had little mini cakes around it. So I modified the design a bit and came up with this:



He requested a toy Spiderman on it, so his Mom brought me one of his to set on top.

The cake itself is red velvet with blue buttercream frosting, covered by marshmallow fondant. That way, when you cut into it, you see the Spiderman colors. I made the red velvet cake from scratch. I thought it turned out rather dry, so I guess I need to find a different red velvet recipe. I think I need to do a little experimenting with cake flavors and recipes. It's got to taste good on the inside, not just look cute on the outside.


As you may have noticed, posting has become few and far between lately. My life has suddenly gotten busier as I've been asked to serve as the Relief Society president at church. Relief Society is the women's organization in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and entails lots of duties that will require me to prioritize my time. Time that I would normally spend in the blogosphere will now be spent in other ways. But hopefully, once I get into the swing of things, I'll settle in and be able to blog more frequently again. And maybe that will happen sooner than I think. Creating and sharing is an outlet for me, so I'm sure I'll be around.