I'm on Cake Vacation!!!!

That's it! I stressed over this cake all last week and boy, am I glad it's done!

Donna Wolf is a friend of mine and she is a really big coordinator for her Relay For Life team. They had a benefit on Sat. May 17th called "Shooting for a Cure" with some of the UND Sioux hockey players (Jean-Philippe Lamoureux, Ryan Duncan, and ol' school boys - Jeff and Jay Panzer) who came to DL to help with fundraising by taking pics with fans and signing autographs. Well, Donna said she was expecting a lot of people and after seeing Ali's Birthday cake, she thought it'd be cool if I could make a UND cake. I thought it would be cool too...little did I know it would end up being the largest, most stressful, most procrastinated cake I've done yet!?!?!

My first thought was to do a jersey cake. And I had planned on doing the newer logo with the "realistic" Sioux Indian face. But then I actually looked at my jersey....and quickly changed my mind! Much to detailed to use for my first attempt with melting candy. So I opted to make the ol' school logo they used in the late 1990's, and which I have always liked better than any of them.

I had to bake the cakes on Thursday, and frost them on Friday. I made three 11" x 13" cakes, using 2 cake mixes per pan. The board that I have the cake on is 30" wide by 40" long. It was huge! All I had done by Friday night was it cut to shape and it's base coat of frosting on! I was freaking out, that I wasn't gonna be able to do it?!

Donna wanted it at the Arcade (where they had the event) by 3pm-ish. Only I didn't get it done until Saturday at 4pm. And the benefit started ate 5pm!! I'll spare you the stressful details, but I will tell you that there were a few things that did NOT go as planned. And Saturday morning I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into?!?!

But I'm awesome, as always! And was able to pull it off. It turned out fairly nice. Obviously, there were flaws that I could see, but for an amature cake...I don't think it's too bad!?! Everyone thought it was awesome and it tasted delicious...or at least that's what the told me!


I made a reversed stencil of the logo, covered it with wax paper and used melting chocolates to do the outlines.

Same thing here with the Name Logo

Now for the white candy!

This part was kinda fun! I might start making my own candies!
The bad part was that I discovered on Sat. morning that you can't add coloring to melting candy because then it turns from candy into a candy "glob"....dun...dun...dun...dunnnnn!

So this is the finished product. I ended up using black piping gel for the logos which complicated things to no end! But it worked!

I used colored the frosting to be black and green and piped it on.

Close up of the logos

The black jersey is an old one. It's my dad-in-law's. I used this for the pattern and just inverted the colors. The newer white jersey is mine. Derek got it for me for christmas in 2006 and had the 2006 team sign it. It was too small for me then...but now it fits me perfectly since I've lost a bunch of weight!

Needless to say, after I delivered this cake I went to the Tavern and had myself a drink! I'm not making any more cakes until I have a place of my own to bake, decorate, store, and wash all the dishes!

Spring Cleaning!!

We gave our garage some much needed attention the weekend before last (10th & 11th). I worked from 6:30am-9:00am and then we went over to the garage, on both days. We finished the paneling and cleaned up all the dust and dirt, moving every piece of equipment out of the way to do so.

We then moved all the garbage from the side of the garage that we had tore out to do the remodeling, to the alley for big garbage pickup. Sorry Doug, no goods here. We now have a restriction of 4 cubic feet for our pickup this year. Which is so dumb...the city bitches and moans that people need to clean up their shit, but then they put a limit on it, RETARDED!!! So I measured out a 12 ft by 12 ft square and attempted to pile everything we had in it, hoping to go no higher than 12 ft high. We had a whole stack of railroad ties and would have gone over our "limit" so we loaded them in my sister's pickup and took them to her curb since she didn't have much put out. After that we tore out all the trees and roots next to the garage. There were a whole bunch, and MY GOD for ROOTS!! Trees really amaze me. We found roots that went all the way along the side of the garage. We had to use the pickup and a chain to rip them out. That part was fun! Then Derek cut up all the trees and we took them to the city's recycling center. Lots of loading and unloading, lifting and moving, bending and...bending, you get the idea.

On Saturday we moved Derek's hot rod from Black Magic to the garage...all by ourselves. Last time we moved it we got to use a wedge bed truck and which pulled it up onto the trailer with a winch. Well, this time they were both being used so we had to push it up onto a trailer with just the two of us! And did I mention that the car is so thrown-together that the front wheels aren't connected so they each want to go their own direction. Plus I'm kinda weak when it comes to upper arm strength, so it pretty much sucked! But after 3 tries we finally got the front end on the trailer. That's right, just the front end. Cuz the car is so low that the body got caught up on the trailer. After an hour of dinking around with it and welding some pieces back together we finally got it. Here's some pics of our hard work!!

Here sits all my hard work, on this trailer...
And finally in the Garage!!!!

Derek cleaning so fast, the flames on his coat are on fire.
That's right, I'm wearing pink working gloves. I have blue, green, and purple ones too.
Trees....
Trees no more!
See, Doug, no good stuff!

Fucking Winter!! Leave Already?!!!

Remember that one time, in MID MAY that it SNOWED!!!!!!
GGGGRRRRR!

That's all I got!

Dieter's Log: Day 101!!!!!

I can't believe I've stuck with this diet--I mean "lifestyle change" for over 100 days!!!! It's freakin' amazing! Even more amazing, you ask.......today I finally reached my initial goal weight loss. I lost almost 4 lbs since last week bringing my total loss to 32.2 lbs!! Which makes this part even better!! I finally broke the 200 lb mark; I now weigh 196 lbs!! Do you know how long it's been since I've seen numbers like that?! Okay, maybe it hasn't been really long, but I know it's been over a year or so. Anyway, I'm totally stoked!

On to other news...

Derek and I have been putting up paneling in the garage since Monday. We have been working on it for a couple of hours everyday after work. We almost have it all done. We just have the south wall left which will involve a lot of cutting and such. But we may need some more paneling. I definitely would have thought that 18 sheets of paneling would have been enough. Eighteen!!!! Oh well, that's the story of my life. Just like how we thought we could use regular paneling nails and hammer them all in by hand!! Yeah right?! On Monday, we went to Sears and bought a air nail gun! I tell you what, that thing has already paid for itself. Somehow, I have messed up my shoulder, or some muscle in my shoulder/back. It really sucks cuz it really hurts anytime I take a deep breath or use my back muscle to sit or lay down, or OMG, sneezing really sucks! Oh well, whattya gonna do?!

Kevin is in the process of rebuilding our computer, since it completely crashed. Luckily he was able to save everything on our hard drive...he's my HERO!!! Given that, I don't know if I'll get to post again before Mother's Day ---- So,

Happy Mother's Day to all those Moms out there ---- My mom Sue, Derek's mom Laurie, My sister Wendy, and my friends: April, Karissa, Amber, and Lisa! Hope you all have a happy day.

Ali's 12th Birthday

So Derek's little sister, Ali Jo, turned 12 years old on Saturday. It's kinda weird for me cuz she was only 3 when Derek and I started dating. So I've seen her grow up and now she's almost a teenager! Yikes! I feel for Laurie (mom) in a couple more years! Anyway, she had a pool party at the hotel. She had 3 friends and some family come. And, of course, I made her cake. She had picked out a pool cake, but as always, I took it up a few notches.
I have to learn to start earlier and give myself more time. I always wait til the last minute. Wendy (my sister) always saves me by baking the cakes for me. She made the cakes on Friday cuz Derek and I drove to GF after work to get paneling for the garage. So then I just went to her house on Sat. to decorate them. About half way thru the decorating, I was really second guessing myself, but it turned out really freakin' awesome!!! I started at 12:30pm and didn't finish until 4:00pm or so. These things would be so much easier if I had my own house to do things in. Oh well, I make it work. So here are some pics.






Derek & Ali
I was trying to take a pic of Ali and me, but I only got myself! Dork!




Pretty cool, huh?! Everything on this cake was eatable! I love to take everyday food items and incorporate them into a cake. So you wanna know some of the ingredients?
Sand - ground up Nilla Wafers
Water - Blue Berry Jello, very concentrated so it wasn't too runny
Palm Trees - Pretzel sticks, Cocoa Puff "coconuts", and the "leaves" are white melting chocolate with green frosting coloring, piped free hand on to wax paper, cooled and then assembled.
Treasure Chest - 2 Hershey's Nugget chocolates with yellow frosting and sprinkles as gold, and red frosting with cinnamon dots for straps.
Seaweed - Green Fruit By The Foot
Butterflies - Bug Bites Graham crackers with frosting and sprinkles
People - Teddy Graham crackers with frosted eyes, nose, and swim suits
Fish - Goldfish Crackers with frosted eyes and "air bubbles"
Extras - Apple Gummi Ring for a inner tube, Fruit Stripes gum for a beach towel, and you can't see it, but I put 2 gummi starfish in the bottom of the ocean before I poured in the Jello.

I know, I know.....I'm amazing!!!!