Wilton II Finale Cake

I've been taking cake decorating classes for the last two months with my friend Lisa.  I've learned a lot of cool techniques but arranging and designing with style is still something I struggle with.  Nevertheless, I have confidence that when the time comes for me to make my child a birthday cake, I will be at least as good as the people at the grocery store bakery (given lots and lots of time to practice).

I thought about going ahead and taking the next class (Gumpaste flowers and fondant) but decided I needed a little break, especially if we are going to be taking foster care classes.  Plus, that's just a lot of cake to have do something with all the time.  It's good cake, don't get me wrong, but it's not helpful to have it laying around the kitchen when you're trying to cut back on sugar.

Here's what I did for class yesterday, I'm still working on the concept of level and I was so tired by the end of class I just started sticking flowers anywhere (that basket weave border is hard on the hand) so it's not super pretty like some of the other class cakes but I'm still proud of myself.

Ok, apparently Blogger doesn't like my pictures, so go to my gallery to see them.

http://gallery.me.com/janaiwm/100675

Some recent projects

This post is primarily for my mother, who wants pictures of all the things we've been up to but I'm not very reliable at doing that.

So far this spring, we've done lots of things:  we've gotten a new patio set (which I put together), organized the garden shed and set up shelves and curtains in our kitchen niche (in lieu of the $2,000 custom cabinetry we were looking into doing.  Maybe we'll get to them somewhere down the line but right now we have other places to put our money).  We are hoping to get edging done in a few weeks, plus expand the garden and add a drip system to the boxes already in place.  I've also been working on improving my cake decorating skills, which has been a lot of fun (and pretty delicious!).

Second Post

Ok, I've already spent way too much making this blog pretty instead of washing the floors and working out like I was supposed to but this was much more fun. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own backgrounds that will actually fit the area but in the meantime, I really like this background and at least I've figured out how to customize the header and insert a signature. Yay for me!

I have 19 days of work left and I am so! excited! Not that I don't love the kids I work with but I really just want to be a stay-at-home mommy and homemaker. Since we're still not having luck with bringing biological children into our home, though, we have begun the path to become foster parents. We have been thinking about this for a very long time and this last General Conference just really cemented in our hearts that we want to be able to provide a loving, stable home for children, regardless of whether they are biologically related or just here temporarily. I am a little nervous about losing all my free time that I have enjoyed so much but much more excited about getting to help teach and serve God's littlest ones. We are still pursuing fertility options but this just feels right so we're going with it.

Ok, time to stop and go do Pilates and maybe the kitchen floor, too.

First Post

So, I realized that no one was reading our other blog and decided to join the rank and file by starting up one on Blogger. Now I'm going to figure out how to customize it using all the cool digital scrapbooking kits I've been accumulating and then maybe I'll be tempted to use it more often than the old one.