Tag Archives: glambaby

Easter Cake Success!

A couple of years ago, I pinned a cake to my Easter board at Pinterest:

Easter Cake Inspiration

Look at the comment. 🙂 So I decided this was going to be that day and gathered what I needed. It was really easy. 

I made the chocolate layer cake in 6 inch pans because we really didn’t need that much cake and it makes it just her size. Then I made buttercream frosting and tinted it purple. Put that together, attached the Peeps all around, sprinkled Easter M&Ms on top and Voila!  My cake:

Easter Cake

I was really happy with the way it turned out and hoped the glambaby would love it, too.

We had it for brunch today and she loved it!

Glambaby Easter Cake

She wanted the Peeps off of it. She decided earlier that she likes Peeps since they are marshmallows which she loves. She then proceeded to eat the ears off of every bunny Peep she got a hold of. She liked the M&Ms that were on top of it, too. Honestly, I’m not sure if she even ate the cake part of it but I knew the way it looked made her happy and that was enough for me. 🙂

Success! 

The Zoo!

Yesterday we took Geoff, Nikki and the Glambaby to the Tulsa Zoo!

zoo

We’ve lived here, more or less, for around 11 years and have never been to the zoo. At Woodland Hills Mall there is a big advertisement for the Zoo and every time we walk past it, the Glambaby has to stop and look at it and talk about it. We’ve been waiting for it to be warm enough to go.

Yesterday was such a beautiful day! It was around 64 degrees and sunny. There were very few people there so it was comfortable all the way around.

The Glambaby really wanted to see an elephant and a monkey. And she got her wish.

elephant

The monkeys got crazy!

We rode the train around to the other size of the zoo.

train

We ate lunch at the McCaw Landing Grille inside the zoo and had some very tasty burgers!

We then visited the slides. The glambaby, supreme slide lover, saw them as we went to lunch and we promised her we’d slide when we were finished eating. We played on the playground for quite a while until she got so sleepy it was time to go.

teetertotter

We didn’t get to the giraffes or the carousel (which looks amazing!) or the petting zoo. I hope we’ll get a chance to go back soon.  We had so much fun! 🙂

Rolled Fondant Cake

Yesterday was the Glambaby’s birthday and today is Boo Boo the Wonderdog’s birthday. I decided I was going to try my hand at rolled fondant frosting. It’s #60 on my goals list and I’ve always wanted to try it.

candles

I’m left handed and it’s really hard for me to decorate with buttercream because all of the tools, tips, etc. are made for right handed people and it just doesn’t work. But fondant always seemed like roll and place and I figured it would be easier to do.

I used the Marshmallow Fondant recipe at All Recipes to make my own fondant. I don’t konw what your fondant eating experience has been but mine has been Blech! Nasty. The reviews for this recipe were good for taste and ease. They were also very enlightening. I read through them all so I would have the best chance of success. There’s also a video to watch to gain more courage.

I knew I could do it, I was ready!

I chose this cake for inspiration.

I made two layers of brownie in five inch pans so it’s a pretty tiny cake but it’s all we need. I put peanut butter cups into the brownie before I baked it. For filling, I melted chocolate chips.

cake1

Then I rolled out the fondant. It was easy! I used cornstarch to keep it from sticking.

rolled

I then place it over the cake.

I took a small amount of the fondant and worked some red food color paste into it. The palms of my hands are still red. 🙂

hand

I then cut out the little hearts, painted their backs with water and stuck them to the cake.

cake

I know there are fondant cake making secrets I must still learn. How to keep my hands from being dyed when coloring the fondant, how to make it smooth.

But for the most part, I’m pretty darned excited with my first effort at rolled fondant. Doing what I did seemed pretty easy and I would definitely try it again. 🙂

Donuts!

Donuts are just one of those foods. You know. They’re not good for you but they taste SO good. Especially with chocolate milk. Also not good for you.

We decided to take the Glambaby for a donut this a.m. to a place call OK Country Donuts. They make donuts into shapes and Nikki had gotten some baseball donuts from them for Geoff for his birthday.

When we got there, the fun donuts were on the bottom shelf of the case, just at the Glambaby’s level. They had pigs and snakes. Well, how do you decide between them? Both so fun?

donut1

You don’t.

You get them both. And enjoy them both.

donut2

We love donuts!

What food does it for you? 🙂

Making Pizza

We now get to have the glambaby with us on Fridays since she’s been going to school on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the new year.

It’s always so much fun to have her here. We’re both amazed at how long she’ll sit and color or do crafty type things. She really likes them.

art

Since we had such a good outing when we baked cookies the first time, I thought we’d have her help make lunch today and start learning the family pizza recipe.  I got the dough all ready so we just had to spread it out on the pizza stone. She wasn’t too keen on helping me spread the oil on the stone or sprinkle the cornmeal. But when I brought out the little pizza dough roller she was ready to play.

She did a great job helping to spread the tomato paste.

sauce

Then she gave the base a good dousing of Italian seasoning.

shake

I’m not sure she liked the feel of the cheese. She sprinkled a little bit on but each of the two times she touched it, she inspected her hand after the cheese was out of it. Then we opened pineapple which she promptly started to eat. She put no pineapple on the pizza. I did that. Then I added sausage.

It looked and tasted great. And it was so much fun.

pizza

We’ve been holding off on buying furniture for the house since we moved in because we have some renovations we want to do first. Well, today I decided that I don’t ever want to buy furniture. It’s way too much fun to run, chase, hide, bounce balls, and generally act like we’re on the playground. Which is what we do the rest of the time she’s here. 🙂

Unfriend Yourself

I got the book Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant and read it this past weekend. It’s not a long book and I was actually finished with it early on Friday but decided to go ahead and take the challenge to unfriend myself for three days on social media.

Unfriend Yourself

The book is interesting and poses some intriguing questions on how we use social media. Tennant also lines up social media usage with Scripture. Thought provoking.

What I got from this book, other than the challenge of staying off of social media for three days, was confirmation that I’m doing it right. At least according to the book.

I love social media and I love the people I have met through twitter. My goal in life is to meet my twitter friends and make them into real life friends. I believe that I could have coffee in any part of the world with someone that I “know” from twitter. That’s a cool feeling.

java

As you know, twitter is my favorite in the social media realm. I have found, as the author did, that Facebook can be a little fake. And I’ve found it can also be a little mean. Mostly, I use Facebook to see photos of the #glambaby. And other people’s little kids. The photos of little kids is my favorite part of Facebook.

Tennant says that social media offers a new kind of social and intellectual environment encouraging false intimacy and feigning friendship. I can see how it could be perceived as that if you aren’t being true to yourself or your friends/followers.

If you know me at all, you know I believe in being REAL. With me, what you see is what you get. The person I am on social media is the person I will be when you meet me in real life. I think it could be very easy to try and let yourself be someone you’re not but since my ultimate goal is to meet every one of my followers in person, being real seems more practical to me.

I wrote in my book that I feel that twitter actually allowed me to be the real me. I tweet what I tweet. Then, when people meet me in real life, they expect me to be me and it’s so cool! 🙂

The one person who came to mind when I was reading this book was Afton Fisher. I love Afton and if I had not been on twitter, I am not sure I ever would have met her in real life. She is a wonderful, kind, and precious soul. She’s a fabulous mommy and wife and I love her. For real.

Afton has told me that she practices WWLD. What Would Lauri Do? Ohhhh. Oh. That always gives me pause. It’s constantly in the back of my head that, at least one person that I love and respect completely, is looking up to me. This would keep me real if nothing else did.

Tennant suggests that we make sure not to forgo in life communion with online communication. This is good advice. When I meet my twitter friends in real life I am SO delighted! It’s really the cherry on top of an already good ice cream sundae.

I think that you can use social media and not be used by it. This would be a good goal to have if you feel that you are becoming enslaved by the medium.

All in all, I think this was a good book to read. It gave me some good things to think about but mostly it confirmed that I’m using social media in a way that is well balanced. And that makes me happy.

So? Did I pop into my social media accounts these three days? I did, I cannot tell a lie. I got an email with three direct messages from a friend who wanted me to call her. While I didn’t go into twitter itself, I did see the direct messages in email form. I also logged into Facebook so I could see a photo of my son’s birthday donuts which were cool and also to tell Beth Hoffman that I really love her new book because I couldn’t wait until Monday. Also, I checked into foursquare today. But, for me, mostly I did a great job on the challenge.

donuts

I can’t wait for Monday to get back to normal! 🙂

 

With arms wide open

It’s so fun to watch our son be the daddy of a little girl. We have so many boys in our family, it’s kind of a foreign concept for all of us.

Geoff is really good about sending us photos every day of Aniston since we can’t visit with her as often as we’d like.

Yesterday, he sent this photo:

with the comment, “Sleeping, arms wide open.”

Then..

Me: She’s going to have to get a double wide king sized bed to sleep that way when she’s married.

Geoff: Yeah – getting married is going to be her biggest problem.

Me: LOL!

So protective, so cute. Poor Glambaby. 😉