August's Wine Walk

Last year my friend Lauren and I decided that we were grown ups and should act that way.  So when the Downtown Business Association had their annual Wine Walk, we chose to go.  We got dressed up, left the children with our spouses and walked to local business to sample wine.  It was fun.  Nice adult only time, without the drama of a bar.  After we went to that first one we found out there were more!!!  But, we had missed them for that year.  So we made the date for this year.  We missed the first one, but I called her two months ago and reserved the evening with her.  We picked out our outfits and went shoe shopping.  We were going to look so pretty.  It rained all day, and the afternoon of the Wine Walk I dropped off Gus and Katie at a BBQ in Spring Creek and as Kris and I were driving over the 5th St bridge we could see people starting the walk.  They were all in jeans and t-shirts.  It was cold.  The pretty dress I planned to wear with the cute new shoes sat in my closet unworn.  We wore jeans and tops like everyone else.  Kris stayed with Lauren’s kids and had her first baby sitting job while Lauren and I tried 13 different wines in 13 different stores.  We still had a great time even though we weren’t dressed up.  

The place with worst wine had the best snacks, the Western Folklife Center let us into the gallery, Duncan Little Creek also let us into their gallery, found the cutest purses at MishMash and Muddle.  As we were thinking of leaving to come back to the real world a couple Carson City Hotshots trucks pulled up.  

One of the guys got out and asked where all the fun was happening for the night we told him all the happening places, and decided to go eat breakfast (it was 7 at night) we had our usual meals and headed to the bar we sipped our sodas and got our ears chewed off.  We finally called it a night returned to our lives...

1st paying cake

As everyone can see lately I have been baking up a storm.  Since January I have made 2 male cakes, 4 females, a truck, a pig, a frog, a Jeep, 1 "flower pot", and a marvelous chocolate cake.  On Friday I finished and delivered my first cake I got paid for.  

It was the same as SuperMom's cake but with 40 red roses and looked a lot better.  Originally it was supposed to be a white chocolate truffle frosting, but yet again it didn't turn out, so I used a regular butter cream frosting.  The flavor of the cake part itself was amazing.  But the temperature everywhere was too hot and made the frosting too soft to stay smooth.

The husband who hired me loved the cake and on Monday I will find out how the wife liked it.

I did learn that the fat content in white chocolate makes it impossible to turn it into a chocolate truffle frosting using the recipe that I have.  I think it would taste great and I will blog about experimenting with that later.

Katie turns 10!

In my family we have this tradition of 9’s.  My mother was born in ’59, my sister Stephanie in ’69, I was born in ’79, my sister Christina in ’89 and ten years ago I was sliced opened from hip to hip and a little girl baby was ripped out of my stomach.  Okay it wasn’t that graphic, but close to it.  Katie was born by caesarean section in 1999.  

To celebrate her 10th birthday we had family and friends from coast to coast come to Elko for a b.b.q. to celebrate it.  

It was a great deal of fun.  

Katie picked out what type cake she wanted, it was cherry and in a skateboard shape. 

 

I think it was the easiest and cutest cake I have made so far.

Just don't try lighting the candles in the wind.  Took Dennis and I 3 minutes to light 10...

Perfection

perfection

noun

1 the perfection of her technique improvement, betterment, refinement, refining, honing.

2 for him, she was still perfection the ideal, a paragon, a nonpareil, the crème de la crème, the last word, the ultimate, the best; informal one in a million, the tops, da bomb; dated, informal the bee's knees, the cat's meow/pajamas/whiskers.

This weekend Gus and I spent it with a wonderful group of people from Idaho.  I usually don’t learn anything from them other than motorcycle stuff, but this weekend I learned a lot.

There is this woman in the group “Tatt’s” she is the most beautiful woman I have ever met.  She is strong, independent, caring, funny and shorter than me (she is 4’11” and I am 5’2”).  This weekend I saw a completely different side of her.  Yes, I did see her behind, but I also saw her scared and what a vulnerable person she really is.  

In everyone’s eyes she is perfection.  In her eyes she is not, she thinks she needs bigger boob’s, a tighter leaner body and is giving up who she is for someone else. 

I am blogging about this because it made me realize that while we may not see ourselves as perfect others do.  Always remember that.

Gus turn's 44

June 21st Gus turned 44!  We celebrated with a nice little party at the Silver Dollar.  I made a cake for it...

There were 4 cakes in it and 4 batches of frosting.  It was cherry. 

Gus got one boob.

Mack got the other.

Dennis a dear friend and bartender we know got the “girlie part”.  He said it was better than he remembered.  He did share it with another friend of ours Michelle.

We all had fun, and came home to a cake made by the girls...  Don't have that picture though.

SuperMom's Cake

Today is SuperMom's birthday, she is 33.  I have been making wonderful and tasty cakes for a few months now and i decided to make SuperMom a beautiful two tier white cake with a white chocolate truffle frosting with 33 roses on the top tier.  It all started out great.

I made 11 red and orange roses and 12 purple (just incase).  Ok there were 11 orange and 11 dark orange, I used red coloring, but still turned out dark orange.  

Wednesday I get home from work and start looking for my cookbooks with the 2 recipes I was going to make, they are both missing.  I searched and searched, Gus found the one with the frosting and the other one is still missing.

I gathered all the ingredients for the frosting.  I began with mixing 1/2 cup light corn syrup with 3 cups whipping cream (I was doubling the recipe cause it was going to be a big cake) in a sauce pan.  I brought that to a simmer, added the white chocolate chips and vanilla.  I waited the 2 minutes it calls for then I stirred and chilled it.  The Dr. Pepper was to clam me down if I needed it...

While I waited, I made the cake.  I gathered everything and did great the batter looked and tasted wonderful.  I popped it into the oven and clean up a little.  About 15 minutes into the baking I looked over and saw my 6 egg whites waiting to be added to batter (I just made a cake with no eggs).  I started all over with the cake, this time remembering the eggs.  It turned out perfectly this time.

When the frosting finally cooled I put it in my mixing bowl and started to beat it.  Unfortunately I beat it too long and it is the chunks your get right before full blown butter.  I still used it, ‘cause at 11 o’clock at night you really don’t care what anything looks like anymore.  

SuperMom should be here in a few minutes for coffee, and we will see then what she thinks of it.

Baby Blues

I had the Baby Blues this week...  My babies are 15 1/2, 13 1/2 and 10 (in a month and a week) they are almost grown up and Gus decided when Kathryn was 1 1/2 that he was done having kids.  

This weekend was a rare one where I got to spend time with 2 really cute babies, and this week I have two baby showers to attend (none of which really truly helped me).  Saturday night I got to play with, hold and feed Alicia a very cute 7 month old baby girl.  She loved me and I never put her down.  She even rooted around on me and she wasn’t even nursed! 

 Then on Sunday I got to spend time with RJ.  He is 7 1/2 months old and the spitting image of his father, but with even prettier blue eyes and curly blonde hair.  He helped me get over the B.B.’s, he cried the whole time unless he was being held (even his car seat needed to up off the ground).

  So I am thinking that when Sunshine has her baby, I get custody of Zachary (I still think he needs to be called Byron or Bryce or Bruce) when he is cranky sometimes so I can get over my B.B.’s without having to call Rusty and his wife, who hates me.

My day with the "family"

Trying to write my blog, but everything I want to write about invovles other people and even if I use fake names for them people who truly know us will know who I am talking about...  I know I will blog about Saturday!!!

At dinner on Friday night we found out that Sam hurt his foot skateboarding.  On Saturday morning Gus getting into his ‘Chuck Steak’ uniform and I was thinking of all the stuff I had to do when Sam came into the room to ask about a bruise on his knee, it looked good but his foot was still swollen.  He then told us that it happened Thursday not Friday like we thought.  I ended taking Sam to the E.R. where we spent 3 hours for a deep sprain while Chuck Steak went to Run-a-Mucca on the bike.  The kids drove me crazy all day, I want that, she touched me, he looked at me, it was all so much fun.  Luckily my friend Michelle texted me and invited me to the Dollar with Jenine.  It was fun, Miles Long and Peter Dragin were there.  We all sat and chit chatted about Peter eating calf balls and Miles thought they would be really gross, till Chuck Steak and Whiskey John came back.  I had to finish my to-do list and Chuck Steak didn’t really seem to want to talk to me so I left to grocery shop.  (Yes, I went grocery shopping, I have real food in the house for the first time in 2 weeks!)  That was fun as always.  I get all the groceries put away and relax by doing laundry until Chuck Steak texts me to come get him.  I go back to the Dollar and my Michelle gets me my soda and I sit with Chuck Steak and Peter and DOW shows up.  DOW is interesting, she is about 50, nice when sober, and a little slutty when drunk.  When she is drunk I really don’t care to hang out with her.  After watching her hang all over the very married Peter, Chuck Steak and I came home.  Wow that sounds like a very boring day, I guess you had to be there...  

I should have better stories next week after all the parties I have to go to...

Help for Sam finally

Okay I decided that this would be better as a weekly blog.  I just don’t have the thoughts to do a daily one...

This past week was informative.  For people who do not know, I have 2 children from my husband’s first marriage, Sam (15) and Krissy (13) in addition to our daughter Katie (9). 

On Thursday I had a meeting at the high school for Sam, he is failing 5 of 7 classes.  At the meeting we discussed the fact that he has not had passing grades since 4th grade, and there is FINALLY something that can be done about at school.   At home we have tried everything, rewards for doing the work, he spent 6 months being grounded for not doing his work once, sitting with him to get work done, and I even went to class with him in my big flannel pajamas none of that worked but none of that worked.  Now after fighting with him for 6 years the school has stepped in and is able to help.  He has an IQ of 111, but has the math skills of a 4th grader and reading grades of a 6th grader, and with the large gap between his ability and his performance he has qualified for Special Education classes.  Next year he will be a Freshman again with the possibility of having some Sophomore classes.  I think that with the smaller class sizes in the Special Education classes he will do better and I know one of his possible teachers for next year and I believe that they will work very well together.  He also has shown quite a bit of interest in continuing his drafting (he is passing that and PE) with Mr. Aikenhead, my old drafting teacher.  As it stands right now we will play the wait and see game and hope for the best.

UPDATE: Sam will be in 4 Special Education classes next year (Study Skills, Math, English, Science) and 3 'regular' classes (Computers/Health, English, History).  He choose most of his classes for next year and is excited about having smaller class sizes and more teacher help.

What I should be doing

I was sitting here thinking that I need to finish laundry, Will's quilt, Lyndi's quilt, Girl Scout paperwork, dishes, and clean off the table when I decided, that this might be more fun...  I guess we will soon find out.  That is after I send children to bed for getting into my make-up again...