birthday party time!

well its official, our little girl is 4! where did the time go? its so crazy how fast it goes. she is no longer the little baby, or the little toddler, she is a little girl- or if you ask her shes a princess.

so it was only fitting that she had a princess party. shes said for months upon months that she wanted a princess party so it was inevitable....

we invited a few of her friends over and everyone got to dress up like princesses and princes. the girls wore their princess costumes-they were their halloween costumes :) - and i made little red capes for the boys so they could be dressed up like princes. the girls made tiara's and the boys made crowns to help finish off the costume. it was so cute watching the decorate them.

then it was time for the games. we had put the crown on the princess, kiss the frog, and a princess castle pinata. we let the littlest ones not wear the blind fold and the older ones thought it was pretty funny. of course the birthday girl didnt want to wear it and said " i will just do it myself". yeah right! she was such a cheater :) even the boys seemed to have fun doing the girly stuff. they even laughed when we put lip gloss on the for the kiss the frog game. and what kid dosent love a pinata! granted it was the one where you pull the stings but it still emptied candy all the same. it took forever though. each kid got to pull about 3 stings a piece before we finally let little miss grab all of the rest of them and just pull. it was funny for us adults because none of the kids really dove on the candy, they were all very polite about picking up the candy and sharing. crazy!

next was the cake and ice cream. i made sara a double layer cake. the top with real butter cream icing, and the bottom with the wilton butter cream recipe. both turned out really good- but my biggest disappointment with the cake was that the top of the bottom layer wasnt wide enough to actually put the princesses on. they were supposed to be on the top of the bottom layer with cones cover the top layer like it was the castle..oh well, i learned an important lesson for next time :)

thank you so much to everyone who came and shared this very special day with us. little miss loved all of her presents and had already gotten most of them out to play with them as soon as everyone left.

thanksgiving

well after a busy weekend of weddings, why would this week want to slow down? but really, i wouldnt have it any other way.

thanksgiving at my house when i was growing up was always a big deal. mom and dad would get up super early to get the turkey in the oven, and then the rest of us would eventually get up. two of my favorite things were always watching the macy's thanksgiving parade and helping my dad make the dressing. and in our house, if there werent at least a few more people to celebrate it with, it just wasnt thanksgiving. i took after my dad in that respect. so every year that josh and i have had thanksgiving at our house, i watch the parade, make the dressing, and invite as many of over friends that want to come. this year was of course no different.

it was a great time to relax with friends and eat amazing food. its nice to have such great friends when we are so far away from home. this year i am thankful for those friends that came to share thanksgiving with us, and that even though we are so far away from home, we have a wonderful family that are always there for us.

happy turkey day!

the wedding cake

i got the honor of making a friends wedding cake...and my first one :) and while i felt very honored, i was also very nervous...what if i messed it up? luckily i knew either way kirsty and rolf would love it, but still that pressure is there.

my chef from school had given me her recipe for the italian butter cream icing she uses for wedding cakes and i was set. i tried out the recipe a few weeks before so that i could let kirsty taste it to make sure we had the right flavor they wanted-orange butter cream! she loved it, and it was a go!

but because the butter cream can crack if left in the fridge too long, so i couldnt make the cake too early in advance. so i had to bake the cakes on sunday (after our last soccer game) icing the middles of the layers and let that sit over night. the wedding was on monday at 3:30 in the afternoon so i had to finish the rest of the cake the morning of. it actually went a lot smoother than i thought, and i was dont with it earlier than planned....which was fine by me! kirsty is scottish and had wanted to work her tartan ribbon into the cake so i was able to use that around the layers and it worked out great. i have to say i think it turned out really pretty, and if i am ever going to do another one i will need new cake pans because the edges didnt turn out the way i wanted (another reason i was so glad about the ribbon). it was a little never wrecking getting the cake to the ceremony and i didnt feel settled until they brought the cake out for the reception and i knew that it was still good.

the wedding was beautiful! it was down past waikiki right on the beach and before sunset, so the scenery couldnt have been any more amazing. but add a scottish and canadian family (all super nice!) some bagpipes, and a very much in love bride and groom and the night was amazing.

congrats to kristy and rolf on their wedding and thank you for letting me share in that special day!!

weekend of weddings and cakes

so this past weekend (monday included-but it gets its own post) was a busy one! josh was in one of our friends wedding- so that wedding stuff actually started around wed. and then i was making 2 cakes for a friends son's b-day for saturday, which was also the day of the wedding josh was in, and then another wedding and a cake on monday.

josh was in our friends jb and rachel's wedding, so he had lots of wedding stuff to do...we had a coctail hour at their house wed. night, thursday they had golf and the bachelor party, friday was the rehearsal dinner, and then saturday afternoon was the wedding. and it was beautiful! we had the mountains as the back drop and even though it was cloudy, it made for some amazing views. i also got to help with the cake on this one. the cake had come as part of the package deal (so did an ice sculpture! haha!) but they didnt really decorate it for you. so it was a nice simple white 3 tier cake that was very pretty, but it needed some color-so they had asked me if i would mine putting some flowers on it. i was a little nervous about this, but when it came time, it was easy. the girls had stargazer lilys and some kind of orange flowers in their hair, so i used the left over ones on the cake. on the top tier i put a single lily (it was huge!) and then on the second tier i took the petals off the orange flower and used those around the inside edge where the 2 layers meet. so on the bottom tier i used the lily petals and did the same thing. it was still a nice and simple cake but now had some color and was even more beautiful. the wedding was beautiful and we had a great time. congrats jb and rachel!

so for the two cakes for the birthday party--i started those on friday morning....i got the optimus prime transformers character cake finished before we had to the rehearsal dinner and the 2 layers of the other cake baked before we had to leave. so when we got home from the rehearsal i started on the 2nd cake. it was really easy to do. i was making a bumble bee cake, so the cake its self was striped yellow and black and then i added a small transformer standing up to it and then a larger bumblebee as his car to it. nothing too fancy, just nice and fun. they both turned out really great and i got lots of compliments on them :) and i should note that it easily took josh 30 minutes and some bad words to get the large figure from his shape as the guy, to his shape as the car :)

then to fully finish off our weekend, i had my last women's game sunday morning-coaching my team, not playing- a pot luck after-i made 48 red velvet cupcakes, and then home to get started on my next adventure.....a wedding cake!

i dont have pictures yet of jb and rachel's cake, but here are the 2 transformers cakes.

4 year pictures

i cant believe it!!! my precious evil little girl is just a few weeks away from being 4!! where did the time go? everyone always said "it goes by so fast" but you never really realize how fast it goes. i mean, obviously i knew she was going to grow up and get bigger, but man! and i am so lucky to have such a talented friend to help capture some of those times-planned an unplanned. these are picture of little miss that was one of the planned times. we got to monoloa gardens and only had about 45 minutes until they closed and these are the shots she got, quite a few of them brought tears to my eyes the first time i saw them. we were even able to get some shots of the best friends :) since little miss was in her cinderealla costume, k was in her belle costume. our two little princesses actually cooperated and tonya was about to get some great shots of them together. she did a great job of capturing my little girl the way i see her. now if only she really acted as sweet and innocent as she looks in these pictures :) thanks again tonya! your the best!!!

schooooooools out for summer!

well really its over for the fall. but that song just kept going through my head, so there. i made it. i made it through my first lab class and it was a blast. very trying at times-mostly because of my partner- but a lot of fun. my teacher was very laid back and let us have fun (very unlike most culinary classes) yet still provided a great leaving environment. we made lots of fun stuff and then for the final actually had to make a few of the things that we had already done in class.

the final, even though i knew what i was doing, was very nerve wrecking. we scaled out all of our ingredients the week before and then on finals days we had 2 hours to complete everything we needed to do. and that wasnt really what was so bad. it more of every time chef yelled out how much time we had left, that my heart would skip a few beats and a little more pressure would come. i had no problems getting my stuff done in time both days, but still. i absolutely have no desire to ever go on one of those cooking/baking shows now :) my chiffion cake turned out awesome which is what i was most worried about, my biscuits were a little flat to me-but chef said they tasted great, and my fruit tarts turned out awesome all around. i ended up with a 38.5 out of 39 on the practical (highest grade in the class!!!) and then we had a written test on the last day. dont think i did so well on the written, but im not too worried. so here are some picutures of all of the things we have made during the last half of the semester.

tarts, carrot cake, chiffion cake, banana cream pies, apple pies, cream puffs, cream puff swans, croukenbush tree, pulling sugar,cinnamon roll, rosemary rolls, apple turnovers and of course my final-minus my flat biscuits :)