Wow!

Well, It's been over a year since the last time I posted anything and almost a year and a half since I was posting regularly. I have no excuse. I'm lazy and I should be shot. Ok, that last one is taking things a bit far, but seriously I used to love reading blogs and posting to mine, but I can't even remember the last blog I read. Oh wait, I lie. I was looking at Christine's blog yesterday for the first time in forever after getting a notification on facebook from her. But other than that I can't remember the last time I checked one of my fave blogs....

Oh well, here's one post and here's hoping that I can get back into the swing of things with both reading and posting.

I won't go into long boring details of my life in the last year, because I'd end up writing too much, then I'd get bored and never finish the post. Instead I'll tell you about my year in point form. Too bad I don't have time or I'd do a powerpoint presentation and load it up..... heyyy..... that's an idea! No, No, Bad Christine. If I do this in point form I might actually finish it.

• Olivia started kindergarten last September. She loved it for all of one day before she started asking if she could sleep for "just 5 more minutes". Though she does still love school, she just hates getting up.
  
• I started working in mid September as a teller at the Bank in my town. (no names mentioned here) I've been there for 10 months and I don't hate it yet. I think that's a record for me. :)
  
• I haven't stitched more than a few dozen stitches since I last posted an update on my stitching. I seem to have lost my stitching mojo.
  
• I have been making more cakes lately and I'm really enjoying that.
  
• We finally got Rachel potty trained after many many MANY months of false starts. She had no desire for the longest time and I'd have to force her to sit on the toilet, but she's finally good, though we still use pullups at bedtime. We're not completely done with diapers yet. Soon hopefully.
  
• Rachel is finally old enough (3) to farm her out to the grandparents for sleepovers! (Can I get a 'Booyah' here? - Sorry, too much Kim Possible!) and she's had a few of them recently.
  
• I've been to the funeral home twice for two different people in the last week, so it's been a fairly sad week overall.
  
• My DH, Jason lost over 50 pounds in the past year. He even came in first place in a "biggest loser" weight loss competition at his work and ended up winning $500.00 in gift cards.
  
• We used the $500.00 to go towards a big swingset/Jungle jym for the kids.
  
• We had a bear in the yard a few weeks ago, now I'm scared to let the kids go out to play on their new swingset.
  
• I, unfortunately, haven't lost 50 pounds. I haven't even lost 5 pounds. :(
  
• I'm very excited that Torchwood will be airing in Britian starting next week and I'm looking forward to watching the new adventures of Captain Jack Harkness and his band of merry men, (god I'm such a geek. lol) even if it is only 5 episodes.
  
• I think I actually cried when I found out David Tennant will be leaving Doctor Who. *sobs*
• We got a new kitty at the Fredericton SPCA a few months ago. He's doing great. He has to be the most patient cat in the world to put up with my kids. He's a big Orange Long Haired tabby. The kids named him Fluffy, though Rachel couldn't remember that for a while and kept calling him Fuzzy instead.

I'm reaching at this point to think of anything else, so I think I'll end with a few pictures of some of the cakes I've done since I last posted some.

Olivia's "Totally Spooktacular" 5th Birthday Cake

October 2008

We had a dressup Halloween party for Olivia's 5th birthday since she's so close to Halloween and she decided she wanted a "Witch Barbie" cake. I ended up having to special order the Barbie off of Ebay because apparently Mattel only makes the Halloween Witch Barbie for "Target" each year at Halloween ... So, since there are no Target stores in Canada I paid WAY too much for the doll on Ebay.

Here is the second cake I made for Olivia's birthday. We rented the Bowling Alley and invited pretty much the entire class to the party and I didn't know for sure how many would show up so I made a second cake in case the first one wasn't enough for all the kids and parents who were there. I ended up taking 3/4 of it home. lol.

Rachel's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" 3rd Birthday Cake

April 2009

This was Rachel's 3rd Birthday cake. She wanted a "Somewhere over the Rainbow" party. Do you know how freaking hard it is to do "Somewhere over the Rainbow" that has nothing to do with Wizard of Oz? HARD!

I managed to find items in rainbow colours instead of actual rainbow stuff for the most part. The rainbow on the cake is made of Royal Icing made several days in advance, the border is Smarties. (I had a huge bowl of pink and brown ones left over afterwards.) The rest of the cake is just blue buttercream icing and white buttercream icing.

But then look what the inside looks like!

This was pretty neat. Find the tutorial here.

I had taken the rainbow off the top of the cake when I was cutting it and I put it back on to take this picture of the inside. I didn't realize until later that day that it was on backwards with the broken side of the rainbow showing instead of the good side.

Johnny's "John Deere" 60th Birthday Cake

June 2009

My most recent cake was a John Deere cake for my Father-in-Law's 60th Birthday. This one is just plain Buttercream and a printed John Deere logo that I cut out and traced onto the white buttercream with a toothpick. I then filled it in with a #16 star tip and yellow and green buttercream icing I coloured myself. It came out pretty good except for the little wow in the front of the cake where it's not quite even.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully this won't be the last you hear from me for another year.

(Side note: it's been over a year and I see Blogger still has the freaky formatting problems that drive me completely batty. I've already had to stop myself three times from throwing my mouse against the wall when trying to get the post looking right after I uploaded my pictures.)