Halloween, Cupcakes, and Fireworks

I've decided I want to try and use colorflow (it's like royal icing that you thin down and pour into an outline then let harden to make little sugar shapes) so I'm starting to make little witches to put on top of cupcakes for halloween, and I wanted a cute little witch so that I could print it off, and use it for a guide to pipe my outline, and I couldn't find one that I liked, so I decided to make one! I've been having a lot of fun with fireworks (the program I used to make her) and hopefully she'll work for colorflow.
And I promise I still am taking care of Emmaline. I've got some pics that I need to post, but my batteries ran down, and I haven't gotten them replaced yet. :)

Cake

I really want to make a cake soon, to try out some new techniques, and play around with some things that I've seen, but I can't think of any reason to make a cake. Nothing. Still nothing. Somebody give me a good reason to make/decorate a cake!

IKEA tables

Emmaline's been wanting to work on the computer a lot, so Royce set up our old lap-top as her computer station, and she has had so much fun. She literally will sit there for an hour at a time, working on stuff. Since we'd decided to make her a station, I've been looking at small tables for her, and we found these small end tables at Ikea, and they're only $7.99. They're waferboard, which makes them really light, and are a great size for her, and there are other colors to choose from. (I wouldn't have picked red, but she's old enough now to have an opinion, and she wanted red.:) )
We got a white one too, to replace her food table, which had gotten really old and gross. Mainly gross. Old doesn't really matter that much to us at the stage. :) They're plain, but you could decorate them pretty easily if you wanted to. The flower and butterfly sitting on the red table are ones we pealed off of the old table, and they're just the 45cent wood cut-outs from Walmart. If you plan on having your kid eat at the table, though, I wouldn't recommend putting anything on the top, because food/milk gets in the little cracks and it gets really nasty. But maybe something on the side.


Since we've wanted to set her up a computer station, for some reason I got it into my head that she needed her own special mouse pad, so I played around with fireworks, (my first time really creating anything by myself. I still had to have Royce help me a little, though) and this is what I came up with. So hopefully it will work, and I'll get it made into a mouse pad from Wal-Mart. One really cool thing that Royce showed me was textures. (I guess the mouse can't have an image repeated over again because it can't separate the difference between the two.) So he showed me how to put it on the background. I think next time I'll have him show me how to put it all over, and make my picture look a little cooler. Although, now that her table is red, maybe I should go with more of a lady-bug theme. They also had round mouse pads at Ikea for 99cents.

Video

Here is a link to a short video made by the (LDS) Church, narrated by President Hinckley. What a wonderful thing to be able to listen to the words of a Prophet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUwh1YUMtE

Gina and the Capitol

Aunty Gina came to stay with us two weeks ago, and we went to see the Capitol. The Texas state Capitol is even a few feet bigger than the United States Capitol. Silly Texas. (I don't know why I can't figure out how to rotate it.)

When we were growing up we rode horses, and my grandma was a riding instructor, and a horse show judge, so when we took this picture, Emmaline was holding onto the horn, and I was just joking around and I told her that if she held onto the horn Grandma would beat her, (because you're not supposed to hold onto the horn...I don't remember why; I think something about getting your hand wrapped around with a rope and cutting your fingers off or something) and as I was putting this picture up on the blog Emmaline said, "If I hold onto that thingy, Grandma will beat me?" It was pretty funny. (We really don't beat our children...I probably shouldn't joke around about stuff like that. :) )

It was a lot of fun, and Daddy ended up getting out of class early, and his building is only a block away, so he walked over and got to go through the last building with us.
Emmaline had a lot of fun with Aunty Gina, and it took a lot of convincing to let us giver her back to Nana and Papa. We still might have to kidnap her back sometime. :)

Emmaline also has decided that she likes to take pictures now, so I let her use the camera when we went, and it was pretty fun to see our visit through the eyes of a three year old. This was one of her favorite pictures...a picture of the Capitol and fireworks. :) She's camera crazy now; we might have to get her a little digital camera for her birthday. (But not the kid tough ones that you can throw down the stairs...they're $80! Besides we don't even have any stairs...)


Our last story of the day was pretty sad. I've been sick all last week, so Thursday I finally went to the doctor, and I had an ear infection, and a yucky cold, so I've been on my antibiotics so I thought I'd be okay to go to Church today, but by the middle of Sunday school I was feeling pretty yucky so we decided to go home, so we went to get Emmaline out of primary, and she was so sad she just starting crying because she didn't want to leave primary. I felt so bad. I almost talked Royce into staying the third hour, but he didn't want Mommy feeling sick, so we came home, and Emmaline and Royce made cookies together, and he cooked her top ramen noodles for lunch. (She loves them, but she doesn't get them very much because they don't have much nutritional value. :) ) Then we ended up playing together for the rest of the afternoon, so she ended up having a pretty good day after all.

More Pics from St. Louis

Here are some more pictures from our trip. Good thing Aunty Lea was responsible and took some pictures.

Baby Mazy. Her little bow is so cute. Lea made it.
Mazy on the day of her blessing.
Emmaline followed Lea everywhere, trying to help take care of Mazy. She'd run to get her her binky, and she'd follow them up the stairs and "help" Lea change her diaper. And we found that sometimes when Mazy would cry, Emmaline would mew like a kitty, and that sound would make her stop crying a look around a little, so everytime she cried, Emmaline would run over and start mewing at her. It was cute.
Grandpa

Cake Stuff

This is my lemon cake that I made today. I was going to make more daisies for the top, but I just ran out of time. I also ran out of my glaze so I couldn't frost the outside of my cake before I put the fondant on, so you can see the different layers. But it tasted pretty good, so I think that will make up for some of the decorating flaws. :)


I've started working on Emmaline's birthday cake. Hopefully you can tell, but she wants to have a Monsters Incorporated cake this year, so I thought I'd give myself plenty of time, and start to make the little figurines first. Hopefully she doesn't change her mind in the next three months. :)



Royce had a big package sent this last week, and Emmaline loves the box; she even convinced Daddy to give it a try.