Update Overload
I update the blog with everything that has happened this month that I was a slacker at. So you will have to click 'older posts' to view everything.
We were invited to join my Aunt and Uncle for Thanksgiving in Provo this year. It was great fun to relax and hang out with extended family. It was held at Charne's sisters house. So there were many South Africans at the party. Cynthia loved every moment of being there.
Here is the turkey on top of the cake that I made. It was made in a rush the morning of so I don't like it ever much. I think that it could have been so much better.
Cynthia loves Layne. She kept wanting to play with him.
Cynthia is marvelous at getting just about anyone to do what she wants them to do. Over the course of lunch, I think about 4 people fed her from her lunch bowl.
Layne and Cynthia playing outside. She followed him around most of the day. Every time Layne asked her if they could go inside she said no. If you enlarge this picture you can see the big smile on her face.
This just a quick video of Cynthia playing around at lunch. She would bounce from on person to the next.
Thanks for a great Thanksgiving!
Friday night, Layne came up for dinner. Ben's work gave him a ham, so we cooked it up and I tried my hand at making fried/roasted potatoes - the way my mom makes them. They were a success and tasted so good. Cynthia followed Layne around. If he went to the bathroom, she waited outside the door. It he was on the computer, then she was on his lap. I think Layne has made a friend for life!
Cynthia is a true one of a kind little character. She has her own agenda and her own way of doing things. Tonight while I was at my final cake class Cynthia and Ben had a little fun. The story goes as follows:
Cynthia finds a pair of my pink socks all folded up. She unfolds the socks and promptly puts them on her feet. Ben and Cynthia play around, kicking the soccer ball, putting daddy's socks on over mommy's socks and a few other things. Next thing she runs over to the back door - where I left my slippers - and puts them on her feet. (She loves to where my shoes!) Then she is back chasing the soccer ball - slippers and all! Here is a little video clip that Ben took of Cynthia and her shoe agenda. If things don't work out she throws them away and then goes back and tries again - notice her throw the slipper away. This is Cynthia being herself!
Tonight was my final decorating class. This is the cake that I made. I found a picture online and just mimicked it. I changed the colour to yellow instead of pink. Underneath the icing is triple layer lemon cake. The colour is a little funky in the pictures. The side of the cake is more a pale yellow and the roses very from a bright yellow to a buttercup yellow.
Thanks Layne for this wonderful birthday present.
A few months ago I got this idea for a dress for Cynthia. I have been waiting until we had some money so that I could buy the material that I needed for the dress. Last Sunday I went to dress Cynthia for church and discovered that most of her dresses were way to short. I think that she had a growth spurt this week because most of her jeans are suddenly to short as well. So this week we bought all the material that I wanted and off I went. I used a basic pattern that I have and altered it to what I wanted. All the black is part of the alterations that I made. Originally there was supposed to be a white flower on the black waist band and the black chest was not going to be part of the dress. The flower I got was to big and never looked good so I went to plan B. There is also a second layer under the dress with mesh stuff to help give it flare. I think that it is darling. What do you think?
The front
The back
This week's assignment for my cake class was to either decorate cupcakes or an 8 inch cake. The book that we are working out of suggests that you make a clown 8 inch cake or flowers on cupcakes. I wanted to be a little different. I enjoy walking through the cake section in stores. Last week we were at Walmart and saw some super cute cupcakes. They had taken two cup cakes and made them into an animal. There was a dragon/lizard thing, a bear and a little puppy. I decided that I was going to copy the puppy, but instead of using two cup cakes I used my mini loaf pans. That way when you want to eat it, you don't have to fight the paper cup holding the cup cake. They were super easy to make and they were a hit.
Up close with one of the puppies
All seven looking forward
A different angle of the seven
I have had the New Moon movie scheduled on my wall calender since the first time I found out when it would be released. I also created a ticker on the bottom of my blog so that I could have a running count of the days left until New Moon come out. I have been getting super excited about the whole thing. I had it all planned out just how it was supposed to go. Then the beginning of the month hit us. Ben never got all the hours at work that he needed because of the weather. Insurance was being taken out of the weekly paycheck that left us a little short and my dream of going to New Moon started to fade. Yesterday I decided to just forget about. Talking about it to Ben and keeping a running count of days, just promoted sadness. So I made up my mind that I would forget about it until things looked a little better - maybe next month with the Christmas bonus or something.
Last night I was feeding Cynthia her dinner and Ben was taking his time getting home. He told me that he stopped at the store on his way home so that was the reason why he was taking so long. The next thing I knew, there was a knock on my front door. I was like great another door to door salesman or something. But it was Ben! He was standing there with a long stemmed red rose. He asked me if I wanted to go out with him on Friday night - then revealed two tickets to NEW MOON! I don't know where he got the money from but at 7pm on Friday night I will be on a date with my wonderful and truly amazing husband!
Thanks Honey!
Cynthia loves to play with the cushions. She usually uses them as a 'blanket' and put the over her legs and sits there all proudly like she just accomplished something that no one else has yet to complete. But Sunday night at play time, they become sandwich material. They were the best toys that we could have had in the house at the time.
Cushion Sandwich Cynthia
Laughing at Daddy for being sandwiched
Getting comfortable with the a cushion 'blanket'
'Hi!'
After Cynthia's afternoon nap and once all the snow had stopped falling from the sky, we went outside to play in it. Cynthia loved to walk through the snow where there were no foot prints. Then she discovered the fun in snow angels. She would lie down in the snow - it had to be just off the path - then I would move her arms up and down. She would giggle and then get up and be dusted off. I also taught Cynthia how to make and throw snow balls. Sure her snow balls where about the size of a golf ball and landed at her feet, she still had fun trying to get Daddy!
Cynthia's snow angel
I wanted to get a video of how we made the angels, but Cynthia decided that she was done. But you can the basic idea of the fun we had.
...Playing in Mommy's shoes!
This is our second/third snow of the year. We had some snow back in September and then again last night. I am not sure how you would really count snow fall. Anyway... I love the snow and so does Cynthia! I don't know how someone can hate the snow so much. Whenever it snows it feels like the Lord is cleaning the world. Everything looks so pure and good. It boggles my mind how someone can say horrible things about it.
When Cynthia woke up from her nap at 11am this morning I promptly got her dressed to go and play in the snow. At first she was a little unsure about what this white stuff was falling from the sky. After a few minutes of being in it she was having a blast. She would run around and look at her foot prints. Once we were all nicely 'chilled' we went back inside to warm up. Once Cynthia had finished her lunch, she was gathering her warm clothes to go back outside.
Bundling up
Wanting to go outside
Outside
Ben met us outside a few minutes later. Cynthia had to run over and say hi.
Making footprints in the snow
'Come on! Why are you not running around with me, Dad?'
Happiness is....
'Let's play!'
Over the weekend Cynthia and I took Ben to go and feed the birds. The last time that Cynthia and I went she had such a fun time throwing the bread for the ducks. Ben was at work, so that is why we took him over the weekend. There was only one problem, there were more geese there this time. They were not afraid of humans either. We could not get a good picture of us feeding the birds, but Ben was fighting the geese off. Cynthia got her finger bitten once, an attempt bit on the finger once, attacks on her shoulders and elbows (thank heavens for her thick jacket), the bread bag got attacked once and on tried to bit me. It was rough. There was this one cute little duck that hid from the geese behind us, so I would give him his own bread to eat. Cynthia was more shocked that the goose bit her than anything. It never broke the skin, just left mud on her hand but she did get a little scared every now and again since the geese are the size of her.
Me, Cynthia and the geese
Part of me, the geese and my cute little duck
Me and the cute little duck again
Here is a video that Ben took of the geese. Part of the video, the sun on the water makes a glare in the camera, but you can still see the point. Check out how many there are. And that does not even show you half of them.
Last night I made my first cake for my cake class. The assignment was either to make a character cake or to do a transfer. The transfer in the book was a rainbow that was made out of stars. I know how to make stars, I sometime have trouble making leaves. I decided to practice my weakness rather than my strength. I had a little problem with my leaves at the beginning because they were not forming correctly. I then learnt that sometimes the tip closes, so I had to stick my spatula through it and then it worked perfectly again. I also got a new toy for my cakes yesterday that I wanted to try out. It is a little 5" triangle that makes patterns in the side of you cake. So I tried it out. It is harder than you think it might be. But I still think that it looks kind of cute.
Live Love Laugh Tree
I know that the picture is a little washed out but I wanted you to see the different colours in the leaves. I bought a Burgundy red for my leaves, but it turned a little more purple than I wanted. So I had to add red to it. Sadly I never had enough red to add, so then I stripped my bag with orange. The idea being that when you put the icing into you icing bag and push it out, then the icing will come out stripped. My teacher did not think that it would work since the icing was dark already. But I did it anyway. So the outside leaves, the first leaves I did, were the Burgundy colour I started with, then slowly I got stripped leaves, but they were red stripped. And by the time I was done, I had a nice red leaves for Fall.
The side of the cake. The lines are come from my new triangle toy. And the spiral stars are from my new tip that I got a few weeks ago and have not used.
Ever since Cynthia was still in my tummy, she could not resist a beat. The other night we were finally able to catch some of you dancing on camera. Usually she will only dance for the first few beats of a song, I think she gets bored of the song. But here, I think she was dancing for the attention and to get out of eating her dinner.
Cynthia loves to put Ben's hats on. She looks so cute every time she does. I just had to share it with you.
Cynthia can't lift her pink on demand yet. So when she says 'I love you' in sign language, it looks like the picture above. Such a cutie!
For the last 10 months I have been looking for some shelves that I liked to put in Cynthia's room. I eventually gave up looking for the shelves and decided to just find some that I liked and then paint them. A local craft store, Michael's, has a large section of wooden items and I found a set a three shelves there that I liked. To add to the luck of finding the shelves, whenever you purchase something from their store, you get a 40/50% coupon for a single item the following week. So I used my 50% coupon and got the three shelves for $8. A deal that I could not find in the stores. I also had all the colours of paints that I wanted to paint the shelves. I bought a stencil of an elephant for the sides, but when I got home I found the stencil was to big, so I had to shrink the stencil. In the end I spent about $11 on three shelves. Talk about a bargain!
Two shelves on the wall. The large shelf has 'Cynthia' on it, a Christmas present from Britney and Shared last year. The small shelf has a large wire and bead elephant on it, Oupa brought it from South Africa when he came for a visit in April.
A close up for the small shelf. Notice the little gold elephant - it is the stencil that I had to shrink.
'Cynthia' on the large shelf.
There is a medium shelf, but nothing is on it yet, so I never took a picture of it.
Sunday afternoon, Ben and Cynthia built a fort in my living room Cynthia had such a fun time climbing in and out of the blankets and helping Ben that I got more blankets for them to use.
The finished product!
Such happiness!
Waves
I got my laundry lights and Cynthia had a ball playing with them in the fort.
It kind of felt like the scripture story of the rocks that were touch by the hand of God to create light in the barges.
Here is the turkey on top of the cake that I made. It was made in a rush the morning of so I don't like it ever much. I think that it could have been so much better.
Cynthia loves Layne. She kept wanting to play with him.
Cynthia is marvelous at getting just about anyone to do what she wants them to do. Over the course of lunch, I think about 4 people fed her from her lunch bowl.
Layne and Cynthia playing outside. She followed him around most of the day. Every time Layne asked her if they could go inside she said no. If you enlarge this picture you can see the big smile on her face.
