Aaron's Birthday Cake and a Pillar Cake!

I have 2 more cake updates for you - Aaron's 25th birthday cake, and a practice pillar cake!

Aaron's poker cake for his 25th birthday.  This is chocolate and white chocolate swirl cake with peanut butter filling.  Frosted with buttercream, covered in fondant.  All of the chips and cards are also made of fondant.

Practice-run with push-in pillars (and a new recipe).  Both tiers are vanilla almond cake - top tier has raspberry cream filling, bottom has strawberry cream filling. Aaron and I took these to work so that our co-workers to be my taste testers. I believe it's safe to say that the test passed, as I received many compliments.

Recipes on the list to try soon (not necessarily together): lemon poppy seed cake, key lime filling, chocolate chip cake.

Techniques to try soon:  Airbrushing!

I've got a few more cakes to make in July so hopefully I'll get to try out some of this.

Sister's 21st Birthday Cake

I know it's been a while (big surprise, right?) but I have another cake to show you!  This was for my sister's 21st birthday.  She wanted a Twilight cake, but she didn't read the books so it had to be about things in the movie.  The inside was a rainbow colored vanilla cake, it had rainbow chip filling, buttercream frosting, and it was covered in marshmallow fondant.

Cullen crest- drawn with buttercream frosting

Volterra Clock Tower - made with modeling chocolate.  I wanted to do some more details here, but I ran out of time trying to finish!

And finally, the inside of the cake and all its rainbow glory :)

Tomorrow, I'm making a poker table cake for my husband's birthday; I'll try to get those photos up soon!

Cake Updates!!

Today, I want to give an update about my cake-making.  This weekend, I made a Twilight cake.  This was mostly for fun/practice.  I used fondant and gumpaste for the first time and it was quite an adventure.  Here's the first picture - finished product with the Twilight books in the background (for those of you not on the Twilight bandwagon) so you can see what I was going for.

This is what I found out:  1.  Despite what I read about it online, fondant is very super easy to work with.  It makes the cakes look soooo smooth and I didn't have to spend so much time smoothing frosting to perfection (or obsessing over cake crumbs that made their way to the outside).  Mind you, I don't really care for how it tastes, but DH doesn't seem to mind.  2.  See those chess pieces?  They are made of gumpaste and it took me forever to make those!  And I'm sure you can tell they're leaning over.  It was sooo difficult to get them to stand upright - I finally stuck a piece of spaghetti all the way through to get it to stay.  I'm not sure if the leaning was due to the fact that I don't know how to work with the gumpaste, or that I didn't have the consistency quite right.  3.  My apple looks a bit like a red pumpkin.  It was much taller and skinnier (like an apple) but gravity took its toll on my gumpaste and it settled.  Again, maybe this is an incorrect consistency thing.  4.  That parrot tulip was the biggest pain in the rear.  The petals were made individually, with a wire stuck inside and dried.  That was the easy part and they looked pretty awesome.  The next step, however, was to tape the wires together to make a flower.  I tried every which way of taping and it just wansn't happening.  The petals were flipping around and definitely not making a flower.  I have NO clue why that is.  Maybe my wires were too small for the tape to hold onto?  I finally resorted to sticking them into the cake as individual petals rather than one flower.  It looks okay but it isn't what I was trying to do.  Here are some other pictures:

I think this was a pretty good first try with new materials.  Coming up the first week in May, I get to make a cake for my sister's birthday - also a Twilight cake, but she doesn't read the books.  She's crazy about the movies so it will be a bit different.  I'll report back with a design update on this at a later time.  Also, at the end of May, I will be making a poker table cake for DH's birthday.  Should be fun!  :)  Happy Monday, readers!

Controlling Miss Pip's Messiness!

For those of you who don't already know, I have a little sugar glider named Miss Pip.  A sugar glider is a small marsupial native to Australia and New Guinea that can glide through the air like a flying squirrel. 

Meet Miss Pip

I love my little girl, but she's very messy and throws food everywhere!  This is characteristic of a sugar glider and, yes, I knew this before I bought her.  I put a cloth over the carpet below her cage and hung a sheet behind her cage on the wall.  I thought that would keep most of the messiness under control.  It didn't.  On Monday, since I had the day off, I did a thorough cleaning of her cage (which I do every couple of weeks or so) and decided to clean all around her.  I spent over an hour cleaning dried up food off of my husband's TV, stereo, the Wii, my desk, etc.  I realize she's not in an ideal location being in the living room, but with our living arrangement, there's not much other place to put her.  The bathroom would be ideal, except that there's no window in there and it is crucial for sugar gliders to have daylight cycles.  When we get a bigger place, she will have a home in a spare room/office. 

Anyway, the point of this post was to introduce the (hopeful) solution.  The Glider Kitchen.  I did not come up with this idea, but read about it online and I'm hoping it will help.  All I did was take a little plastic storage tub from Wal-Mart ($1.50) that's about the size of a shoebox and cut a hole in it.  Then I put it inside her cage, and put her food bowls underneath it each night.  Now all I have to do is wait a week or so and see if the messiness is contained.  Hopefully she will be throwing her food at the plastic storage container instead of our TV.  It should work unless she decides to bring the food out of the "kitchen" and still throw it.

Here's her cage with the sheet on the wall and the cloth underneath

And here is an up-close picture of the Glider Kitchen!

Duty calls at work.  Thanks for reading!

New Cookbook - Saving Dinner (Week 1)

I just picked up this cookbook a couple of weeks ago called Saving Dinner. The great thing about this book is that it's divided into seasons and for each season, those recipes use produce that is in season at that time (so they're fresher and cost less!). The other great thing is that at the beginning of each week, there is a shopping list of everything you need to buy for that week's meals. And you can go online and print them so you don't have to carry around the book at the grocery store. And, it gives you suggestions for side dishes that go well with the meal (and that are also in season).

It gives you 6 recipes for each week, but we can't eat that many meals in a week once we go to church, I do some babysitting, we eat leftovers, etc. so I'll buy enough for 4-5 depending. Anyway, the first week, we ate Pan Roasted Chicken and Potatoes, Pasta Beef Satay, Black and White checkered Chili, and Blackened Salmon (some photos are below).

Most of these came out really delicious! When I made the Pan Roasted Chicken following the recipe, the chicken finished cooking before the potatoes. Next time, I think the potatoes should be smaller pieces. The Pasta Beef Satay had a little too much peanut butter for my taste; the noodles tasted a little dry because of it. Overall, so far, so good. I've always liked to cook, but I was stuck cooking the same things repeatedly. I like learning how to cook some things that are more outside of my comfort zone but not too over the top.

Black and White Chili









Pan Roasted Chicken and Potatoes









Blackened Salmon Over Rice

Anniversary Trip??

First of all, I can't believe it's even almost time to think about our anniversary, but it's quickly approaching! We have been wanting to plan a small, inexpensive trip for our anniversary and while we have a couple of ideas, I would appreciate any input you have. This will be just a Thu/Fri-Sun trip and we will have about $300. These are the things we've considered:
1. Beach trip. We have a friend with a house at Holden Beach. We could stay there most likely, relax and have a nice dinner Saturday night.
2. Camping. Less money for lodging = more money for something like whitewater rafting or going to see Biltmore.
3. Carowinds/Busch Gardens for the day, stay somewhere inexpensive that night.

More ideas? Let me know!

Coming later this week: my new recipe book and why it makes me so happy :)

It's Your Long Lost Pal!

Clearly, I am terrible at updating my blog! But, I'm hoping to get a little better at it, so bear with me!

After Aaron and I got married in June, we moved into a little apartment (1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1 closet, roughly 600 sq. ft.). On top of that, it's the handicapped unit, so where one would normally find cabinets and drawers (in the kitchen, under the sink in the bathroom) our apartment has access for a wheelchair. Anyway, the idea was live there for a couple of months until Aaron graduated in August, he would find a job, and we would move wherever that may be. It's now March, we just signed our third 5-month lease, and we're still living in the little apartment. Aaron did get a job just a couple weeks ago, but it's temporary. Well, during all this time that we've been hoping for a full-time job, we have left most of our things in boxes. There's no room for the stuff, plus we were thinking we would just have to pack it again. Our walls had no pictures, our windows had no curtains and our wedding gifts were kept safely in their packaging. This weekend, I decided to do a little bit of decorating. It doesn't seem like we're leaving any time soon, so we might as well make it look like someone lives there! So now, we finally have some pictures on the walls and some curtains! We still have wedding gifts in boxes, we still have plastic drawer sets in place of real cabinets and drawers, and we still have a whole corner in our living room dedicated to empty cardboard boxes that we hope to reuse when we move but it's better than it was.

In other good news, I'm pretty sure I will get to make my first official wedding cake next year! :) I've done a practice cake, which I've posted a photo of below, but it's only about half the size this cake will be. I'm super excited because I really want to turn this into a career one day!

The Weekend and The Holidays

This weekend was relaxing for the most part. I had the day off on Friday so I went to Verizon to get my phone upgrade! I wanted the LG Env Touch; however the phone required that I purchase a connect (internet) package of $9.99/mo. I'm sure I would use it if I had it, but in the spirit of conserving money, I didn't think it was the best choice. I got the Env3 instead. I really like the phone but have a bit of buyers remorse for not getting touch screen, even though I'm not sure I would like it (specifically not being able to feel buttons). I did some babysitting on Saturday (which ended up paying for my phone upgrade). Aaron decided that he wanted to be added to my cell phone plan to save money, so we went back to Verizon again on Sunday and he chose the Chocolate TOUCH...after telling me he wanted nothing more than a simple phone that could call people, he gets a brand new touch screen that came out a week ago! Now we're a family of new phones :)

It's hard for me to believe that the Holidays are almost here! Where has 2009 gone?? I love Thanksgiving and Christmas but it's always such a rush. For Thanksgiving, we go to Greensboro on Thanksgiving day and Goldsboro the day after. Then for Christmas, it's Greensboro Christmas Eve and leave after dinner to go to Virginia for Christmas Day! I do love to see both of our families but I certainly do not like all of the hustle and bustle! I don't know how it will be once we move. I guess that will depend where we end up.

In the spirit of Christmas, since we're working with a single income now, we have decided to be thrifty with the gifts. I'm thinking homemade items, perhaps. Bread, candies, baked goods?? If you guys have any ideas (homemade or otherwise thrifty) send them my way! It's not about the gifts; fortunately our families know that, but I'd like to arrive with something thoughtful in hand!

Happy Monday everyone!!

Introduction!

Hello everyone! My name is Stephanie and this is my first blog. Nothing too exciting, I'll write about the adventures of being a newlywed. I got married in June of this year to a wonderful man named Aaron. We met during our studies at NC State...we're still living in Raleigh for the time being. Aaron just finished up all of the credits for his Master's in Aerospace Engineering and is, unfortunately, still unemployed. When he has a job offer, we will move. I've never lived outside of NC so it will be interesting to see where life takes us :)