The Wedding

Thankfully the weather was beautiful on Monday. John and Linda's backyard was lovely. John has quite the green thumb and it showed.

However, there was an unfortunate incident involving the 3 year-old flower girl before the ceremony go started. She found the fish pond and fell in. Lets just say that it's still spring and pond has gone unattended all winter so it's a bit slimy. Needless to say she was traumatized and her dress was ruined. Luckily Kathy's daughter, Becca, was dressed appropriately and was able to quickly step in to the roll of flower girl.

Shaylin looked lovely as her dad walked her down the aisle.



I have never seen a red wedding dress before. I got a close up look at it during the reception and it had some incredible bead work. Really pretty.

It was the largest wedding party I had ever seen. Nine groomsmen and eight bridesmaids. They didn't quite fit into the tent that was set up. I don't have good photos of the group because of where I was sitting.



Mr. & Mrs. Joshua Elieson



This is Pedro. He's a good friend of the bride.



Oh, Pedro is the one on the left, not he right. I must say he was the most poised bridesmaid in the group.

More of the Adventure tomorrow...

Have a Blessed Easter

I just wanted to share this video to help us all remember the true meaning of Easter.

Adventures in Wedding Cake Baking

Several weeks ago, my Ultimate BFF, Kathy, was asked by her nephew to make his wedding cake. He then asked me to help her. I'm sure it's because I was nearby during conversation. Both of us enjoy baking cakes, but neither of us has made a wedding cake before. Anyway, the fun began last Saturday and was a 3-day adventure.

On Saturday we baked the 3 layers of the 14" chocolate cake. Then on Sunday we baked 3 layers of a 10" coconut cake and 3 layers of a 6" chocolate cake. Fun, fun, fun. These cakes were totally made from scratch and used LOTS of butter and eggs.

Here's the 14" chocolate cake with the chocolate mousse filling.



This is the 6" chocolate cake it had coconut cream filling.



Here's the 10" coconut cake with coconut cream filling.



I had no idea how heavy fondant is. Wow. You have to knead the stuff A LOT and then roll it out and pray that it doesn't stick to the counter. Which of course it does. When you're trying to cover a 14" cake you have to roll out the fondant to about 24" inches square. Try getting that onto the cake. After several failed attempts because it was sticking to the counter it eventually took four of us to lift it up and lay it on the cake. The two smaller layers were a bit easier to work with.



After you get the fondant onto the cake you have to smooth it out and, mold the corners and trim it to fit.

Tomorrow the Wedding Adventure will continue.

Waaa!

I've been a fan of Adam Lambert on American Idol from early on. I know, some people thought his version of Ring of Fire was garbage. I thought the arrangement was unusual, but his vocals were hawt! After seeing it a couple more times, it grew on me. Now I actually like it.

So, last night I was hanging with my Stampin' Up! sistas. The DVR was set to record American Idol, as usual. I hate commercials with a passion. I also recorded The Biggest Loser. I watched most of TBL last night and finished up this morning knowing that there would be a lot of chatter at work about it. All was well until I get home today and watch Idol. Um, apparently the show ran long last night and I did not have Adams performance recorded. If Paula Abdul would just shut her yap make her comments a bit more concise, this never would have happened.

Thank goodness for the internet. However, it took a lot of digging around to find a video that hadn't been yanked by Fox. One that had been legally uploaded. One that wasn't just posted by some adoring fan trying to save my sanity.

So, I present to you the UBER HAWT performance by Adam Lambert on last nights show of American Idol...



(In case you're not a fan of the show, last nights songs were from the year the contestants were born. Hence the baby photo of Adam.)

I am now a happy and contented Fan! Go Adam!!!

Adventures in Furnace Repairs

This is what I woke up to on Thursday. Um, I tend to like the house a little cooler than Sprout does. She accuses me of trying to freeze her to death on occasion. The thermostat is one of those programmable ones that you can have adjust your temperature multiple times throughout the day. I generally keep it at 64 during the night and have it adjust up to 70 for wakey wakey time. When I threw back the covers I knew immediately that there was a problem - the air was to cold. So, while quite cold I dutifully did all the things I could think of to get the heater going.

New batteries in thermostat (the battery light was flashing)

New filter in furnace (the filter light was flashing -- ooops)

Maybe due to all the wind the pilot light has gone out. Search through house trying to find one of the long handled lighters. We have two of them, you'd think it would be easy to find at least one. Sprout LOVES candles and always obsconds with the lighter. Wake up Sprout in search of the lighter. Go down into family room and dig around. Bingo. Why the lighter is in the box of 'gaming paraphenalia' I will never know.

Open up furnace cover and try to read instructions (clear down by the floor) on how to light the furnace. Wowie, it has en electric ignition. (I've only had it for 3 years, without incident, so no smart remarks on not knowing this already.) Cool, no lighter needed after all. Turn off gas, wait 5 minutes. Hmm, what to do to kill 5 minutes? Pack my lunch, yep that works. Go back downstairs. Turn the gas on. Put the cover back on. Flip on the power to the thermostat. Nothing.

Hmmm, maybe there's no gas coming into house? Pull apart base of water heater. Hmm, there's a pilot light glowing so gas is not the issue. Double-check thermostat, it appears to be fine.

Call Sandy to get a recommendation on a service company as they had their furnace worked on just a couple of weeks ago. Sandy goes to work at 5:00am so don't think I was crazy to give her a jingle that early in the AM.

Resign myself to showering - at least we have hot water - and getting ready for work. Once at work call and schedule a repair technician and realize that I have left my cell phone on the charger at home. They said that they would have the technician call my work number before they came to the house. I only work 10 minutes from home so I could quickly leave the office and meet him there. He should call between 10 and noon. Great.

Fill up my water, go potty, sit at desk dutifully waiting for phone to ring. 12:01pm and no phone call. 12:05 and still no phone call. I call the company and they check into it. Um, the technician went to the house and no one was home. Great. I explain the whole need to call me at work and I'll drive home thing - again. They promise it will be before 2pm. 20 minutes later - we're a go. Gather up my stuff and hurry home.

The technician spends about 20 minutes and says, it's your thermostat. Your fuse was blown, I put a new one in and when the furnace tried to kick on the fuse blew again. When I bypass the thermostat the fuse doesn't blow. This visit is $138.50 and you can go buy a thermostat from Lowes and install it yourself. So, just out of curiosity, if I have you supply and install a thermostat how much will that set me back? $250.00. Um, not on top of the $138 right? Right. Yeeee, that's a little steep for my budget. Write out a check. Send him packing. Drive to Lowes. Look at various and assundry models of thermostats. I can't justify spending $90 so that that cuts out a few models. Settle on a $35 unit. Grab some more filters to have on hand - maybe I'll change them more frequently. Maybe. Head home.

Take old thermostat apart. Study wiring connections. Open new thermostat. Houston, we have a problem. Old thermostat has 4 wiring connections, new thermostat has spots for 5. Hmmm. A little head-scratching and studying. I'm feeling really good about where to put 3 of the 4 wires. Got a 50/50 shot with the fourth. Go with my first guess. Go downstairs, flip on the power. Nothing happens. Nadda. Go back up move the one wire to the other possible location. Back downstairs, turn on power. The furnace clicks a little but doesn't really turn on. Hmmm. Pull the cover off only to discover the technician had turned the gas off. Grrrrrr. Turn it on, put the cover on, flip the switch. Hallelujia!!!!

Strut through house like a proud peacock. I battled the thermostat and won!!!

It's currently 70 degrees and it feels doubley good.

I Had Noooo Idea...

Am I the last person on earth to learn about this great service that Google offers? What great service you ask? Well you can dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (for those of you with a Blackberry and can't dial 'letters', GOOG = 4664) from any phone, for free and get 'directory assistance'. It will ask you the city and state first, then the company name and then connect you directly to the number you were seeking. How cool is that? AND it's free!



Add it to your speed dial, you won't regret it!

I'm Back - No Foolin'!

So, I took some time off from blogging. Not exactly sure why. Maybe because I felt pressured (by my own self) to come up with something clever and/or interesting to post about all the time? Maybe because I was trying to do Project 365 and I just didn't have anything interesting to photograph every single day? Okay. Both.

Yes, I am the queen of starting all kinds of things, losing interest and leaving them in the dust. ADD? Lazy? Committmentphobic? All of the above? Who knows for sure, but I've decided to resume blogging. I am making no guarantees about how frequently I'll post or whether you'll actually find my posts interesting. But, in the immortal words of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

I'm Ba-ack!

P.S. I was going to change the photo in my blog header but since we do keep getting snow, granted not as much as in the photo, I'm going to leave it up a little longer. When Sprinter actually starts leaning more towards Spring watch for a newer photo. Hee hee