A Very Thankful Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for so many things...most of all I am thankful for God as he has blessed me with all that I have; a loving husband, a handsome little boy, a second baby on the way, the chance to host two wonderful exchange students and so much more!

This year was basically the first year I REALLY cooked Thanksgiving dinner in the 8 years Travis and I have been married. In previous years, if we weren't at my parents or invited to a friends, I would just make a very small turkey breast in the crock pot with mashed potatoes and maybe corn.

This was the first year for a giant turkey and, of course, I forgot to take a picture of it before it was cut! That's okay though, it turns out that when I put it in the roasting pan and cut the trash bag off we used to marinate the turkey in, it ended up breast side down, so it wasn't very pretty looking on top!

It was TASTY though!

Our Thanksgiving feast. It doesn't really look like a lot, but it was PLENTY!

Travis gave us a quick lesson from the Bible on Thanksgiving and then blessed the meal!

RC waiting as patiently as he could for food....that he ended up not eating anyway. He sat eating pretend food while daddy talked.

Family photo. Pardon my horrible looking hair please, I had just washed it and didn't gel it! KJ was photographer, hence why he is barely in the shot!

We even broke out the bubbly for this meal...as in Sparkling Apple Cider!

KJ decided that the angel pie had to be eaten with no fork. He dug right in...face first!

And he just turned 18? LOL

Billy must have decided it looked fun.

Silly boys!

It has been a wonderful Thanksgiving. Now I am spending time trying to score a few Christmas gifts and newborn diaper supplies for a great deal and tomorrow we are going to hit up only ONE store to see what we can score. I hope and pray that by going to the Lifeway Christian store people won't be insane and crazy there!

Once we get home tomorrow, it will be time to start getting the Christmas decorations up! "It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

Trick or Treat?

This Halloween brought another first for RC. It wasn't his first Halloween, but instead his first year to Trick or Treat. We got him all dressed up in the Bob the Tomato costume I scored brand new on sale for $5!!! He LOVES Veggie Tales and especially Bob and Larry.

Right before we started. He was watching the other kids as they were running around crazy.

We went over to a friends house and met up with a large group of other kids so RC would have someone to go with. He had a blast!

Walking with daddy and seeing how it's done.

We headed off down the street! RC didn't know what to do. He liked carrying his bucket but at the first house, by the time I got him to the door I found out he dropped his bucket back by daddy! Oops...candy in hand please! Thank you!

 

Such a big guy carrying his own bucket. He wouldn't let go of it!

 After that he got it! Occasionally he would get mad when the person giving candy would put it in his bucket for him. He is such an independent little thing and wants to do everything on his own. He literally would take the candy out and put it back in the bucket! 

Our...I mean his, candy haul.

The kinda funny thing is that RC has no clue really what candy is and what he was getting in his bucket. He was just happy to be with his friends and getting stuff from people. LOL

 

The goods which he didn't get to have but the gummy snacks. Poor kid = happy mommy! ;)

He still has no clue as he was only allowed to have the gummy snacks. Made mommy happy!

I'm sure next year he will be even more eager to head out and beg for candy!

Another Perfect Cake

For this year's 4th, I wanted to make a cake that would be perfect for the occasion. A friend sent me a website with a suggested cake. I used the basic design, but made it mine. I think it came out as one of the best cakes I have made. Everyone ate it up at the party so that was a good sign!

The recipe called for fresh strawberries and blueberries, however, I chose to just use my favorite box mix (vanilla cake) and add coloring to the layers. I have yet to find a white cake from scratch that I just love. Hopefully soon!

Here is how the cake came out!

My favorite design "Patriotic Rose Cake"

 And the inside came out like this.....

 

Flag design from Better Crocker

 Now I just need more excuses to bake! I really might just start whipping things up and sending in weekly with Travis to work. Just so I can test different recipes, etc.

My Polished Patriotic Party Cake...

was a smash! (A friend gave me the title for today's post!) I got this idea from i am baker's blog. Amanda came up with this simple Rose Cake and has now made it even better! For those that have thought about cake decorating...this is the first cake you should ever make or at the very least decorate the outside of the cake using Amanda's rose technique. This is where I started with cake decorating and it was super easy to make. Even when I decided to recreate the vertical layers i am baker did on the original rose cake. Here is a picture of my first Rose Cake. I had made this cake for the first baby shower cake I ever made.

Rose design in butter cream icing

Vertical Pink and Chocolate Stripes.

This weekend we celebrated Memorial Day early by having friends over for a cookout. I of course had to make a cake for the occasion. Lately I haven't had a reason to bake!!! *Note to self...start working my way through the Cake Boss' cookbook again and send in with Travis to work!!!

Amanda at i am baker, came up with a patriotic twist to her rose cake. I just had to try it this weekend! So after checking out how she made her's, I got to work! Because I wanted a white cake base, I decided to go with boxed mixes as I haven't found a white cake recipe I like yet! I picked up 3 boxes of vanilla cake mix. Using 9" round pans I made one red, white, and blue layer. To have proper height for each layer I ended up having to use an entire box of mix for each layer.

Also remember when coloring that gel coloring works best. A tip for the red layer: be sure to start with a pink base then add 'NO TASTE red'. This will give you a good red color but not having it tasting nasty! I did add a little of 'red red' and 'Christmas red' to mine, but not much! For the blue I used 'sky blue' and a fair amount of it. I think it would have looked better with royal blue, but I didn't have any! Another note about icing colors...when working with darker colors such as red and blue, if possible make the icing the day before and color it. Darker icing will enhance in color over night. I unfortunately ran out of time the night before and therefore had to settle with what I got day of. It still looked fabulous though!

Now...drum roll please.......

TA DA....

I started with these....

To make this...

and decorate it like this!

One of my favorite views!

and finally how the inside of the cake looks!

This cake was fun to make and tasted awesome. In fact...I was told it was one of my best yet! I think it was the vanilla cake mix that did the trick! This is a fun way to celebrate the holidays!