Sea Creatures Baby Shower Cake

And last but not least, the baby shower cake.  This one was for a neighbor's daughter, and she wanted a beachy/sea creatures themed baby shower cake.  I sent her a few ideas, and she chose one that was little blocks with sea creatures on top of them.  The baby's name is going to be "Jay," so it worked well to put three little blocks on the cake that spelled out his name. 

I find it so funny that Josh really, really liked this cake.  When he looks at my cakes, he usually says something like, "Yeah, I like it.  Maybe you could have done this..."  Or "Next time, why don't you... but it looks really good."  He's a pretty talented artist, so there's always room to improve in his book.

But when he saw this one for the first time, all he said was, "Awesome."  And then kept talking about how much he liked it.  When my neighbor came by to pick up the cake, I'm not sure that she was planning to open the box and look at it right then.  But Josh carried it out to her car for her, and he opened the box and showed it to her.  He said, "This is one of my favorites."  :)

Play-Doh Accessories

I was reading back through my journal tonight and found this:

Tuesday, 03-22-11:

Bennett is playing with play-doh in the kitchen while I’m in here working in the office.  He just came in here and said, “Look what I made, Mama!” and brought me a blue play-doh ribbon that he made in his extruder.  He said, “You may weah (wear) it, Mama.  Puh it on.”  So I said, “Ooh, is it an earring? (and held it to my ear) Or is it a necklace? (and held it at my collar bone) Or is it a bracelet? (and put it on my wrist)”  He said, “No.  It’s a darf.  Puh it on your net.”  And in case you didn’t get that - it’s a scarf, put it on your neck.  He just came back in with a necklace for me.  I put it on my neck and he had the proudest, happiest look on his face when he saw what he had made around my neck. 

I should have posted that a long time ago.  :)

"Bama Bound" Cake

Cake #2 this weekend was for a (I never can remember how all this stuff goes) second cousin?  First cousin once removed?  She's my first cousin's daughter.  Second cousin, right?

Anyway, she's headed to the University of Alabama this fall, and I made the cake for her graduation celebration Saturday.  Not being of the "Roll Tide" variety, I didn't have a good feel for the correct 'red' for this cake.  I, myself, prefer this kind of red.  I hope I got close enough to the right color not to cause a riot.

Congratulations, Taylor!

RO-
ROL-
ROLL T-

Nope.  Can't do it.

Marcie the Giggling Grouch

I've been meaning to write this post for a few days.  I've been feeling grouchy lately.  But tonight I asked Josh to make me one of those coffee/vodka drinks (I promise this is the first time in, like, a month at least), and now I'm not feeling so grumpy, but I still want to post it.  I just kind of imagined writing it with a scowl on my face, but instead, I'm giggling at all of these topics I want to mention.

I've just been making a mental note of all the things people do in my daily routine to irritate me.  And this could most certainly be a 'to be continued' kind of post.

But for now...

1.  It irritates the crap out of me when I pull up to a stop sign and come to a stop before the person perpendicular to me, but they feel the need to motion for me to 'go ahead.'  Uh...yeah, I know.  I was here first.  Of course I'm gonna 'go ahead.'  Grrrrr.......

2.  It irritates me even more when a car pulls up to a stop sign way before I get there, and waits for me to get to the stop sign and come to a complete stop before going.  Oh. My. Gosh.  Just go!  You don't have to wait for me to stop!  I'm still half way down the road from the stop sign!  Just go!  You're now making me wait for you!  I guess I can understand if you've been in an accident involving someone running a stop sign, but I would guess that's not usually the case, and it is quite obvious that I'm planning to stop when I slow to 25, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8.... mph as I approach you.  Go!!!

3.  I try to get to the gas station in the middle of the day, before everyone gets off work and floods the place.  Same with the grocery store.  But sometimes I can't help it, and I have to go fill up at 5:45pm and choose a pump to pull in behind someone and wait for them to finish.  I hate doing that, but sometimes you have to.  BUT.  Can I please just say that pulling up head-on to a car still pumping gas is never going to work?  You have to pull in behind someone in order to actually get your turn.  I realize that some gas tanks are on the opposite side of the car, but find a car that is like yours that you can pull in behind.  This woman is sitting in her car that is pulled face-to face with another car when another car pulls in behind the car that is occupying the pump.  The woman gets out of her car and goes walking, shouting, and finger waving towards the other car saying, "I've been waiting!  I was here first!"  I mean, really?  As soon as that car backs up and moves on, you know another one is going to pull right up!  Just go find someone that also has a gas tank on the right side of their car!

Okay, I think that's all for now.  I'll definitely let you know if I encounter more stupidity.  I guess I can't really call it stupidity.  I'll let you know if anything else just really irritates me.  How about that?  :)

Braves Baseball Caps Cake

I'm seeing cake in my sleep after the last few days.  This is the first time I've taken on three cakes in one weekend.  They were all due today.  I have to say, I think I handled it very well.  I never got overwhelmed or overly stressed.  My stomach did hurt from Wednesday to this morning, but that's just how my body handles stress, no matter how well I'm handling it on the outside.

It wouldn't be that big of a deal if you didn't have to wait until Thursday to start them.  You know, if you could make one cake on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and one on Friday or something.  But you can't do that.  You can't bake a cake that's due Saturday until Thursday, or else it won't be as fresh.  But you can't really wait until Friday, because the decorating usually takes up an entire day (especially when you have a 3 year old and a 1 year old).

I think I can thank my mom for my being able to remain quite calm while getting these cakes done this week.  Thursday morning, I stopped by there after dropping Bennett off for school to get a couple of the cake pans that I needed.  Does everybody know that my mom bakes cakes?  That's how I learned how to do this.  Though she now sends much of her business to me.  Anyway, she's got the huge stash of everything-you-could-ever-need-cake-related.  So I went by there to get some stuff, and she said, "Why don't you just come over here and bake your cakes?  I've got three ovens [yes, that's right - she has three ovens] and you could get them done in no time.  Plus, your Daddy's in Alabama today and I could use the company."  So Cannon and I went back home, packed up all our ingredients and decorating tools and headed back to Grandmama's house.

I think she got a little more than she bargained for, because we wound up being there for two whole days.  I went and got Bennett from school that Thursday and took him back over there, and we wound up spending the night.  Josh was in Atlanta visiting a friend, so we would have been at home alone that night anyway.

But just having her to talk to, drink wine with, and clean up after me was so helpful.  As I put things down, she picked 'em up and washed 'em.  Sometimes, just to have them picked back up and dirtied up again.

So anyway, let's get to the cakes.  I'm only posting one for now, because it's the only one I have a picture of yet.  Greg photographed two of them for me today and hasn't gotten them to me yet.  He had to leave before I had completed the third one, so I had to take my own photo of this one.

So this one was for the local reception facility that I used to work for, Le Jardin Blanc.  They e-mailed me a couple months ago and asked if I could do this cake,

except with these hats:

I said, most definitely.

If you know me, I will always try to do a better job than what is expected of me.  Especially when it comes to cake.  I feel like I accomplished that with this one.  Here's what I delivered to them today:

Music-Filled Evening at the Gibson Household

iPhone Etiquette?

Okay, I have a question.  I don't have a smartphone, therefore I do not receive e-mails on my phone.  I'm still in the stone age where you sit down at your computer and log in to check your e-mail.  Haha.

Anyway, it just occurred to me that there might be some kind of new etiquette about what time you should stop sending e-mails in the evenings.  I mean, a lot of times I'm on the computer late, responding to facebook messages and e-mails.  Just now I was getting ready to respond to a lady about a cake and thought - wait a minute.  It's 11:00pm.  Her previous e-mail to me had that familiar line at the bottom "sent from my iPhone."  Is it too late to send this?  Will her phone make a sound, letting her know that I've written her?  What if it were 2am and I wanted to write her back, because that's when I had the time to get on and take care of things?    

I mean, it's not 2am, and probably never will be when I'm writing e-mails, because if you know me, you know I love my sleep and wouldn't be wasting quality snoozing time writing e-mails.

But you get my point.  Do iPhone users turn their phones - or at least their alerts - off after a certain time at night, or is there some etiquette out there that I don't about that says you shouldn't send an e-mail after a certain time?

Somebody educate me!

The Incident

I haven't had a scare like this since Daddy took Bennett to Ace Hardware a year ago.

After I picked Bennett up from school Thursday we went to the mall.  I had a couple of things to return, so I thought it'd be a good little activity for me and my boys to do together.  They enjoy going to the store.  And I had a coupon for a free milkshake from Chick-fil-A that I knew Bennett wouldn't mind sharing with me, and there's a Chick-fil-A at the food court at our mall.

So off we went.  I made my returns, we got our Banana Pudding milkshake from Chick-fil-A (which was better than I thought it would be), and we were ready to head home.  We were on the top floor of the mall and needed to get back down to the bottom, so we waited for the elevator outside of Macy's (I had Cannon in the stroller).  Well, Bennett loves elevators.  Waiting for it to come, he was looking at himself in the reflective doors.  He put his hand on it and I said, "Bennett, don't put your hands on it, it might open."  His usual response, "What will it dooooo?"  I'm pretty sure I said something like, "It might take your hand with it!"  Of course I wasn't really concerned about his hands getting hurt from being on the elevator door when it opened, I just didn't want him right there as someone might be trying to exit the elevator.

So anyway, it came, we got on, Bennett pushed the button for Level 1 and we went to the bottom floor.  As I felt the elevator stop, I turned my back to the door and prepared to wheel the stroller out of there.  All you mamas know how you have to be prepared to exit, 'cause those doors'll close on ya (or your baby) in a heartbeat if you don't get a move on.  Plus, the crowd waiting when the doors open never looks too happy when you're taking half a day getting yourself situated so you can exit.  Well when I turned around, the doors were opening and Bennett started screaming bloody murder.  I looked, and his hand was stuck in the door jamb - well, I guess it's not really the door jamb.  Imagine if you put your hand flat on an elevator door and as it opened, you just let your hand go with it until it led your hand right into the (very small) opening that the doors recede into.  That's what Bennett did.  The doors got stuck, because even though his fingers were little enough to fit in there, his knuckles weren't. The third set of knuckles- the ones on top of your hand.  The other two sets were already in there.   I immediately grabbed his arm and thought I would simply pull his hand out.  Not quite so easy.  The doors were still trying to open, pulling on his hand.  When I realized his hand wasn't going to come out easily, I started pressing the 'door close' button on the inside of the elevator.  Nothing happened.  By this time, Bennett is screaming his head off, Cannon is terrified and also screaming his head off, and I remember starting to lose it a little bit when the doors weren't moving and neither was his hand.  My mind was racing.  I thought for sure he was going to have a few broken fingers.  I wound up having to pull (with a good amount of force) his hand out of there. 

Whew.  All fingers intact.  The doors opened the rest of the way, and there was a couple with a stroller standing there that had witnessed the whole thing.  The girl immediately came over to us and asked what she could do to help.  The guy just kind of stood there with a "what the crap just happened" kind of look on his face.  She ran into Macy's and asked them if there was a mall medic on duty.  She also went to the nearest restaurant and got a bag of ice for Bennett's hand.

I don't really want to go into detail about the rest of it, because I don't feel like complaining about what a joke the security at Arbor Place Mall is.  They were very nice, but totally incompetent. 

Bennett's fingers got very hot and quite swollen for a little while, but I was able to bend each finger without causing him pain, and the swelling went down after a while.  In between his fingers you could see lots of tiny little red spots, like his blood vessels had been strained, but other than that, nothing.  He was fine.  Just a little traumatized.  By the time we were done filing the incident report, he was asking the security guards when their birthdays were.  That's what he's into right now.  He wants to know when your birthday is (what month) and if he can come to your party.

So there you have it.  Scary situation involving Bennett's fingers, Part 2.

(I have a feeling I'm going to get a phone call tomorrow that will go something like - I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT THIS!  IS HE OKAY???)   :)

Party-Filled Weekend

We had such a fun weekend last weekend.  Friday was Cannon’s actual birthday, and Saturday was his party.  Nothing too fancy; just some close friends and family over for what I intended to be a porch-party.  But, since 1) I didn’t have the food set up outside and 2) the ever-popular train table and all of the other toys were still in the den, it kind of started out as an indoor thing – which was fine.

We did go outside when it was time to cut the cake, though.  It was just such an incredibly beautiful day, and I didn’t want cake all over the floor.  But I thought the same thing for Bennett’s first birthday, and I certainly didn’t have to worry about cake on the floor.  He barely even touched the thing!  I wound up putting a piece of icing in his mouth and he spit it out.  Oh well.  No big cake dive for Bennett.  

Cannon, however, dug right in.  I put that cake in front of him and he took his hand and gouged a huge chunk right out of it.   

And he ate it.  He went back for more, and more, and then got tired of wasting time using his hands.  Atta Boy!

I've never been so willing to get icing all over my face:

Then we opened presents, but Cannon was not interested in that at all.  He wanted to crawl around and see what all those big kids were up to.

Bennett had fun playing with his cousins, Mac and Rachael, and friends Ella, Katherine and Aiwyn (all children of our close friends).

Some more good pictures from the party:

Baby Everett (as Bennett still calls him):

He's got to be one of the most handsome babies ever.  :)

Uncle Josh teaching Rachael how to play the trumpet.  But it looks like he might need to focus more on teaching his own son the correct way to play...

Me with my newest niece, Maria:

Bennett and Cannon's cousin, Haylie, about to enjoy her cake.

And as usual, we try to get a shot of all the Gibson grandchildren.  Greg was able to grab at least one decent one before the meltdown started:

It was a good time.  I really enjoyed seeing everyone, and some even hung out long enough to have pizza with us that evening, which was great.

The next day, we went to another birthday party.  My good friend from college has twin girls, and it was their 2^nd birthday.  What a party those folks throw!  Oh, man we had fun.  Especially Bennett.  That little boy did. not. stop.  for three hours.  He ran and played and ran and played and ran and ran and ran…  

Anyway, their party this year was a “barnyard animals” theme.  So of course they had a rooster, a couple of ducklings, and a guinea pig for the kids to feed and play with.   

They also had the forethought to put a ton of toys in the yard so the kids could go to town and the parents could safely sit back and watch from a distance.  I set Cannon down out there and he was just as content as Bennett for a couple hours.

 

I did the cake, and it was, of course, barnyard animals themed.  My idea was to make this barn that was split right down the middle so that when you pulled it apart, each cake came away as a fully iced cake; one for each girl.  But, to my dismay, it shifted a little on the ride over and one side fell into the other and made it so that it was kind of a mess when they were pulled apart.  And one of the barn doors fell a little bit too.  I was so sad, ‘cause it was so cute before we left – and I didn’t get a picture of it at home because I knew I’d have a chance once we got there.  So no pre-slid pictures.  Oh well.  It happens.  Good thing it was a gift from me.

And I don't think Katerine and Ella minded.  :)

I made a really cute cupcake for Miranda, but didn't get a picture of it, unfortunately.  James, her husband, wrote me a couple days before the party and asked if I could make a special cupcake for Miranda, since her birthday was Saturday.  So I started thinking about what I could do.  On their invitations, there is a black-spotted hen sitting in the upper window of the barn.  So I thought, well, Miranda is the mother hen…  So she got a spotted “mother hen” on a bed of hay.

Just like last year, right about the time the girls were getting into their cakes, we heard the familiar “clang-clang” of the ice cream truck.  They had the ice cream man stop by the party and everybody was able to go up and order whatever they wanted.  Bennett picked a cherry popsicle (although he’ll tell you it was raspberry).

Cannon got to enjoy some too.

After the cake and ice cream, it was back to playing.  Cannon got to ride around the yard and then relax with Daddy for a while.

Towards the end of the party, James’ dad and brother broke out their toys; a couple of remote control cars.  They stood back out of sight a little bit and ran those things all through the yard, between kids and toys and animals.  It wasn’t long before there was a whole mess of kids running behind the cars, and Bennett was right up front, absolutely having a ball.  As they tired, kids kind of slowed down and the mess dwindled from about eight of them to just a couple, then down to just one.  Guess who that was?  Yep.  He was the energizer bunny.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sweatier, more red-lipped kid in my life.

You would think he would have passed out on the way home, especially since it was basically his bedtime by the time we left, but nope!  He yapped the whole way home.  At one point Josh and I just looked at each other, both exhausted just from listening to him!

It really was a great weekend spent with people we love.