I found a recipe for a 14-layer cake.  That’s 14 layers, not 14 tiers.  I thought it sounded pretty cool, so I decided to make it.  Well I don’t plan on doing it again any time soon.  Let me tell ya’ that was quite a task.  First of all, to make 14 layers, you need 14 pans.  Well I guess you don’t HAVE to have 14 pans, but it sure does make things go faster:

Then you have to bake 14 layers.  Then you have to cool 14 layers.  Then you have to stack and fill 14 layers.  Yeah, it’s a mess:

Then you have to make icing and frost 14 layers.  And this is what it looks like when it’s done:

Yeah, all that work, and it looks like a plain old chocolate cake.  Until you cut it.  And then, it looks like this:

So that is what 14 (very thin) layers of cake looks like.  Yes, it was yummy.  But I’m not in any hurry to do it again.  Baking the cakes in 14 pans does make it easier to make, but cleaning 14 pans is not nearly as easy as cleaning 2 or 3.

This week I have to do a cake for a baby shower that Tarabeth is giving some girls she works with.  It’s fun to do cakes for Tarabeth, because she doesn’t care what I do.  Most people who want a cake from me tell me what they want it to look like, what designs they want, what colors, what style…blah, blah, blah….and that’s really boring for me.  But Tarabeth just tells me she wants a cake and do what I want.  Now I know she’d be perfectly happy with a cute decorated sheet cake.  But since I have free reign to do whatever I want, I like to take the opportunity to experiment and do something that I’ve been wanting to try, but never get the chance to do.  Soooooo….Tarabeth should be getting a really cool cake….that is, if it turns out the same way in real life that it is in my head. haha  We shall see.  If it turns out halfway decent, I’ll post pics of the finished product. 

I also have a newspaper cake to do for Friday.  Let’s just hope that the edible ink cartridges and icing sheets that I ordered for my printer get here in time to do the cake.  If not, I’m in trouble. lol 

Then I have a small cupcake cake to do for Saturday for a lady that Brittany works with.   And Josiah is coming in this week also.  His first birthday is tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll have to make him a cake sometime this week too.  That’s a lot of cakes, but at least they’re not all the same day. 

Jamie, Roxie and I leave for Las Vegas (and Disneyland!) one month from today.  Fun, fun, fun!!!  Roxie’s saving up all her quarters for the slot machines. lol  (I’m joking, people. )

Well I’m pretty boring lately.  Not a whole lot of stuff is going on here at the Leonard household.  Right now, Lexie and Jamie are gone to her gymnastics class, and Kaleb, Roxie and I are at home doing pretty much nothing.  Roxie just now came up the stairs with her hands hidden behind her back, a sneaky grin on her face, and said “Hi, Mommy!”  and ran into her room really fast.  I yelled at her to come in here and show me what she was hiding, and she said, “Okay, but you can’t spank my butt.” lol  Turns out it was a receipt from JC Penney that she had gotten out of a bag of stuff I bought there today.  I guess she thought she’d be in trouble for getting into it. 

I kept Reagan on Tuesday for Brittany.  I told Roxie that she was coming over.  I said, “I wonder what Reagan will have to say today?”  And Roxie said, “Well, Reagan does NOT speak Spanish.” lol  This is true, but seeing as how she’s only 10 months old, she doesn’t really speak English either.  haha  I don’t know what goes through her head sometimes.

I gave Lexie another funky hair-do the other day.  I just made this one up.  Can you tell? haha:

Oh, I also forgot to mention that while I was watching Reagan the other day, Roxie was off playing somewhere by herself for a while.  That is never good.  She came upstairs looking rather guilty (again, hiding her hands.)  I said, “What are you doing?” and she said, “Well I’m just making a hand puppet” and she shows me her hand, which she had balled up into a fist, and where her thumb and fingers meet, she had drawn a bunch of scribbles on her hand.  I guess it was supposed to look like a face.  So I tell her not to write on herself anymore, and send her on her way.  Well later, after I pick the kids up from school, Kaleb yells up at me from downstairs, “Mommy!  Who did this on the wall???”  I go down to investigate and find this:

Looks like she was drawing on more than just her hand.  I’m hoping the Mr. Clean magic eraser will do the trick, although I haven’t actually tried to clean it off yet.

We also went to the movies the other day for James’ birthday.  We took the kids to see Hotel For Dogs.  It was pretty good.  Jamie is really wanting to see Taken, so we might do that this weekend.  Now that Twilight is out of the theaters, I don’t have anything I want to see. haha  Although I still think I’d like to see Coraline.  I ordered a couple of books online this week.  There’s this old spooky movie from the 70s with Patty Duke called “You’ll Like My Mother.”  I was thinking of it the other day and wishing I could see it again.  It must not have been popular, because it isn’t even on DVD.  But as I was looking for it online, I found out that it was based on a book.  All the reviews I read said the book is even better, so I bought it on ebay for 99 cents.  I don’t know why I liked that movie.  I think it might have even been a made-for-TV movie.  I saw it in re-runs several times.  It’s very weird.  Anyway, I’m excited to read the book.

Speaking of old shows…we got Roxie the 2nd set of the Smurfs DVDs for her birthday.  I love the Smurfs, and now I’ve got my kids addicted to it too.  Did you know they’re making a Smurfs movie?  I am SO excited. lol  I also loved the Gummi Bears, and they have it on DVD too, so I’m thinking I need to get it.  Now if only I could find Shirt Tales, the Getalong Gang, and Kissyfur on DVD, I’d be set. haha

I’ve got several more cakes coming up in the next few months.  Let’s see….I’m doing a baby shower cake on Tuesday for some girls at Tarabeth’s work….and I have an order for another newspaper cake next week….and I have a guitar cake coming up in March….and somebody ordered a gumball machine cake also, but that’s not until May….I’m also going to make a birthday cake for Josiah when they come in next week.  He’s turning one year old on the 23rd.  So I’ve got to come up with something for him.  I went shopping today and got his birthday gift and also one for Jess.  She’s going to love her gift.  It isn’t what I was going to get her, but Jamie, being the wonderful brother-in-law that he is, went ahead and got it for her.  Let’s just say I was going to get her something similar, but he upgraded. lol  I won’t say what it is, because she reads this sometimes.

Well I must be really bored right now, because I’ve gone on and on about pretty much nothing.  And while I’ve been typing, Roxie has crawled up into my lap and gone to sleep.  That is not a good thing.  It’s about 6:15, so she’ll probably take a nap for a few hours, wake up, and be up til midnight.  I hate when that happens.

Party Time!!!

So yesterday was Roxie’s 3rd birthday.  We had her a little party last night.  I wasn’t exactly feeling 100%, so it was bad timing for me.  But I had to tough it out anyway.  I was planning on sparing everyone the details of my discomfort, but Roxie had other ideas.  While everyone was sitting around eating pizza, Roxie announces (loudly), “MY MOMMY’S BUTT HURTS.  SHE HAD TO PUT MEDICINE ON IT.”  Okay, thank you very much, Roxie, for sharing my little BIG problem with the world. lol Then, of course, I had to explain what everyone was laughing at to those people who weren’t paying attention to what she said.  Oh, everyone got a really big laugh out of the whole thing. ha-ha-ha….Well, with the pain I was in, I did not see the humor.  I won’t elaborate any more on the issue, but I’m sure you can figure it out.  And how ironic that I would have to deal with this issue on the 3rd anniversary of giving birth….hmmm….

I can’t believe I actually told this story.  Oh well, when you have kids, nothing is secret anymore.

Okay, on with the pictures from the party….

First of all the cake.  She wanted a Minnie Mouse cake.  I got this done before I became incapacitated:

Kaleb and Lexie drove me nuts telling me that the cake was crooked.  I kept telling them that it was supposed to be like that.  I guess they are so used to me trying to get my cakes level, that they just couldn’t understand why I’d make it lean on purpose.

And then there were these lovely cupcakes that I made also.  It’s a good thing I took a picture of them before we left, because they did not make it to the party.  Well, three of them made it to the party.  Jamie was holding them in the van and dropped them.  Oh. Great.  So much for chocolate cupcakes. 

Jamie took this picture.  How does he manage to make me look goofy in every picture?  What IS that blue stuff coming out of my nose?  It wasn’t on me, and it’s not in any other picture:

Blowing out the candles:

Opening the loot:

I tried another hair-do on Lexie:

Roxie called my dad yesterday morning and said, “Papaw, I want you to take me to my birthday breakfast!”  So he came over and took us to Bob Evans:

This morning when she woke up, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Mommy, I love my birthday!” lol  I guess her party must’ve been the last thing on her mind when she went to sleep, because it’s the first thing she thought of when she woke up.

Finally, here are a few pictures I took of the kids after church on Wednesday night at Arby’s.  Lots of silly faces, as you can see…..

Happy 3rd Birthday, Roxie!!!

Roxie is driving me nuts right now.  She is singing nonstop.  It was really cute at first, but now it’s just annoying. lol  Here’s a little sample:

It’s her birthday on Friday, so we’re getting all geared up for her party.  I hope I have the energy and time to do the cake that I have planned for her.  I’m not sure I can top the one I did for her last year.  Remember that one?

Yeah, I’m not planning something quite that complicated…haha But hopefully, it’ll be cute.

I made a little Valentine’s cake this week just for fun.  I had seen the idea and wanted to try it.  First I made the “candy” to go on top:

And yes, these are cake too….cake truffles.

And then I made the cake:

Yes, it’s all cake.  Red velvet.  And now I have nothing to do with this cake.  It’s sitting on my counter.  I won’t eat it.   I don’t eat cake very often.  And Jamie isn’t a cake fan either.  My family gets so much cake, that they totally don’t appreciate it.  Oh well, I guess we’ll just look at it until it rots. lol

We ran into Elmo at the mall the other day.  I’m not exactly sure what he was doing there, but the girls wanted me to take their picture with him.  Elmo is a him, isn’t he?:

He’s taller than I thought he’d be.

Well I’m going back to watching Dateline now.  The woman with the octuplets plus six more kids is on there.  Crazy woman. lol

Wordless Wednesday

We’ve had lots of stuff going on.  I guess I’ll start with pics from last night.  We went to a Super Bowl party at Bill and Tami’s house.  We ate and watched football…and ate…and talked…and I took pictures…and we ate some cake….you get the idea.  Here are some of the pics….

I made a cake for Tarabeth’s birthday.  She’s a big Steelers fan, so I went with that theme since it was also a Super Bowl party:

The birthday girl and her cake:

Tarabeth and Shannon, sampling a cheese ball:

The kids ended up being off school the entire week last week, so we spent a lot of time at home.  It snowed pretty much everyday.  The kids did lots of sledding and frolicking in the snow.

Here’s Roxie, ready to go outside:

Okay, here’s a video of Roxie making a snow angel…apparently, I was holding the camera wrong, so it’s crooked.  Sorry. haha

I told the kids to lay in the snow and make snow angels.  They were less than enthusiastic about it. haha:

For some reason, Roxie was having a few issues…not sure what her problem was:

As I said, Roxie was having issues while we were outside.  She kept breaking out into tears every few minutes. lol:

Okay, here’s an interesting story.  On Friday around 1:30 p.m. as I was getting ready to get into the shower (yes, I was just taking my shower at 1:30….haha) I heard a huge explosion.  It shook the house, and the stuff on the shelves rattled.  It scared me to death.  The electricity went off, and so did the cable.  I had no idea what had happened.  I went ahead and took my shower and got dressed.  I heard lots of sirens, fire trucks, police, ambulances, etc. going by the house.  Then I got a call from a lady at church asking if we were okay.  I said we were fine, and she proceeded to tell me that she’d heard that a plane had crashed next to us.  Okay, well, that explains the explosion I heard.  I looked outside, and sure enough, all of the emergency vehicles were parked right down the road, and traffic was backed up.  Here’s what it looked like:

And then we made it to the restaurant:

I got some new hair-do ideas from the websites that Lori posted.  I tried one of the styles on Roxie.  It’s supposed to look like a heart.  I thought it was pretty cute:

I also had an order for another Macy’s cake last weekend:

This week is when I’m taking the two-day cake decorating class.  It’s 8-5 for two days.  That’s a lot of caking.  We’ll see how it goes.  I hope I enjoy it….’cause if I don’t, it will be a miserable two days. haha

So the kids have had a big break from school this week.  It’s been cancelled every day, and they’re off again tomorrow.  They’re hoping to be off on Friday, too.  I’ve spent the past few days enjoying my new Wii game, The Price Is Right:

Our electric has been off all day, so we’ve been over here at my parents’ house.   Here’s what everyone’s been doing.

My dad, eating his cobbler:

The kids watching Rata-tooty….well, that’s what Roxie calls it anyway:

Here’s what I was looking at. haha:

I tried to sneak a pic of Mamaw, but she caught me. haha:

Jamie, with his laptop:

Roxie, eating her “ice sandwich”:

And she’s running around the house with her “magnifying glasses” haha:

We took the kids to see a movie last weekend.  When we got to the theater, Roxie kept saying, ”I want to see Mow The Grass Hard.”  Hmmmmm…..okay.  Whatever that is.  Well, earlier last week, Kaleb and Lexie got to go on a field trip with their school to see a movie.  They get to do that every few months as a reward for good behavior.  The movie that they took them to see was Madagascar which, I guess, sounded to Roxie like “mow the grass hard.” lol  So that’s why she kept saying that was the movie she wanted to see. Crazy kid.  Here’s Kaleb at the movie:

And then he wanted to take our picture, but he got a little too far away. haha:

I finished another cake class this week.  I subbed for another teacher at Hobby Lobby.  Here’s one of my students:

And finally, here are a few cakes I made last week:

Thursday Thirteen

I’m doing a “Lori” inspired TT today.  Randomness.  Or random-ocity.  What she said.

1.  Roxie and I spent all day Tuesday watching all the inaugural festivities.  What else was there to do?  It was all that was on ……ALL DAY LONG.  Thankfully, Tuesday night’s episode of The Biggest Loser was still shown.  I was so worried they wouldn’t show it.  What a tragedy that would have been.  Anyway, as we were watching the inauguration Tuesday morning, Roxie pointed at the TV and said, “Look mommy, it’s Rocco Bama!”  lol  She learned his name during the election and has never forgotten it.  She points him out in every newspaper and magazine.  She talked all day about Rocco Bama’s noggy-ray-shun.  As she was listening to the reporters talking about the new “President of the United States, ” Roxie said, “Mommy, they said President of the United States!  He’s on Corey in the House!”  lol  If you don’t have kids, and you don’t watch the Disney Channel, you won’t have a clue what she was talking about.  But it was hilarious to me that she thinks that the President of the United States is just a character on Corey in the House.  lol

2.  I took some pictures of Roxie and Reagan at church last night.  They were both dressed in red, black and white, so they matched.  They both smiled and posed for the camera.  It was so cute:

3.  Then later I found Roxie watching Kaleb and Joseph play the DS:

4.  Then we went to Triple H after church:

5.  The kids (mainly the girls) brewed up some nasty concoctions and insisted that I video them.  I’m not sure what they were doing:

7.  I’ve been trying to get my supply list ready for my cake class.  It’s a two-day class.  The first day is taught by one lady.  She’s going to teach us how to do a five-panel box top lid and a bunch of other stuff….like this:

And the 2nd day, the class is taught by a different lady who will teach us how to make some flowers out of gumpaste, like the poinsettia and peony:

Anyway, we have a supply list of stuff a mile long that we’re supposed to bring.  So I’ve been working on that.  I finally just emailed one of the instructors and asked her to bring everything I needed for her part of the class, and I would purchase them from her, rather than trying to scramble around and order it all online.  That made it much easier.   I did have to order some dummy cakes to decorate (since we obviously can’t work with real cake).  But that is a good thing, because I can keep the dummies forever once they’re decorated, and use them as displays or whatever, or just to sit around and collect dust.  haha

8.  Roxie’s birthday is on February 13th.  It will be here before I know it, and I have nothing planned.  Her birthday falls on a Friday, so I guess I should have her party that day.  I have no clue what to do.  Sometimes she tells me she wants a Handy Manny party, and sometimes she says she wants Minnie Mouse.  The bad thing is, her birthday is the weekend right after my cake class in KY.  I have a feeling that I’ll be all pooped out, as far as doing cakes is concerned.  It would be a tragedy if I made her just a plain ole’ sheet cake instead of something really cool.  Let’s hope I get some motivation.

9.  I’m so glad the weekend is almost here.  I’m really tired for some reason.  Thankfully, I have only one cake to do for Saturday.  Basketball themed.  I should really be downstairs baking that puppy right now.  Bleh.

10.  I had something typed in here for #10, but I decided I’d rather not discuss it. lol

11.  I’ve mentioned on here before the ‘Reading Counts’ program that they do at the kids’ school.  It’s where they read a book, and then they take a test on it….and based on the level of difficulty, they are awarded a certain number of points if they pass the test.  The kids with the most points at the end of the year are the winners.  They have a winner in each classroom, and then one overall winner for the whole grade.  Remember Kaleb was all excited about it when he was in 1st grade, and he got really competitive about it, and ended up winning for his whole grade.  Then in 2nd grade, he won for his classroom, but not the whole grade.  (He gets less motivated about it every year…but he’s still in the front in his class again this year.)

Anyway, this is Lexie’s first year to do the Reading Counts.  They started doing it right before the holiday break.  When I was in her classroom for the Christmas party, Lexie’s teacher was talking to one of the other mothers about the Reading Counts, and telling her that her son was doing so well and was in the lead.  He had 12 points already, which was a lot, considering they had just started.  Well, the mother told her that he was very competitive, and as soon as she had told him that there was a trophy involved, he was determined that he would win.  So that whole conversation made me curious, and I went over to see how many points Lexie had.  She had zero.  haha  I asked Lexie after we left why she didn’t have any points yet.  She said she didn’t know how to take the tests….no one had shown her….and the only reason the little boy knew how was because the teacher let him sit at the computer when she was showing the class how to take the tests….blah blah blah….Well I told Lexie that she needed to learn how to do the tests and get busy!  I said, “You get that boy to show you how to do the tests, so you can beat him!”  lol  I knew she could do it.  She reads all the time and is probably the best reader in her class.  She whined around and acted like she didn’t want to compete.  She’s funny like that…she doesn’t have the competitive spirit that Kaleb (and I) have.  But I bribed her.  lol  And last week the teacher printed off a new list of points and announced “We have a new leader….It’s Lexie!”  hahahaha   Yes, my child has 29 points, and the boy who was leading has like 23.  Looks like Lexie is gonna swipe his trophy.  Eat our dust. lol

12.  I really like Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips.  They are so much better than Nestle’s chocolate chips.  I saw them for sale at Walmart over the holidays and decided to try them.  Then I was hooked.  So after the holidays were over, I saw them on clearance at Michael’s for $1.99 a bag.  They had been $3.99 there, but cheaper at Walmart.  But $1.99 was cheaper than I get them at Walmart, so I bought a bunch of bags to stock up.  That was a couple of weeks ago.  Today I was at Michael’s, and they still had them on clearance.  Only now, they are on sale for the low, low price of $3.59.  Hmmmmmmm….what a deal!  Don’tcha just love a sale where they RAISE the price by $1.50???  haha  Kaleb and I decided to make use of my newly purchased stock of chocolate chips to make some cookies:

Notice the spiked hair.  lol  He’s been begging me to spike up his hair for school everyday.  What is up with that?

13.  It’s official.  I have now seen Twilight 5 times.  And so has Jamie.  This time, we let Lexie go too.  She really wanted to go, so we took her, and she loved it:

Thursday Thirteen

First, 9 things Roxie has said in the past few days, and then a few random things…

1.  “Mommy, you’re sweat.  I can’t love you right now.”

2.  “I don’t want to be beautiful.  I want to be nasty.”

3.  “That’s impressive.”

4.  “Lexie is a wild woman, and Bubby is Superman.”

5.  “Oh bummer.”

6.  “I can’t kiss Uncle Bart, ’cause I don’t love him right now.”

7.  Roxie:  “I want Papaw to take me to Disney World.”  My mom:  “When do you want Papaw to take you?”  Roxie:  “At 3:48.”

8.  Apparently Roxie was guilty of spilling a bunch of Kaleb’s nachos in the floor yesterday.  She denied it.  Kaleb kept taunting her about it.  And so they came in my room fighting about it.  I didn’t catch the initial confrontation on film, but I did tape them when I asked them to repeat what happened:

9.  I had to run in to Sam’s yesterday to get a few things.  I had Roxie with me.  She said, ‘Mommy, why are we here?’  I said, ‘I have to get a couple of things really quick, because we have to go get Kaleb and Lexie at school.’  And she said, “Mommy, are we here to get me some samples?’ lol  She thinks the only reason we go to Sam’s is so she can stop and get samples of all the food and stuff.  I said, ‘well we don’t really have time to get samples.’ haha  As soon as we got back to the food section, there was a lady there giving samples of orange juice.  She asked me if I wanted some.  I looked at Roxie and said, ‘do you want to try some orange juice?’  She said, “NO.  I don’t want orange juice.  I want a sample!”  I tried to just chuckle and be polite and take the sample of juice.  When we walked off, I told Roxie that she wasn’t very nice….the lady was just trying to give her some orange juice.  So I drank the juice myself.  Two seconds later, Roxie says, “I want some orange juice!”  I said, “too bad, you had your chance.  Now there’s no more samples.”  Then she said, “I want a sample!  I want a cracker with cheese!”  (That is one of the samples she got the last time she was there, which was like 3 months ago, so I have no idea how she remembered that.)  I said, “they don’t have crackers with cheese today.”  So then a few minutes later she says, “I want a sample of cereal!”  (That’s something else they were giving samples of last time.)  I said, “Too bad.  They don’t have samples of cereal today.”  Finally, some lady yelled at me across the aisle and said, “would you like to try a sample of our delicious mandarin oranges?”  I said, “Roxie, do you want to try some oranges?”  She said, “NO!”  Oh great.  Well, I wheeled over there anyway and took the oranges, which the lady was most excited to sell.  She kept telling me how nutritious they were for the entire family. haha  I ate one of the oranges myself, and then Roxie decided that that was the only sample she was going to get, so she finally ate every last drop of the oranges.  Then she asked if we could go back for another sample of orange juice, because now she was thirsty.  Crazy kid.

10.  That’s all the Roxie-isms I can think of right now…..

Anyway, it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of traveling the next few months.  I signed up for a cake class in IN next month.  It’s taught by two women who are famous in the cake decorating world.  That’s probably not exciting to anyone else, but it is to me.  One of the teachers is a lady that makes all the DVDs that I have, so it will be cool to meet her in person.

11.  Then in March, Jamie has his conference in Las Vegas.  I hadn’t really made up my mind if I wanted to go with him or not.  I’d have to leave Kaleb and Lexie here, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.  But then Jamie went ahead and booked it before I knew it, so I guess there’s no turning back now.  The exciting part of it is that while we’re gone, we’re going to drive to LA and spend a day in Disneyland.  Yippppppppeeeeeee!  (Thanks to Julia for finding us a place to stay in DL!  If you’re ever planning to go somewhere, give her a call.  She will hook you up!)

12.  And then in April, during the kids’ spring break, is when we’re heading to Chicago to go to the American Girl store.  We’re also planning on visiting Lincoln’s tomb or home or birthplace or something like that….whatever it is that’s in Illinois.  My dad is wanting to go there.

13.  While Jamie and I were in line to return something at Walmart today, I tried to subtly take a picture of the guy in front of us.  I thought that was an unfortunate place for a dirt stain.  At least, I hope it was dirt.

Bonus:  Finally, here’s a pic of Emma at church on Wednesday night:

She said I only take her picture because I think her clothes are funny.  I said, ‘no, I think it’s cool.’  And she said, ‘well, you think they’re different.’  And I told her yes, but there’s nothing wrong with being different.  She just has a creative sense of fashion.  haha  You can dress however you want when you’re 7, and it’s okay if it doesn’t quite match.  But if you do it when you’re 33, it’s just not the same. haha  Well at least she’s not boring.