Harnessing Your Inner Hermione

My daughter loves the world of Harry Potter.  It is a very real world for her.  That said let me explain the nail design for her this week.  She is rather superstitious and wears a Harry Potter bracelet she made, a Harry Potter shirt and usually brings her wand with her (and she leaves that in her back pack) when she takes tests in the testing center at college.  This week is finals.  She asked if I would do her nails HP for finals, you know give her some extra help to harness that inner Hermione.

 So here is what we came up with.  I didn't know she wanted me to do her nails so we bought a couple of things at Wal-mart but her college is in a small town and the selection left something to be desired. Thank heavens I found that using fine tip sharpies is amazing for detail on nails.
So we have.  A crown for of course Weasley is our King

 Then a wand, with sparks, glasses and scar for Harry, the deathly hallows and a light bulb for Hermione, because she is the brightest witch of her year.

 So I uses some gold glitter nail polish for the crown, didn't have my brushes so did it with a toothpick, the light bulb had gold under then  drop of white and the rest of the detail was done with a black sharpie

 Of course she is holding her wand, made especially for her based on what Pottermore.com said her wand would be.  Thanks again to the magnificent wand maker :)

I was excited how well they turned out based on what we had available to use.  She was very excited with them.    Let me know what you think.

Happy Birthday Guitar

My baby boy turned 17 last week.  I was trying to think of a fun idea for a birthday cake and decided to make one like his favorite guitar.  This is way more intense of a cake than I have ever attempted before and I am pretty excited about the results. 

So the first thing I did was take a picture of the guitar and have my amazing daughter put a grid behind it so I could draw it out.  Ended up being about 8 1/2 inches wide to 23 inches long.   I used 2 9x12 cakes a Red Velvet (my sons favorite cake) for the base and a yellow cake (my husbands favorite, his birthday is 3 days after our sons) for the neck.

I made the cakes on Wednesday night and froze them.  Then on Thursday I pulled them out and put the stencils I had done up based on the template my daughter sent me.  They cut fantastic.  

After I cut the cake  I put on a layer of icing as a crumb icing.   Notice the foil I have around the cake, this was an idea from my friend Melanie, just put the foil barely under the cake do all your frosting then you can pull it off and your cake board is clean.   I did end up having to tape 2 cake boards together.  I realize now I didn't take a picture of the neck at this stage, but you can imagine it ;)

Then into the freezer it went.  Isn't my top shelf amazingly organized?  HaHa  I cut the cake boards down as much as I possibly could and seriously that thing rubbed the walls going into the deep freeze.  Whew that was a lucky one.

 I had it sit in the freezer for about an hour or 2 and then pulled it out to put the black frosting on.  I ended up buying my icing from Harmons Bakery.  I was so worried there would be no way I would be able to get the icing to be a decent look and flavor if I tried to dye it myself.  3.99 for a lb of icing, seriously that is about what I would pay for it if I made it myself.   After I iced it with the black icing back in that tight fit in the freezer it went.

 This is how it looked all iced.

 Friday morning I got up put in Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and got down to business.  Thursday night after finishing with the icing my nice and I did all the fondant pieces (I used Duff fondant, and I was told the truth that actually taste good).    First thing I did was smooth the icing.  I used the method of using a hot spatula over the frozen icing, it worked fairly well.  It was the first time I had tried doing this at all and was pretty pleased with the effect.

The stripes are made from sugar sheets.  This worked...ok, they kept breaking on me.  I finally figured out popping the sheet in the microwave for 30 seconds warmed it up enough so it didn't break.  The balls for the pick-ups were made with sugar balls, however I could only find them in white so I bought silver edible spray paint and painted them on a plate then dropped in the holes already made.  I admit, the stripes are an exact match of the guitar, but close enough.

 I hand did the decorations on the neck of the guitar and the frets are made from sugar sheets cut very thin then sprayed silver. Can I tell you my fingers were black and silver by the time I was done with this.   For the strings I couldn't find the silver string I wanted and didn't have a car to go look again so I used some curling ribbon we had in the house and cut each strip in 3 pieces.  I am so glad I had Mr Darcy and Lizzy to entertain me during some of these tedious steps.

 Here is the head of the guitar, I ended up redoing the skeleton head on the head with icing, here it was done with sugar sheets and I didn't like the look.

 Here is a look at an angle, you can see the detail on the body.  The Floyd Rose (whammy bar) was made from a q-tip with the tip cut off on both ends and bent then wrapped in fondant.  That Duff fondant really was amazing to work with.  I will certainly use it again.

 Here is Tanner's reaction.  Which I didn't get the best one.  He really liked it, but he was super tired.

 Here is the final product.  Like I said I was really pleased with it.  I have never done anything this elaborate before, but it gave me some confidence.  I can't wait for my daughters birthday.

 We decided to use tea lights instead of sticking candles in the cake itself.  And he stood at the end of the cake to blow it out and they blew out down the row, which was really pretty cool :)

And the green has been put to rest for a bit

I had 2 of the 3 girls come over on Friday. Busy weekend Lizzie was home and we were going out to eat for my birthday on Friday. I had time for a couple of quick mani's. Look how long their nails are getting. They are doing great on not biting their nails!

For this one just did a purple mani with confetti over the top and then an accept heart on the index finger. Turned out cute. Did 2 hears, one in a light purple with a dark purple over the top to make it stand out more.

We picked blue with a black crackle on this one, then a blue heart on the index finger. The heart really wasn't standing out so I outlined it with silver. Not my favorite design ever, but it turned out pretty cute. Her nails are growing too, I am so proud of them for not biting their nails.

Since Lizzie is home I had fun working on her nails too. We decided for the Mario Mushroom (still a little green, but we did do this design on St Patrick's day). Really a pretty easy manicure. I got the idea for this on this youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-3FgpqzBf8I

I have a great idea for next week when Lizzie comes home too :D

St Patty's Day nails...and some pink :D

Started doing yoga this week, and while I absolutely love it, I was so sore I didn't cook much this last week. I need to do some good crock pot meals I think.

I did however have time to do some nails (perhaps my priorities are a bit out of wack). My neighbors daughters have started coming over for me to do their nails. They love it (and so far it is helping them stop biting their nai

I am excited to do more nails, hopefully I will get better with my technique.ls :D)

Sorry the pictures aren't better quality, I just used my cell phone.

This one was my choice, it is a horrible picture of it, but the thumb has a pot of gold on it, then leprachan foot prints across the others...leading to the pot of gold. Turned out very cute!!!

The next one I did was dark green with light green polka dots. Turned out cute, she wanted stripes, but m

y stripes are still...well lacking, so dots were easier to achieve. I covered the design with a gold glitter top coat. I thought it turned out cute!

This one (on the left) was for the youngest daughter.

She picked green because it was her favorite color. Simply a grass green with a white sparkle on top. Tuned out simple and really fun.

The pink polka dots and bows was the last one I did. She wanted pink. I thought it turned out

very cute. Put some shimmer on the top of that one too.

Mine for this week (I will probably change and do some green later in the week) is a grey with pink glitter over the top. I really like the look :D

And one more, I did this one on another neighbor girl today, I am excited with how it turned out :) I was nervous about doing the gold piping, but it turned out great.

Cakes, Nails and Chicken

This week at work was....well less than the ideal week, and as often happens on a stressed out week, my nails suffer. Off they come. Anyway I did paint my short little stubby nails and like the look. The purple is kind of fun. I am just waiting for spring.

On Monday I helped my friend who's two sons . decorate cakes for a scouting activity. The theme was mexico. For the first cake we made a Mexican flag, made with marshmallow fondant. I probably should have done the cake in regular frosting so he could help more with it. He did help with the chocolate eagle design in the middle of the flag. This is only my

second time dealing with fondant and I am still learning that is for sure. But I thought it turned out well.

The second cake we made was a tostada cake. Started with a thin cake and frosted cake in yellow frosting. Melt Reese's chips &

chocolate chips in a bag & squeeze on frosting then spre

ad for refried beans (add a little bit of frosting on top to hold on next layer). Crumble chocolate cake for hamburger, Tear pieces of green fondant for lettuce. Cut up cinnamon bears for tomatoes. Dye coconut yellow & sprinkle on for cheese, Melt 3 large marshmallows in ziplock bag, make large cut in corner & squeeze out for sour cream. Chocolate circles for olives. It was such an easy fast cake! And the 11 year old did it almost all by himself. I love that we ran out of regular white frosting and melted the marshmallows because that really set of the whole thing.

The boys had fun I think, I know I had fun.

I didn't try very many new recipes these week. Go back to the first statement about work. I pulled out a hamburger helper lol, haven't done that for a while. Today I did try a new recipe, I found http://www.heatherchristo.com/cooks/2011/04/13/greek-chicken-and-potatoes/ Ok seriously a yummy and easy recipe :D Greek chicken and potatoes,

has lemon in it :D how can you go wrong with lemon?

I spent so much time this weekend finding new ideas for nails. I came across a great blog for nails http://www.kaylashevonne.com/ I love the blog, she blogs things that I can do, compares different brands of products. It is just a new love of mine :) Here I am with all these new ideas and no one to paint nails of. So I call a friend to see if I could borrow her girls. Oddly enough they were more than willing to come and have their nails done :)

The bottom one you can't see perfect, but it is white with blue lines and then doodles on it. To look like school paper with doodles on it :D So cute!

80's Movies and nails!

Last weekend my daughter came home from college and my niece came to visit. What to do with these 2 college girls? 80's movie marathon.

The girls hadn't seen some classics that honestly I was appalled they hadn't seen. It needed to be rectified. We started off with Ferris Buhler's Day Off...because honestly that is the logical starting point to me.

So here was on the playlist for the weekend....Let me know what we missed as far as 80's Teen movies.

Ferris Buhler's Day Off

Say Anything

Pretty In Pink

Sixteen Candles

Breakfast Club

One Crazy Summer

Some Kind Of Wonderful

We had Better Off Dead but ran out of time. I can think of a couple that we still need to add to the list but what are your suggestions?

While we were sitting there watching movies we did nails. My niece we did a nude color with high gloss high glitter top coat. It was so cute!!!!

Lizzie I found a picture on Pintrest to try out. I am so proud and excited of how freaking cute these turned out.

They took a while to do but still were so great.

We ate so much junk food while watching movies....trying to channel our inner Gilmore Girls or something. Made home made pretzel bites, so easy and so yummy, you really need to try them out. http://www.justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com/?p=932

The rest of the recipes on this site are great too. Don't you just love getting a link to the blog for one thing then find yourself stuck there for a couple of hours finding all kinds of fantastic ideas?

so question

I am not sure who even follows me. But I have been having such a great time on Pintrest and have found so many wonderful recipes on there. I seriously love it. Tanner says he likes me trying out all the new recipes..it is working out great for me he says as he rubs his stomach. LOL I love that kid.

So I think I am going to start posting things I have been making, the link and then how easy it was or hard, time consuming. How much everyone liked it and the such. Hopefully this will be a way I will feel like I have something to post about and share a bit.

Last week we tried the following:

http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2009/12/pepperoni-rolls.html

They were so incredibly easy. I think if you made your own dough they would be easy too. I made them again Wednesday night and

they were still great, but I put in way more cheese (like blanketed it with it) I think it was too thick and didn't get quite done inside (that was blanketed with slicked cheese not grated) But over all they were fantastic and I will make them again. Ev

eryone loved them and they were gone very fast. I guess that is a sign of them being good.

We also made http://life-as-a-lofthouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/parmesan-pull-aparts.html to go with some pasta Alfredo (made with Parmesan and provolone cheese....let me just say

delicious!!!) these pull a parts were so beyond easy. I did change the recipe up and used Pampered Chefs Parmesan-Garlic Oil Dippin Seasoning http://www.pamperedchef.com/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=26449&catId=12&parentCatId=12&outletSubCat= I love this stuff I need to get more (I use it for seasoning chicken, pasta, all kinds of things besides what it was intend

ed for). these were fantastic and we ended u

p making a second batch that night. (My daughter was home for the weekend with college and we had a couple of other college girls there for the weekend, so at least we ate that much but there was 6 of us there that weekend)

Two weeks ago though I won major points with my 16 year old son, and made home made taquaitos. He came downstairs and asked what I

was making and was so excited when I told him. I just slow cooked a roast and then used my kitchen aide to shred the meat (seriously the coolest thi

ng ever) I seasoned a little different since I couldn't find some of the ingredients, I ended up using a habenaro chipotle salsa that was not a chunky salsa. http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/06/baked-chipotle-beef-taquitos/. I love that the recipe calls for baking them not frying them. I actually have made them twice. They are a bit time consuming to put them together, roll them up and cook them but not too bad. I ju

st put on a fun show to watch while I did them. They are so incredibly yummy. I do think they end up being more expensive than the freezer variety that you buy in the store, but way better tasting and they were bigger too.

The other attempt at a new recipe (I really have been having fun trying new things...have I said how much I love pintrest?) Were some chocolate chip cheese cake bars. They were amazing. http://www.mrfood.com/Cheesecakes/Chocolate-Chip-Cheesecake-3194/ct/1 I didn't take a picture of these, they went to fast. We actually just made up some chocolate chip cookies, and when I make these again I will make a double batch of cookies because the top layer of cookie dough was pretty thin.

My other fun thing in pintrest is finding new ways of doing hair or nail

s. I did Lizzie and Sara's nails. Did some really cute hair styles, but I didn't take pictures. We tried the sock curls but instead of doing the donut type we did (and I love this video blog, she does the cutest styles and makes the videos very easy to follow) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CzJKdHglFck.

2011 Happy New Year

Christmas break was wonderful! I enjoyed the time with the kids and Jeff so much (well Jeff worked alot). It was great to have 2 weeks off work and not feeling rushed all the time. The kids and I got a wonderful/horrible sleep schedule of going to sleep between 2 am and 4 am and waking up between 11 and noon. We watched alot of movies, my favorite of which I think would be Despicable Me. Such a great show!
Christmas was so wonderful and relaxing. I was proud of myself for actually having a couple of surpises for each of the kids. That seems to get harder when the kids get older. For Lizzie I was able to find a killer deal on a memory foam mattress pad. She says now she can stay in bed forever like her roommate :). For Tanner I found a tux. He has been wanting one and I found one at DI I was so excited! Tanner seems to be pretty excited about it. I think he wants to wear the jacket to school sometime.
New Years Jeff and I went to a party with some friends and it was fantastic :) Lizzie went with Deven for a New Years party at Provo Towne Center. Tanner went to a friends house for a while then came home and rang in the new year playing Black Ops.

Graduation

So today Lizzie graduated from Lehi High School. She really has had such a great high school experience! I can't believe how the time has just flew by. It doesn't seem that long ago that she was the little girl getting ready for 1st grade

Here is a video from when she got her diploma :D

School Year 2010

Ok so I know I haven't updated for almost a year. Silly me I spend too much time on Facebook but since I know not everyone is on facebook I thought I would post some pictures from this last year.
First of all know that there are more pictures of Lizzie than Tanner because well she likes having her picture taken.
This year is Lizzie's Senior year and she was/is so incredibly excited for it.


and yes that is her in her locker, the same locker she has had all 3 years at Lehi High.

The first morning of the first day of school we went back to the apartments we lived at when she was little and took a picture of her in front of the tree we always took pictures by in elementary school. She is even proudly showing her 'pack pack' as she use to call it.

Lizzie also got her senior pictures taken (well the ones done by the school) they turned out amazing. She had fun doing the photo shoot. She was really excited for the 'personal interest' one of course it was reading for Lizzie heavy on the Harry Potter.

Tanner started his Freshman year. Normally in our school district Freshman stay at the Jr High but since it was over crowded and there was a new high school (which Lizzie stayed at the old high school), Tanner had the opportunity to start high school a year early.
Tanner's obsession right now is music. He playes the guitar, is messing with the piano and hopefully this coming summer will learn it more. He got a new guitar late summer a Schecter Damien 6SR. He is like a little kid at Christmas that got a Red Rider BB Gun.

For Labor Day we went to Capitol Reef State Park, Escalante and Bryce Cannon. It was fun the kids got to pick fruit at Capitol Reef they thought that was the coolest thing.

Lizzie went to a few dances. I think one of my favorites was Sadie Hawkins, the theme was the circus. So Chance and her dressed up like little kids and his mom made 'cotton candy' for them to carry.

In November Lizzie went to a 'Silent Weekend' at USU for her ASL class. She actually was the only student from her school that attended but she had so much fun. They had a whole weekend where they were not allowed to speak only sign. We picked her up and stopped at Smith and Edwards which is this surplus store that is beyond anything I have ever been in before they have everything army surplus plus almost everything for ranchers, toys, clothes, and a bunch of other just odd stuff. The kids were having fun trying on hats and messing around.

I'm so glad they dont' have a problem being silly kids when it is ok to be so :D

This year one of the things Lizzie has really been involved with is Special Needs Children. She has been a peer tutor in school all year, worked in special needs seminary and proably her favorite is every Thursday night being a youth councilor in Special Needs Mutual, that has been the highlight of the week every week. She has said so many times that se always know it will be such a lift for her no matter how bad the week or day has been that hour and half will make everything wonderful. The girl she was assigned to is Paige here are a couple of pictures from Special Needs Prom

Lets see there was a couple more dances for Lizzie, Tanner listened to music and went to a few concerts with Jeff. They are having so much fun going to concerts together and finding new bands to listen to and like.

I guess to wrap up the year so far would be Prom. Since Tanner is going to one high school (and Lizzie's boyfriend goes to that one too) Lizzie will go to 2 proms. Grandma made the dress we are changing the band at the waist to change it up some. West Lakes Prom (that is where Tanner goes) was at La Callie a very fancy resturant and reception center. Lizzie's best friend wanted to go and asked Tanner to take her. They had so much fun. Tanner had so much fun getting a tux. I will do a slide show for those pictures.

Lehi's prom is tomorrow still don't know how I am going to do her hair for it this time but I know she will have fun.

I can't believe this school year is almost over. The kids have had a good year for the most part. Tanner has grown to be SOOOO tall. He makes me laugh everyday, I have loved listening to his talents explode with music. Lizzie, well I can't believe she is a senior. I am not sure how I am going to handle her graduation in a few short weeks, or how I am going to handle her going to college (Snow College btw). Not sure how Tanner and Jeff will handle that either. Tanner and her have gotten very close and are good friends.