Hi! Come on in and look around!

Welcome to my window on the world. A snapshot of my life and experiences. I'm a photography junkie and a scrapbook addict. I capture it all here, and share my journey down this amazing road called LIFE with you!

Monday, May 28, 2007

More blog stuff

Well, I've just been adding some more things to my blog to see what they do. I added a guestbook. I hope that is fun...to see who visits. Hopefully, friends. If not, I can delete anything I don't want anyway. And a guest map. To see where all the visitors are from. Now that seems very fun to me!
I do need to learn to do more things. These were easy. But I've got some yard work to do and the day is warming up!
I do need to get some cards made. What is my problem? I'm just not in the scrapping mood lately. I miss it, I do, but the sunshine is calling me louder than my scraproom. That will change soon I'm sure as we get more into the summer?
I know when I take dd to cheer camp, I'm going to have a ton of photos to scrap and share. So I better get my mojo back by then!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Header/Banner with Layouts

Oh, I did it. I got layouts and the title in my header/banner for my blog. Just a little piddling this morning. I removed the notebook paper and added the layouts that I stitched together in Photostudio. I feel like such a stud! Woohooo!

Friday, May 25, 2007

Adding a Banner

Well, I think I added a banner to my blog today, but I'm not really sure. I took some time to play with my blog, which is one of my goals this summer to get it looking exactly like I want it. But I think I get how to add pictures to my header now so I might work on that this weekend. I want to spruce up my blog and make it look more like me instead of these templates. We'll see how that goes!

Anyway, I added the notebook paper look at the top of the blog. That's what I did. I played in the HTML code. Yes, I did!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Cakes and Magnolias




Well, we had our roses class last night. We had to bring our cake iced and ready to decorate. We used the e'motions for the side instead of zig-zag. Of course, we did the scallop top and bottom, and then our rose spray was done on the top. We also learned to make the bow.


I might have gotten a little goofey with my icing. I wanted to try all the colors in the gel colorant box. So I decided to make chocolate roses. I had to add a little chocolate to the green for the leaves and the bow or it would have been totally wrong with the brown. I learned that trick from another lady in class. Should have known it from scrapbooking.


The lady teaching our class told me that my roses were really good! I'll take a compliment from the cake expert! She also likes me writing, but honestly, we know that comes from all my scrapbooking, doesn't it!


I picked some flowers yesterday from my garden. I picked tiger lillies, gardenias, petunias and a magnolia blossom from my tree. I could not resist photographing my magnolia blossom this morning in the early morning light. It was so beautiful! I got two photographs I wouldn't mind blowing up.


Next cake class...get ready...we are making decorating cake squares with all kinds of little things on them. I'm looking forward to that. It's not so much the baking as it is the decorating. Ashleigh said she would bake and I could decorate if we had our cake business!!!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Top Of the Cake Rose Spray

Much to my excitement, our lesson was making roses! We worked on the full rose and also the little rose buds you see on the side. The little rose buds are supposed to be small like that. They are a spray off to the side.

Our next lesson is actually doing this on the top of a cake and doing some on the side. We have to bring a fully iced caked to class and our rose icing, which is thicker for stability.

One thing I am really good at is the writing. The teacher always comments on that.

I will probably do another color rose. I did pink this time and last time my flowers were pink. I noticed with the other colors that people used that the non-traditional colors are really cool. One girl did blue! I also think it helps to mix the colors of the roses using more than one.

My roses are somewhat small compared to the instructors. When I practiced at home, I think I have that figured out. It's the way I was holding my tip. I needed to tilt it out more.

I'm a cake decorator! And it's fun!

Friday, May 11, 2007

Two Survey and First Cake


Nancy issued a Two challenge on her blog which she got from Two Peas. It sounds like fun so I am doing that today. I haven't blogged in a bit. Shame on me!


TWO:

Two Names I Go by: Leigh and only my bff can call me Leigh Anny

Two Things I am Wearing Right Now: T-shirt and jeans

Two Things I Want (or have) in a Relationship: Love and humor

Two of My Favorite Things to do: sneak a nap and scrapbook

Things I Want Very Badly At The Moment: my pool to heat up and my kitchen to be clean

Two pets I have: Boo and Run

Two things I did last night: cooked dinner and watch ds play softball

Two things I ate today: coffee and soon to have a bagel

Two people I just talked to last: ds and dd

Two Things I'm doing tomorrow: varsity cheer carwash and sunning by the pool with an sb mag

Two longest car rides: moving coast to coast as a kid and driving the whole stinkin' way in the family station wagon! Once east to west...once west to east...

Two Favorite Holidays: Christmas and 4th of July

Two favorite beverages: Diet Coke and water


Now on to other things: I am taking a cake decorating class with my friend, Ashleigh. It also turns out a girl I used to work with is there, too, Donna and her dd, Sara. This class was something I wasn't sure about, but I hadn't hung out with Ash in a while. It turns out it is alot of fun. Maybe it is the artistic expression on the cake. I'm not sure, but making roses out of icing and decorating a cake like you see in a fancy bakery is rather satisfying. This is the first official cake I decorated. I sent samples to various people, and they thought it came from a bakery. I guess that would be the seal of approval! I thought it turned out remarkably well, and frankly, I'm rather proud of myself.
This was class number two. In class number one, we got some recipes, went over all the tips and tried a few things. For class two, we had to bake the cake and glaze it and bring our icing. Then in class we decorated it!
I've decided to bake a cake with a different recipe they gave us in class and decorate it for the Varsity cheer carwash tomorrow. I'm going to see if I can make pom poms out of icing... We'll see. I'll post my results!