Park again

We have been trying to take Ethan to the park as much as possible before it gets too cold and starts snowing. We took him to the new park at the Whittier building and he loves it! He's getting so big. He can climb to the top of the playground by himself, sit down in front of the slide and slide up to the opening and push himself off to go down. What a big boy!

Positioning himself to go down the slide:



He loved the steering wheel in this train. He wouldn't do anything else for probably a good 5-10 minutes.




While we were there, he found a little friend and they played together until we left. Ethan would run all over the place and this little boy would just following him everywhere. If Ethan laid on the ground this little boy would lay on the ground. It was funny to watch them. I think he's getting to the age where he needs a friend to play with.

He had fun and was worn out when we got home. I hope we can get a couple more visits to the park in before it snows and buries us in the house.

Time out chair

I've never known a 1 year old who gets put in time and and actually stays put the entire time. Ethan's time out spot is in our entry way in a little corner facing the door. It's his spot because there is nothing to distract him in there. Mart felt bad leaving him there because the floor is granite so it's cold to sit on. He found a little stool at the DI the other day and brought it home for a time out chair. It fit in the corner perfectly.

Ethan was playing in the living room and finally noticed it was sitting in the corner. When he first found it I looked in the living room and he was sitting on the stool in the corner, leaning over all sorts of funny so he could still see the tv. What a goofball. He then figured out that he can move it, so now he drags it all over the living room and sits on his own personal stool while he has a little snack.

What a good DI find. Ethan loves it!

The other day I was on the computer working on my project for Christmas and Ethan was in the living room watching a movie. He walked up to the fence and looked up and me and turned and walked back toward the couch. I looked at him and he had found Mart's ninja turtle slippers and put his feet into them and was walking around the living room. He thought they were so fun!


Making shooting noises at me:

On my birthday Mart had to go to work at Hot Topic so Ethan and I were hanging out. He was so cute and being such a good boy that day. We were watching a movie and it was getting close to his nap time, but he wasn't showing signs of wanting to take a nap. I put him on the couch and covered him with his blanket and stella climbed up and laid down next to him and a few minutes later when I checked on him he was out cold! Cute little boy. He loves to snuggle up with his dogs and watch a good movie, just like his mom. :)

Chocolate demo and wedding cakes

Kace came to school two Friday's in a row to make a wedding cake for her friend. The first Friday she was there, she started the day by doing a chocolate demo for the high school class and whoever of my class wanted to watch.

Tempering the chocolate:

Filling her truffle molds:

Explaining what she was doing:

Rolling some truffles:


After the demo we both headed into the kitchen to start baking her friends wedding cake and 150 cupcakes. The plan was to make a devil's food sheet cake to be the grooms cake. I guess he wanted a giraffe with a superman badge on his chest and when you cut off his neck, it will look like it's bleeding when raspberry coulis comes pouring out. The actual wedding cake is a 2 tier lemon cake with a raspberry mousse filling and then we are going to have 150 cupcakes as well.

We started with the devils food sheet cake, everything seemed to go pretty well without a problem. That's surprising as I stink at baking ... I was super nervous to actually have to make a wedding cake for some girl I don't know. The only reason I thought I would be fine is because I would have Kacean do all the actual baking.

When the devils food was finished we started on the lemon cake. We were going to be using a gold cake recipe of Rex's that she had never made before and just adding lemon flavoring to it.

We had decided to do a double batch to make sure we had enough for the 2 tier cake as well as 150 cupcakes, so I weighed out 10 pounds of flour and 7 pounds of shortening and put it in the biggest mixer we have.

Our giant mixer:

Once I had the flour and shortening in the mixing bowl Kace asked me to turn it on speed 1 and just mix the two together for 4 minutes. In the back of the room, we have the same mixer just smaller and the settings are backwards. The ball on the arm is facing away from the number, and in the front on the huge mixer, I guess it's the other way around. I set the mixer to what I thought was speed 1, which ended up actually being speed 4.


I pushed start and there was a huge cloud of flour that came flying out of the mixer and covered me from head to foot and made probably a circle that went at least 5 feet out from me on both sides. I looked up at Kace and Adrienne and we all just started laughing. After we all stopped laughing, I ran to get the broom and get it swept up before Rex came over and saw it and started teasing me about it.
As soon as I put the broom away, he came over. Good timing. :)

We ended up getting all the cakes baked, and the lemon cake was delicious! We packaged it all up and put it into the freezer to wait until the next Friday when we would decorate them.

The following Friday she came back and we worked on cutting out the giraffe and assembling the actual cake. We had a few disasters and rough moments, but it came together and it looked good at the wedding and the bride liked it. That's what matters.

Here are some pictures of Kace and I hanging out in the kitchen after lots of stress.
She's cute and I had a good time hanging out with her at school.


Goofing around:


Here are a couple pictures of the finished cakes set up at the wedding.

Here's the grooms cake all set up at the wedding. It turned out really cute.

And here is her two tiered lemon cake with raspberry mousse. The flowers and the top two butterflies are made out of modeling chocolate so they were completely edible.

And here are the lemon cupcakes with raspberry butter cream and a small modeling chocolate flower on top.

Lee's Food Show

November 14 my class had the opportunity to participate in the Annual Lee's Holiday Food Show. It was a lot of work preparing appetizer size portions of something for 1500 people. It was fun and I was really glad I participated. We only had 4 students who cooked something and 1 came to help and 1 who works in the cafeteria came to help as well.
Paul made a vegan apple crisp with prunes. It was really delicious
Jessica made the pureed squash soup I made a while back with an apple onion cranberry relish
Amy made a cranberry salsa on top of cream cheese and a cracker
and I made two different kinds of dip. The first was an artichoke and green chile dip. The second was a cream cheese, spinach and artichoke dip. Everything turned out really good and we had a good time.


Paul showing off his apple crisp:

Paul and Stefani:

Me showing off my artichoke and green chile dip

Kendall:

All of us lined up:

Decorating for Christmas!

Sunday we had decided it was time to put up our tree! We pulled everything down from the attic and got started while Ethan was taking a nap. We had the tree up, lit and was getting it decorated when he woke up. Before Mart went to get him out of bed, I turned to him and said "Ethan is going to walk in here and go "OH WOW! and be really surprised there's a tree here now." He laughed and said yeah probably. He went and got him and as soon as they rounded the corner to come in the living room I heard a loud gasp and Ethan said "OH WOW!" It was really cute. He was so excited to see the lights and the tree and all the shiny ornaments (which I had bought new this year so they were shatterproof!).

While we were getting everything down we decided that to keep Ethan away from the tree we would pull out a small tree and let him decorate it himself and it would be his tree to play with.


Ethan really excited about the ornaments:


Mart helping Ethan decorate his tree:


Ethan admiring his own tree:


My tree this year. It's not my favorite, but it's alright.


Ethan's tree:


All put together. Ethan's little tree is on the other side of the tv. You can see it sticking up a little bit over the couch.


All lit up. There's nothing I like more than sitting in a room with just the Christmas tree lights on. It's so relaxing and peaceful and it just makes me feel good. There's nothing better to get you in the Christmas spirit than a decorated tree either!

We are just about done with Christmas shopping/decorating/building/creating, etc. Our Christmas is going to be super small this year due to VERY limited funds, but it's not about what you get, it's the spirit of the holiday and being with your loved ones. Mart and I are making each other gifts once again and Ethan is just getting a few things. It'll be fun and Ethan will be a lot of fun this year.

Student of the Month

For December, Rex had nominated me to be the student of the month. I thought that was pretty cool and was excited about it. Tuesday, Gloria a woman in charge of marketing for Bridge came to interview me on video, take some pictures and ask a zillion questions. She also told me that I will be recognized at graduation in June for becoming student of the month. She gave me a certificate, with my name spelled wrong. Haha. I laughed. She fixed it for everything else at that point.

Anyway, pretty cool thing for being there for less than 2 months.




This is going to be run in the Herald Journal on Sunday.