Cake Decorating - Course II

Below is the culmination of my second cake course. The first 3 weeks you focus on making all sorts of different kinds of flowers (that are royal icing, so they harden and you can keep them). I had to miss a week, so I dont have to full assortment that you would normally have.

The last week you bake a cake and learn the basket weave technique and some more borders. I forgot to do a bottom border on mine, so it looks a little messy, but you get the idea. You were also supposed to create a sort of garden bunch of flowers (see cake), but I actually really struggled with this, as I have a deep love of symmetry, and this was all on on side :-)

Women's Weekend Gone Bad

So last weekend I went to Winterlude, the women's retreat that is sponsored by my church. I have gone a few years and always loved it. There are over 500 women, from 136 churches in the New England area.

Anyway, this year was a whole different story. I was looking forward to being challenged, but that was not the case. Let me give you the reader's digest version:

First Session (Friday night) - Worship (good), speaker begins with a story about a naked man that snuck in her house...twice. Totally scary, and a good example of her struggle to deal with fear and forgiveness (though I dont' think that was the theme of the weekend). Then we were instructed to just "Love on Jesus" (she is southern, but still). Some random verses were mentioned, then she busted into song. End of session.

Second Session (Sat morning) - worship, fear story about her son (again still not what I think the theme is supposed to be), hands out pillowcases with fear verses on them to women with fearful kids, busts into song again...I leave early.

I had a migraine in the afternoon, so I opted to skip dinner and the last session (tough call), but I did get up and get ready, and eventually head over to the session for just in time to catch the tail end of the talk (yes the bust into song part of the talk). As this was the final session she was pulling out all the stops. So with her PMS Queen t-shirt, plastic tiara and feather boa, she proceed to sing a song she wrote herself about...PMS. But here is the clever part (note sarcasm), by the end of the song PMS didn't stand for prementrual syndrome, it now stands for "Pray More...Seriously". Brilliant (note more sarcasm).

So that was the Winterlude adventure this year. I am a little scared to try again. I mean there were women weeping, and loving this speaker, and I just don't get it. Maybe there is something wrong with me, but if so, I don't think I want to be right.

Would love to type some more, but I gotta go LOVE ON JESUS Y'ALL

Blind Dates in the tech age

My friend Kari has a blind date this week. As any self respecting single woman would, she stalked him on facebook just to get a first impression. As her best friend, I took it a step further and went to makemebabies.com to see what their kids would look like (hehe..). The kids are cute, so I gave her the green light to proceed!




What do you think about my little new baby Erri?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

Blind Date

What do you think about my little new baby Karic?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

MakeMeBabies.com

Check it out and see what your kids might look like. Pretty funny!

http://makemebabies.com/

If we had a girl

What do you think about my little new baby Sarah E II?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

If we had a boy

What do you think about my little new baby Christopher Joseph Jr.?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

2008 Highlights

1. Moved to Wakefield in February and have enjoyed living in a lovely condo that we could not normally afford if my aunt wasn't also our landlord :-)

2. The Wakefield Lake - Chris, Manny and I made the most of the beautiful walking path this summer, and tried to run/walk the 5K around every chance we got

3. Mother/Daughter weekend in Grand Lake. While the men of the family were in Florida on business (fishing), I was able to go out and spend a lovely lowkey weekend with my mom. We chatted, watched movies, ate yummy food :-)

4. July 4th at the Esplanade with Flip & Christie (MIT side). Christie whipped up some yummy Mojitos and we snagged the perfect spot to see the fireworks and listen to the Pops.

5. Vacation on Martha's Vineyard - Chris's dad gave us a week to ourselves down at their house on the vineyard. We went to the beach, went on a 40 mile bike ride (ouch!), and had as much seafood as humanly possible. Manny loved running around the big yard, and my parent's were able to come out and join us for a few days as well!

6. Long weekend up at the Balsam's Resort as an early 60th birthday celebration for Chris's dad. Beautiful setting, historic old resort, and first voting place in the nation (Dixville Notch).

7. Christmas with family/friends in Colorado! Got some quality days in Denver with best friend Kari, and got to have a great visit with Gretchen and her two adorable girls. Then off to Grand Lake to see the family, this year including Auntie B and Cousin Chris. Great Christmas Eve party, bonfires in the backyard (with hot cocoa or your choice of beverage), shopping around Grand Lake and movies and reading by the fire in my parent's new beautiful house.

8. Stephen and Tahnee are engaged! As of Sunday, December 21st. Wedding is set for June 26th and Tahnee will be an official member of the Penta family (though she really already seems like she is ;-).

Many blessings this year, and I am sure I could think of a lot more! Hope 2009 holds as much joy and happiness as 2008.