Sheniqua

When I was in beauty school, they started us off on mannequin heads. (mostly because no one is stupid enough to be someone's first perm and color ever.) My sister had my mannequin head, Sheniqua, (yes, I know, I was 18 when I named it that.)

Anyway, she brought it back and Reese wanted to play with it. Is it dumb that it kind of warmed my heart a little? She kept saying, "Now I'm just like you mommy." "Will you teach me how to cut real clients hair?"
So here she is, my little hairstylist to be.
p.s. No those are not the shears I cut hair with.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Usually by the time St. Patrick's Day comes along, (right after Reese's birthday), I could usually care less about it. But this year Jeremy mentioned to Reese about how when he was little the Leprechaun would come to his house, leave footprints and treats.

So of course, I was hooked. We had little footprints, leading to a stash of treats. Luckily Jeremy found the gold (chocolate) coins, I had looked everywhere with no luck. (Zurchers had them by the way.) Also that crazy Leprechaun came and colored our milk green.
Which resulted in Green pancakes for breakfast, and green pasta for lunch. It's funny but things that shouldn't be green are so much less appetizing.
I'm glad Jeremy gave us the boost we needed to get in the St. Patty's spirit. It's not like it's hard to cut out some footprints and dump food coloring in milk. Reese loved it, and it was fun to do something for the holiday that we usually ignore. Why not do something a little fun! Hope you had a fun day as well!

Reese Is 4!

For Reese's party we decided to do a Mad Hatter Tea Party. We decided to do it downstairs, so on your way down the rabbit hole I had the cookies that make you grow, and the drink that makes you shrink.

This is the door that Alice comes to before she goes into wonderland.

It was too late to find any Alice dresses at the costume shops, so I ended up sewing one. (No, I have never sewn a dress, or anything from a pattern really,) but it turned out ok. (As long as you didn't look to close to the zipper :) But Reese didn't know.

We set up a whole tea party, which was fun. And Jeremy had Alice in Wonderland going on the projector screen for the kids.
You have to have a mischievous cheshire cat. I'm sure Reese is going to get older and think my homemade decorations are not cool, but for now she seems to like them.

Since we did the party not on her birthday, I made a sign that said " A Very Merry Un-Birthday to Reese!" And here's the cards that paint the roses red.

And Absolum the caterpillar. Reese wondered where Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum were, and the truth is I just ran out of wall space.

Here's her cake, I thought it turned out so good.
Jeremy is really good at coming up with ideas, the whole party was his idea. And he told me if I made a teapot for the cake he could make it steam, and he did! It was so cute. I used modeling chocolate to mold the handle and spout. (Inside the spout is a pipe). Then Jeremy broke up dry ice and poured water in, and wa la! Steaming teapot! The pictures don't quite do the steam justice, things like that don't come across as good in a picture.
I have officially perfected my cake recipes, so not only did it look cool, but it tastes good too! Everything is edible but the pipe inside the teapot.

Jeremy bought this for Reese when we were at Disneyland in the fall. It has a little scene of the mad hatter tea party, and it lights up inside, so cute!

Once again I completely forgot to take and pictures of any of the party goers. But I think it turned out cute, and Reese seemed to love it which is all that matters. p.s. I can't believe she's already four! Now I really can't count her as my baby, she's a girl.

A few miscellaneous items from the past week.

Reese apparently is old enough to push her own little shopping cart. Which was weird / nice. She actually did good, it kept her close to me, and she kept the groceries in her cart.

Pasta, anyone?

What? Chocolate cake? I saw this in a food network magazine. I used homemade choc cake, with a cream cheese buttercream, yum. Fondant noodles, (In the magazine, they had piped frosting to look like noodles, but I thought this made it look more realistic, I rolled fondant and put it through my pasta attachment, and wa la, I had noodles. Topped off with stawberry sauce, and white chocolate grated, to look like parmesan cheese. (The meatballs are just cake crumbs rolled into balls.) I made it for Jody and Heather's birthdays last week. (Not like pasta has anything to do with Heather or Jody, I just thought it looked fun.)

It was finally sunny, so we took out first trip to the park (for this season). It actually ended up being a little too windy so we didn't stay too long. Rylee is still a bit too little, so she doesn't know exactly what to do, but she'll get there.

Reese wanted to hold Rylee down the slide, (don't worry I was right there). I don't think Rylee thought it was as fun as Reese, but at least she didn't cry.
My computer was broken for a bit so sorry for the absence of posting, but now we'll be right back on track. :)

We finally have a walker folks!

Rylee has been taking steps for a little over a month now. But it definitely counts now. Starting last week she was able to walk longer distances like across the room. She keeps getting better each day. I guess it's official I have a toddler, not a baby.

My latest cake.

My friend Ellie is in charge of the young women's group in my ward. For their new beginnings night, they did a red carpet theme, which I thought was a good idea. They decorated with gold stars so I went with that.

It's 6 cakes altogether, in star shape, but gold is not really a color I could find. So I used gold dust to give it some gold shimmer, and I found these really cool edible gold star glitters. This was my tallest cake I've made so far. The top layer ended up being a little big, but by the time I put it together it was too late to do anything about it. But other than that I thought it turned out good. I've also been experimenting with recipes and I think I've perfected the cakes on the inside. A new thing I had heard about was a cream cheese buttercream. Which is basically the same, but replacing the crisco with cream cheese. Way better! Although I think you can't do as much with it, but I thought it made it taste a lot better!

Super Bowl party!

Is it just me or do you just have to have a super-bowl party? And you have to have lots of treats, that's what the super-bowl is all about. These are yummy Oreo truffles I made, to look like footballs. (I always like my treats to be "themey").

We actually had no one in attendance for our party other than us. And I spent at least half the game trying to keep Rylee from dumping all the treats on the ground.
Our team didn't win, and we had a Lot more food than necessary, but we had a good super-bowl.

The other day, Jeremy had been stressed out at work so Reese, Rylee, and I, threw him a surprise party.
I made a little sign, Reese made some pictures to decorate, and I even made some party hats. We jumped out and yelled surprise! I don't know if it made him feel less stressed, but I think it made him happy to see how much the girls love him.
We love you Jeremy! We are proud of how hard you work, and take care of us! Thank you so much.