Exciting News!!

Charles finally received acceptance into ASU's MBA program which will start in the beginning of July!!!

I finally found a copy of Over the Hedge and watched it twice!

The garden is growing great.

Charles had a first interview for a job in San Angelo, Texas.

My job is fun.

School is winding down and finally less stressful.

We went to the dentist, at the best dentist ever.

We got to see David and talk.

It kind of snowed, but it has been nice and warm at 45 degrees.

2nd Week of Life

The little plants have been working hard and growing well. In this their second week of life, they have made leaps and bounds in their growth.

This is our broccoli which we actually just planted at the beginning of the week.

Here we see from left to right, the okra, peppers, carrots, and tomatoes.

Here we have the peas with the bean plant in the background.

Featured in this photo we have the lettuce in the back with the long pumpkin plant growing out to the right.

In the red Christmas bowl we have potatoes and two pumpkins. In the farther bowl there is zucchini.

The center plant which is just growing up so fast is squash.

In the farthest popcorn bowl we have the onions that are growing so tall they are falling over.

This is our small little honeydew that was started this week because we finally have more room in the little planter.

This is our large bean plant that just keeps growing. I know understand the story "Jack and the Bean Stalk."

In the okra we have a little lost seed that grew and we aren't sure if it is lettuce or carrots, I guess we will find out when it grows a little more. By it's fruit we shall know it.

Here is our little garden, if it expands any more I don't know where it will go.

The Growing Garden

On the bright sunny days in Utah, Charles and I have been planting a garden.

Photo taken Sunday, the 14th of March 2010

Of course we weren't that dimwitted and started it indoors so that we could miss the whole freezing of the plants thing. We started the plants Monday, 8th of March. The picture below was the first of our plants coming up on Wednesday the 10th.

The photo below was the morning of Thursday the 11th.

All following photos were taken Sunday morning the 14th with little captions to tell you what it all is.

Two transplanted onion sets

Transplanted beets

Hordes of lettuce

The thing in the middle is the squash

Beets that are way to cramped

Our tomato plants

The okra that is growing faster than weeds

Here is our set up of our indoor garden, other plants that are also growing which are not pictured are peas and beans. The pumpkins haven't come out of the ground, but their roots are starting to come out the bottom.

When we started transplanting them we needed more space so we rearranged our "office" and put all of the plants on the "art cabinet" with the grow light hanging from Charles' bike which is hanging from the ceiling.

The Masquerade Cake, the making of

Charles and I made a huge masquerade cake for Amanda's birthday. Here is the process ....

A practice cake and frosting which didn't turn out very well.

All of the fun things we used, the spray-on frosting and glitter frosting was quite neat.

Vat o' Frosting

We placed three 9x13 cakes side by side, cut a little into it and added a part at the top. We wanted to try to make it a little similar to the mask that Amanda was going to wear at her party.

We added height to the top, the nose, and cheeks.

Here is a side view of the buildup of the nose that we attached to the cake. Fortunately when we served the cake it all stayed pretty well intact.

We carved out the eyes and into the cake so that it would be deeper than the mask itself. We, as well, cut a little more off of the bottom corners of the mask so that it looked better.

Here it is all frosted with us making sure no white frosting got in the eyes.

Here we have added some of the green spray-on color frosting and the glitter frosting to the top of the eye. As you can see, the bottom of the nose and the eyes, as well as the top edge of the mask have no frosting. We had to make black frosting and place it in those areas. To make the black frosting we used an entire bottle of black food coloring in the white frosting, and added cocoa powder to it which made it look quite shiny for some reason.

Here is the finished mask with all of the trimming and black frosting. It was a long process of five hours with five people helping. At the top of the mask is a rose in the center, which looks gorgeous.

To show you a size comparison to know how large the cake was, here it is next to a regular size eraser.

We didn't have anything to cover the cake, so we used four cones and a cut open trash bag.

It was a lot of fun to make the cake and if we had to do it again we have a lot more awesome ideas. If you need a unique cake built let us know; we would be more than happy to make it for you.

Charles and I would like to give a special thanks to Charles' mom Jan who gave us good ideas and was far braver than us and did the beautiful white lining around the mask. She, as well, let us use her kitchen and helped with the cleaning which was a lot bigger of a job than anticipated because the green spray went into the air intake and went all throughout the house. A little green mist can make a whole house green. We had no idea it would go every where, there was no warning label about doing it outside at all.

We would like to thank Ashley, Charles' sister for being extremely meticulous about making all of the frosting perfectly smooth and beautiful and spent so much time picking out little flecks of cake that had gotten in the frosting. She as well made the beautiful flower that went on the crown of the mask.

We owe a lot of work to my friend Heidi who decided that she wanted to help with the cake. We are so grateful that she came because she had many good ideas and was as well very patient as she picked out cake flecks in the frosting. She was a great asset in the making of the cake.

I guess we should thank Amanda for having a birthday and allowing us to make her cake without knowing what she was going to get.

It was a great experience!

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!