Boys of Summer

I love baseball, I really do. I don't have a favorite team, I just like watching it played. I think it reminds me of when I was a kid, my brother played for many years, and one of my best friends was on the baseball team in high school.

I've said before that I really like making cakes for men. You can only make so many girly, frilly, children's cakes without going a little nuts. But then maybe that's just me.
**Sidenote: Had a discussion with Sgt. Awesome the other day while we were watching previews for movies. The words that actually came out of my mouth were "Maybe I'm a man because I would much rather see Hall Pass(which looks super dumb) than Sex in the City (which makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out)." So maybe I'm just predisposed to slightly less feminine themes? Who knows. Probably more than you ever wanted to know about me. Sidenote over**

Ok, so what does all this have to do with cake?
Well, I made a baseball themed cake for a man's birthday.

We had originally discussed just cupcakes with the Dodger's logo on each one, but I though that would make me crazy. I'm glad I came up with the pennant idea, it's something I've been meaning to make for Awesome's birthday for some years but he keeps getting the girly white chocolate cake.

I used my cake dying skillz to color the inside of the cake.

I also had to make a template to maximize the cuts in the cake so that I could get the longest pennant shape possible out of two 9X13 cakes. Math makes my head hurt.

Mustache March Madness!!

So, Mustache March is finally over, here is a link to the Wiki. The husband only lasted about two weeks with his lip weasel. It was causing too much distraction at his office, people kept giggling during meetings, not productive.

I started out with these mustache templates I found on The Inspired Bride.

I ended up having to cut them apart to account for the sticks. Here is a photo of a bunch of them piped out in chocolate.

A whole bunch of chocolate 'staches that have set up.

The finished product

The problem with the little sticks is that the 'staches kept twirling around, but overall a great success!

Happy Belated Birthday!

The Husband's big Four-Oh was on the 4th of this month. Unfortunately for him, he spent it in bed sick with Norovirus. I guess it's going around our area...Awesomesauce!
So, obviously no cake for him on his birthday.
The next week, he went on a trip, so no cake again.
I told him that the only way he was going to get a cake for his birthday was if I could bring it to him at his office. There was no way in processed grains and sugar hell I was going to have a big cake sitting on our dining room table for a week.
So I took it to the office last monday.
I swear, I don't mean to sound like I'm stereotyping, but taking a cake into an office filled with cops is like chumming the water on Shark Week! One person left the office with a slice of cake, and soon enough there was a line out the door!

Anyway, onto the cake.

This is a special cake I only make for him on his birthday. Not the most masculine cake ever to grace these pages, but it was fantastic!

Sgt. Awesome's White Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake, with white chocolate buttercream, fresh strawberries, and white chocolate dipped strawberries.
White chocolate is his favorite obviously. Luckily the strawberries have started to come in to the stores, and they are very nice for this time of the year.

Happy Birthday Mr. Awesome!

St. Patrick's Day

We started our day with some green eggs and milk! I think that she was somewhat nervous about trying these. It's just food coloring babe!
Here is Steve the Sock Monkey modeling one of the pins I gave out this year.
A fantastic pattern from another outstanding crafter and blogger, Betz White.
I only made one glittery & sparkly one, four guesses who got this one, I only have 4 friends after all....
If you answered Lenae, gold star for you! She was actually pouting because I was handing the pins out to my other 3 friends since I wouldn't be seeing them on St. Patrick's day. Yeah, I made her wait, evil laugh....MWAAAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Well, it didn't end there. It ended with St Patrick's Day (night)ZUMBA!!!
I actually bought a pair of green legwarmers, and then when I was cleaning my "closet" I found another pair! So, Teri got my extras.

Lenae and Me rockin' the green fishnets!

I also prepared some appropriate sweet treats for the evening.
Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes, with bittersweet chocolate ganache centers and white chocolate and Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream. I used the recipe I found on Confessions of a Tart! What kind of an awesome blog name is that?!?!?
I didn't use the whiskey in the ganache, and I had some white chocolate buttercream left over from The Husband's birthday cake, so I mixed my Bailey's right into that.
Who knew beer (stout) in cake would be so good?!?

OK, so I managed to work Crafts and Cakes into this post....

I'll round out this St. Patrick's Day post with my favorite Patrick on the CrossFit circut, Patrick Barber. Currently tied at #33 on the Crossfit Open Leaderboard.

Funny Bunny

Now I can't seem to discover if this bunny is named "Happy Bunny", or "Grumpy Bunny", but I guess it is an entire product line? I know I've seen it before, and it is kind of cute.

Yes....I still suck at taking photos of my cakes...

I would say that this is a pretty happy bunny.

Here is the cute saying that the birthday girl wanted on her cake.

Awesomesauce!

V-Day 2011!

Generally Valentine's day turns into a last minute craftapalooza on the dining room table, and why break tradition, this year was no exception. I have been feeling particularly lazy in the whole crafting department, and we had our swimming championships the weekend before V-Day.

But I managed to pull it together for the kidlet.

This year we went with a combination of last year's card (based on this totally AWESOME tutorial),and this guitar lolli template from Zakka Life. She looks oh so different this year than she did last year.

After some false starts with the jumping action photo (my kid has unfortunately never seen a VanHalen video).


We finally got the shot that we wanted to use.


I digitally cut it out and placed it over a background I found on the internet, and added the text. This year I actually had some photo paper, so I used that, and mounted the pictures on some craft paper.


Next I made the guitar lolli's according to the tutorial, and pushed them through the card near her hand. There was a scale issue, but that's ok, these are for 8 year olds.

Ba-da-BAM!!! The rockin'est Valentine's cards in the 3rd grade!

I don't know if I should laugh, or be mad!

Zumba vs. CrossFit
This might not be SFW, I can't remember I was giggling so much.


For the record, I do Zumba on the days I feel too muscle tired to lift, it makes for a nice change, I call it my MetCon day. I have also never ripped my hands from doing too many pullups (mostly because I can't even do one unasisted), and I am on a 70/30 Paleo diet, since I can only drink my coffee with lots of cream, and enjoy the occasional trip to Subway.

CrossFit is kind of a cult though!

Spangdahlem Combat Fitness Facility

The CFF is finally opening on base!
From the Fitness Center Facebook page:

Es wird der einzige Beitrag angezeigt.
52D FSS Skelton Memorial Fitness Center
Interested in the Combat Fitness (Crossfit) workout program?
Workouts are scheduled to start Monday January 31. Walk-in hours are Monday-Friday, 0900 - 1100 & 1300 - 1500. *Come-in and workout with one of our certified instructors. Reservations for squadrons may be made by calling 452-6634. PTL's must have proof of certification before reservations can be made.

Combat Fitness Training:
Training will be held on Friday, February 11 @ 0800 in the Combat Fitness building #149. This class is open to all PTL's who have been certified by the HAWC after July 1, 2010. The training is mandatory for all PTL's who wish to lead squadron Combat Fitness classes in building 149 training area.

Combat Fitness Orientation:
Class will be held every Friday starting February 4 @ 1000 (no class Feb 11). *This class is open to all Base ID card holders who would like to use the Wing Combat Fitness workout area. This class will cover equipment, safety, form and different workouts. This class is mandatory prior to use of the CF workout area.

Hours of Operation
Monday - Friday 0600-1800
Closed weekends, holidays, goal/down days

**Note: Active duty has priority

We saw the CrossFit Cert instructors in the gym's office yesterday morning, it was like a celebrity sighting. Of course I had to give The Husband a call, and let him know that if I saw Pat Barber I was going to make a fool of myself. Sadly/luckily he was not one of the instructors. Hopefully interest in the program will be such that they will hold an open Level 1 certification open to everyone.

Ninja Cat

I know that the title of this post is Ninja CAT, but what really got me excited was the ZOMBIES!!! I don't know if I've ever gone on about my love for a good Zombie flick. And, you wouldn't be surprised at the lack of requests for me to make a good ole' Zombie cake.

This was a Ninja Cat (made for a lady named Kat) vz. Zombies cake!

EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Here are some of my undead parts! (I'm kind of inapropriately giddy here)

More parts, with extra gore!!!

And a wide shot of the whole cake.

The Ninja herself, I didn't get a shot of her tail in here, so it is kind of hard to tell that she is a cat.

One of her victims.


The funny thing about this cake is that I made it on the same day that I made the Louis Vuitton (??) one posted below. If you look closely, you can see that they are the exact same cake, just decorated on two different ends of the taste spectrum.

I'll let you guess which one I like better.

Do you Zumba?!?

If you're at Spangdahlem, you should!



Ok, so Zumba is not exactly CrossFit, but since my club days are long behind me, this is really the only opportunity for me to get my dance on. For all you Spangdahlemites out there reading check the Fitness Center's Facebook for the schedule. I go with my gang once a week to one of Fiona's AM classes.

If you show up, I'm easy to spot, I'm the sweatiest one there, I seriously think I have a sweat gland problem. Lenae says that Botox can take care of that, do you think Tricare would cover that?

I Heart Adidas

Here is just another reason that Adidas is my favorite sports brand.



Star Wars, Draft Punk, Snoop Dog, Becks. The only way this could get any more awesome would be for Merry and Pippin to show up dancing and singing The Green Dragon on one of the tables.

My Birds

So Lenae and my other friends had a squadron Christmas party to go to, and this year it was themed. The theme, was a Masquerade Ball. Lenae was complaining to me about having to wear a mask, and what a hassle it would be, those things never stay on right, what do you do with it when it came time to eat. You can't put it on the table, there is never any room, do you wedge it up on your forehead, what the heck???

So, I had a plan!

Face paint and feathers!!!

Lenae's was the most thought out since her theme was the first one we came up with. A peacock...

Connie was a raven...

Teri was a Firebird...

My flock!

I made each of them different kinds of feather headpieces that coordinated with their makeup and outfits.

I was quite proud of the detail on Lenae's makeup. If she closed her eyes it would look more like the eye of a peacock tailfeather.

Woo-Hoo!

I guess I was up on Thecupcakeblog.com this month, or some month, who knows!

My Cupcakes!!!!

Woo-Hoo!!!

Topsy Turvy!

O-M-G!!!

FINALLY!!! I mean, seriously, finally!!

I put on my big girl decorator pants and attempted a topsy turvy cake again.

For those of you reading from the beginning (I know there are not many of you, but that's ok) you might remember my very first post. My first attempt at a topsy turvy cake was a pure disaster. And since then I've had unintentionally crooked cakes, but not an actual true, meant to be wonky cake.

Until now.....

Ta-DAH!

This was an Alice In Wonderland themed cake.

Really how else should an Alice In Wonderland cake be, but a little off balance.

Granted, there are some areas that could have been improved, and things that I would have done differently. But overall, I am incredibly happy about the way that it turned out.

A very merry unbirthday indeed!

Hallow-Weenies 2010!!

Serious Weenie action here.

Last year Lenae and I spent most of our time on costumes for the kids. This year, we decided to spend more time on our costumes, and allow our children to tag along. Our plans sounded good at first, and then quickly took a turn into what the hell were we thinking territory.

Here we are starting out

The majority of our supplies.


Getting paper mache-ed.

Lenae under our high tech drying lamp.


Fitting my hat.


I somehow escaped the whole paper mache my head thing, and now that I think about it, we probably did not need to do it for Lenae either. Oh well.

Craft foam makes great armor. You can heat it a little and form it to whatever shape you need. Don't heat it too much, and don't heat it before adding whatever under paint embelishments you want....like I did. Check out this tutorial for more information on creating your own craft foam armor.

Here also you see the apalling lack of storage in my kitchen. Though, for a German non-fitted kitchen, I have lots of space, just not alot of storage.

This is Lenae's hat that has been filled with expanding foam. We will cut it down later to form the top.


Any ideas of who we will be?


Keep in mind that we live in Germany, it's not as if I can drive down to Wal-Mart, or Jo-Ann's for a supply run. We had been collecting odds and ends here and there for a year. Our best find was a couple of glittery gold "dresses" from the thrift shop, our most difficult find, stretchy shiny fabric for our shirts/armor. I swear we walked all over the city of Trier looking for something suitable, and we finally stumbled onto a tiny fabric shop that had just what we needed.

That is pretty much it for the in progress shots. We get too absorbed in what we are doing that we forget to take pictures of the process.

Here we are skipping ahead to the end product.
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BA-BAM!!




Here is a reference comparison.


The kids rounded out the rest of our group, with Sacajawea, Amelia Earhart, Jedediah, and Octavius. Plus my little kid as a non-matching witch on the end there. I'll post a litle more about her costume later.

Down Time

So the blog has been down for awhile. I have been reassessing my business and other activities.

The Kid and I are currently working out our differences.

This photo was taken at the Film Museum in London. There is a Star Wars set built there, and you can have your photo taken. This in itself was worth the price of admission.

Posting will resume with photos from Halloween! Forever to be known as "The BEST Halloween EVER!!!" by The Kid.

It's OVER!!!

Summer that is.
The calendar is open again, be gentle on me, I'm out of practice.

But, let's celebrate with some awesomeness!

Cake and classic Star Wars!

awwww....booo...it's cut off on one side!
Ok, fixed a little bit, thanks Mrs. S.
And yes, Jen this one's for you!

ARRRRRR!!!

Pirates again! But different.

I had alot of fun with this cake, as you can see.

What was most thankful for were all the provided pirates, and pirate gear. Making actual pirates out of gumpaste was not something I was looking for. She even provided me with some treasure chests and skeleton parts! And HELLO! not a smooth surface to be seen! Textured buttercream, another one of my favorite things!
It's hard to find a Lego guy who is not smiling. Though when I dropped it off, the birthday boy said that it looked like he was screaming, so I guess it worked out in the end.

And then, my favorite bit of inspiration! Dueling cephalopod and crustacean!! Though I think I got a little carried away with the size of that crab.

Hope it was ARRRsome Joey!