Texas, that is. PopPop and I headed up to Frisco for a quick weekend visit with my son and his family. We figured if we didn’t go this weekend we probably wouldn’t get to see them for a couple of months. It was cold up there so we spent most of the time just hanging out and playing with the grandkids. They are growing up way too fast. We had lots of fun playing Pictionary Man and Lego Rock Band. All in all it was a pretty good weekend.
January 27, 2010
My good neighbor KVH turned forty at the beginning January. The neighborhood ladies decided to celebrate in style and hired a limo to drive us into the city for a nice dinner. I was tasked with making the cake for the celebration since I was taking cake decorating classes. KVH is a lover of all things cheetah so I decided I would make a cheetah print cake. I planned the cake for weeks — scouring the internet for ideas and talking to my cake decorating instructor. My design was finalized. It would be a chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream frosting flavored with Frangelica. The cake would be covered in fondant and painted to look like cheetah skin with fondant balls around the bottom. The cake would be topped with black fondant roses. I worked for 3 days after work on this cake and then finished it on Saturday before our night out. This is the cake I made:
As they say “The best laid plans…..”. Our guest of honor came down with food poisoning in the limo on the way to the restaurant. She spent an hour in the lady’s room of the restaurant waiting for her hubby to pick her up and take her home. Needless to say the rest of us skipped dinner at this restaurant since the party was over.
We decided that we would have a “redo” the next Saturday. The cast of characters was slightly different but it still would be a fun night. I volunteered to make a second cake. It wasn’t going to be as elaborate as the first but it still would be nice. I decided to make a butter cake with a lemon curd filling and vanilla frosting. I experimented with making fondant from marshmallows. This came out great and was much better tasting than the store-bought stuff. I decided that KVH ’needed’ to see a cake with 40 candles on rather than the decorative “40″ candles from the first week. I think the cake came out very nice.
The second night out was a big success. No one came down with food poisoning and we had a great time!
December 8, 2009
I’ve had several things going on lately that I’ve completed. I thought everyone might like to see them. I’ve been taking cake decorating classes at my local Micheal’s for the last couple of months. I just completed one of the classes and this was my final cake:
Not too bad for a beginner.
The other project I’ve been working on is a knitted baby afghan. My cousin and his wife are expecting their first baby at the end of February. It’s a girl. This is the afghan I knitted for them:
The pattern is “Orange You Glad” from Terrific Textures for Baby by Lorraine F. Hickey.
I felt so accomplished that Monday. I decorated the cake and completed the afghan. So what did I do? I promptly got sick. Getting sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not a good thing. I’m so far behind on decorating and shopping it’s not funny. PopPop would be happy if I skipped the decorating this year but that’s not going to happen. I’m finally starting to feel better so the decorations are going to start going up. Let the shopping begin!!
November 21, 2009
I really thought the week before Thanksgiving would be a nice and easy week. I could slowly ease into my week off for Thanksgiving. I knew Thanksgiving week would be a busy one. My parents and my son and his family are heading this way for Thanksgiving. I”m having over twenty people for Thanksgiving dinner so there’s a lot of cooking and cleaning that needs to happen. Silly me!
PopPop’s sister had heart surgery — a triple bypass and valve replacement. PopPop spent the majority of the week in Louisiana with his family so I was alone again. My mother had a procedure to stabilize two compression fracture in her back. Thank heaven both ladies are doing fine now.
On top of that, the job was a nightmare this week. In fact that nightmare is still going on (even though I’m technically on vacation). I’m lurking on a conference call while I write this. Nothing is more boring than listening to computer technicians trying to diagnose and fix a hardware problem. I’ll have some things to do once they finish but this is more boring than watching paint dry.
I think I’ll start my grocery list for Thanksgiving dinner. That should keep me busy while I listen to this ‘exciting’ conversation.
November 5, 2009
My grandson David turns a whopping 6 years old today. It seems like it was just yesterday when we made the mad dash to Dallas for his birth. He’s been such a bright spot in our lifes since his arrival. There’s nothing else in the world that compares to being a grandparent. He’s been the spitting image of my son since the day of his birth. It’s been so much fun watching him grow.
PopPop and I are heading to to Frisco tomorrow to celebrate David’s birthday. I can hardly wait. It feels like it’s been forever since I saw my son and his family. It should be a fun weekend. My daughter-in-law’s parents are also heading up there and we’re all staying at my son’s house.
October 26, 2009
The Amazing Race on CBS is my all time favorite reality show. It was also my sister’s favorite. We would always try to watch it together when we lived in the same city. We would research the country the race would be visiting that week and cook meals from that country. It wasn’t always easy to find the ingredients necessary for ethnic food in our small town. We had great fun doing this and it broadened our tastes for different ethnic cuisines. We were always on the lookout for places we had been and places we wanted to go. We would call each other during the show once we lived in different cities to say “Did you see that?” or “Can you believe that team did that?”. It was a way of sharing our love of travel.
This is the first season of The Amazing Race that I’m watching without my sister. She passed away this past April after a two and a half year battle with breast cancer. PopPop and I still watch The Amazing Race but it’s just not the same. I want to pick up the phone and call my sister to talk about the teams and the challenges. I still love the show but it will always remind of the time spent with my sister. Sometime I just get sad because she’s no longer here to watch it with me.
This is PopPop, me, and Eileen at the Hapsburg Palace in Austria.
October 20, 2009
PopPop left Thursday for Baton Rouge to spend a long weekend with his daughter and her family. I had to stay home – you know that work thing. I started getting excited as he prepared to leave. I was going to have a whole weekend at home by myself. That just doesn’t happen very often any more. I could do what I wanted. I could work on those projects that you want to work on when you’re alone in the house. Most of the women I know were envious of my weekend alone. Why is it that we look forward to time alone at home and the reality never lives up to the hype. Now don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoyed my weekend by myself but by Saturday night i was really missing PopPop.
He’s on his way home now and I can’t wait to see him.
October 16, 2009
Welcome to my new blog!
I’ve been tossing the idea around for a couple of weeks of starting a blog. I would write about the things going on in my life — which is definitely not that exciting. I’m finally taking the plunge. I’ll be talking about a wide range of topics — cooking, knitting, travelling, television, books. You know — whatever pops in mind when I sit down at the computer. I’ll probably even have a ‘few’ posts about family. It all depends what’s happening in my life at any given moment.
