Cake-Maker for Hire??

Ok y'all remember my snail birthday cake?? Well my lovely friend Erinn called the other day and asked me if I'd like to make a panda bear birthday cake for her 5 yr. old daughter's birthday. Sure, I was up for it. She brought me the stuff and I got to working...I think it came out pretty cute. It was MUCH easier than the snail cake (that was 2 layers w/ lots of complicated pieces and fillings). This one was one layer, but it did have a 3-d nuzzle on its face. I ran into a few problems along the way (such as BLACK icing is ridiculous to try to MAKE). I ended up using Wilson's ready-made icing in a tube! I had just barely enough to do what I needed--while still compromising a bit on some of the other things I wanted to do. Anyways, I thought it would be cute to make this panda a little girly--so I added a cute flower barette in her "hair," and also some eyelashes! Ha!
My one regret was that I think its ears are a tad big--more like mouse ears. I hope all the little girls at the party don't notice! Hee hee. Well, here's a look at the side view:
After all of this cake making, I started feeling like maybe I should learn more about this and start doing cakes on the side for a bit of extra cash. It's pretty fun, after all. Unless you have a 15-month old holding onto your ankles while you're piping on icing! :)

Spaghetti Fun!

I made the BEST spaghetti sauce the other day, I swear! I am still trying to figure out what I did! Jase was all over it. I bought him this cool bowl with a suction cup bottom. It worked great until he figured out how to remove the suction cup thing. Argh. Anyways, I know he might still be a bit too young, but I have been working with him on how to eat with a spoon. Here's some of his first attempts.
Yay, he did it! I realized I don't let him get messy very often. I'd rather feed him myself than clean him up afterwards! So here he is getting very messy...
Even though he can actually get the spoon to his mouth every now and again, I think he still prefers the good ol' hand-to-mouth method. Here's a quick clip of me helping him figure it out:

Trip to the Aquarium

So I realized the aquarium here is NOT very cool--but it was fun, I guess. The best part for me was petting the stingrays. I was scared to death! All the kids were doing it so I felt like a big ol' wimp. My mom came with us. Here she is pointing out some cool fish with Jase:
This is Jase showing Grandma his belly button! He knows exactly how to find it. It's funny to ask him where it is when he's wearing a onesie bc he gets confused. Heh heh.
Here we are by the stingray "petting" pool. It's deeper than you think! I finally got the courage to basically touch one, then run! Once one turned around and looked at me right before I was going to touch it and scared me to death!
Another pic of us chillin' by the coral reef fish...
My mom and Jase hangin' by the stingray pool. I think the pool was Jase's favorite part, too. He was just a-splashin' away! (And that big brown thing in the water is an actual stingray, by the way).

Before...and After!

BEFORE with lovely light hair...
AFTER with super DARK hair! And shorter bangs! What do ya think? I'm still trying to adjust to it. It's dark brown with a reddish undertone to it. I finally went for it!

Belated Christmas Post

Here's our cute little tree. We opened presents on Christmas eve since got up super early Christmas day to brave the snow and drive to Grandma Jenith's house. I forgot to take ANY pictures while we were there. Argh. Well, ok. Back to our house...
The stockings were hung on the staircase with care...(yes we have them for our dogs, too)
Jase trying to learn how to spin on his cool spinny spiderman toy. The funny thing is that it talks and plays music, too. Ok that's not so funny--the real funny part is that the talking voice totally has a lisp. Yep. Funny.
Checking out his super cool Dr. Seuss themed learning cards--which are currently all over my living room floor. Awesome.
This is what Jase did instead of unwrapping things. He just preferred to climb on them. And I was ok with that.

Lame

I've gotten so caught up in reading everyone else's blogs that I literally have forgotten about my own! Ridiculous. What's also even more ridiculous is that I hardly have any pics from Christmas to post--and NONE from New Years' Eve. Lame. Plus, the internet isn't working on my laptop (which is where I have my very few xmas pics). So the post with those will have to wait. Double lame.