wedding cake

On the last post I did showing cakes that I made, there were a couple comments asking if I ever do wedding cakes. The answer is yes I do, but not your typical tiered wedding cake. Over the years I haven't made a lot of cakes for weddings but there have been a few.  Most they were full sheet cakes. This one is the most recent one that I did last week

I wasn't there when they picked it up but the girl who was working said the person who picked it up had no reaction to it at all. I like to kind of judge by their expressions whether or not they are happy with the cake.

 I outlined the hearts with string pearls that I happened to have in my cake decoration stash.

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

I'm cheating today and we're going to go to Walmart for a few Pioneer Woman items I saw that I don't have myself.

In the craft section there were cuts of fabric and sewing kits.

Not sure if all of these were bird feeders or if some were bird houses.

And last, I saw the cosmetic bags. I think it was Sandra who mentioned that she had seen these in the store.

killing time

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment to check my progress. I'm still extremely sore but I'll survive. I had to keep the temporary in as much as possible from Thursday till my appointment and I was able to do that. I did have a few moments when it hurt way too much. Yesterday he did some adjustments and now he wants me to take it out when I'm home to let things heal better. I go back again on Thursday. 

I was a little early for my appointment so I stopped off at Frank's Farm Market. This place has tons and tons of hanging baskets and other flowers. They're absolutely gorgeous but very pricey the most expensive basket that I saw with 89.99. Granted it was a huge basket but still that's a lot of money for flowers

A few cakes

A few of the cakes I've done recently.

This one I actually did two identical cakes. This one for Owen, and a second one for his twin brother. I can't remember what his brother's name is.

This next one is a small 1/8 sheet cake.  I thought the fish were kind of fun . They are actually rings then you can put in cupcakes but I use them on cakes 

The last one I think is for somebody going into the military. The person who ordered it brought in the edible image for me to put on the cake

Motivational

We have a few people in the deli department who are less than stellar workers and that is putting it nicely. One day, since I had a few extra minutes, I made some motivational posters. It did  absolutely nothing to improve their performance but I had fun. I put these up on June 14th. Less than 10 days later they are now all curled up and bent over and pretty much destroyed

I want to thank all of you for your well wishes. I'm still feeling sore but nothing too terrible. Grace asked if I got a temporary denture. Yes, I did. I am actually the first person in his office to have gotten one. It's something brand new for him. His assistant told me that after me there were 2 or 3 others who also chose to go with the temporary.

Betty mentioned that pudding would be a good food to add to my current diet. Yes, pudding is one of the things I've eaten. Soup, pudding, applesauce and ice cream.

I'm glad that's over with.

 Let me tell you, I was way more nervous than I thought I would be yesterday. I'm glad my appointment was in the morning because if I had to wait all day I probably would have made myself crazy. I got to the dentist office and his assistant gave me a couple papers I had to sign. My hand was shaking so much I could barely write my name. 

Next came Novocain. I lost count of how many shots he gave me, but it was a lot. He finished and I said "OW". His assistant says "wow, you didn't even flinch".

Afterwards she told me numerous times how well I did. She even told the receptionist I did really good. He didn't prescribe any medications and just told me to take 2 Tylenol, 2 ibuprofen together every 4 hours. 

I came home and spent the day on the couch napping and watching tv. My mouth is a little on the sore side but other than that I'm feeling fine. Of course, I'm writing this Thursday night so I could wake up in the morning and feel differently. 

Dinner was tomato soup and applesauce. I can't say that I'm hungry but I'm wanting so many foods right now that I can't have.

2 vacation days

One of these days I might just take vacation time for an actual fun vacation. Unfortunately today I'm off because I have a dental appointment. Tomorrow I took off just in case my mouth is hurting too much. This is not a fun one. My bottom teeth have gotten very very bad and it's time for them to come out and a bottom denture goes in. I got the top one done probably 15 years ago. Wish me luck

 On that note I'm going to leave you with something funny.

It's been a long time

 It's been a very long time since I've sat down and played around in Photoshop elements. I used to spend hours in front of the computer doing anything from simple to totally crazy edits on my pictures.

These were all rather simple edits using the guided feature and the program pretty much does all the work.

The original picture.

This one was maybe watercolor? I'm not 100% sure on that.

And this last one was lomo.

The picture was one that I took a long time ago. I found it in the archives. I can't remember what year it was from.

Like father like daughter.

 On my father's day post, Sandra left a comment saying "I love the joy on his face when you were kissing him." She was referring to this picture.

When I read her comment it gave me an idea for a post. I must be my father's daughter because look at the joy on my face when my son is kissing me on his wedding day.

it happens sometimes

I had a cake order last Friday. It was supposed to be picked up at 4 p.m.. when I got to work Sunday morning it was still sitting there. I tried calling to find out why they hadn't picked it up but only got a voicemail. Thankfully this doesn't happen often.

I find it incredibly rude though. Of course there is always the chance that the person who took the order got the date wrong. If that were the case though, you would think they would return my call quickly to let me know that it was supposed to be for a different date. If they never call this will get cut up into single serve pieces and put out to sell that way.

On a side note, Grace recently asked if anyone ever ordered a cake with chocolate frosting. I rarely have anyone ever ask for chocolate frosting. I used to order chocolate frosting in but it was going bad before I used it all so I quit ordering it. Personally, I would rather have chocolate. Oddly enough, the yellow cakes sell way more than the chocolate ones. I don't get that. Chocolate is always my first choice.

Happy Father's day

 Today is a repeat of an old post. Happy Father's day to all the dads out there and especially to mine. Miss you every day dad.

From June 21, 2015

My dad is no longer with us but I still want to take this opportunity to wish a happy Father's Day to the best dad ever.
This is a scan of the last picture I have of my dad. It was taken with a cheap camera ages ago.

This is more of how I remember him. This one was taken in 1982 when I got married (for the first time)

The only pictures of my dad and I together that I could find were from that day. I know there's more but for some reason I can't find them.

Happy Father's Day dad. I love you and miss you.

Happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there, I hope you have a great day

Lilac

 I have always loved lilacs. My dad was an excellent gardener and we had huge lilac and snowball bushes planted along the property line of our yard. I have tried numerous times to plant them and they never live. My neighbor has one so I took pictures of that.

as ordered

It seems I've had lots of orders at work lately. Especially for cakes. Of course being that is graduation time there's going to be quite a few. Two recent cakes one was for a teacher

The other one was a retirement cake. I absolutely love what she wanted written on this one 

I have one other cake that I did last week then I have one ordered for today and another one for Sunday.

Flying by the seat of my pants.

The last few weeks I've been doing really good with posts. I've scheduled a weeks worth at a time on my day off and I was good for the week. This past week though, I ran out of scheduled posts and I'm feeling rather uninspired.

When I went to do a post for Tuesday I accidentally put the date as the previous Tuesday and the post was buried. Some of you saw it and some of you didn't. For those who didn't, I'm posting just the pictures again since it was a cake I did.

 I'm thinking that perhaps the size of the ball and a hole maybe a little off but seriously it's cake. I wanted to make the ball look a little more like a golf ball so I used the end of a tip to add a little bit of texture to the white blob

Yesterday we were under a heat advisory here. The high temp was 88 or 89 with a real feel of 99. It was hot but it wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was going to be. The only AC I have is a small window unit that I will put in my bedroom when it gets really bad. Yesterday morning when I went to work I had all the windows and curtains closed and it kept the temp down in the house. When I got home Gibbs and I hung out in the Ann cave. We had no problem beating the heat.

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

I'm going to be lazy today. I don't feel like digging up the pictures of the Pioneer Woman stuff that I have. Instead I'm going to use a picture that my daughter sent me the other day. She sent me a text saying that Pioneer Woman now has brushes as in hair brushes. I hadn't seen those in the store but I did see that she also has headbands.

Screwed up.

 I don't know how it happened but yesterday I scheduled a post for today. When I was checking my email one last time last night, I saw comments had come in on the post that wasn't supposed to publish until this morning. Apparently I must have set the date to 6/7 instead of 6/14. 

So here I am scrambling before I go to bed to get something ready for Tuesday June 14. 

On the off chance you don't see the other post, I did mention that I had my follow up eye appointment. All went well and my eye is back to normal pressure. He was pleased that the drops worked quickly. I do have another appointment scheduled for some time in the beginning of July. 

Iris

When the guys who do my mowing took care of my front yard, they had put some iris at the one end. I remember having some in there and looked forward to it blooming.

I am certain that the ones I had were purple, but this year I have white ones.

A long time ago I had some white iris in my back yard but I haven't seen any other than the purple ones in a very long time. This was a nice surprise.

Pretty Peonies

 I love the peonies that are in my front yard. They never last very long though. I rarely get to enjoy them for more than a day before the rain comes and they are done for.

I came home from work one day and figured I better get some pictures while they were still looking good.

So far this year they have stuck around longer because they haven't been hit by a heavy rain.

A special day

 Today I have to wish my daughter Amanda a very happy birthday. She came into this world on June 10, 1983. 

I hope she has a wonderful day.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

 It seems every year I take a picture of the sun dial that sits out in my back yard.

Every year it gets a little bit more rust on it. I suppose I could paint it, but I rather like the weathered look of it. 

I can't even remember how long this has been sitting here. I do know that it was my ex-husband who had bought it though. So that tells me it has been here quite a long time. I couldn't tell you if it's accurate or not. I think when he put it out there he did a rough guess as far as direction. 

Pioneer Woman Wednesday

 It seems like it's been forever since I've done a Pioneer Woman Wednesday post. I had to go back and look to see what I had posted already. 

Today I've got a set of bowls that Amanda gave me. I can't recall if these were a birthday gift or a Christmas gift. I'm sure that I'll be getting a text to fill me in on that though.

I did a bit of a collage here so you can see the sides of the bowls better and also see the words on the inside rim of each bowl.

They really are quite pretty

swinging into retirement

No, it's not me that's retiring. I'm kind of thinking that retirement is not in my future, because my job is also my social life. The retirement is for a cake I did recently at work. It's a woman that works at the prison and she frequently orders cakes for various reasons. She's always thrilled with whatever I do. On this one she asked for a golfing theme

 I'm thinking that perhaps the size of the ball and a hole maybe a little off but seriously it's cake. I wanted to make the ball look a little more like a golf ball so I used the end of a tip to add a little bit of texture to the white blob

On a different note, I went back to the eye doctor and he said all was good again. My eye responded well to the drops and the pressure is back to normal. I asked how likely it was to happen again and he said it is possible. If it becomes something that is a regular occurrence then it would probably mean a more permanent treatment.

While I wasn't looking

 I've been out in the yard on and off with my camera getting pictures. It seems like I had just taken pictures of the Japanese Iris looking like this.

And then suddenly they were looking like this.

They are simply gorgeous and it makes me happy every time I look out my kitchen window and see them.

Of course, as I'm posting this, these are already starting to lose their blooms. Soon they will just be the green leaves for the rest of the summer.