Christmas 2010

Some favorite pictures from Christmas morning:

Tiffani was excited about her new desk chair - no more old kitchen table chair! Les bought it at IKEA on his first trip to Utah for work this fall. It'd been in the garage for about month or so!

Brianna was was excited about the beads she found in her stocking. And even more so about the box of multi-colored seed beads from Tiffani

One of the gifts Brianna looks forward to each year is the addition of a nutcracker to her collection. Depending on what we find sometimes she gets to add multiples - like this year. I found the penguin one first, but on another shopping trip out we found the skier & that was, of course, a must have!

Tiffani has a nutcracker, too, though doesn't really collect them like Brianna does. She's been on the lookout for a baker - a female baker nutcracker - but we have yet to find one. But this particular one was perfect for her. A countdown nutcracker with a cupcake for a hat. And as Tiffani pointed out, he's holding a peppermint lollipop and her other nutcracker is totally peppermint themed, so they go together quite well. (Note to self - the yet-to-be-found female baker nutcracker must have a peppermint something on it!)

The one time of year the dogs are allowed in the living room... Tiffani was trying to get Tessa interested in the stocking. Tess knew there was something good in there, but the plastic bag the treats were in are a big discouragement to her... Once the treats were out, it was a different story all together though! :)

Poor Simba wasn't sure what to think of all the commotion in the living room. He mostly hid under the piano bench. When we got the treats out though he took his and retreated to the kitchen.


After making 18 hard boiled eggs into deviled eggs and making a potato casserole, we loaded up the trailblazer and headed to New Plymouth. We also brought out fudge, cookies, and of course the Christmas Tree cupcakes - made out of spice cake with cream cheese frosting - YUM!! (see previous post for picture)

One of the girls favorite gifts every year is from Tracy. She makes them t-shirts and Brianna was actually looking forward to that and hoping that she made a t-shirt this year. Score!! The t-shirts are a hit and the girls both love them. :) Thanks Tracy.

Tabbi's Wedding

Wisdom teeth pulled on Monday, Maid of Honor on Thursday - no problem!!! Really, Brianna did great & the majority of her swelling was gone & no visible bruise at that point. Whew!

Tabbi and Brianna before the wedding.

Being brave - didn't shed a tear. :)

All done. Whew.

The wedding party - Girls (Tabbi, Brianna, Sam, Cassie) Guys (Aaron, Kyle, James, Jake).

Tiffani seeming rather bored at waiting for those involved to sign the certificate.

But all it takes is Les to make faces at her and she'll smile her big Tiffani smile! :)

The very happy bride & groom.

More of Tiffani's Cupcakes

We've been on a cupcake baking spree this month. Tiffani made snowman cupcakes for her yearbook class party. We made skeins of yarn for complete with knitting needles for my friend Julie on her birthday and we all helped out in making a Christmas Tree to bring to Grandma J & Grandpa Ron's for Christmas Dinner. Now, for some reason there aren't many pictures of the process of making the creations this time, but at least I remembered to take a picture of the completed yummies!

Here are the snowmen - I did get a picture of the hats, made from chocolate wafer cookies and then the little end was stuck into the side of the cupcake.

Tiffani is imitating the snowmans little "O" mouth.

The bunch of snowmen.

The Skeins of yarn and the little balls of yarn. The needles are pringle sticks dipped in white chocolate and topped with a smartie. The yarn cupcakes - 100% edible! :)

And finally - The Christmas Tree. It has been the easiest to make - not a lot of parts & pieces, but it was definitely the most difficult to transport! Yikes. We bought the cupcake display thingy just for this tree, but it will sure be nice for other cupcakes, too. Also gotta love the 40% of coupons to JoAnn's! :) The 'pine needles' are green melting candies from JoAnn's also, just melted and then piped out into zig zag lines on wax paper. Let that harden & then break into pieces and place around the edge of the cupcakes. White sprinkles for snow and cinnamon candies for lights. We were going to use mini m&m's so we'd have colored lights but we couldn't find ANY!! The group effort - Brianna frosted, I sprinkled snow, Tiffani did the pine needles and Les did the lights. :)

Tabbi's shower

The Friday before Thanksgiving Brianna came home from college. Saturday morning we did the 1st annual Turkey Trot put on by the KHS SADD program. (It was snowing and cold, but we walked it anyway!) Then we had a few hours to put together the shower for Tabbi.
Tiffani is making the cupcakes (Friday night) and Brianna is making the hearts out of Almond Bark.

Brianna working on the hearts. You may notice the top corner of the wax paper says "back" perfectly legibly... Well we'd drawn the hearts on the wax paper, melted the bark and had intended on turning the wax paper over to "trace" the hearts we'd drawn. The "back" was written on there to remind us of that. Didn't happen! (My fault - I was so excited to try one...) Brianna made all those hearts and when we peeled those wonderful white hearts off the wax paper there was brown sharpie marker coming off with it! :( So we went back and redid all those hearts again - on the right side of the paper!!

The finished product. Tiffani really doesn't like to use a lot of frosting and with most of her cupcakes it is just used as "glue" to hold the candies and what-not onto the cake. These were just the fancy, piled high with frosting cupcakes with sprinkles or hearts on them. So in that sense these were the hardest for Tiffani to make!!

Tabbi and Brianna sitting in the Bride's chair while the guests played a game about how well they knew Tabbi.

I forgot to take a picture of the table before people came out to start filling their plates... So I snuck in and got these few... Tabbi's colors are Caribbean blue, olive green, chocolate brown. Those colors must not be in season (really!?) because the only decorations we could find were in the blue. We lucked out there because the blue plates, forks, etc were actually called Caribbean blue. :) Anyway, we add a little splash of the olive & brown with punched out flowers and sprinkled them on the table. Then we bought blue sprinkles and decorated the edges of the serving plates, too. Zurchers sells individual colors of sixlets (Tabbi's favorite) so we bought a bag of white and blue and served that instead of mints and dipped pretzels just because we had all that almond bark melted. And that's what disappeared the fastest.

Tiffani made the little candle decorations, too. The blue sparkly balls were on tree branches and we just snipped them all off, mixed them with a handful of coffee beans & then pushed an LED votive candle into the middle. I found the little glasses at the craft store for 1/2 price and the branches were 88 cents each for 3 of them. We "borrowed" the coffee beans from Les.

Tabbi and Brianna relaxing after the shower.

Tiff and friends

Homecoming 2010
Tiffani went with her best friend


...and her friend/exchange student from Germany


Tiff's Junior project was to job shadow someone and their area of interest. Tiffani asked, and was able to, job shadow at a specialty cake decorating business in Boise. She was beyond excited about it. You can check out the business (amaruconfections.com). Here is Tiffani with Aimee, the owner. Absolutely beautiful cakes, & yummy, too.



After leaving Amaru, we went to see Jenny & her new baby and 2 of our favorite kids to babysit in the past. Seems like so long ago now, especially since B. is almost as tall as Tiffani!! What fun to see them again. :)

Grandpa Ron's birthday

Grandpa Ron is famous for his popcorn. Movies are even better when you're eating Grandpa Ron's popcorn while watching them. So several months ago I found this popcorn/movie themed stuff (bucket, napkins, butter server, coasters - and a bowl I didn't get but wished I would have!) and knew that Tiffani would make some sort of gift basket out of it for his birthday. Of course my cupcake girl had the perfect cupcake in mind all along! :)

We started with this... simple marshmallows


And cut and "glued" them together... (Tiffani's new personal quote... "Frosting is my glue")


And then "glued" all those pieces of popcorn to mini cupcakes to make ALOT of popcorn (about 260 individual pieces of popcorn)!!


Here's a close up of a few popcorn pieces on the cupcake...


And here is the finished gift. This is where the popcorn bowl that I didn't purchase would have come in handy, but spreading them around the tray worked too.


And yes that is real melted butter in there. :)


Grandpa Ron & Tiffani after he saw the cake.


Grandpa Ron & Tiffani


Of course the horses were visited...


And horseshoes were played... That's a ringer - by Les! ;)


And beautiful clouds/sunset on the way home.


Happy Birthday Grandpa Ron!

Bar J Wranglers / Project updates

About a month ago Les and I went to the Kuna High Auditorium and saw the Bar J Wranglers from near Jackson Hole. They put on a great show - great old western music and a bit of comedy, too. We loved the show and would probably go again. Going to the Bar J Ranch and having the dinner and show together would be fun, too. Although one guy we talked to said he'd seen them both at the Ranch and when they are touring and said they were better on the tour. Here's a few pictures from the night.

This was part of the stage set up.

Loved the little boot on the bass guitar.

This guy so reminded up of Wilford Brimley - sitting there in the commercials telling you how good Quaker Oats hot oatmeal was for you. He was very serious all the time and hardly cracked a smile.

All 5 of the guys. Just having lots of fun. :)

The project update:
First a project that didn't even have a before picture, but has been in the works for over 2 years now...! Hmmm, must've really wanted those handles & knobs, huh!?
Well, yes, we really did - and are really glad that they are finally up. Love 'em!!


Here's Tiff's bed. Completely sanded down & repainted. Yes, white again, minus the purple trim so it doesn't look that different. The big thing is no more mattress on the floor. 2 years after moving in, she finally has a real bed again. :)


The curtain in the garage. Broke 2 needles trying to sew the hem on those things!! But it is done... almost... Les wants to put snaps on them to hold each panel together so it will close up just a bit tighter when he does messy things that creates lots of sawdust. But the curtains are hemmed and hung, yay!!


And the blanket I made for baby Elijah.