Chocolate Showpiece!!

This past week we made our chocolate showpieces. It was actually a lot of fun. I, however, hate tempering chocolate. I am not a patient person and I don't love doing it. It was interesting to see it all come together. My partner, Melissa, was out the first day so that meant I had to make the base and main parts all by myself, which was good practice but again I hate tempering chocolate. Plus I'm not that good at it and it takes me forever. The second day though when we were unmolding the "M" it broke so we had to do it again and this time I made her do it. In the meantime I started make the flowers. It was such a cool process and I had lots of fun doing it.

And incase you were wondering, NO we are not giving some sort of shout out to Michael Jackson, The "J" and "M" are for Julie and Melissa.

Baby Black Bear!!

So this was a couple weeks ago, I'm just not as quick with the postings as I used to be.. So my friend Sylvia and I were out test driving a car that Stacie and Kenny were thinking about buying and as we were driving down my driveway(which is about 3/4 mile long) we got about 200 yds from the house and what do we see run across the road right in front of us?? Yep that's right a little baby bear. He was so cute. He hopped through the fence into the llama pen and started up a tree. I was so excited I ran and got Stacie and Kenny and told them all about it and by the time they got there he had crawled all the way to the top of the tree and was just hanging out. Now I'm sure you are all thinking the same thing that everyone else thought when I told them but the mommy bear didn't even cross my mind and we didn't see her at all. And then about 4 hours later as I was leaving for the night the bear was gone. I was so excited I have never seen a bear in real life before it was so much fun.

Red, White and Blue Pictures..

While I was home the girls and the kids took some cute pictures together in our red, white and blue..

Mommy and Me!!

The best grandparents ever..
Since we were at their house Mike and Kelli got to take a cute family picture together. Mike just happened to be wearing the right color..

None of those children really were interested in taking a picture with me..


Sisters and the best of friends..

All the Girls

All of us..

Niece and Nephews

I'm so glad that I got to go out to Utah and see these cutes kids... I love them all so much.. They are all so completely different from each other and are so much fun to be around..

Lamce is so helpful. He went to the nursery with "Grandmo" and "Pockin" (Grandma and Grandpa, ya who knows where he came up with that) and picked out a bunch of flowers and then came home and helped them plant them.

Lance with his "Moomies" (Movies) I got quite good at translating the Lance speak while I was home. It takes some getting used to but I think I did quite well..

Lance has gotten so big. I can't believe how tall he is.. Well I guess it's not that hard to believe since he is part of the family of Giants but he is just so dang big.. I think he is the tallest two year old I have ever seen.

Luke pretty much despises the grass. He sits there and tries to lift his feet up so he isn't touching it but he can only lift one at a time otherwise he would fall over, so he continues to lift one at a time up and then starts to cry until you pick him up.

She hated that cereal, She took one bite and turned and spit it all over me..

Luke and Kate watching TV while everyone gets ready.

Luke, the Moose, and Aunt Julie.. He is such a funny kid, he cracks me up and look how dang cute he is, how can you not love that face..

Cupcakes..

I've decided that I really love to make cupcakes so that is what I have been doing lately..

These I guess aren't cupcakes but similar. They are heathbar cheesecake cups..

I love these cuz they are so dang cute.. Pink Lemonade cupcakes.. cute right??

And finally Lemon Meringue Cupcakes.. And oh they were all very yummy.. I think that my family enjoyed my trip home..

Advanced 1 Final!!

I am finally finished with my third quarter.. I'm quite excited that this class is done. I have loved every class but really this one just wasn't very stimulating. For our final project we had to make 10 items.. One of them being the bread showpiece we made last week. We had a lot of fun and made lots of yummy stuff. For my group..

We made eclairs with honey pastry cream..

For our plated dessert we made pineapple sorbet, fried pineapple rings with a mango sauce..
Our cake is a vanilla chiffon, chocolate mousse and a raspberry italian buttercream

Challah bread

My group.. Melissa, Brittany and Me

Focaccia with parmesan, thyme, basil and oregano

Ham and Cheese Croissants

Mango bread

Lemon Meringue Pie

Orange Hazelnut Biscotti

Bread Showpiece

For part of our final we had to make bread showpieces and this is my groups showpiece. Since it is almost the 4th of July that was our theme. It actually turned out better than we expected.. I thought it was going to be a complete disaster when we started assembling the pieces because some of the parts baked funny and they didn't quite go together very good. As you can see it is kind of leaning well that was unavoidable because our base is a little lopsided but all and all it turned out ok.. It was lots of fun and I thought we were quite creative and everything on there is made of bread.