Happy Thanksgiving

Cooper and Pekoe sharing a meal

Update: a certain orange cat pictured above went to the vet for his yearly checkup. Apparently all his trips to the dog food bowl has caused our little Garfield to put on some pounds and now has to go on a diet.

Cooper in Cake

Last week we learned some new techniques in cake decorating. On Wednesday we used the projector to create an image on cake. The cards we used were stock images from a file box our instructor provided us...they were all a little cheesy...I think they might be thirty years old, but I decided to have a little fun with it. This is the image I chose:

After placing the image in the projector I used a black piping gel to outline wherever you see a black line. After the image was outlined, I used the airbrush to fill in the image with the appropriate colors. It kinda looked like a big mess because the rainbow colors were running into eachother and I, of course, could not deal with an ugly cake. I decided to pipe in the icing on the rainbow and flowers so the final product was a blend of airbrush and buttercream piping. The clouds I actually always planned to pipe with white icing to give it some texture.

"Have a Great Day!!" Cake

Our instructor encouraged write a message on the cake to practice our writing. It reads, "Have a Great Day!!" I thought it went with the image. An check out this shell border:

Two-tone color shell border

On Thursday our task was to create a shaggy dog cake. Now anyone who knows me knows that as soon as our instructor charged us with a dog cake my cake had to look like my own adorable dog. Since Cooper is not a shaggy mutt, I had to do some improvising. Using the techniques I learned from the hamburger cake I was able to create a smooth, round dog. I then used an airbrush for the coloring. I think it turned out so cute! You can hardly tell the difference between the cake and the actual dog...ok, maybe that's going a little to far.

Cooper the cake

Cooper the dog

Look at that handsome pup!

Goodbye North Carolina, Hello Texas!

Part of my decision to start this blog was to document my big move and new career in Texas. Exactly one week ago I packed up all my worldly belonging into a 6 x 12 U-Haul trailer and drove from Charlotte, North Carolina to Dallas, Texas.

The Lexus & the U-Haul...thanks, Dad!

The drive took approximately 17 hours over two days. It is not something I reccommend as it was not very fun. Luckily, my I had a couple books on tape and a cuddly sidekick riding shotgun to keep me from going crazy.

Cooper riding shotgun

I have done the NC-TX trip several times over at this point so I decided instead of going the normal route through the southeastern states of Georgia, Bama and Mississippi, I would change things up a bit this time. My route took me through the beautiful state of Tennessee, a state I have never visited.

Top: "Mountains" Bottom: Entering the state of Tennessee

I stopped in Nashville the first night so I could go to Neely's BBQ [since I am a self proclaimed Food Network junkie], but unfortunately my tight schedule prevented me from exploring Nashville any further.

Tuesday morning I was back on the road, but by the time I hit Arkansas it was pouring rain which it did until I hit Rockwall. Since then it's pretty much been a whirlwind of activity. I moved into my new digs. Cooper is getting used to living with a different kind of four legged creature, cats!

Cooper meets Oolie

He's not quite sure what to think of Pekoe and Oolie, but I think over time they will all be the best of friends...maybe.

So for now I focus on unpacking, organizing, starting school (more info on that to follow) and getting used to living in Dallas again. In some ways it is so different, but totally the same as it was 10 years ago.