Business idea

I'm not sure this will ever happen 'cause I'm not very brave when it comes to things like this, but it is fun to dream about.

A little background information...on Valentine's Dave took me to a dessert cafe in Orem that he had heard about from friends and co-workers. When we pulled up to this house on the main drag in Orem, I have to admit I was a little apprehensive, but as soon as we walked in the door and looked around for a bit I was in love! The Chocolate is this stinking cute and fantastically wonderful place to get desserts such as cakes, cookies, cupcakes, cheesecake, bars, brownies, pastries, etc. The fun thing about it is that they've taken an old house and spruced it up so that each room has a couple of tables in it and maybe even a couch or chair so that you can sit down and enjoy your dessert. On Valentine's it was "Dessert by Candlelight."

As we sat there that night eating our delicious "Cazookie" (a big cookie freshly baked with vanilla bean ice cream on top) I thought it would be so much fun to open up a place like that myself someday. Anyone that knows me really well knows that even at 31 years of age I still struggle with what I want to be when I grow up. The idea of opening my own dessert cafe got me really excited and the wheels started turning in my head.

We decided to splurge and get me a KitchenAid stand mixer so I could start experimenting with different dessert recipes. So far I've used it to make two cakes from scratch (which I've never done before in my life) and pizza dough. I absolutely love the thing! My cakes haven't turned out exactly how I would like them too, but that is the point. My dessert cafe is years away from opening, if it ever even does! I need to start sharing my desserts though because the pounds are slowly going back up. UGH!!!

The catch in this little dream of mine is that I know I could not open something like this in this area because obviously it already exists. I'm thinking it would have to be something I tried to do if/when we ever move back home (Kansas). I envision this cute little cafe in some small downtown area in some small town in Kansas. How fun!

My first chocolate cake.

It looks horrible because I didn't have enough of the right size of round cake pans so I just used those disposable pans you can buy at most stores and they don't have straight sides. Also the icing didn't set up quite right and it was super runny. I think the taste of it was all right. The icing was made with semi-sweet morsels so it was a bit overwhelming. I need to try another chocolate icing recipe for sure!

My first white cake with butter cream icing.

This cake tasted delicious, but the icing was too thick! You can tell in the picture that I kind of just pasted the icing on there because it was so thick. I'll have to try it again and make sure I add more of the liquids (possibly more of the whipping cream???).

I'll just have to keep trying until I find the perfect recipe for all of the desserts that I would want on my menu. I've thought about taking a cake decorating class, but I've decided that I don't want it to be about how pretty the cake is, but how good the cake tastes! Simple!

It's been a while

We haven't had a lot of stuff going on lately, just normal life, so I haven't really felt the desire to blog. But Miles continues to learn and grow daily and I figure some of you might be interested in hearing what he is up to these days.

Miles' vocabulary is expanding tremendously. He still sort of focuses on one new word and says it over and over and over and doesn't really say the other words he has learned as much, but he still knows those words and will use them occasionally. One of his new words is "mess." If his sippy cup leaks a little onto something he'll say "mess" and wipe his hand over it to clean it up! He'll also say "mess" if he dumps his toys out all over the floor, etc. It is entirely too cute.

One day while we were eating lunch he held his sippy cup up to me and said something that sounded like "cheers" so I took my glass and clinked it on his and said, "Cheers!" Now every time we are drinking something he has to clink our glasses together and say "cheers." I'm not exactly sure what he was trying to tell me the very first time he did that, but to me it sounded like cheers and we've run with it. It is pretty comical!

He is becoming such a great helper. He loves to clean up his highchair tray after he eats and wipe his face and hands. Yesterday it was such a beautiful day outside so we went out and raked some leaves and he did a fantastic job at helping me put the leaves in a trash bag. He LOVES to be outside and begs for us to put his shoes (which is another word he likes to use these days) on so he can go out. I'm glad we've had a couple of nice days lately and am looking forward to it getting warmer and warmer.

Miles is starting to get a little picky when it comes to food. It is so bizarre to me too because what he devours one day he won't even touch the next day...so it has been hard to buy groceries for him. I've been able to get away with him eating something different than what I'm eating for breakfast and lunch up until lately. He has decided he wants exactly what I'm eating. I'm not very good at eating vegetables or a wide variety of food so that is becoming an issue.

With the weather being a bit nicer, we've been able to get out and explore. Miles has discovered the moon (during daytime hours) and loves to point it out and say "moo!" He'll point it out about a hundred times in the matter of 15 minutes or so. He also loves to point to the sky when he hears a plane flying over. Sometimes he gets lucky and can actually see the plane and that makes him super happy.

He is learning body parts and knows where a nose is although he refers to it as a "no." He also knows where eyes are. We are working on where our ears are because he currently refers to them as "eye" as well.

He likes to bark at dogs and loves to pick up things off the ground and hand them to whoever will take them from him.

It is so much fun to watch him learn and grow! We aren't quite as excited about the "fits" he throws when he doesn't get his way these days, but I guess that is to be expected in his toddler-hood.

Miles' new friend

Miles got this bear for Valentine's Day. He loves to sit on its lap and drink his milk!

Happy Valentine's Day

So ready for spring!

It seems like at least one of us has had some sort of illness that we've been dealing with for the past month or so. This week we all got the pleasure of feeling icky! I think we caught some sort of stomach flu while visiting family last weekend. Needless to say it was a rough week and I'm ready for warm weather to get here now!

Miles discovered the purpose of his chair this week (he hasn't really been interested in it before) and spent a lot of time relaxing in it because his tummy was hurting. We went through a lot of pants this week as well so I just gave up and let him run around in his diaper instead. Poor kiddo! I'm happy to report though that we are all feeling better, at least for the moment.

New things

We got new carpet last Friday and I absolutely LOVE it! It makes our house look a lot different, which is a good thing. To save ourselves a few bucks we decided to do the furniture moving and removal of the old carpet ourselves (I say we, but it was really Dave doing most of the work). After the carpet was installed, but before we put everything back in its place, I got this crazy idea to paint our bedroom. I've been wanting to do it for a while, but just haven't had the motivation. An empty bedroom was all the motivation I needed. It always amazes me how a coat of paint can change the entire look/feel of a room. I think it turned out pretty nice. Below are before and after pictures.

This was taken last May
The bottom step really shows the wear

Isn't it pretty?

Before

After

Since I'm horrible at keeping a journal, but do an okay job of keeping our blog updated, I've wanted to try out Blog2Print so that we would have a hard copy of all of my blog posts. I started this blog in 2007 so I'm only four years behind! I knew it would be too large of a book if I tried to have it all printed out (it might not have even been an option) so instead I decided to break it down into years and start with the most recent year we completed, 2010. It isn't exactly perfect because the editing options on Blog2Print are very limited and of course videos aren't included, but it is nice to have it. Now I just need to work on 2009 which was a busy year for us because of Miles' arrival.