Cake Decorating

As many of you know, I've been getting into cake decorating for awhile now, pretty much just for the fun of it.  I remember growing up, my mom used to always make and decorate our birthday cakes.  She was pretty darn good at it too.  Ultimately I'd like to be able to make my daughters birthday cakes (and first day of school cakes).

So my first class was over the summer.  It was a beginner class so I learned the basics of baking and icing a cake with buttercream frosting.  Yes, I was pretty clueless about how to bake a cake and get it out of the pan properly - feel free to laugh at me now.  I'll get the last laugh.

I learned a lot of basic decorating ideas as well.  I learned how to make clowns out of frosting.  I learned how to make pretty roses.  I also learned a few different styles of cake borders.  After that class, I made cakes for every function I could get away with.  Thanks to my family for being willing to eat so many cakes made from a box, decorated by yours truly.  Here are pictures of some of my work.

 I recently decided to expand my horizons.  So I signed up for Wilton's Flower and Cake Design Class.  It's held at my local Michael's by a great instructor who's been doing this for years.  The first class was spent playing with fondant and gum paste.  You can make easy cut-out flowers that dry hard.  We made button flowers as well as pansies.  Here's my handiwork.
 

The next class was my first experience with royal icing.  Now, I love royal icing.  It's made with powdered sugar, meringue powder and water.  So easy and clean up is a breeze (as opposed to buttercream frosting, which is made with shortening and a pain in the rear to clean up). And the frosting dries hard so you can make a bunch of flowers, let them dry and then save them for a future cake.  At this class we learned to make the base of a rose, apple blossoms, primroses,  and rosebuds.  I had my challenges but I think my flowers turned out pretty good.   

My third class consisted of more royal icing frosting.  We finished up learning how to make roses, and we learned violets, daffodils and lilies.  I think the lilies are one of my favorite - easy to make and so pretty to look at.  

I just had my final session of the class this past week.  This time I had to bring a frosted cake to class.  We learned how to do basketweaving on the side of the cakes.  Very pretty but really, really time consuming.  Then we got to decorate our cakes however we wanted using the flower designs we had learned so far.  I decided to go with....

Baby Movements

So about 2 weeks ago, I thought I was starting to feel the baby move.  Of course, I have nothing to compare it to so it was just a wild guess for me.  But now I'm positive I can feel it.

It's kind of a strange feeling.  Sometimes it feels like something is poking me from the inside out.  But mainly it feels like there's a tennis ball just under my skin and it's slowly being rolled from one side of me to the other.  It actually kind of tickles. 

She's pretty calm and still when I'm just sitting and working or watching TV.  If I get up and move, that's when she decides it's time to play too.  I kind of look forward to feeling her move more strongly but mainly so that Eric can feel it too. 

It's a girl!

We had our second trimester ultrasound yesterday and found out that Baby Fagan is a girl!  We're very excited about it.  I feel bad for any guy this precious little one eventually wants to date because Eric's going to put him through the ringer.

Ultrasounds area always fun.  I go through every day, wondering what's going on inside.  Is she turning flips, is she just hanging out, how is she growing, does she like the foods I eat.  But when you have an ultrasound, you actually get to see what's going on.  At the time of the ultrasound, her head was up near my belly button and she was facing my back.  At first, she was just chillin'.  But when the ultrasound tech tried to get measurements of her leg bones, she was kicking them back and forth. 

All of her measurements are normal, which is a great thing.  She also weighs 9 ounces.  How they figure out what she weighs, I have no idea but that's what we're told.  It's amazing the level of detail you can pick up on an ultrasound.  Some of our pictures are below.  Are they kind of creepy looking?  Sure, a little bit but I don't care - it's our baby girl!

Here's one of her face.  I was amazed that not only could you see her eye sockets, you could see the lens starting to form.  It's the circle within the black spot in the middle of the picture

We could also see her spine.  Each little vertebrae...

A great shot of her two little feet...

And last but not least, a 3D shot of her little face and her left arm hugging her body.  She looks so peaceful.

So continue growing well inside there, little one.  You've got 5 more months until you're ready to enter this crazy world we live in.  And mommy and daddy need that time to prepare for your arrival :)