So this last week was HUGE for me in terms of cake baking!  I was asked about a month in advance to make a carrot cake for our Ward’s book club meeting in July.  Sweet!  I’ve never made a carrot cake before, so I was so excited to do that.  I found an awesome recipe and of course I had to try it out on the family before making it and serving it to anyone else.  It was beyond delicious!  So I was prepared for that.  Then my friend Heidi told me her sister was in town and it was her birthday…so could I please make her a cake.  Of course!!  That one was due two days after the carrot cake.  Still, plenty of notice to get together what I needed.  Not a big deal to make two cakes back to back like that!  Then…..I get a call on a Wednesday afternoon……Tyler is having a Battalion bbq  Thursday morning and the cakes never got ordered!  Who ya gonna call?  Melissa the cake baker of course!  I asked her what she needed, enough cake to feed about, oh….400 people!  YIKES!!!!   I got a plan in order and went straight to Wal Mart to buy boxed cake mixes and can frosting (I know, I know, but no time for scratch stuff!!)  I made 4 sheet cakes and a huge layer cake.  I only really nicely decorated the layer cake.  Hey, I’m only human!  But they all turned out really great and everyone liked them!  Phew…time to take a cake break, I really need to bake a batch of cookies……

I have had a lot of people asking me for this recipe!  I’ll have to give you all the link to the website.  It’s full of great information on it and step by step on how to make, and decorate with fondant :)

http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/Fondant.htm

I printed it all out (8 pages) so it would be easier for me while I’m in the kitchen.  Of course the most important page ended up with melted marshmallow all over it……Good luck if you try it, I would love to see what you make!

I decided one day that I wanted to learn how to decorate a cake using fondant.  However, everywhere I turned, I hear how nasty and gross it tastes.  Yes, it makes your cake look beautiful, but who wants to eat that nasty stuff?  Oh what to do!  I want every part of my cake to taste good, so I went on a search for a possible recipe that was not too hard to make, and it had to be delicious!  Thankfully I found one, yahoo!!  I wish I would have gotten pictures of me making the actual fondant, yikes!  It was a giant ball of powdered sugar, melted marshmallows and, just a sticky mess!  I really didn’t think it was working, then all of a sudden….it just kind of came together :)  After covering the cake, I though, sure….I’ll see if I can color it and make it all fancy-like.  I let the kids pick the colors.  After it was all said and done, this is the result!

I tried covering my mistakes, like a good decorator does.  Hence all of the balls and dots…..I still didn’t get them all covered, but I think it turned out pretty good for my first time!   ALL homemade by the way :)

Boy, I’m getting tired writing about Disney World!  Ok, so here’s the rest!  We went to Disney Quest, it’s an indoor (that means air conditioned!) interactive game place.  Arcade/video games up the wazoo, and they were all FREE!!!  They also had several 3D interactive rides, so it was a good time for all!  Once we were done with that, we headed over to Planet Hollywood for dinner.  Holy cow, that place was so awesome!  So the building is round, it looks like a giant planet, then you go inside where they have about 4 different floors.  Each floor has a different theme.  Like classic movies, cartoons and what not.  If you’ve never been to a Planet Hollywood, they have props and costumes from famous movies all on display.  The food was actually very good too!  Once we were all stuffed, we just didn’t feel like going back to the hotel yet, so we caught the movie “Up”  in 3D.  Very cute movie, we really enjoyed it!  What we did not enjoy was the expensive ticket prices and the lack of military discount :)

Last but not least was our visit to Epcot center.  We went there on Saturday, the day we were actually supposed to be on our way home.  We just packed up all our stuff, went to Epcot for the day, then started our trek home!  Epcot was Tyler’s favorite place when he was a kid!  It was really cool visiting all of the different “countries” throughout the park.  Unfortunately my camera decided to poop out and I forgot to bring along Tyler’s, so not too many pics of Epcot.  I know, dry your tears!  I still have some!  We were able to meet Stitch and Daisy there!  Stitch is Evan’s favorite character too :)

Well, that does it!  It was a great trip and we’re so grateful we had the chance to do it!  Thanks for reading!

Well I’m back, to give you more fun details about our vacation, bwahahaha!  Magic Kingdom was our next stop, and that was my favorite!  Classic Disney!  Cinderella’s castle, Barber Shop singers in the street, the electrical parade, you just can’t get any better than that.  We didn’t have a chance to go on any of the big rides, like Splash Mountain.  I was pretty disappointed, but, with lines the way they were….we decided we wanted to have FUN instead of standing around!  There was only one person(s) that any of us were willing to wait in a long line to meet, the Disney Princesses!!  Ok, well, only me and Emma wanted to do that.  And *poor* Evan was forced to stand in line with us while Tyler and the boys did more manly things,  like going to the Haunted Castle!  Evan refused to meet Sleeping Beauty, but he HAD TO meet and hug Cinderella and Belle!  We stayed until they shut the park down, we were just having too much fun.  We were there for the parade and the huge fireworks show too :)

The next day we visited Animal Kingdom.  That place was pretty fun, lots of animals!  We were able to go on a really cool safari, with real animals!  It was awesome! There was also a hilarious show, called It’s Tough to be a Bug.  It was in 3D.  The theater was dark, and it was all interactive.  Like when they sprayed bug spray in the movie, the theater was full of smoke and we were all sprayed with water.  All sorts of things like that!

That’s all for now!  Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel!  Only a few more days to cover!