Update on life/move

I know that it has been a while since I have posted anything, but things have been so hectic here lately!
  Besides having to worry about moving, I was very sad and busy the week of September 22. My Uncle Osiel went to be with the lord on Monday, September 19. He was a great man with an awesome attitude and will be greatly missed. This was a very hectic week for me. I was trying to do the best I could to be with my family throughout the events planned with the funeral and keep up with school work, study for a midterm the following week, and write up a looong lab report. By the end of the work week, moving and studying was the last thing I wanted to do.

We were set to move into our new house on October 15 because the apartment complex required that we give a 30 day notice before we moved. BUT... That ended up changing at the last minute, on Thursday, September 22 we were told that we could move out on Friday, September 30. I am not really sure why they decided to change our move date, I think it may have had to do with them really wanting to get started on construction for our building. So there we were, with about a week's notice needing to move into our new house asap! We totally weren't ready. We had nothing packed and weren't even sure if the landlord would be OK with us moving a bit sooner that we had originally planned. So that was extremely hectic, trying to get the date of all our services electricity, water, internet changed. Luckily Matt and a few of his wonder Kwik Kar co-workers/friends helped us move most of our stuff after work on Friday night while I had to work. I am very thankful for Matt and his friends! They really helped me out a lot.

Needless to say, we had a very busy weekend trying to get the house ready to move into and packing up all of things. My stress levels were extremely high and I always felt tired no matter how much I slept. Stress makes me very tired, physically and mentally. This was a very hard week for me to get through, but God blessed me with a wonderful husband who really loves me and helped me through this hectic week:)

Mooovinggg!

Our apartment complex was recently bought out by new owners. These new owners have decided to change everything! They are replacing the siding, trim, and roofs on all apartment buildings and they are also remodeling. This sounds like a good thing (which it is), but it does have its drawbacks. They are remodeling each apartment which means that each family is going to have to a.) move into another apartment in the apartment complex, or b.) move out of this apartment complex completely.

This wouldn't be so bad, but they want you to move into your old apartment when it is completely remodeled. The initially stated that this would be 6-8 weeks, but that has turned into 3 months. The worse thing is that the temporary apartment they have available for you is not even remodeled. So you would have to move twice in three months. I don't know about you, but I think that this is completely unfair and very unreasonable. They are not compensating tenants for their time spent moving, transfer of utilities, or helping tenants move. I know that there are many older tenants in our apartment complex and people who have lived here for many years. 

The worse thing is that after they complete all of the remodeling, the rent for a one bedroom apartment (which is what we have) is going to increase by $200! That is really ridiculous! These apartments don't have good floor plans and they aren't in the best neighborhood. They are one of the cheapest apartment complexes in town. I know that many tenants are not going to be happy with this change. 

We received a notice on our door this week that we have to move out of our apartment by September 30. That is in two weeks! I can't believe that they expect us and the rest of our apartment building (16 apartments) to be out in that time. Our lease it up at the end of the month, but that really doesn't give us very much time to look for another place to live, or to give them a 30 day notice that we are moving. Matt and I really don't have a lot of free time to move at will and to find another place to live. Matt works two jobs, one part time and one full time. And I go to school full time and work part time. On top of that, my school work load is pretty full these next few weeks. 

This whole moving thing is extremely stressful and completely took us by surprise. I figured that they would have notified us much further in advance. I was really stressing about it this week. Luckily we found a place to live yesterday afternoon. My aunt is going to let us rent out her house temporarily  for the next 6 months to a year. Hopefully by then I will be graduated from college and have found a good job. God is awesome and I have great faith in him. I know that he always provides for u!. He provided the house we are going to move into soon and provide a good job for me when the time is right:) 

Matt and I are really excited about finally moving into a house (him more so than I). We will finally be out of a tiny one bedroom apartment, have a yard, a garage, and a computer room. We are so cramped in our current apartment and have no where to put anything anymore. Thank you Lord for this opportunity!

Cake Decorating Course 2 Class 2

The second cake decorating course by Wilton is all about designing cakes and learning how to make flowers. For almost all flowers that we will make for this course we will use royal icing. Royal icing is totally different than any normal icing including buttercream. It is very stiff and hard to push out of a pastry bag. The stiff consistency of royal icing allows for the icing to harden quickly leaving beautiful flowers that are edible (like candy) and easily moved.

For this class we had to make two batches of royal icing. We learned to make the Wilton Rose, cherry blossoms, and a primrose. This class was difficult! These flowers take a lot of time and effort to master. It really doesn't help that royal icing is so stiff either. My hand was cramping and I felt like I could no longer squeeze the pastry bag! My flowers didn't come out so great either. This is definitely something I need to practice.

The Wilton Rose:

The Primrose:

Pumpkin Spice Latte is BACK!!! :)

Fall is my favorite season and I can honestly say that I love absolutely everything that comes along with it. Including Pumpkin Spice Lattes!!! :) Today I had my very first Pumpkin Spice Latte with soymilk from Panera and it was glorious! Even though we are still having 100 degree weather and my stomach doesn't do too well with caffeine (so this was definitely an exception). Other than that I stay away from caffeine. This latte was so good! I definitely will be drinking more of these before they go away again:)

First Cake Decorating Request UPDATE!!

Last week I posted a blog about my first cake request. My sister-in-law Grace and her son William both had a birthday earlier in the week. We celebrated their both birthdays on Saturday and I was asked to make a cake for them. 

William and Grace have totally opposite personalities so I decided to bake them two separate cakes:) Grace is such a hard worker, very girly, and is super sweet. William loves camouflage and is a major history buff. I would consider him an expert on WWI and WWII. He is very smart for his age. I decided to decorate Grace's cake with pink icing and white flowers. William had requested a Halo (the Xbox game) cake. I really didn't know how to make a Halo themed cake. I looked up a few cakes on google to get some ideas, but they were really extravagant and something I didn't have the time to do. So I settled with decorating his cake with a camouflage theme.

Grace's cake was made with a special recipe I found online for a carrot- mandarin orange cake. It was very delicious. I also make cream-cheese icing to go along with the cake which I later dyed pink:) The flowers, dots, and border was made with white buttercream icing. Here are a few pics of her cake:

William asked for a chocolate cake, nothing special. I made buttercream icing and dyed each separate color of icing. Then I drew out and put on each patch of camouflage on the cake separately. Here are a few pics of his cake:

I have such a hard time baking cakes in our oven. The oven is not level and doesn't heat correctly. I always end up with lopsided cakes that are unevenly cooked. Then I have to cut off  a lot of the cake to even it out. I don't think even bake even strips would help out much here:(

1st Class of Cake Decorating Course 2

I loved cake decorating so much that I decided to take the second cake decorating course titled "Cake and Flower Design" with my good friend Veronica! Our first class was last Thursday (I am a little behind on my blogging) and was a lot of fun. We are taking this course with another at another location because our previous instructor was not going to teach classes at nights anymore. Our new instructor is very good, but she goes extremely fast. I was really struggling to keep up with her:( I think that the other students felt the same way because it seemed like the whole class was rushing and trying to get everything done. And I thought that the last instructor went fast! The new instructor is 2-3 times faster. Class also seems to go by so quickly since we are always busy doing something and trying to keep up.

For our first class we learned how to make royal icing. Royal icing hardens, but it still edible. It is used to make flowers and other designs. We have to bring two royal icing recipes to the next class on Wednesday. For this class we learned how to make gum glue and how to make gum paste flowers using some sort of cutter. It was a lot of fun!

Here are a few pics of my flower creations:)

First Cake Request

I just got my first cake request yesterday and I am super excited! This is finally a chance to put my newly learned cake decorating skills to use. I am making a cake for my sister-in-law and her son's birthday party this Saturday. I have some sort of idea of what I am going to make and how I am going to decorate it. I am thinking of making two cakes to give a little variety. One definitely has to be chocolate, but the other, I am not too sure. If anyone has any suggestions, please post. My nephew wants a cake with a Halo theme which is going to be super hard to make. I have done a google search and the Halo themed cakes look like a lot of work. I will probably decorate my sister-in-law's cake with flowers or something girly. Flowers are one thing I can easily make.

I am also thinking about making business cards with my information just in case anyone at the party is impressed by my cake and would like me to make them one:)

If anyone has any suggestions please post them here. Thanks! I will post pictures of the completed cakes here soon.