Things I've Made Recently

So I'll give you a break from all the baby drama :) One of the advantages to having Skylar home though is that we have been better about getting all the pictures off of our camera. I've been planning this post since last August, but was too lazy to transfer the pictures to our computer...Lame? Yes. But since I did wait so long, I now have more creations to add!

One of the things I started getting interested in last summer was cake decorating. My Aunt Laurie makes AWESOME cakes and I wanted to learn a few tricks. I started off with my own birthday cake that she helped me put together. It isn't the best, and cracked on the way drive back from Layton, but everybody has to start somewhere right?



It was super yummy though and was a raspberry cake with chocolate filling. I also made the same cake (by special request) for my sister Brittny's birthday in November, but I don't think I did anything special with it and can't find any pictures of it :)

The next birthday was Ryan's in January. He wanted a boring vanilla cake, but I convinced him to let me put a whipped cream filling with strawberries in the middle. This one also received rave reviews, and I was more pleased with the quality of the decorating on this one.

In honor of his love of all things BYU, we went with just a simple "Y". Not necessarily explicitly birthday, but still fun!

I branched out a little bit next and made an ice cream cake for Valentine's Day. It was layers of chocolate and vanilla ice cream with a cookie crumble filling in the middle. I didn't have a recipe for this one and just kinda made it up as I went. It turned out marvelously though, but I wouldn't ask for the recipe...I just can't remember what I did :) In my defense, I was still in the throes of the first trimester of pregnancy at the time and didn't think to write it down!

Not the most creative decoration, but like I said...I was in the middle of morning sickness!

The next cake I made was in celebration of our ultrasound. Since we didn't do anything fun to announce that we were having a baby, I wanted to do something fun for announcing our "flavor of baby." So I made a cake and decorated it and then sent pictures to my family and friends to make the announcement.
This one was a layer of vanilla cake and a layer of strawberry cake with a chocolate filling and chocolate frosting. For some reason my entire second trimester was all about chocolate and strawberry. Not separate, but together. Basically Neapolitan ice cream and I were best friends :)

This one is out of order, and not really in keeping with the genre, but I've also made lots of cheesecake for weddings, showers, birthdays, etc. It is basically the most perfect recipe so I haven't thrown any variety into it at all. It is a chocolate raspberry layered cheesecake and is my absolute favorite thing ever. I did try it with semi-sweet chocolate like the recipe calls for, but I quickly decided that I was correct in using milk chocolate instead. It even looks pretty when it is done!
This one I made to celebrate the birth of my nephew Sam! Half of our family was in Utah celebrating, so I made this for those of us stuck in California to celebrate with :)

My other recent creation has been a slew of baby blankets. I came up with this pattern when I had mono while Ryan and I were engaged. I was down and out for the count for a long time so while I was just lying in bed I decided to make a blanket. I wanted it to be big enough to cover a twin bed, or for two adults to snuggle under while watching a movie. It was huge and took me hours to complete, but was super pretty.


It probably took me about 50 hours to finish though so I decided to scale it down and make baby blankets instead. The first one I made was for my friend Heather and her baby Ethan. I don't have a picture of it, but it was white squares with blue piping.

The next one I made was for my friend Becky and her baby Khloe. I stuck with the white squares, but did purple piping instead.
The next two blankets I made while on bedrest/recovering from a C-section. The first one I made was for my friend Jeanine and her baby boy (tentatively named Micah). Her nursery is a dinosaur theme with blue, green, and orange.



This was also when I decided to start documenting my blankets before giving them away :)

The next blanket is special because it is made from yarn that I got from my great-grandma Bonnie. She passed away a year and a half ago and left all her yarn with my grandma. She in turn gave it to me. I made this blanket (and will probably make many more based on the trash bag of yarn I came home with).



Finally (kinda, I left a few blankets out because I didn't have pictures), I made a blanket for my own baby! My theme for his nursery is pretty boring, just brown and blue. I'm not really a fan of all the baby animal prints that they have out there, and so I'm just sticking with prints that are simple like polka dots or stripes. If we had a girl it would have been chocolate brown and lavender. This one is my favorite blanket, not only because of how it looks...but mostly because I get to wrap my little man in it everyday!

The one on the right is the back of the blanket, and used to be attached to the first one. I'm going to re-attach them when it starts to get cold again, and use it to cover his stroller or carseat when we go outside. It took FOREVER to make and stitch, so if you ever receive one of these from me, you will now that I love you dearly. I still probably love you even if I don't make you one of these blankets, but if you get one of them just consider it a super big compliment.

That's about it! Hopefully I'll be able to add to the collection as the years go on :)