I Heart Faces - "Dress Up"

This is my pumpkin holding our little pumpkin...it is one of my favorite photos of the two of them together.

Go on over and check out the other "dress up photos" that are being shared over at I heart Faces :)

Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu

So I have to say that I have always been one of 'those' girls. You know the ones - the ones that started out playing in the mud and collecting bugs and ended up as video game freaks. It's not to say that I'm not feminine or into girly things...its more that I've just always been drawn to activities that are not classically female past times.

Point in case, Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu. Now if you talk to me on any sort of regular basis you will know that my husband is a jiu-jitsu freak. He started just about 5-6 months ago now and he LOVES it. You would have also heard me jokingly complain about how much I get "beat up" (I use that term very loosely) Basically after class Ed comes home totally pumped and wants to show me all the new submissions and moves that he has figured out. Initially I would roll my eyes and ignore my own fascination with this fighting style. A relatively new friend of mine and someone I consider to be quite the kindred spirit (she loves video games too!)had been trying to talk me into joining BJJ as much as Ed had been. I still was torn about it. Stay at home moms are not supposed to be going out in the evenings to fight, right?? Where's the grace and elegance...although I suppose a good arm bar has a little bit of both involved in it ;)
SO
I went to my first class on Wednesday.

I totally loved it. I came home all pumped and wanted to show Ed what I had learned. Some girls can sew and cook and have a clean house and are domestic goddesses - Most days of the week I aspire to be like them. Although very soon I am going to take a couple of evenings each week I am going to go and lay my domestic side aside and try to learn how to choke someone out.

I Heart Faces - Pink !!!

The timing of this photo challange is perfect. This week was my Grandmothers 90th Birthday Party....and she is a Breast Cancer Survivor. It was a wonderful party where we were able to celebrate the amazing woman she is and all the obstacles she has overcome in almost a century of life. Here's to you Grandma!

A Piece of Cake...Part 2

So for those of you that may be wondering...

I finished THE cake.

It was surprisingly uneventful once I got past the custard. The icing was threatening to be very difficult until Ed, sensing my tenuous hold on my composure, rescued me by standing beside me giving directions.

In retrospect, this is rather ironic as Ed is normally the man that wouldn't cook or bake to save his life, but he seemed to think that this whole cake icing business was his cup of tea and walked me through the whole process...

"No, scratches Kate, keep dipping the knife in the water every second stroke..."

So yes, I finished and now all I have to do is get it to the party without dumping it on its head.

Wish me luck....











PS - I found this funny link earlier today and it just fit with my whole week...check out some cake disasters here

A Piece of Cake...Part 1

Really why do we use this saying, "Its a piece of cake".... It means it is going to be easy right?!? Maybe the illustrious 'they' were referring how easy it is to EAT a piece of cake....Not to MAKE one...

Allow me to explain..

My Grandmother is turning 90 this month and we are throwing her a birthday party this weekend. It is such a spectacular milestone and one that I am so happy to be a part of; so when I was asked if I could make the cake I jumped at the opportunity.

I started planning the cake in my head right away. I knew it had to be a lemon cake, Grandma loves lemon, and I wanted to make it marvelous. I deduced that a custard filling and a butter cream icing would be perfect. I also wanted it to look fantastic so I went about learning how to make flowers out of gum paste, which by the way is SO much fun, to decorate the top of the cake with.

So far, so good.

Welcome to reality. Two layer cake that serves 40 people - 4 9x13 cakes...not so bad when you have an oven!!! Mine decided to go out in a shower of pretty little sparks two weeks ago. I actually got to bake the cakes at my moms on the weekend so it should have been clear sailing from here....

Step two - Make a custard filling. Seriously, custard is like cooking 101 and I would like to consider myself at a least a level 102, so why oh why can't I make custard.

I have 3 letters for you A.D.D.

Burnt, over cooked, under cooked you name it I did it. I went through over 4 Lt's of milk trying to make a decent custard filling. ARRRRGGGG

At 5:30 this evening I finally made something resembling a custard filling. Victory.
At 5:45, before running out of the house to go to a meeting, I thought to myself, "I should quickly put the custard layer on the cake so that the cake can get wrapped up and back in the fridge."
At 5:46 I had a meltdown. Literally, the custard was not yet cool enough and or undercooked or something and as I poured it onto the cake is quickly poured itself right back off.

At this point I didn't know weather to laugh or cry. Right now I am laughing but I think in the moment I would have rather cried.

I put the layers together and told myself, "No one will notice that the bottom half of the cake is a gooey custardy mess...."

I would have posted a picture of the sad condition of this cake but my husband, I think recognizing the cake's part in my rapidly declining sanity, had it all cleaned up and put in the fridge by the time I got home from my meeting.

So here I am at 11:00 at night wondering what I am to do with my mess of a cake and I think I am going with plan "A"

Serve it.

Tomorrow I decorate...*Sigh*
I love my Grandma, what can I say.

Excited Electrons - I heart Faces "Excited"

LOL
Ok I know this is traveling a different path on the whole excited theme, but I just couldn't resist. In electrical terms to excite means to energize...so we excited our daughters hair :)

This photo truely was a snapshot of a moment and so I had a bit of fun and played that up a little in the editing.

Thoughts on Becoming Piglet

OK, so I need to clarify, in referring to myself as piglet I am not referencing my ability to pack back the snacks; although, this being the Thanksgiving/Halloween season I sure have been!! Rather it reflects how I am comming to view myself - as Winnie the Pooh's, well intentioned but cowardly friend.

You see I have been feeling a little conflicted as of late without really being able to pin down what was exactly bothering me. Don't you hate that!! Of course this blog is a culmination of several different conversations and life lessons that have all brought me to this point. One thought that has been very prevalent these past few months is the idea of being faithful with whatever we have been given. BIG. little. Whatever it is - to be a faithful steward.

For those of you with a bit of bible knowledge this echos the parable of the talents. When this whole journey started I was just handed the responsibility of our family finances...yikes!! For anyone who knows me at all you might be able to guess that math and other such anomalies, like numbers, are just beyond me. This being said though I wanted to take on this challenge and "Be faithful".

Where my conflict began is when the idea of faithfulness started creeping into other areas of of my life. Two separate parts of my journey here collided...this idea of faithfulness met Proverbs 31, the noble woman.

Damn, I think I found the perfect way to fail.

So now faithfulness has just taken a leap from good accounting - to something else entirely. Talents no longer just represented how we spent our money but more so what I was doing personally with the passions that lay buried at the moment in my own heart. The question that has been plaguing me is, "what do I do with them!!??"
And unfortunately the answer I know, USE THEM, is some how not so easy to swallow. The lump in my throat is pure fear and cowardice. On one hand this does seem like a pretty feeble excuse.

On the other hand I am suddenly sympathizing with the third servant. What if rather than just lazy he really was just afraid of failing, rejection, or disappointing his master. What if he, recognizing that his talent was lesser - I mean he was given the smallest amount - recognized that he could only ever achieve mediocre results. That's daunting. Obviously the master and I have differing opinions on this third servant. Which of course sucks because the Master is Christ and he and I are not seeing eye to eye right now. Although there is something that is reverberating around in my soul speaking to me even now. I think a key might lie somewhere in an idea I read about this week, God confidence, maybe in the this case it could be renamed Master confidence. What if the third servant had confidence in his Master enough to know that if he gave him a talent it was for a purpose bigger than sitting in a hole in the ground. Just because it was small meant nothing, maybe the Master knew the heart of his servant and knew he needed a softer place to start from. Maybe the servant just needed to trust the Master.

Hmmmmm

"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.

Alright Enough of Blog Block...

So enough of this blog block already hey! Yesterday I was convinced I was going to blog...instead I learned how to add a signature and I placed a menu on my Photography blog site. Today I don't really have anything profound to blog about but I did realize that I have skipped a couple weeks in my self declared challenge to post a photo of myself once a week.
I realized I don't really like it! lol I guess that's why it's called a challenge.

Despite my whining I do want to stick to my original purpose of putting myself in front of the camera, which if you missed that blog, is about allowing myself to be put back into my family's photo history. (I think any mom or photographer can attest to the fact that you never appear IN the photographs!!)

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I also thought I would take out a few metaphorical birds with one stone. I did just get my hair done and for those of you who wanted to see it...voila. Although I have to admit the biggest reason that got this blog done was I was all inspired and curious about shooting photos in RAW mode....very cool. To read more about RAW and I'm going on about check out this link here