Monday, May 31, 2010



May 30, 2010
Next year's Bluebonnets! The seed pods on my bluebonnets are finally starting to open and drop their seeds! I can't wait to see next year's crop. I might do another round of transplants to make sure I've still got coverage.

This one is totally empty!
To end the day a great dinner at Jim and Heather's house complete with strawberry sorbet and fresh strawberries! Yum!
May 29, 2010
It's like a grown up lives here now. I finally hung some curtains in the living room. Tragically I hung them just a touch high (which you can really see on the one on the far left, the room slopes down in that direction). There are about 36 holes in the wall for just these curtains so it might be a while before I get up there to correct it. The real question is, should I hang the remaining set I have in the kitchen and do the living room in separate curtains? I think it would be a lot of brown curtains if I were to just hang these on all the windows....
May 28, 2010

After working a few nights this week and a long drive back and forth to Dallas, I didn't feel guilty at all working from home on Friday. Ginger LOVED it. Even though it was "Hotter than seven acres of burnin' stumps" outside, she roamed her domain hunting for butterflies and flying beetles. She must have caught something 'cause she yakked it up at 1 in the morning. Lesson to me: Ginger unsupervised outside for long periods of time = not good sleep.

Friday, May 28, 2010

May 27, 2010
Just got back from Dallas and I'm workin' from home for just a few hours. Here are my cube mates, they are hard workers....

Thursday, May 27, 2010

May 26, 2010
Another day, another night in cube land upgrading appliances. This is the view from the cube I'm working in to upgrade my customer's appliances. I kinda think the lights fanning out so far....almost to infinity!
May 25, 2010
What won't they advertise on? Here's my room key from the hotel I stayed at while traveling. The worst part is when I finally got back to the hotel at 1am after a late night of upgrading that pizza looked pretty good!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

May 24, 2010
Argh she got me again! I turn my back for one second and that girl is in the bathroom making a grab for the toilet paper. You can see she wanted to be comfortable while she worked on it - walked it all the way to her bed so she could relax.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

May 23, 2010
Now the garage is really done! I got the hooks installed yesterday to hang up the last few pieces of equipment and I couldn't be happier with the result. Of course while I was working on this Ginger chose to ransack the kitchen garbage and dine on chocolate and vanilla cake, butter wrappers, shortening wrappers, toast, and lord only knows what else was appetizing to her.....we were up at 1 barfing that all up. Joy.
May 22, 2010

A shot of all the cupcakes lined up at the party on Saturday night. Almost didn't achieve the right orange as the entire area is out of the color orange....I guess it's graduation weekend!

May 21, 2010

Graduation cupcake toppers complete!! I worked with both rolled fondant and marshmallow fondant with Tylose powder to make these forms sturdy enough. I think the hardest part was getting the darn ties on the scrolls....gotta figure out a better way to do that!

May 20, 2010
Dinner out with the Thetas! Megan and Arianna chatted before dinner arrived. Only one minor snafu, since I pushed back the calendar last month we had one person accidentally go to the wrong restaurant. Oh well, we'll catch her there next month.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

May 19, 2010
I'm back in the kitchen again working on cupcakes for a graduation. These little cap toppers are about 1.25" by 1.25" by about .75". On Saturday, I'll throw in a cupcake so you can see how big they are - it's hard to tell from this photo. Tonight I'm going to try to make a few more caps and work on the scrolls that will top other cupcakes.

May 18, 2010
Operation paint the garage is done! Whoo hoo! I still need to hang a few hooks that I purchased at the Container Store, but other than that I'm done! It's much brighter and lighter out there now.

Monday, May 17, 2010

May 17, 2010
Post Party Let Down. Here we are with no Grandparents, Grandparent-in-laws or Aunt or Uncle to pay attention to us.... Good thing Gramee left Ginger and Zoe with toys. After thoroughly searching the guest room to make sure they were gone, Ginger and Zoe each made a grab for the toys that Gramee brought with her. They played with them and squeeked all afternoon! We'll see if the toys can make it to tomorrow.
May 16, 2010
Today we had the adventures of Stand Up Bridget. Bridget couldn't be in Austin for Caroline's bday, but that doesn't mean that we didn't miss her!! We had to take her with us everywhere we went on Sunday. It turns out that Stand Up Bridget is a bit of a lightweight. After a wine tasting at Mandola's and Driftwood winery, she was on the floor! Silly Girl. Don't know if we can take her wine tasting again - she turns it into wine drinking!!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

May 15, 2010

Happy Birthday Caroline!!

Love at first site, here is the peanut just a few weeks after she was born - with dark hair!


We love her because she has attitude.
Doesn't let her big brother push her around at all.
Sometimes you can even con a smile out of her
But let's be honest, a smile is pretty rare for the camera


and she has totally cornered the market on the stink eye....
But you can catch her in unguarded moments like opening presents on Christmas morning

Or trying to jump out from the couch to surprise me! Ha!
She's my number one cooking assistant
and all around cutie patootie!
Happy Birthday sweet Caroline!!

I hope you enjoy your not princess cake!
May 14, 2010

Operation Caroline Cake in full effect. These dang Minnie Mouses are turning out so cute!! The bows are definitely the hardest part. But I have made a break through. I'm switching to gluing together fondant pieces with vodka. Yeah, I went there. It's perfect. It evaporates fast and doesn't leave the pieces gummy.

And just so you don't think I'm wasting perfectly good vodka (a crime!) I'm using the Sky vodka a friend gave me for my birthday (sorry Susan!! - I still love you, it's going to a good cause).
May 13, 2010

Rewind! Well I had my first 365 photo blog fail. Perhaps it was because I was up until 11:40 working on finishing off the garage before everyone arrived. Oh well. Pictures of the completed project soon!

For now a rewind to 2003! Ginger's first day home - look how tiny she is!!

I'm not exactly sure if it's truly 2003, since I'm pretty sure that I got Ginger in 2002, but whatever we're going with it....I don't have any other pictures from a May 13th! Plus she's an adorable puppy!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

May 12, 2010
Dark & Lovely! Well the blonde highlights were getting to be just too much. This is definitely darker than my natural color...it should be interesting to see light roots coming in rather than dark roots!

Don't worry, we'll be back to blondie Martta in no time. Just want to add it in as highlights rather than a full color lift.
May 11, 2010

Today off to my fav spot to baking supplies in Austin - The All in One Bakeshop - to prep for Caroline's cake. Heather's not having a big party, so I didn't want to make a lot of cake, but the design clearly calls for three layers. So they are going to have to be tiny layers. I picked up 4" rounds for the top. Going to be so cute! I've put my cell phone in for proportion.

Monday, May 10, 2010

May 10, 2010

I sketched out the plans for Caroline's 3rd birthday cake. She has been wishy-washy on the matter, flip flopping back and forth between a Minnie Mouse cake and a princess cake. Heather told me she was leaning toward the princess cake. Last weekend when riding out to see wildflowers in Llano, I asked her what kind of princess cake we were going to have....she gave me the Caroline stink eye and said, "I want a Minnie Cake" and then turned away from me.

O.K.

A Minnie cake then.....

This designed cobbled together from a few pieces I found out on the internet - let's see how well i do!
May 9, 2010

Happy Mother's Day! I got to spend the day with one of my favorite mothers - Heather. Here are a few snaps of Heather with her munchkins - Jack & Caroline.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

May 8, 2010

Summer annuals planted! I realized that May is starting to get away from me, what with Caroline's birthday next weekend and Austin hitting 100 for the first time this season. I had to get plants in the ground this weekend! Luckily Saturday turned out to be mostly overcast with much cooler temperatures.
I'm working a purple and while palette this year with a pop of bright pink salvia. Most of my Victoria salvia and my pink salvia bit it over the extra cold winter. In this bed only one out of a dozen plants made it....see if you can spot the extra large flower blowing this whole thing out of proportion.
I fared a bit better on this side of the house - only the pink salvia died. Most of the Victoria salvia made it, albeit a bit straggly.


May 7, 2010

Sunset at Driftwood Winery. In what is becoming a quarterly ritual, Thomas and Eryn asked Cheryl and I to the quarterly wine pick up at the Driftwood winery and dinner at Trattoria Lisiana. Yum and Yum.
Here we are working on our arm poses. It's a little funny if you really look at it, but when you first glance, it makes the arm look skinny :)


Thursday, May 6, 2010

May 6, 2010

Book Club night! Well, not book club, but get together and drink and have fun night :) Triple celebration tonight as we welcome Jaime's baby boy, Mary's baby girl and Corina's going away!! Plenty to talk about all night long, but this isn't a drunko party like they do up in Cedar Park, we've all got to get up to go to work tomorrow!
Mary & Rocio
Marlene & Sarah
Susan & Jamie's new little man
May 5, 2010
Why no, I don't think I have a problem with butter. I'm sure that Paula Deen would approve of my stocking of butter too. I've got to make butter cream icing this today and I needed to make sure I had enough butter in the fridge. The rest of it is packed with healthy snacks I promise!!

What's funny is I *just* noticed when I looked at this picture that I have the sticker that came with the fridge still stuck on the door....you know the one that tells you to buy this fridge because it has adjustable shelves and is energy efficient. I'm sure I never took it off because I would have to leave the door open to do it that takes away from the energy efficiency.....
May 4, 2010
Viper free! One of my co-workers Bill came to check out the garage and he found no sign of Clive. Just to be on the safe side I'm not parking my car in the garage tonight anyway.....

Monday, May 3, 2010

May 3, 2010

SNAKE!!!! In my garage!!!!!!!
Thankfully he appears to be a common checkered garter snake, but still. Get. Out.

Update: So it turns out that Clive (I've started calling him Clive) is really a rattle snake and poisonous. So he is going to get his eviction papers. Though many co-workers suggested taking a hoe to his head (as if I would be able to get close enough to do this!!!!) I'm going to go with Absolute Pest Control's Charles. Hopefully he will be able to find him and take care of this problem!
May 2, 2010

Garage done! Check out that ceiling. I know, it's not too exciting. And it's a far away shot because even though I used *all* two gallons, it could still use another coat!

There was only one casualty when the extension pole broke. I manage to deflect it off my head and on to the lawn mower. I figure we'll roll that paint right off that wheel before the end of the Summer!
Now all I have to do is paint the walls. *sigh*