Mid Conference Cake Update

Omnomberry Cake!

It was a wonderful session of conference that just ended! I listened while I mixed up the cake recipe and Seth kept the Squawker under control- he's been so fussy with teething the past few days! Anyways, the cake batter tasted pretty much like heaven. Miles and Miles and Miles above anything out of a box. They're cooling now and the blueberries are infusing with raspberry juice as we speak! In an hour I'll start making up the frosting and we'll see how it goes from there! But if it doesn't turn out awesome over all, I could seriously just make up the cake batter and eat that raw. So delicious.

Later after William went to bed... So I mixed the frosting while listening to the second session. I got a good kick in the gut at the talk about family history. I really need to do more with that. I got that impression very strongly when I was pregnant with William and now that he's here and I've settled into life with him the impression is back and I have the feeling that that talk was directly for me.

Frosting though! It's delicious. Especially the fruity one. If I did this cake again though, I would double the fruity one. I didn't have near enough frosting to give a generous layer between the cake layers, much less keep 1 cup for decorating the cake. I kept half a cup and the frosting layers were pretty skimpy. The chocolate frosting on the other hand I have like two cups left over to blow my caloric budget on once we get graham crackers. It's also very delicious. I'd also change the amount of cake batter. Maybe increase it again by half, use smaller than 8" diameter pans, or make only two layers instead of three. As it is, the 8" pans made for 1" ish thick layers and I prefer to have them a bit beefier than that. Then again, with three of them it's a pretty decent height. We'll see how the frosting:cake ration works out when we eat it tomorrow though.

My decorating skills need refining. But dang it looks yummy to me!

October Already!

How does time sneak up on me?! It can't be October yet! That's far too close to Halloween for comfort, and the Peanut is not in the mood to give me a few hours of peace and let me sew his Halloween costume during the day. Anyways, the end of September was fun! We went up to visit Grandma and Papa Pease The boys had a blast, of course, and William spent quite a bit of time mauling Grandpa.

In other news, William is still adorable and I think he may have a career as a model if he wants. He's already got the fish lip expression down pat.

We also got a large chunk of food storage this month. We found a great deal on a 1 year (or 6 months, with two of us) food supply at Sam's Club. The delivery guy didn't seem all that thrilled and ended up using a fork lift to dump an entire pallet directly in front of our door, but William's been enjoying the impromptu baby cage in the upstairs living room that it's created. Gives him the run of the living room without me having to worry about him heading towards the stairs now! We do need to get that into the crawl space shelves though. Won't that be a fun project for an afternoon. Seth will be doing it. I know there are hoards of spiders and crickets in there.

We don't have a couch for the living room yet, which can cause some seating issues with more formal guests like the pair of Elder sister missionaries that dropped by the other afternoon but they were at least impressed by our sense of priorities. XD

This afternoon William tried a taste of my apple.

He wasn't so sure of the taste I think, but he had fun with the texture of it!

This weekend is General Conference. Sadly, it doesn't mean being able to sleep in on Sunday anymore thanks to You Know Who, but I've got some other projects to occupy the morning now! I have two choices.

1) William's halloween costume. We went to the fabric store yesterday and got some sweet lizard scale print and some patterns to modify. He's going to be a Pterodactyl! Or absolutely ridiculously unrecognizable. We'll see how it turns out.

2)

Source: gourmetgaming.co.uk via M. on Pinterest

Braving the Kitchen in epic battle and attempting to create this delectable dessert. An Omnomberry Cake! Yummy chocolate with fruity frosting and most certainly more calories than I know what to do with. But I'm going to try to make two this weekend. One to utterly screw up, and one to take to a picnic with friends on Monday to help spread the calor-er- love around! Hopefully if both turn out edible, I've got a Visiting Teachee with a baby a couple months older than I who could probably use some chocolatey love.

Well that's not good...

Someone got into our car last night. This morning the door was ajar, the glove box was riffled through, and the back seat next to William's carseat was dropped flat to access the trunk. We don't think anything was taken. The GPS was still there and we didn't keep any other valuables in the car but it still freaks me out. Seth thinks they might have been scared off by someone, but if they had time to search through the glove box and drop the back seat and didn't take the GPS then what were they looking for? Time for a little more paranoia around the house since I'm home alone with William so much. :(

Things have gotten away from me lately...

As the title says, things have gotten away from me lately. I'm not quite sure where time has gone now that it's starting to get cooler and turn into fall here. The leaves haven't changed yet, but I'm looking forward to it. It's my favorite time of the year. Anyways. Blather about me first and then you can have cute pictures of William to coo over. :)

For the past three months I've been working on losing weight and getting back into shape. To be completely honest, my exercise efforts have been a losing proposition. The time to get out and run or whatever just doesn't seem to be there. I don't really want to spend yet more money on a jogging stroller I'd probably only use for the rest of the fall until snow comes, and frankly most of the gyms around here are outrageously prices (around $100/month) with no baby care for the peanut. There's one I've been meaning to check out that's reasonably priced with baby care, but it's 30 minutes away without traffic and I haven't gotten over there yet- and if I haven't gotten over there yet would I get over there again if I did have a membership? Like I said, my motivation in that department kinda sucks.

On the other hand, I've been doing really well in the diet department! I've changed how I eat (no more munchies whenever I get bored and a lot less sweets!) and I've been counting calories. The past couple weeks I've even left off the literal counting and just try to keep the lifestyle and portion size of what had been in my caloric budget when I was counting. I don't want to spend my entire life checking food labels- I'd much rather be able to make eating reasonably an instinct. I've lost over 20lbs so far! My goal is to get down to 140 (10 more pounds to go!) and fit back into some of my old costumes I outgrew even before I had William. As it is, I'm below my pre-pregnancy weight so I'm really happy and feeling great!

Let's see, other stuff and things. I've been called to serve in the Primary now! I'm teaching the 9-10 year olds as well as being the Activity Days leader for the 8-11 year old girls. I hope it'll be a fun calling and that it'll go well. Teaching makes juggling William a bit tricky now though since Seth teaches the YM. He just got called to be the YM 1st counselor instead of the 2nd where he has been for several months now. But Seth takes him 2nd hour when I teach and then we do a hand off for 3rd hour and I take him while my kids are in sharing time. Thankfully other teachers can keep an eye on them there. William's normal lunch time comes up during 2nd hour so we're going to have to juggle that around and hope he doesn't give Seth too much trouble! This past Sunday he was really good though. He got hungry early so I sat in the hall feeding him, wanted to play with Dad all 2nd hour, and then he passed out and slept all 3rd hour for me! He's too cute.

Sewing Updates!
I've been out of the costuming thing lately. It's the off season for conventions now and William is far too cute and interactive to sit still while I sew these days. I've still got a top sitting on my cutting table half finished because I haven't found the time to get back to it. Really should do that. I even dyed the fabric one afternoon into a soft lavender-grey color.

I still want to make that yellow 18th century dress, but things haven't worked out very well for me to get to the Library of Congress to do the necessary research since William isn't allowed inside. Frustrating, but that's life and I'll get to it eventually. My 18th century corset also needs some repairs done before I can wear it again. So I'm going to take a break from historical for a while. It's sort of devoured my costuming career the past couple years and I've been wanting to get back into more the crazy out-there scifi/fantasy realm of costuming again where being historically accurate doesn't matter and you can go nuts and create something really impressive. The trick, of course, is to create something awesome that is recognizable (even if only by some) rather than an original creation that makes everyone go 'uh, what are you supposed to be?

So my ambition is this character from the new Guild Wars 2 video game. She's a tree. Sort of. heh. The character herself is fun, but she'll also be an awesome technical challenge for me that'll really push me to improve and expand my skills. It'll take a lot of fabric painting (for the plant like textures on her clothing and limbs), prop making (which I've never done much with), alternative materials that have more structure than regular fabrics (like her big leafy shoulder thingy), body painting for the face, and wig making! Pretty much everything I'll be doing will be new and that'll be a ton of fun. Just need to... you know... find the time to do it!

Now onto the stuff you guys actually care about! As I type, William has just stood up on his own for the first time!

Here's William playing in church. I only had my ipad with me, so quality isn't that good.
William has had a lot of 'firsts' this month it seems. He even had his first kiss! Though it's very likely that he and Ari were just trying to bite each others noses off and missed. Still. This one'll go in the file to bust out and tease him with when he's older!

Here are some other fun pictures. These next few are from August actually, that I finally got off of my camera. "You're probably wondering why I called you all here today..."

Good Night Moon is his favorite book.

The power of Spoon

cFirst time eating solids! Carrots are yummy!

"I caught a Dad!"

First time sitting on his own!

These are from September (Yay for getting caught up!) Playing with Dad when he gets home is always a highlight.

"But Cameras are awesome too!" He's such a ham.

"What? Dad won't ever let me fall!"

Dinner time is always an adventure. That's why he needs his pilot hat.

Good Morning Peanut!

Fine, fine, I'll update this darn thing

So here's a picture post. William is sqwaking and crawling around like a fiend. Currently trying to get under the chaise for some reason.

Seth and Peanut playing together!

Playing with Grandpa when we went up there in July while Seth was out of town for work!

Practicing scooting around! He hadn't completely gotten the hang of it at this point, but putting Mr. Parrot just out of reach was good incentive!

Of course Grandma makes the best playmate, and spoils him rotten.

He's also pretty good at helping sit on the laundry.

We finally got a rug in the living room upstairs so he can crawl around comfortably.

Just needed to give it a Quality check! Yup, it's nice and soft for little guys knees.

And back up to see Grandma and Grandpa again once Seth came home from travelling for work! Peanut is so lucky.

We even got to go to their county fair and meet the goats.

And a horse!

And a (stuffed) elk(?)! He wasn't sure what to think about all this.

And lastly in the pictures I've managed to get around to uploading, I finally got the curtains finished in the living room with a blue linen swag. We're planning on finally finishing our living room as soon as finances allow with a TV console (and moving our big screen upstairs and hooking it up to my old computer. A couch and a couple of end tables. The chaise'll squeeze in here still, but the giant poof will head downstairs to the guest room or be sold to a friend. We'll see. Money's tight right now since we're expecting Seth to be furloughed for two months this upcoming fiscal year. Way to go government.

Bedtime is hard

I'll catch up more later, but just a few thoughts tonight while it's on my mind. Bedtime is hard. Poor William didn't sleep well when we went up to visit Grandma and Papa Pease last week. Every night he got up every three hours. Drove me nuts. He'd been sleeping ok here at home, but after several days up there it threw everything off. When we got home he'd try to stay up until 1 or even 2am. Admittedly we keep late hours at our house since Seth often works with west coast people so goes into work late and comes home late. But it was getting ridiculous. So we've put our foot down. Bedtime is at 11 now. Wiliam gets one last dinner, a snuggle, and then gets put down for the night... and sobs. And sobs. And sobs. Tonight he didn't stop until after midnight. It's heartbreaking. We'll go in every 15 minutes or so, calm him down and then leave again but that just makes him cry harder. I really hope he starts to catch on to this whole falling asleep thing soon. :(