Father's Day fun

When I asked my hubby what he wanted for Father's Day, he responded that there wasn't really anything in particular that he wanted.  He did say that the best gift is if I help the kids make him something.  I had already planned on helping them when they came to our house but had not decided what to do.  So of course I started browsing Pinterest yesterday to get some ideas.  I found a few things and posted them.  I had full intentions of following one of the pins and making the card shaped like a shirt and tie, or the family "tree", or one of the many cards I saw.  When I went to the store with the kids, I let them pick out the colors of paint they wanted.  I had decided that whatever "card" we chose, I was going to put it in a frame.  When we got to the frame isle, I started to think about what I actually wanted to do since, what I did determined the frame.  Then I got this idea.  I turned to Alex and told him I had a great idea.

I put my hands together and asked Alex what shape they made.  He noticed that it was a heart.  Then I put my heels together and toes apart and asked him what letter that made.  He caught on the "V".  I explained to him what we were going to make from that point and he gave me this look like, "Seriously?!".  Okay, so it's a Girly idea but I knew it was something Rory would like.  I decided to use one had and foot from each of the kids to make the "O" and "V" in LOVE.  I was going to just paint or color the other letters and have it say "We LOVE Dad".  I originally selected a large frame that was a matte with 4, 4x6 pictures.  Unfortunately, I was planning on using a poster board and the frame was too long.  I settled with a smaller frame that held two 5x7 pictures.

When we got home,  I pulled the matte out of the frame and traced it onto the poster board so I knew how much room I had to work with.  Then I got every thing set up on the floor in our kitchen since that was the only place in our apartment where there was a hard surface to work on.  I used paper plates to put a small amount of paint on it and then spread it around with a paint brush.  The kids then made their hand and foot prints.  The fun part was cleaning them up afterwards but I just used a wet paper towel.  I ended up making the "L" out of my thumb and index finger.  I think it would have been better to just paint it but oh well.  Aurora helped me make the "L" and I finished the picture off and painted the WE and DAD.

It certainly didn't turn out exactly how I envisioned it but what really matters is the fact that Rory loves it.  He has something the kids made with a part of them.  He can see it when they are not with us and we will always  see how small they were as they grow older.

Birthday time

I know I have mentioned it before but one of the things I love is that I now have 2 wonderful children I get to call my own when they are with Rory and I.  Alex and Aurora are at the perfect age to just have fun.  Last year I had a major fail for Aurora's birthday cake. Mostly because the flour that I used for the cake was supposedly very old.  I am not so sure because I haven't attempted to make that cake since then and I didn't save the recipe.  This year, I wasn't about to take my chances on the cake so I took the lazy man's way and used a boxed cake.  While boxed cakes are quick and easy, I still prefer making them from scratch but these are children and they will never know the difference, right?  When I was in culinary school I made my nephew a train cake.  I had a blast making the cake and my nephew LOVED his cake.  It was a cake that my sister and I worked on together.  Later that year my sister told me about her successful attempt at making a princess cake for my niece. I let the inspire me to go ahead and make some fun cakes for the kids this year for their birthday.  I did go to culinary school after all and baking and pastry was my forte.  Aurora wanted a princess cake and Alex wanted a batman cake. 

I borrowed my friends princess bowl kit so I could make the bottom part of the dress.  That's where I got frustrated because I mixed the cake mix and put it in the pan. Problem was, the cake didn't rise as high as I was expecting.  Actually, it barely rose at all.  I wasn't counting on that at all.  (and that's why I choose to  make my cakes from scratch) I went ahead and froze the one I made and decided that I would make another one to see how that worked out.  The bad thing is, my mother in law called me while it was baking and I got side-tracked and forgot about the cake and it burned. Fortunately it didn't matter anyway because it didn't rise any more than the other one.  I decided to make just a standard round cake and let it be a "platform" for the princess to stand on. Of course the dress had to be pink and white.

The next challenge with the cake was the fact that I had less time to make it than I planned on.  The phone call that I received from my mother in law was to ask if we could move the party to that evening instead of the next day.  We were planning on having it at her home and we really didn't have much of a choice at that point.  I said I could make it work and would work on the cake that afternoon and we'd head over after I picked Rory up from work. About 1:00 I started to make the frosting for my cake.  I had the round cake in the oven and the top part of the dress in the freezer.  When the "platform" came out of the oven, I let it cool slightly and then put it on a cooling rack and put it in the freezer to cool it down enough to put a crumb coat on it without the crumbs going all over the place.  I looked at several photos on google of the bodice of the dress and many of them looked like they were made out of fondant.  Since I was making mine completely out of frosting, I had to come up with a way to make it look good.  I couldn't really use a knife or mini off-set spatula because it wouldn't work right.  I decided to use small dots for the entire top half.

Around 2:30 I had to take an hour off and go pick up Alex from school. We got home by 3:30 so I had an hour left before I had to pick up Rory and then head to the party.  The entire time I am decorating the cake.  Aurora is standing on her step stool next to me trying to "help", and eating the frosting off the cake.  I can't count how many times I had to say, "don't touch". Alas, I rushed to the end and managed to complete it before we had to rush out the door.  It certainly was far from perfect but it was with a 4 year old standing next to me and my having to deal with inturruptions, it didn't turn out too bad.

Alex's cake was a whole different story.  I told him I would make him a batman cake.  I looked at google images and decided that I was just going to do the bat logo.  It looked easy enough and I could add a couple other things to make it look cool.  I decided to let Alex look at the pictures on google images and told him he could pick the cake he wanted.  We looked at several.  He liked several tiered cakes and I told him those were too big.  So he looked at the smaller cakes and of course he picks the cake that has the animated batman on the top of the cake.  I didn't want to say no, so that's the cake we stuck with. 

Fortunately, one of the few talents  I have is the ability to look at a picture and sketch it.  It's not always perfect but I can at least get it close and then adjust the lines as needed.  I decided that I would sketch out the cake on paper using the picture as a guide.  The picture had his back hand/arm much smaller than I liked so I drew mine a little larger. It was far from an artist's artwork but it was sufficient for me to look at to make the cake.  The next challenge was to figure out how to get the image onto the cake.  I thought about using wax paper and somehow tracing the image in frosting and then put it on top of the cake but then the image would need to be mirrored to be right on the cake.  That could also have gotten really messy.  Then my friend suggested drawing it with a toothpick on the cake.  I had already been thinking along those lines but her idea was definitely the winner. So, using the picture as a guide, I used the toothpick to draw my lines on the crumb coat.

The next part was the challenge.  I unfortunately only had liquid food coloring.  It works fine when you want a lighter shade of whatever color you are trying to acheive.  The picture of the cake used black, blue, and gray for the colors of his suit.  I was only going to use black which made a challenge for some of my lines.  The other problem with the liquid food coloring is the fact that it's liquid and I am using it in a frosting where you want as little liquid as possible for the frosting consistancy.  The lighter colors were just fine but as soon as you start adding more color to your frosting, you start to look the frosting consistancy.  Rory helped make the frosting while I was decorating with some of the lighter colors.  Eventally he used all the food coloring and I decided it would have to work. I used my small cake spatula to spread the frosting into the smaller corners and the toothpick for the finer details of the logo and his eyes.  For my first attempt at a cake of this sort, it turned out okay, but I am a perfectionist and can see what could have been better.  There is always next time. Alex was happy with it and that's all that matters. 

All About the Dress

About 3 or 4 years ago, I was dating a guy that I thought I may actually want to marry.  I had always thought about what my wedding dress would look like but I had never looked for it.  Around that time, I did some web browsing for pictures and saved them.  When I went home to visit family, I went over to my grandma’s house and we sketched out my wedding dress.  I was planning on having a seamstress make it for me.  I wanted a dress with a dropped waistline and a layered skirt.  I also wanted a square neck with a Queen Anne-like collar.  The biggest challenge about my dress was I wanted to be able to wear it in the temple for the wedding.  I knew that the wedding dresses had to be long sleeved so my plan was to have a slightly longer short sleeve and have a sleeve that attached to it using hook and eyes and have a satin ribbon/bow to cover where the eyes were on the sleeve.  I was happy with my sketch when we were finished.  Unfortunately, I ended up breaking up with the guy I was dating so my sketch went into a box. 

When I got engaged to Rory, I got to start the process all over.  Fortunately, my taste had not changed much and I still had my drawing.  I originally was going to have someone make the dress for me but I decided that was going to be more work that I wanted so I went dress shopping.  I looked at all the dress warehouses and tried on multiple styles of dresses.  I liked the ruffled dresses but there was still something about the simplicity of the layered skirts that I loved.  After I was done dress shopping I knew what I wanted and it was no surprise that it was exactly what I had sketched years earlier.  Problem was, I was on a budget and wasn’t willing to spend $700-$1000 on a dress only to have it altered and spend another several hundred.  During my quest to find a dress I found a alterations shop.  I stopped in to ask them how much they would charge to build up a strapless dress.  They gave me a price quote of $200.

So, I went hunting online.  I found several websites that sold dresses at great deals.  The only problem with online sites is there is no way to tell the quality of the dress you are viewing.  I searched tons of sites and finally decided to bite the bullet and order a dress online.  I found a layered skirt that I loved and a bodice that looked pretty and easy enough to build up.  I could have paid to have it “tailored” to me by giving them my measurements but I opted not to.  Part of me thinks I should have but it all worked out.  I ordered my standard size and put a rush on the order.  I was home when the dress arrived a few weeks later.  It came in an vacuum sealed package so it seemed much smaller than I was expecting.  At first I was slightly disappointed because I didn’t particularly care for the fabric the dress was made out of.  I am sure that if I had paid more attention that I would have expected it.  The dress was made out of white taffeta.  It wasn’t a horrible fabric, I just preferred the silk or a polyester. 

That day I printed out my photo and set out to the tailor to get my dress fixed.  I wasn't really how they were going to accomplish what I wanted but thought a photo of hwat I liked would help.  This is what they had to go off of.  I went to Elegant Reflections in Mesa, AZ.  I found a couple of reviews online about them from a few other LDS brides who said they did an amazing job altering dresses so you couldn’t even tell.  It was the end of December and I need my dress by mid-February.   Surprisingly, the dress fit reasonably well as is.  There were a couple of places where they needed to take it in around the hips and waistline but that could be expected from a dress that was made in China using standard measurements.  I also paid a fraction of the price I would have paid if I bought the dress here locally, even if it was one of the bridal warehouses so I was expecting to have to make some adjustments.  The lady in the shop pinned my dress where they needed to take it in and pinned where I wanted my neckline to start. I was really going on faith at this point in hoping that the woman who was adding to my dress would be able to envision a way to make it look like the dress had always been that way.

The next time I went in for a fitting, I took Jayna, my dad's wife.  It was fun to have her go along and be part of the wedding fun.  It was a very basic fitting to make sure they were putting everything in the right place before they started stitching.  It was a good thing because I told them I wanted butterfly sleeves when I was actually thinking about a tulip sleeve. BIG DIFFERENCE!  I tried the dress on with my shoes and we found that the dress was a perfect length. You cand see where they started to place the the lining. 

I had several fittings after that to make adjustments and make sure everything was progressing like I wanted.  I was so impressed with their work.  The seamstress who was building up my dress was matching the fold pattern on the front on the bodice area to make it look like it flowed all the way up to my neckline.  They left the back plain but matched the pattern on the lace and bead work.  The original zipper on my dress broke and needed to be replaced but it was a simple fix.  The day finally came when it was time to take the dress home.  The only reason why I you could tell that it had been altered was because the dress would sometimes creep up from my moving around.  Otherwise, everything looked like the dress always had sleeves.  I ended spending about $400 on my dress with the alterations.  It was definitely worth it in my opinion. When I think back to my sketch, it's not the same but it follows the same exact idea.

Blogs and newlywed Life

Apparently keeping up with a blog and being a newly wed don't work well together.  It's probably a good thing that I pay more attention to my hubby than my blog but it would be nice to be able to maintain something.  I am going to work on trying to post my wedding life and other events that have happened lately.  I have started several posts but never finished so here we go....

Life Choices

I find it interesting how our choices and the choices of other impact us and others around us.  When I made the decision to marry Rory, I knew that I was getting myself into a challenging situation with his ex-wife and children.  I loved Rory and had the feeling that I was making the right decision by marrying him.  While it was definitely not what I had always planned on for the person whom I was going to marry, I knew that he was what I was looking for in a spouse and that he made me happy.  I have genuinely come to love his children completely and treat them as if they were my own children.  I want nothing more than their happiness.  In observing how Rory’s ex continually challenges him in every aspect is very frustrating for me to watch.  I have seen emails exchanged between them where it seems she doesn’t care what Rory’s opinion is.  She wants to do things her way and only her way, whether or not we (Rory and I) feel it’s best for the kids.  Not too long ago, Rory asked her to remove me from the exasperating email chains in which I was always included in.  When I was included in the email chains, I literally had to restrain myself from sending her an email when she would throw up the brick walls because Rory would disagree with decisions she wanted to make regarding the children. 

It seems there is always something that is being discussing or brought up to cause some sort of disagreement.  The most recent challenge came up last Sunday when she emailed Rory and informed him that she had begun attending a different church she feels better aligns with her personal beliefs.  Because of this, the children will be attending with her when they are with her every other weekend.   She feels that it will give the children a more well-rounded view of religion.  I have difficulty handling this because I don’t see how it will be healthy for the children, especially at their young ages of 3 and 5.  Her church doesn’t believe that heaven and hell are actual places but a state of mind in the here and now.  They don’t believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.  He is in our “way shower” and Jesus was the perfect example of the Christ in us all.  They do, however, apply his principles and teachings of Truth in their daily living.  They do not believe he is the Son of God; he was filled with the Spirit of God as we all are.  They don’t believe salvation comes after we die. It’s in the here and now we receive salvation as it is a state of being. 

I completely respect other religions and have no problem with a religion that helps someone become a better person, or strive to become a better person using Christ as an example.  However, I don’t like when my children are going to be caught in the middle of two religions.   The things taught between these two religions completely oppose each other.  When children as young as they are have two sets of parents telling them information that are opposite, it will confuse them.  When they get older, if they want to learn about other religions and make the choice on their own, I will fully support them.  I have had religious conversations with friends who do not share the same religious beliefs as I do.  They don't get heated but it's clear where we differ in our beliefs.  It usually comes down to "believe in Christ as our Savior and strive to be more like him".  I know what I know about Jesus Christ and know that there is a purpose in life, which is to return to him after this life. 

There is a positive side to this situation at the current time.  When Rory got divorced, his ex was afraid he would leave the church.   He had been inactive for many years of his marriage and he began going back to church during the divorce.  She wanted to make sure that the children would attend church.  If he chose not to go to church and take the children she wanted to opportunity to take them herself.  It was written into the decree that the children would be raised in the LDS church.  The divorce was his trigger for him finding his testimony and he became a better person because of it.  Rory has continued to take the kids to church even when I am unable to be there because of work.  Hopefully we will be able to work something out so we can take the children to church weekly.

Thinking about this situation, I am reminded about how life choices affect not only yourself but those around us.  If Rory’s ex had not made the choice to get divorced, I would have never met Rory.  If they had not gotten divorced, Rory may not have gone back to church and become who he is now.  If my old roommate Courtney and I had never lived together, I would have never met her mother and she would have never suggested that Rory go on a date with me.  If I hadn’t gone through the struggles that I did many years ago, I may not have had the compassion and love that I have for people now, which is the same compassion I need to care for the children.  We often wonder what life would be like “If I had made a different choice” or “If this had not happened”.  I can’t say that I know where I would be in my life if I hadn’t lost my mom.  I can’t say that I know what would have happened if I said, “I love you” to the boyfriends that I remember being my first experience of love and heartbreak.  I can’t say that if I hadn’t struggled with my testimony that I would still be attending church.  I can say that I am grateful for every heartbreak, feeling of loneliness, and my struggle with what I believed in because I know every single experience has made me who I am today.  If I had not experienced those, I very may well not have met the man who I believe is literally the love of my life.  For that, I couldn’t be more grateful for my life choices and how the choices of other have blessed my life.

My Husband Is So Amazing, Handsome, Sexy, And Other Very Positive Adjectives

I am totally writing this post myself, and Rory did NOT find my iPad still logged in to Blogger.

-Rachel

Who, What, When, Where, Why?

When I got married, I told myself that I was going to get a new job so I could have Sundays off to go to church with Rory.  After the wedding, I had a difficult time actually making that decision because I loved my job.  Even now, I think about the people I work with and the residents that I would not see anymore and I don't want to lose that.  Why do I love my job so much?  I love the relationship that I get to have with the 200 residents that live in my community.  No, I couldn't say that I talk to them all the time and that I have a close relationship with every one of them.  I can say that I remember nearly every ones' name.  There are the handful of residents that have become like family to me.  I love seeing them every day and love saying hello and being able to talk to them.

Over the last couple months, I have been job searching and have realized how much I don't like it.  I don't really know where I want to go next.  I don't particularly want to go back to a job like I had at Insight where I have to make phone calls all day long.  I definitely don't want to go back to the retail industry.  As much as I love cooking, baking, and pastry, I can't go back into a culinary field because it would not be a good move financially.

I had a job interview today for a Urology medical office as a front office personal.  While I am looking for an administrative position, I don't think this would be the field I want to get into.  One of the managers in the interview pointed out that my past 3 jobs have all been completely different and I am again jumping into something completely different.  She is right in a way.  The last 3 jobs I have had have all been in 3 different industries.  The one thing they have in common is the sales and customer service aspect.  For the most part, they have been much slower paced--outside of the holiday time at Helzberg.  I have days where I am busy all day where I am now, and I love it when that happens because my day flies by.  When I think about what I am looking for, I don't know what I want to do.  I  have had plenty of those wonderful life insurance companies calling me telling me how much they think that I would be a good fit for them because of my sales background but I definitely don't want to go there.  I looked at Insight and even applied and interviewed for a position.  I was relieved when I didn't get the job.  Ultimately, I know I want to be able to stay home and take care of my children, but right now that really isn't possible.  We only have the kids half the time and since Rory and I don't have our own children, staying home isn't necessary.  I don't want to take any job that I am offered just so I don't have to work on Sunday.  I want a job I will be happy at.

Quite some time ago, I had a conversation with a friend about life and school.  He asked me what I wanted to do with my life.  I had just finished culinary school or was close to finishing l (I can't remember which) and we were discussing what I was going to do when I was done with the degree.  My plans were to go to ASU or BYU and get my nutrition degree and a business degree.  We talked about what I wanted to do with the degree and then he asked me, "If you could do anything your wanted and money wasn't a factor, what would you want to do?"  I knew the answer right away.  I wanted to help people.  Any and every degree I have thought about or looked at involved helping people in some way.  I was a Music Therapy major at ASU.  I think fondly back to the semesters when I had my clinical coursework and got to work with people using my music therapy.  I remember thinking about going into counseling because I wanted to help people with their problems.  I wanted to get my nutrition degree to help people get healthy and gain a better opinion of themselves.  If money wasn't an issue, I would help people.  So, why is it so hard for me to find a new job?

I guess in my mind, if  I leave where I am at now, I should be going to a place where I feel that I can help people.  I already feel that I am able to help people where I work now and make a difference the their lives. I know that the very definition of what my community does as a whole is help better the lives of our seniors to make their final years just as important as their younger years.  I guess I feel that if I resort to my old sales job at Insight or working in a doctor's office as a front office personal, I am not really doing what I really want to with my life.  I want to be that person someone else talks about when they say, "This person changed my life."

Why? I don't know. I think it's because there have been people out there that literally changed my life.   It wasn't just one person, but an army of people that made me feel that I was important when I was feeling down about myself.  So, I want to make sure I pass that onto someone else.  I think I mentioned before that I have always been the person that my friends felt that they could confide in.  They knew I wouldn't judge them our think less of them for any decision they made. I love people and truly believe that everyone is important and has a purpose in life.  Every one deserves a chance to be loved and understood.  So, who could I possibly work for that I can reach out to people and help them?