Less than 3 months!

Well all kinds of great things have been happening and been getting taken care of!

First of all on the family front - Baby Isabella Marie is HERE and as beautiful as ever! Second, we've got Baby Marina on the way, should be here any day! Third, Baby Caden will be here in a couple weeks and Last, but not least - Danielle and Jason are expecting, baby SPROUT due in Dec! We're so glad to have all these babies around us and want of these wonderful parents and mommy-daddy-to-be's to know we're here for you! ~ Happy Auntie's!!

We had a great trial run for a dessert buffet, but man was that exhausting and TONS of work. We've decided to change ours up for our wedding as a result. We're definitely going to do less ourselves and are working on getting a cake done from some friends.

Both of our dresses are in and FIT! Nicole got her veil and shoes as well and everything is a GO! We're still working on the dieting\working out plan, we've had some setbacks however. I hurt my back when we were going to the gym 3-4 times a week and that put a damper for sure in my work out. I've been going to the Chiropractor for about 5 weeks now and so far not very much pain relief and I'm losing patience. I'm sticking to it and have since decided I'm going to work out anyway and muscle through this pain in hopes the Chiropractor will be able to work on that! I really enjoy the gym, it doesn't feel like a chore. It's very difficult to find time though in our busy schedules. We're going to have to sacrifice a little bit to fit it in more. The last two weeks we literally had 1 free night, it's insane!~ The schedule is looking better though! :) Nicole's weight loss is going great, I think she's down about 16lbs and I'm about 13lbs or so. We're really proud of ourselves because it's not easy and boy one bad weekend can put on 3-5lbs! LOL

On Friday I turned in my Passport application 4-6 weeks to get it in and we're going to Curacao for our Honeymoon! Man that's far from home, but I'll be with my wife so I just know everything will be great!

Yesterday we finished our invitations, what an accomplishment! Thanks to all of you involved in helping us, much appreciated. Janae we hope you get better! :)

Currently, I'm @ work and Nicole is @ her makeup trial in Auburn with her Mom and Danielle... all of this is SO exciting!

That's to catch you all up! Many more details to follow, everything else is great - just plugging along planning for the BIG DAY!

My First Baking Photo Tutorial!

As some of you may know I LOVE baking and I LOVE baking blogs!! Some of my favorites are Bake @ 350, Bakerella and I am baker. These women are incredible and do these awesome photo tutorials that are so helpful and have taught me so much!! So I decided to do one of my own! I made these super cute Cake Pop Chicks for Easter, Bakerella's are way cuter than mine but practice makes perfect! And they got rave reviews from those that ate them! So here it goes!

Ingredients:

1 box cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake)

1 can frosting (16 oz.)

Wax paper

Yellow candy melts (1 lb. pkg.)

Lollipop sticks

Edible ink pens (Americolor pens are recommended, I used the Betty Croker version and now I know why)

Candy decorations (will discuss this later on down the blog)

I chose to use a Rainbow Chips cake and frosting but these can be made with any cake/frosting combo!

Bake the cake as directed on the box and let it cool.

Destroy it! LOL Crumble it up into a bowl.

Add about 3/4 of the jar of frosting and mix together. It will be a gooey ball of yumminess!

Roll the gooiness into quarter size balls and put on a wax paper covered cookie sheet. Freeze them for at least an hour, I did mine overnight.

Melt a small amount of the chocolate to use as glue for the sticks, dip them in the chocolate and then insert them into the cake pops about 1/2 way.

Melt the candy coating

Dip each cake pop into the candy coating and stick into styrofoam blocks to hold them up. You can also make them upside down, just place them on a sheet of wax paper.

FYI....Putting them in glasses DOES NOT WORK! LOL

Let them harden and now its time to decorate! Bakerella uses rainbow candy coated chips for her beaks and wings. And Little flowers for their feet. I didn't have those so I improvised. Hers are way cuter than mine!! We called them little nerdy chicks with their big noses!

I then put them in a basket with some Easter grass and was ready to go!!

Enjoy making them and let me know if you do and how they came out!

~Nicole