Couches, Quiet time, and sooo many Cupcakes

Happy Sunday all!

The past week has been eventful.

We've continued working on the house and will have a new (non-smelly non-disintegrating) garbage disposal and dishwasher installed on Friday!  Woohoo!  I'm in the process of hemming all of the curtains, and finally got around to covering some mini-couches a friend gave us. 

Before

After

Couch covers are tricky and these have turned out a little baggy and saggy, but the pillows I covered help distract a little.  Meh, maybe after hemming curtains I'll work on tightening them up a bit.

This illustrates Ira's recent "If it's in my hand, I want to throw it at someone" attitude.  sigh...  Last night we went to a fundraising event for the preschool coop that we'll be apart of in the Fall, and Ira was chasing bigger kids around, hitting them with a "balloon sword" and growling.  They were all significantly older and taller, so I'd like to think they were just pretending to be scared.  Hopefully they won't kick us out. On a more positive note, we went to the Library this week where Ira approached some kids and instead of snarling or roaring, he said, "Hi!  Would you like to have a tea party with me?" My eyeballs almost fell out of my head! ..and they continued to play PEACEFULLY together for at least 10 minutes before an argument broke out.  Not too shabby for our little man. 

We got our first lawn mower.

It's a motor-less reel mower, and works great!

Can't quite fit that head through...

Eliot has hit a couple of fun milestones.  He took his first couple of steps on the 22nd.  He cut his 5th tooth, and has been signing "more" for a few weeks, and has just started pointing.  I love it when these little people can start communicating their feelings! 

He has been really into books lately.  Mostly pulling them off the shelf, but also occasionally sitting and reading them to himself.

It's so rare to have both boys sitting quietly, that I had to take a picture to prove it was real. 

Anthony is doing really well.  We celebrated our 6th Anniversary by going to the temple to do sealings which was very happy!  What a man.  I'm so glad he decided to marry me. 

He also got recognized for some extra effort he put into a work project, and he was given a bunch of gift cards (all of which we put towards our dishwasher and garbage disposal.)  

So, that's pretty much life.  Happy.  

Below are some cupcake experiment results.   I had a free naptime, and lots of (frozen fondant/ frosting/candy melt) odds and ends to use up.  So, unless you are really curious about tiny cakes, you'll probably just want to stop here.  Peace out!

I wanted to try dipping cupcakes in icing (just powdered sugar and water.)  The cupcake on the left, had icing too thin.  In the back it was too thick (it rips off the surface of the cupcake).  On the right, it was just right.  

Icing on icing.  Easy and looked blobby, but o.k.  By the next day they bleed all over the place.  It's not like on a sugar cookie when the icing stays hard.

Icing and fondant.  Easy Peasy.  I used a flag and train cookie cutters to make the continents.  They held up a little better than the icing on icing, but didn't look quite as nice the second day.

Failures.  

Upper left: icing too thin.  Bottom Right, the circle was too small.  The purple ones I used Candy Melts.  I don't know, the candy melts might look smoother if I worked with them faster.  They definitely hold up better over the next few days than any other combo I tried. 

Fondant Cupcakes

                                    

The cupcake on the left, just had a button size blob of frosting spread out.  The middle one was generously covered, and the one on the right had a fluffy, soft-serve icecream dose of frosting.  The one in the middle was by far the best portion.  The one on the right was more spherical, but the frosting was oozing out all over. 

This size cookie cuter works great for fondant full coverage.

Mmmm.  Earth Day cupcakes.

In my opinion, the fondant on fondant looked and tasted the best.  They also held up well enough to make again.  They look the best the day of, and almost as good the day after.  If you wait much longer than that, the cake starts to get a little soggy.  Alright, let's all go recycle and shrink our carbon footprints now.  Peace.  

Eliot and Easter

This is Eliot's cute friend that was born two days after him. 

 Hopefully these failed attempts of ring gifting to cute girls isn't foreshadowing.

Failed attempts to swap some saliva.  Sorry!  I couldn't resist.  These captions are almost as bad as those horrid posters of toddlers dressed up like adults giving each other red roses and such.  

Working on our garden to be

Ira pausing to play with his shadow

The big news here was that Eliot turned 1!  Time flies when your working as a body guard to protect an infant from a playfully aggressive, older brother. :) 

The tubes and circus tent were his main presents.  He loves the tubes especially.

Neither of the boys wanted to take a nap after playing at the Hand's On Museum, so I didn't have time to decorate as planned.  But here was my makeshift, quick job. 

Eliot's first taste of dessert!  

He nursed this thing for about a minute straight before moving on to the actual chewing.

 

Ira constructing some words....with a little help from mom of course. 

Eliot enjoying conference.  We loved the parts we were able to pay attention to.  We'll have to read up on the parts we missed.

Both boys had their checkups this week and are looking good.  Eliot is finally over a stomach bug he got which is a huge relief.  We really love our pediatrician who was extremely patient with a flailing, screaming, scared Ira.  She kind of laughed at the fact that usually kids Eliot's age begin their stranger anxiety, and by the time they're 3, they're getting over it.  Eliot was as pleasant as can be, despite the fact that he had thrown up that morning, had diarrhea and an ear infection, and got four shots.  It's just another example of how different our two boys are.  

Ira has been walking around the house pointed out how tall he is in different locations.  "Look how tall I am next to the table!  Look how tall I am on the chair!  Look how tall I am on my bed!"  We finally bought him new pants since his were starting to look like capris.  

  Eliot's new favorite game is pat-a-cake.  The "roll it" part is pretty stinkin' cute with such short arms. 

We've been visiting preschools in preparation for the Fall.  I've also just finished a really time consuming, but fun wedding present for a childhood friend, and am moving on to making couch covers and pillow cases.   Pictures pending.  We were also sad to see some of our good friends move across the country.  But since they're not too far from Kristen, we're hoping too see them again soon. 

Anthony is hoping for clear skies so he can start biking to work more often, and is enjoying a little bit of a more normal pace after a surge of business.  

We failed to take any good Easter pictures, but it's really fun exploring possible holiday traditions.  The focus on Christ and the Resurrection was really clear until Ira realized there was candy associated with Easter too!  Oh well.  

We're keeping lots of you in our prayers as many of you have been facing difficult trials.  Love you lots!