Saturday 14 April 2012

Cake Ball Cake

So we finally got around to making a cake for the March birthday boys. Although a little late, it still served a delicious purpose.  We began by seperating jobs - Miss Cass was in charge of making the cake balls and Miss Tam was in charge of making the cake batter.  We cheated a bit with this project and used Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker cake mixes. The difference is that we mixed a packet of pudding mix with Soy milk and then poured it into the dry batter. This is so that it will make the cake denser and moist.



With the cake pop maker, the task of making cake pops is quite easy (good x-mas present from Miss Tam). We have made them by hand before and it is a serious amount of work so with this little tool our cake balls got done in minutes.



While Miss Cass made the cake balls, Miss Tam mixed the batter, preped the cake trays and baked it in the oven as directed by the cake mix box directions. Once the cakes were cooled, we cut them into the sizes that we wanted for our cake shape and began icing them.














After icing the cake ( we also used a bit of store bought icing to hold the layers together only), it was time to coat some of the balls with purple chocolate melts and milk chocolate melts. Then we brought out the piping bag and added a few extra touches to them.



For the decorative icing, we made a buttercream version from scratch. The ingredients are:

1 cup of unsalted butter
3-4 cups of icing sugar sifted
half teaspoon of table salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons of Soy milk

Blend the ingredients with a hand blender for approximately 8-10 mins. 


The last portion of our project was incorporating the cake balls into the cake. Although we had a few glitches along the way, it turned out great! Very delicious! We found the homemade icing was sooo good because it wasn`t overly sweet and it had a very creamy texture.  So our March Birthday Cake for the fellas was a wonderful success!  What will we do for next year?!





In this coming week we hope to blog about a few of the things we have going on. Hopefully we will have a post on one of the crafts we are currently working on, and as well we will be posting some pics from an upcoming Michael Jackson tribute concert we are attending here in Kitchener! 
Stay posted!!

Friday 6 April 2012

Luna's Dog Modelling Day

Throughout our posts you may have noticed a little friend who appears in some of our photos - Luna.
This wiener dog is definitely a special edition to our family. Always looking to play or lounge on our laps, she has grown into having a bit of a princess/diva complex.  And in line with that very sentiment we wanted to share a truly special day we had with Luna earlier in March.  It began one lazy Saturday morning when a random opportunity presented itself via a community radio station. We heard about a non profit fashion show that was being held and that they were conducting tryouts for a spot on the cat walk.  So we figured we'd give Luna a shot at the big leagues :) 



It was being held by The K-W Humane Society and Ren`s Pet Depot. We found out that it was an annual fundraiser called On the "On The Cat Walk" Fashion Show which put together fashions for not just people, but for dogs as well.


So we decided to take Luna to the Top Dog qualifying tryouts and see if she would be chosen as one of the top 10 dogs for their model search. To our surprise Luna not only qualified but she actually received the best score!


Way to make us proud Luna!

Keep in mind that Luna had never been involved in any big events before. She lives a humble life at home where she enjoys the comfort of simple things like sunbathing, driving, and playing DS Light.  And so once we arrived at the venue for the fashion show and saw how grand the event truly was, we were a bit worried about her abilities to perform under that kind of pressure.
We never know quite where she is headed

 
Luna always lounges on sunny days

Luna getting fitted for the show





 The event was beautifully decorated and packed full of dog and fashion lovers. It was so much more than we expected and it truly makes us aware of how hard the volunteers from organizations like The Humane Society work. We will definitely be participating next year as well! 

And so how did Luna do?  See if you can spot her 3 seconds of fame in the video below :)


Well for now we can not get the video uploaded.  Check back later to see it.  OR
Click on link below to view it.




Tuesday 3 April 2012

A Look Back At Our Rock Garden

April is Spring time here in Southern Ontario and the Forsythias are blooming!  It`s Mother natures way of telling us that it`s time to open and clean up our garden beds. That indeed is what we will be doing today in our Rock Garden. But first, here are some pics from our Rock Garden that we built last year.


This was the spot we decided to create our Rock Garden in. Initially there were no lilac shrubs along the left side and as well the space was all grass. It was a very long, very physical job removing the grass down to root and levelling out the soil, then transplanting the lilacs into place. That alone took a whole day to get done!


Using landscape fabric, we mapped out the layout of the garden beds and walkways. We also incorporated a water feature into the garden, hence the black crate (Aquablock).  We also mixed our own combination of fresh soil using black earth and Cocopeat or Coir Mulch. We truly love the Coir Mulch products because it adds so much moisture  and nutrients to the soil mixture.

About to place the Mr. Moai statue and stepping stones down
Stepping stones and plants in place



Once we knew the layout, we placed down the stepping stones on stone dust and 3/4 inch gravel.  We also covered the walkway with riverstone and planted our perrenials and roses.  Then we topped it off with black cedar mulch.




So here is the finished product - Our Rock Garden!

We added decorative stones on top as well as a concrete bench

Inukshuk statue (made by Miss Tam) replaced our awesome Moai statue - read story below.
Luna enjoying the Rock Garden



The Story of the Lost Mr. Moai

The moai statue seen in the first few pics of our Rock garden project was a birthdaty gift to Miss Tam from our mom.  The moai is a symbol amongst many that represents our homeland of Chile so it was a very special addition to the garden. But unfortunately one Sunday night Mr. Moai dissapeared to the astonishment of us all! We couldn't fathom who would have the strength and gumption to carry off a 80 pound statue and so we prefer to think that Mr. Moai wanted to visit Chile one last time and has just never come back.  And so in place of him, Miss Tam formed a small homage to our other homeland Canada - the Inukshuk; a timeless symbol of Canada and friendship.