Jan 26, 2008

RV show, M&O Diner and Leonard's Dept Store museum

Russell & I went to the RV show today at the Ft Worth Convention Center. Wow! I can't begin to tell you how awesome some of those huge monsters were!!!!!!!!! There was every kind of RV (this picture is the inside of one of the RV's that we 'toured'), 5th wheel trailer, pop-up trailer, etc that you can possibly imagine with every possible amenity that you can imagine. We went thru so many and picked up so many brochures that it made our head's swim. After about 3 hours and 8,000+ steps (according to my pedometer), we felt like we were pretty 'full-up' on what RV's, etc had to offer and were ready to go (it didn't help that I'd totally worn the wrong kind of shoes to be climbing in and out of RV's!). Afterwards we made our way to the M&O Diner on Carroll St. in Ft. Worth (thanks to a recommendation from the Ft. Worth Weekly - http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=6601) where we had very tasty burgers and the opportunity to stroll thru the very interesting Leonard’s Department Store Museum (I think you can ck out the history of Leonard's Dept Store via this link and if not, it's certainly worth Googling). Even if the burgers hadn't been incredibly good, discovering this very unique museum would have made seeking out this little 50's style diner totally worth the trip. And according to the sign outside the diner/museum, it also plans on being the future home of one of the old subway cars from subway that the Leonards built in downtown Ft. Worth back in the day.

Another Treasured Cake creation

Another Treasured Cake creation for your viewing pleasure and our customer's eating pleasure. This particular cake is a chocolate and red velvet flavored cake (top tier is red velvet and the bottom is chocolate) with marshmallow fondant textured and colored to appear as if it were black leather with pink asymetrical circles and pink satin ribbons (Ashley was able to find this tastier version of fondant via the many message boards that she frequents) . This customer (and our most recent) loved it and claimed that it was the perfect cake for her 16 year old daughter's b'day.

PS: We rcvd a really nice e-mail from her saying that her daughter loved the cake!

Birthday Present

Check out the birthday present I got from Russell! How cool is this????? Not only did he sing Happy Birthday to me (this would be the first time in as long as I could remember that Dad wouldn't be singing it), but he surprised me with the one thing that I'd been drooling over for a while! Since Ashley and I began taking cake decorating lessons and started Treasured Cakes, I've been looking at these mixers, checking out every sales ad, comparing prices, models, etc. What a great birthday present and a great surprise! And it didn't stop there. We had a wonderful day as well. We went to Italliani's for dinner where I had my most favoritest meal - the lemon flavored tilapia over couscous, surrounded by fried spinach (yes! fried spinach and oh my! it is awesome!) and from there we went to the movie and saw Charlie Wilson's Wars which was also very good - definitely worth seeing. It was a good day.
PS: Ashley & Blake gave me a Pampered Chef stoneware Pie Plate which was pretty terrific given that I love making pies these days (Honeycrisp apples make really yummy apple pies!). I've managed to put it to good use multiple times already and am sure that it, like my new mixer, will become one of my favorite kitchen items.

Jan 14, 2008

In time, I will heal I hope

This was originally written to explain my absence between posts and thanks to 'blogspot', it has disappeared twice now....so this is the 3rd time I'm writing. Maybe that's part of the healing process? Anyway, my precious dad got sick enough to be hospitalized the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and passed into the hands of waiting angels on December 13th. There is much to the story and is still far too painful to discuss. During the time that he was in the hospital, I spent as much time with him as I possibly could given that I had just started a new job and that the hospital was a couple of hours away. I treasure the time that I was able to spend with him and miss him far more than there are words to explain. He was my strength, my friend, my advisor, my confidant and a terrific father...always!