2nd annual Christmas in July

I'm sorry I haven't updated this in so long! Summer has been really busy with work. I am babysitting a good bit and teaching cake decorating classes. Recently the other Wilton Instructor quit so starting in August I will be teach 3 night time classes and 2 day time classes! We are also headed to LA Friday morning and leaving on a Cruise to Mexico with Justin's family on Sunday.

But, enough about what's to come. This past Monday we had our second annual Christmas in July party filled with ugly sweaters, a Christmas feast and of course gingerbread houses!
Katie found an awesome pink, feather tree so we decided to have a beach themed party this year. So, our gingerbread houses were also Beach houses.
We decided to keep teams the same, guys versus girls. Unfortunately, the guys had lots of issues building their house and it ended up collapsing more than once.
Here are some pictures of the event:

The next few pictures were taken by Chris:

Katie decided to made frozzen hot chocolates, this turned out yummy but we decided next time it needs to be sweeter as we continue our search for the perfect blend to match Serendipity's
Last but not least, Fweduel also made it to the party Monday I also got a new camera! I really liked my little cybershot so I decided to just upgrade from what I had. I ended up getting a Cybershot DSC-H55, it's got lots of more features than my old one. The 2 I am most excited to play around with are sweep panorama and manual settings.

Thanks for reading! And if anyone is wondering I'll still working on bloging about the road trip!

16. Bennett Place

Our bowling wiigue had been talking about visiting the Bennett place for a good while now. Actually, I believe Chris, Justin and I have been talking about going to the Bennett Place since before there was a bowling wiigue. So what is Bennett Place you ask?

Bennett Place is where In April 1865, the two commanders (Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's headquarters in Greensboro, and Union Gen. William T. Sherman's headquarters in Raleigh) met and signed surrender papers for Southern armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. It was the largest troop surrender of the American Civil War.

This weekend was the 145 year anniversary of the event. Chris found out they were having a reenactment. So, Chris, Scott, Justin and I decided we should go check it out.

There were a good number of a people there, most of just like us checking things out but there was a fair number of people dressed for the event:
The next few pictures I took from Chris:


We got to see part of the reenactment of the agreement:


And finally the Bennett brothers next to the Bennett Place sign:

We had a good time and we are glad we went. It turns out they only have the anniversary events every 5 years! But, the place it self is open most everyday for people who want to go check it out.

Thanks for reading!

11. Cuscatleco

Like most of my new experiences this one involved our wiigue. We decided to try out a restaurant most of us hadn't been to. Katie suggested Cuscatleco, a near by Mexican restaurant.
I was really excited to see that they had fried yucca in their menu. It was an appetizer and it came with fried pork, which turned out to be really yummy, and cabbage. Katie enjoyed the cabbage and I am happy to say the yucca was good! It was much, much better than the last restaurant I tried fried yucca at.
Justin had nachos with steak, I had a chicken quesadilla, Katie had a vegetarian special and I can't remember what Angelique had. We were all happy with our food and we'll going there again! It was very reasonably priced and service was good.

Thanks for reading!

1. Happy half Birthday America!!

I've decided to keep going with my new experiences as I had a lot of fun with them last year and have things still on my "things to try out" list. I'll probably continue to do them weekly like last year but I know it may not always happen. So, this year I am just going to number my experiences instead of keeping track of them weekly.

So Here is experience one:
By now everyone that reads this blog knows that most of my random new experiences involve our wiigue. After we had our Christmas in July party we decided we needed to have a Happy Half Birthday America cook out.
Justin was the lucky one who got to grill when it was 32 degrees outside.

Katie brought baked beans and the very special Stars & Stripes 3 litter soda.

For dessert I made holy cow cake. Chocolate cake soaked in a syrup made of caramel and condensed milk topped with butterfinger pieces and whipped cream.
After having the star and stripes we started to talk about whether or not people can really tell a difference between coke and pepsi or other sodas. This lead to a quick taste test. Overall most of us could tell a difference (I didn't participate as I don't think caffeinated sodas). We decided in order to really test it out we need more options and more people. So, if you are one of the lucky ones coming to celebrate my birthday you will get to be a part of the taste test!

This week I made the holycow cake, a cake for bible jump off, 2 cakes for class and a 5 flavor pound cake.
I had attempted the pound cake once before and is was a horrible failure. My 2 piece pan didn't stay together and most of the batter leaked out and burned at the bottom of the oven.
This time it worked!!

I also made pastels this week. They are basically a thin dough filled with whatever toppings you want that is then deep fried. I didn't have a lot of time before class so I just went with cheese.


That is all for now thanks for reading!

Larissa :)

Week 51 Gingerbread houses!!

I have wanted to make Ginger bread houses for a long time. So, it sounded like the perfect thing to do with our bowling wiigue! We decided to make 2 houses in teams. We had a ladies' team and a guys' team. I made ginger bread for the first time following a recipe from one of the cook books I got in Portland. It smelled really good but we didn't eat any of it. It did however work really well to make houses. I used the wilton recipe for Royal icing which held up really well.
I know I say this a lot but we had a lot of fun! I really enjoy our bowling wiigue. Here are some pictures from that night:

There are lots of more picture on facebook.

Thanks for reading!

Week 44: Halloween

Growing up in Brazil we never celebrated Halloween. When we first moved to the US grandma's church didn't celebrate it so this year was the first time I have ever celebrated Halloween.
So, this week was full of first time Halloween related experiences.
We started off the day by going to the Halloween festival at Downing creek, we went to it last year but this year Justin dressed up for the festival.
At the festival they had a guess the pumpkin weight station, and I own the pumpkin! The pumpkin was 25lbs, and I guessed 23 lbs. I came up with my guess by picking up the pumpkin then picking up Lili and deciding it weighted a little less than Lili (who did not want her picture taken).
After the festival Justin headed back home and I went to IBS with Howard, the 3rd time I've been to IBS this year. This time I only got glass pearls for my costume.
We decided to get an early dinner with Chris as we didn't really eat lunch. At dinner we ended up deciding that as Chris' parents have never had trick or treaters and as I had never been trick or treating that on the way to Katie's party we should stop by their house. They were really excited to see us! As we didn't have a halloween bucket we used our popcorn buckets. We left with almond joys, snickers and homemade treats! The next new esperience was going to a Halloween Party. Katie and her roomate decided to have a 20s themed party. I borrowed Margie's flapper dress and her gradmother's head piece.
I made my necklaces and were my wedding pearls. Justin got a hat and suspenders to go with his suit.

My baking experience of the week was making a cake for the party. This cake was A LOT of fun to make. I love how it turned out! I am not usually proud of my cakes, but this is possibly the cake I am most proud of so far. The top 2 layers are vanilla with vanilla butter cream and the bottom layer is chocolate with vanilla butter cream. it's all covered with fondant, the black fondant was homemade the rest was store bought. Homemade fondant tastes a lot better than store bought, but it's a pain to work with. The flower is gumpaste.
Thanks for reading!

Week 34: Drag bingo and minnie mouse

For a couple months now our bowling wiigue has talked about going to drag bingo and we were finally able to go this week!
In addition to your original bowling wiigue (Chris, Katie, Justin and I) our friend Angelique, and Megan, a friend of Chris's who was visiting from Boston, joined us for the event.
Drag bingo is a fund raising event that happens once a month at the Durham Armory, and the money goes to Aids Alliance of Carolinas. Each month the event has a different theme. This month's was Broadway.
I can't remember the last time I played bingo was. Between each game of bingo there was a performance by one of the Drag Queens.
No one at our table won a game, but it was still a lot of fun. We are planning on going back either for the nutcracker or the holiday theme events later this year.

This weeks baking experiment was another cake order.
This time they were for a Minnie mouse theme 2nd birthday party.

These were fun to make! They are chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream and fondant details.

Thanks for reading!