Cakez

I've had cake conversations lately and I thought I'd dig around on the computer and see if I had any cake pictures. Turns out I did and when I remembered all the work that went into them I decided I should post them. I couldn't find all the pictures and I'm sure some of them are sitting in our storage unit in Michigan on a medium we used back in ancient times called "film."

I'm not a pro at the whole cake scene but it didn't seem like Rocket Surgery to me and I decided that it was something I could figure out. I still can't do what they do in the shops but as long as I avoid rectangles and any attempt at "smoothness" I think I'm ok. HA!

Cakes were really important to the formation of the Gomms. I made a cake for Troy's birthday when we were dating and I think that was the thing that clinched the deal :-P So here are the pictures of the cakes I could find.

The butterfly cake is from Scout's first birthday. The woven part is fondant, the rest was me playing around with different sized tips on a frosting squisher thing I had just gotten. That cake was a pain in the bum.

The soccer balls were from Kevin and Natalie's (my sister Sarah's twins) 5th birthday. I had gotten a new ball shaped cake pan but it didn't seem like enough cake so I made the cone too...mmm cake.

The Care Bear cake was from Savannah's 5th birthday. It's not that great except that it's tiny (about 6 inches) and I made one for all the kids at the party to go along with the Build-A-Bear workshop trip.


















The castle cake is already on our blog in the post about Scout's birthday but I figure if you're bored enough to read our blog you won't mind seeing a cake twice. For this one I made almost 300 tiny tiny fondant flowers and enlisted the help of my mom and dad.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008!

Happy Chinese Year of the Rat!
Happy European Year of Intercultural Dialogue!
Happy Australian Year of the Scout!
Happy International Year of Planet Earth!
Happy International Year of the Potato 2008! (w00t! go Idaho!)

And most importantly:
Happy International Year of Sanitation!

This year we can look forward to:

• January 30th - We have a 1 in 25 chance of asteroid 2007 WD5 crashing into Mars! Yikes!
• February 7 - There'll be a partial Solar eclipse over eastern Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand. Book your hotels early, it's is also Chinese New Year!
• February 14 - The Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled for mission STS-123 to add the first section of the Japanese Kibo module to the International Space Station. What better what to say Happy Valentines day?!
• February 21 - There will be a total lunar eclipse in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Western Asia. Enjoy that "Blood Moon," it's fat free!
• March 2 - It's the 2008 Russian presidential election! Sorry, Kasparov was already dismissed - darn governmental obstructions.
• April 1 - National Take Your Plants to Work Day! YES! I got my April Fool's joke in already!
• May - The Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to begin operation, it will be the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Here's hoping for a Higg's Boson for my birthday! (I'm actually really excited about this one)
• May 25 - NASA's Phoenix Lander will land on Mars! It's the first of the Mars Scout missions. Discovering the history of ice has never seemed so exciting.
• June 14 - Expo 2008 opens in Zaragoza, Spain. I just can't get excited about this one.
• August 8-August 24 - The 2008 Summer Olympics will be in Beijing, China. Is it me or does "Dancing Beijing" look like he's flailing more than dancing?
• November 4th - The US Presidential Election. Wow, this one'll be a doozy!

• Oh, also 2008 is the year you need to pick up a digital TV since all US TV broadcasts will be digital starting February 2009. You know you've been waiting for a solid excuse to pick up a digital TV!

Lots to look forward to! Happy 2008!

- Troy

Christmas at the Gomms'

Merry Christmas!

This year we're living the college lifestyle -- we're in a small 2-bedroom apartment furnished in an eclectic hand-me-down style (we call it vagrant-chic). Due to the lack of floor space, we decided to go with 2D decorating! The whole family had a lot of fun coloring and cutting out the Christmas tree as well as decorating it.

Savannah and Scout sculpted the star out of salt dough and painted it gold.

Since Santa needed a way to deliver presents, we had to make a fireplace too:Amanda hooked up a couple of strings of flashing lights to make the fire look ever so cozy.

We had a lot of fun during the vacation. We made lots of candy (fudge, caramels, divinity, and lots of cookies). I totally recommend this caramel recipe if you need a reason to gain a few delicious pounds.

We also tried making snowmen out of marshmallows, melted almond bark, and cocktail stirrers. They ended up looking nice but tasting a little too almond barky.


Now that we're in Oregon we've made a new tradition of having a Christmas hike! It rained during most of the week of Christmas, so we finally just went and hiked in the rain. It was a lot of fun! We went to Hebb Memorial Park (pretty close to where we live). Part of the park was flooded, but we were the only ones there and had a BLAST hiking through the woods! Yay Oregon!

One last thing, my brother David sent us a really cool stained glass snowflake for Christmas! He has his own stained glass studio here.


We put it up in the window and I think it brought us some luck - it snowed for a few hours on Christmas (our first snow of the year)!