Winter Wedding Cake

 

I had the honor of having a few friend's ask me to make their wedding cake. Sadly we are flying out to go home tonight and won't be able to make it to the wedding, but I'll be there in cake spirit. It is a traditional wedding cake for a beautiful simple winter wedding. I love the cute little sugared cranberries! Inside it is a fabulous carrot cake and it's iced in cream cheese frosting. Mostly sad to miss the wedding but also a little sad to miss them lighting these LOVE sparklers!!!

 

 

Fancying up Frank

 

Frank is a little lopsided, only holds about 4 ornaments and we ran out of lights towards the top. Luckily we care about none of those things and have been very much enjoying his colorful company every evening. I finally finished reading the Harry Potter series to Joshua and we're on to another book. Joshua is super into this book so we've been making tea and reading almost every night to Frank's glow.

 

 

 

I made these little 3D animals for a kid's event we did with my office.

Also brought home a set for myself.

We're also particularly fond of this years Christmas card design :)

 

Frank the Fir

We are on letter "F" so this year our stubborn tiny tree is named Frank. I don't acutally know if he's a fir at all but there's also no one to contest me on it, so oh well.

Frank came to us from the side of a hill in the Umatilla National Forest in Oregon. We acquired a $5 pass to cut him down and then pulled of on a random National Forest road. We found a group of overcrowded trees and decided Frank was the one for us.

Sadly we had no saw. All we could find was a garden spade. Therefore we had to attempt to hack Frank down with a garden spade and then whittle away at the remaining strands with Josh's knife. It was windy, cold, and took quite a long time. Eventually we had success and tossed Frank in the back of Richard underneath the bikes to prolong the torture we put him through a bit longer.

Now he is happy and glowing and capable of holing about 6 ornaments on his little thin branches.

Roller Rink

 

Our friend Melissa had a birthday recently and to celebrate a group of us donned some neon, sparkles, and roller skates. After a lovely dinner of tacos we showed up to adult skate night and attempted not to fall all over.

 

As some of the more accomplished skaters there jam skated around us leaping and spinning our group grasped at the sides and attempted not to knock anyone over. Roller skating is hard! After a few laps through the black lights and disco ball we were quite tired.

 

how to sit sexy in roller skates lesson from Sabina

Eventually we rallied and most of us made it off the handrail and we had a lovely amazing 90's time skating.

Biking in Boise

 

Our last day in Boise we hopped on our bikes to explore the city. Started off googling best donuts in Boise and grabbed 4 of those- Lavender wildberry, chocolate chili stout, cardamom orange, & espresso cream filled. Then we walked around their farmer's market and then the sun started to come out. We ended up biking quite a few miles because it was so beautiful out. There was even warm wind, there is never warm wind in Seattle.

 

 

 The bike path along the Boise river winds down both sides. There are tons of cute bridges that intersect the paths so we'd bike back and forth over them. Lots of parks created pit stops along the way, stopped to watch few people attempt surfing at a little dam, saw a weasel running around.

 

After that we popped into Payette Brewery and got little taster flights. We were the only people in there so we chatted a lot with the people working and even ran into a guy who had been to Rhinegeist in Cincy. Then we found another place that had great food- I had poutine & bacon popcorn for lunch.

 

That night we biked back into downtown to a pizza place to order a Mac & Cheese with jalapeno and bacon pizza!!! It was life changing, so so tasty. Joshua was very skeptical and by the end was a true fan. Wandering around after we heard music and stopped into the Pengilly Saloon. It was free to listen, cheap drinks, and a man dressed in a colonial outfit dancing to it upfront all by himself. Fabulous.

 

 

This is our fancy place we stayed in. The porch was the best spot.

 

Idaho Snow Hike

 

After our hot springs day we drove 3 hours outside of Boise to Stanley. The scenery was all snow draped mountains and isolation. We stopped at Redfish lake and then on to find a snowy hike. The first hike we wanted to try required some 4-wheel drivin up a snowy, bumpy mountain road. We only made it about half way before we decided Richard (the truck) was probably going to run into some possible problems. We turned around and headed for hike two- Fourth of July Lake.

 

This hike was about a few miles to a snowy lake. It was nice to be outside walking around all day. It wasn't a challenging hike but hiking in the snow is still quite exhausting. We ate leftover turkey on some sandwiches for lunch, ran Richard up some hills to catch views and enjoyed the overall isolation and quiet out in the fresh snow.

That night we biked into downtown Boise, had ourselves a fancy dinner & a drink and biked home.



5th Annual Campsgiving

 

We didn't actually camp this year as the rangers said all the campsites close as soon as snow hits the ground. Turns out there are a lot of camspites not under their purview but that info was not on the internet. So we did a cool airbnb in Boise and drove northeast to hit up the hot springs. We pulled up to the first hot springs right off the road, people were there and we don't love that, so off to the next one. This one had the road into it shut down so we hiked past the gate and that little bit of snow walking got us this place all to ourselves. The sulfur smell was very subtle and there were giant pools of hot water bubbling down the rocks into more pools right next to the rushing ice cold river. I brought along my candy thermometer and found a pool to be 105 so we hopped in.

 

It was on my bucket list to go to a hot springs and it was awesome to even get it all to ourselves. We lounged in the pool, attempted a dip in the cold river (only to our ankles) and wandered around the landscape through the warm steam. Out of curiosity we put the thermometer into the water up near the part bubbling up from the earth it was 150 degrees F!!

 

 

Then we found a beautiful campsite in an empty campground and set to work making our traditional Thanksgiving dinner over the fire. Went with the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans with leeks, and spicy sausage stuffing. The stuffing was the showstopper again this year. That cast iron pan over the fire creates the  best toasty flavors. We made enough to have leftovers and ate them the night we drove back from Boise.