A new fence, a birthday cake, and Rachel

Hi,
I am finally getting my backyard fence in proper condition. My golden retriever has been escaping out of the yard, so I am getting a new gate and an upgrade on part of the fence. Yea!

Today is Rebecca's 12th birthday. She called me the other day to ask me if I would make her birthday cake. I told her that I sure would! She is having a scavenger hunt at the mall today, so it was appropriate to do some sort of mall theme. Rachel spent the entire day with me yesterday (and spent the night!), so she helped me with the cake. When I made Adam's graduation cake, she was over here and saw how I worked with fondant. I taught her how to color it and knead it, etc. She helped me cut out letters and put them on his cake, too. So, she was ready to tackle Rebecca's cake. We talked about what kinds of things to put on it, and she started cutting letters. I made some homemade fondant Saturday, and I had plenty left. So, we used that for Rebecca's cake. We cut out letters for Gap, Old Navy, and Claire's. I wanted to put all sorts of little shapes on the cake, so we/she cut out hearts, circles, stars, etc. With the circle cutters, Rachel made the Target red circles for the cake, too. Then, we colored some of the fondant green, for the bottom layer. Green is Rebecca's "new" favorite color, replacing pink :) The top layer is pink. I think the cake turned out really cute and preteen looking. I have been wanting to do a cake like this for a while, so we did it!! Rachel rolled out the fondant, which is the hardest part of the whole process! She told me that she now knows why the big bakeries use those machines to roll out their fondant! haha! We needed two big pieces of fondant to be rolled out, so that we could cover both layers. I made some buttercream icing to go underneath the fondant, and I showed Rachel how to do a crumb coat on the cake. After we got the fondant on, I taught her how to make a star flower border. She did a great job.

Rachel has gone to the mall to help with the scavenger hunt. I am here with the dogs waiting for my gate to be made. The dogs have to come inside while the guys are working outside. I don't want them escaping out of the yard while the workers are here. Here is a picture of them doing their favorite thing...SLEEPING. Please ignore all the extra junk in the picture that is on my floor. I tried to crop most of it out of the picture! I still have all of my school stuff sitting in this living room that I brought home in June! It will just have to stay there until I go back to work in a couple of weeks.




Yesterday was the first day the guys came to fix the fence. Wouldn't you know that we had a rainstorm before they were able to finish! So, they had to come back today to make the gate. Yes, they have to make a gate from 'scratch' to fit in the space of my new fence.




Lattice was added to the top of my short fence, so that the dogs cannot get over into the neighbors' yard and jump their fence!




So, I have a new fence, a great looking birthday cake, and a wonderful daughter to spend time with and enjoy.
Have a great day!!