CAKE CREATIONS

Photo collage made with Smilebox

So as many of you know....back in July, one of my best friends Whitney and I took and completed the Wilton Cake Courses tought at B.Y.U. We are just starting to work on our profile but in the past 3-4 months I have had the opportunity to make several cakes. I really enjoy it and it allows me to be creative and do something that I really like and that challenges me. Anyway, here are some pictures of some of the cakes I have done. I am available for hiring so if you need a birthday cake, wedding cake or a cake for any other special occasion, leave me a comment and I would love to create a one of a kind cake for you! I am working on getting a cake blog put together, but here is a taste of my work for now.

Grandma Bowers

This past Monday December 20,2010 we lost Brian's sweet Grandma Agnes Blair Roach Bowers. Although she was Brian's grandma....she always treated me as if she was my grandmother. She was such an AMAZING woman!! She passed away at the age of 93 and had been married to her sweetheart Judd Bowers for 72 wonderful years. She had such an inspirational outlook on life and was such a great example of service.

Brian and I had the opportunity to go down to Arizona in June and visit with her and grandpa. It was so nice to see them and it was very hopeful to see that they were both so active at their age. It is so refreshing to see such an exemplory example of love and support and I feel that if Brian and I can be in love like they were....we truly can make it through anything. I hope that in seventy years we can be as happy and in as much love as they are.

She had a very fulfilling life as a school teacher and later after she retired, she continued to tutor children. Just a couple of years ago, she was honored by the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Ageless Heroes for her contributions in the Love of Learning category. She absolutely loved the outdoors, whether it is the beauty of Alaska or the serenity of the Arizona dessert. One of her favorite things to do was to hunt with Grandpa and her sons. She recently went on the deer hunt with Grandpa and when she was in the hospital over the weekend, she mentioned that she was hoping to get her strength up so that she could go turkey hunting in April.

She loved to golf and up until October when the weather stopped cooperating, she continued to golf. Brian has many fond memories of golfing with her along with many other activities they did together. Along with that I will cherish the memories I have of her and Grandpa as well.

We Love you Grandma Bowers and you will ALWAYS be in our hearts and memories. As much as we will miss you we know that you are in a Beautiful place in Heaven and hope we will get to see you once more.

We know that it will be difficult for grandpa to adjust to life without her there, but we know that he is a strong person and will get through this difficulty. He is still very active and as much as we know that he will long to be with her again....we do know that one day they will be together in the eternities. We love Grandma and Grandpa Bowers SO much and we will miss grandma very much!!

Miss Madison & Her Heart

About 6 weeks ago, some of my dear friends Mark & Michelle received some devastating news that precious little daughter Madison needs a heart transplant. Madison is 17 months old and has a twin brother Cooper. They are both such sweet little spirits and we continue to keep their family in our prayers. Madison is diagnosed with Wolfe-Parkinson White Syndrome (abnormal heart arrhythmias) and Hypertrophic Cardiomypathy (heart muscle too thick.) Due to the thickness of her heart muscle, her heart is unable to function properly so her little heart is working TOO hard resulting in the valves leaking and a few other symptoms. She is currently on the Heart Transplant list as a 1A status. Her parents are writing a blog following her heart transplant journey and you are welcome to follow along Here

As soon as we heard that she was being placed on the transplant list, we immediately started thinking of things that we could do to help the Hiles family through this very difficult time. My work, Diamond Rental is doing fundraisers and so many people have stepped up to the plate to see how they can help. It has truly been so amazing and enduring to see how much love and support EVERYONE has so selflessly given to this family. One idea that came to my mind was “The Festival of Trees,” which is such a great opportunity to help raise money for Primary Children’s Medical Center. If are you not familiar with The Festival of Trees, 100% of the proceeds raised there will go to Primary Children’s Medical Center. When Madison receives her new heart, the surgery will be done at this state of the art facility.

So I decided to donate a tree in Madison’s honor and titled it “A Heart for Madison.” It was such a Wonderful experience to decorate a tree and see it through from my beginning sketches and thoughts I had for it all the way to the end when it was fully decorated which completely reflected her cute little personality. Although I did look I got in a fight with a cat with scratches from the floral wire we had to use to wire ALL of the lights and ornaments onto the tree with, it was TOTALLY worth every moment! I am so amazed at how many people donated their love, time and not to mention the financial aspect to this AWESOME event every year. THANK YOU to everyone who contributed love, support and money to our tree. We went all out on our tree making it as beautiful as the sweet little girl that is was honoring. I really feel so appreciative that I was able to help in this small way and I will Never forget it!!

Believe it or not, there really is a tree under all those ornaments. I chose to do hot pink and lime green because I LOVE those colors especially because they capture sweet little personality of Miss Madison

Two twin teddy bears under the tree- representing Cooper and Madison

I truly love this family and I hope that they know that if they need anything I will be there to help in any way that I can. I pray that Madison can stay as healthy as possible until she receives her new heart. I also pray for their entire family as they are going through such difficult trials. As I said in my last post, I believe with all my heart that our Heavenly Father will watch over and protect us and he has promised that he will not give us any trial or situation that we can not overcome. I also know that he will NEVER make us go through our trials alone…he will ALWAYS be there to help, we just have to ask for his help. I am so happy to know that they are an eternal family and that they WILL be together FOREVER Mark and Michelle are such Amazing, Wonderful and STRONG people and I know that they will get through this. Please keep their family in your prayers!

Emotions

For the past few weeks my heart has been filled with SO many different emotions and with the Holiday season among us it makes me think about all those trials and struggles that we all go through. Although Brian and I have our own trials, this time of year always makes me think how very lucky we are and how we truly have SO much to be Thankful for. I know that there are people in this world and even in our own neighborhood that have SO little and they still have such an AMAZING attitude.

My whole life I have ALWAYS truly believed and lived my life with the attitude that “Everything happens for a reason,” whether we are going through good times or bad times…I truly believe this with ALL of my heart. I know that Heavenly Father will not give us any challenge that we cannot endure and that is SO very comforting to me. However, at the same time as we are going through the trials in our lives, it is VERY hard to think that these trials will only make us stronger. I am SO eternally grateful that I have the knowledge of this doctrine. It has helped me through some VERY difficult times in my life and there is NO DOUBT in my mind that it will continue to help me through touch situations.

Some Thoughts- Inauguration Day 2009

WOW!! What a historic day!! I really can not believe that the first black president in the history of our Great nation, Barack Obama is being sworn into office today!! What a HUGE milestone for our country. Personally, I ALWAYS knew that someday I would see the first black president, but I always imagined our first black president being SO different from him!! I always imagined our first black president being more like Martin Luther King Jr. The president obviously faces HUGE challenges going on in our country right now and I pray that he will be able to be guided and pull our nation out of the terrible slump that we are in right now and get it back on track to become the BEST nation that we really are! I feel so honored and gracious to know that I will be witnessing this milestone during my lifetime. I definately DO NOT agree with a lot of his policies, but I do honor the fact that he is our president and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it, so I might as well sustain the fact that he is in office to stay and see what happens. As much as I agree that our country does IN FACT need a change, I truly fear the future of our country! His speech today stating “choose HOPE Over FEAR” has a nice ring, but I can’t seem to get over how afraid I am. I will continue to pray that he will be able to unite our nation in this tough time.

On Sunday night, I was watching a show on the History Channel about Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the racial segregation. What a GREAT man he was and what GREAT things he and other influential black people did for our country. The thing that has always absolutely amazed me about Martin Luther King Jr. and the racial issues that surrounded him is how recent it all was, it was ONLY about 46 years ago that all of these issues were at the It made me SO sad and scared, but also at the same time very PROUD at the same time that we as a nation could grow so much. As proud I am of this major growth in this country, I am however, very afraid that this major milestone will cause some of those past issues of racial segregation and hatred to unveil their ugly faces in present times. As much as I don’t want to admit it, there are still issues in other areas of this nation that still suffer from these degrading issues! We are all God’s children and he loves EVERYONE no matter their skin color, height, weight, religion or beliefs. I wish for one day everyone could become more Christ-like and love EVERYONE!! I hope and pray with all of my heart that we can show how strong we are as a nation and come together to be united even in the mix of all of our differences in these ever growing times of uncertainty. Do we really need any extra separation and hostility between each other while we are at war right now with other countries?

New Haircut

For the last few months, I have been going back and forth on whether or not to cut my hair. Until about Friday I had made my mind up that I was NOT going to cut it and let my hair grow out. However, I went into my hair stylist on Friday after work and while I was in the chair, I decided to cut off about 6 inches and do a long bob!! Pictures to come soon :) I am still trying to get used to the change, but I really do like it and it is a nice change.

Kicking Off 2009

I feel as though January has flown by even faster than last year (if that is even possible.) I don’t really do the whole New Year’s Resolutions I just set little mini goals all year round and that way it’s a lot easier for me to stick to them! My overall goal this year is to be “HEALTHIER” By no means am I unhealthy (other than the fact that I have Multiple Sclerosis :) ), but I just want to try and make a more conscious effort to cook more healthy meals at home, eat healthy snacks and as a result I think I will be more HEALTHY. I have been off soda pop and carbonation for about 6 months now so that won’t really be an issue (Hopefully Brian will follow in my footsteps) plus as many of you know, I have been practicing Yoga for the past 9 months and another mini goal to help me in my Healthy kick is to practice at home EVERY morning, not just when I practice at the “It’s Yoga” studio- (Dean is an AMAZING instructor and friend- Thanks again!!) I absolutely love YOGA and I can tell such a huge difference whenever I do my practice, even if it's just for 30 minutes it seriously makes my day SO much better!

To kick off 2009, Brian and I didn’t do anything too eventful. I had a killer migraine on New Year’s Eve, so we didn’t do much as far as ringing in the New Year. However, we did get a surprise phone call on New Year’s Eve day from one of my Best Friend’s Marchezt that they were on the road coming up from Las Vegas. I was really bummed that they could make it up here during Christmas so it was a WONDERFUL surprise! They didn’t get into town until really late New Year’s Eve, so we got together with them along with her brother and sis-in-law Nick & Chelsie over at our house on New Year’s Day! We watched TRAITOR which was Really good and had Brick Oven Pizza and Blackberry Smoothies (Thanks to my Blendtec blender J ) We also got some WONDERFUL news in the form of an text announcement from our great friends Erin & Clay that they are expecting their first baby in July and we are SO excited for them, Congratulations!! Another one of my friend’s Lisa had her adorable baby boy Tate David on January 17- Mom & baby are both healthy and happy!! We are so thankful that we have such Wonderful friends that are good influences for us!

I’m SO glad that 2009 is starting out with so much WONDERFUL news!- Hopefully more and more good news will follow throughout 2009.