A painful blessing

In my life, I am blessed. I have many people to love me. I have a mom, 2 dads, a step mom and a step dad, as well as many sisters and brothers. Today, with great sorrow, I said goodbye to one of those dads.
The story of my fathers is inconsequential, but for the sake of confusion, I have my biological dad, my dad who raised me and my step dad, who loves me like his own. It's a blessing combined to have the three of them.
Three months ago, the very last thing I would have thought was that right now we'd be preparing for a funeral. Two months ago, I was preparing to have 2 years left to spend with my biological father, and 2 weeks ago, I began to tell him goodbye, b/c we found out that we only had weeks.
The blessing of having many people to love you is that you feel so supported in every sadness of your life. If only it could make the pain less, is all I keep thinking.
My biological father was who he was. He was a loving, groucy, country, fishing, beer loving, hammer swinging man. He was not perfect, and neither am I. He did love me, and I will always love him, nothing could ever change that. The pain the he endured hurt me more than anything in my life, and when our prayers of his passing on Friday morning around 5 am were finally answered, I felt as though God had lifted a huge weight off of my heart.
My heart hurts for me now, but not for him. He no longer hurts, he's not longer agonizing to breathe, no longer can his body betray him. I can see him in my mind, sitting with my Gramps, perhaps wondering where in Heaven you can get Busch....
My mind can't help but wander forward to the days that will be to come, how I will feel as the pain of watching him pass goes away and the pain of missing him fills that void. I have vowed to remember all of the good times, have long forgiven any bad, and will teach my children about their Gramps right along side loving their PawPaw Bill and PawPaw Ray. The final moment that they spent with him he was able to pull from somewhere in his tortured body a smile a laugh and some comfort for them, so they will not remember him in pain.
I pray for my stepmom, for all my brothers and sisters. I stand proud of my brother Robert, who I had always seen as a child. He stood strong for his mother and our sister, and gave them the strenght they needed. I'm proud to call him my brother. I pray for closure for all of us. He was a man with many children, may each of them carry a happy memory of him to their own children as they grow.
I ask that you pray along with me for those he left behind, but rejoice with me that God has taken his child away from this painful life into a life of everlasting Glory and painlessness. May we meet again some day, all of us, past a rainbow in the sky, and live forevermore.

Starting the Christmas Joy!

We have ALOT going on in our family right now that's emotionally hard, so we decided to start Christmas EARLY and share the joy.
It's a yearly tradition with me and the kids to make ornaments. You will see several installments of them this year I'm sure. But..today I was shopping online and saw this ornament that a store had for sale and thought..HMM..I have all the things to make those, so we did!

Here's our inspiration:



Well, we didn't have the elongated bulbs, but I did have round ones. So..for this project you will need:

• Round glass bulb, that you can fill
• Some white sparkly stuff (we used white snow sequins)
• Sharpies
• Wire
• Something to make earmuffs with, we, being the caking family, used fondant with tylose in it, but you could use clay, you could use small foam balls cut in 1/2, you could use playdoh

First, take the top off of your ornament and fill part of the way with the "snow"
Then..draw on your face with the sharpies, this is where personalities come into play!
THEN..put on your earmuffs with a drop of glue and stick the wire into them







Make sure you write your name on the back and the year!!

Have fun crafting,
Heather and the kiddos!!

The finished cakes

These are the cakes that my friend, her DIL and I did for her daughters wedding. They did an awesome job on the wedding cake, which they did all by themselves!! I made the flag, emblem and seabee on the grooms cake, and they did the cake before I got there. I'm so proud of them, and I know they were proud to have done that for their family! It was a beautiful wedding also! Congratulations Jessica and Anthony!

Grooms grooms grooms

Seems this is the week for grooms cakes! I am helping a friend work on a grooms cake for her son to be, as well as having a grooms cake order.
My friends SIL to be is a Navy Seabee, and she wanted to show that on his grooms cake. Although she has done many cakes, she had never done what needed to be done to make the bee, so we worked on it together.

We made a royal icing plaque of the bee, as well as making an edible image plaque of the Naval Emblem. Tomorrow we'll finish the cake, and she'll finish her wedding cake, how proud she must be to make a wedding cake for her own daughter!!

I'll be sure to share those pictures with you.

My order this week was rescheduled from Gustav, when poor Baton Rouge took such a hard hit. Our groom wanted to honor his puppy, as well as LSU, his favorite school. So..I made a chocolate chocolate labrador to go on top of his cake, and made a collar for him with LSU colors and all.

The lab took about 1 1/2 lbs of chocolate to make and smelled divine!! Chocolate cake with buttercream icing and some fondant doggie bones. Really fun to make, and I hope they enjoy it thoroughly!!

Thanks so much for sharing these cakes with me. I'm not doing many cakes right now...due to a sick family member. One day, when I have more energy and less emotion I'll blog about that. Please continue to pray though for him, he needs all of them that he can get.
Heather

An award to pass on

Jacque at Daisy Lane Cakes graciously gave me this award this month. Seems there are some rules for this award:


Find 5 blogs, of any kind that you love to read.
Write a post about the blogs you picked, linking back to them.
Make sure you let them know you gave them an award.


So...I'm handing this award over to three blogs that I dearly love, and watch daily. One for each of my obsessions in life. My kids, my cakes and my photos.

First: Kids (they always come first)
Mata Mania, Carla, and awesome mother and friend. (She also makes a mean cake and cookie and shares my Disney obsession.) Most days you will find Carla hanging out with her awesome kids!

Second: Cakes (I have to tell you, these days I go back and forth between cakes and my camera coming 2nd...but this lady is DEFINITELY top on my list of cake obsessions. Not only does Sharon at Sugaredblog make AWESOME cakes, but she's a killer friend and my partner in crime on many occasions. If you have a cake obsession, her site www.sharonssugarshack.com, will definately help you out, and if you have an obsession to MAKE perfect cakes, her DVDs at www.sugaredproductions.com are the bomb.

Third: Pictures (hence the "lens" part of my blog name) This woman is a HUGE inspiration to me, her style of photography speaks to me! If only I could learn to take pics like her, I'd be a happy camera girl and probably NEVER mention cakes again. Wild Spirit Photography is just an AWESOME blog to watch for inspiration for pictures, so she's recieving the award on the merit of being spectacular behind the camera!

Thanks again to Jacque for the award, she rocks, btw. And..Jacque, any time you're out my way, you're welcome to some more of that jambalaya. I thought of you the other day when I made it for my cubscouts!