Home Renos 2.11 / 3.0

*My husband was corrected me this morning that this is really a new project, so going forward I'm going to consider this home reno 3.0 :)

This home reno seems to be taking just as long as the basement!  Ok, maybe not that long, but it seems like it is taking a long time since I am on blog post #11 for this renovation which was only suppose to take a month to do...so clearly we like to extend our renovations as long as we can!

Ok, to the actual renovation progress :)

This weekend we got started on the closet.  Saturday morning I woke up to John talking to himself while measuring the closet after finding a design online which he wanted to use.  Once I got up and changed, I went and helped him out, then after breakfast, we were out to Home Depot for our first trip of the day.  We bought all the wood for the frame of the cabinet and screws to put it together.  Once we got home, we started taking down the existing shelves and clothes rod.

John bought new safety goggles for the job, something he learned
was important from his dad :)

John started building the frame as I was taking parts of the closet down.

John working away on his new workbench that he built
himself.

I was going to help John put the frame together, but when we went to get started, John realized he didn't have enough screws, so I had to make another trip to Home Depot to pick up the screws.  Just when I was going to do the fun part of the building process! (Although ripping the shelves down was fun.)

Frame for the ceiling all done.

The construction of the frame got a little away from John and the cabinets are now a little bigger than we were anticipating...as they come out past where the original door was.  We were planning on them being 24" deep, he made them 27.5".  Tonight he rebuilt the frame after going back and forth all day Sunday and Monday about whether it was worth rebuilding it.  All along I knew he would rebuild it...it's scary how quickly I've learned how he thinks!

More pictures to come as he is going to work on the cabinets all week!

Cake Decorating Class #2

I had my second cake decorating class this week.  Unfortunately we were away on Tuesday (the normal night of my class), but the teacher has a class on Thursdays which I was able to join to make up for missing my Tuesday night class. This was great, because I was a little sad when I thought that I was going to miss out on the class.

We were back in town by Thursday, so I spent part of the afternoon getting my icing ready and packing my bag.  This week we needed a lot more things to take with us, so I had to upgrade from a Loblaws reusable bag to a Sobey's reusable bag.  I feel like there is so much to take, but in the end I use almost all of it!

Bag filled to the (almost) brim.

Bird's eye view.

This week's lesson was very different from the first week's lesson.  This week's lesson was completely hands on and the only time we looked at our course book was when someone wanted to see how cake was decorated in the book.  This was more of what I was expecting!

This lesson was learning how to ice and decorate a cake by doing a 3D picture. First, for those who needed to level their cakes or were going to fill their cakes, the teacher let them use her cake leveler.  I did not need to level mine, nor was I filling it this week, so I was able to get started on icing my cake right away.  With the tips I remembered from the previous week, I barely had any cake bits in my icing, which was great!

After I was done icing my cake, I started on mixing colours for the design.  I decided to do a fish and picked out some colours that I knew John would like (teal and blue), and ones that I liked (purple).  They ended up being a great combination, which everyone in the class kept commenting on.

I learned how to mix colours from a Pro (that means
you Mom ;) )

Before we started decorating our cakes, we practiced using a couple of the tips on our practice boards. 

These seem fairly easy to do, the hardest part is keeping your hand steady and the pressure consistent.  I'm assuming that will come with time.

After this, we started decorating our cakes.  The teacher taught us this technique that involves taking a picture and placing wax paper over top of it then tracing it using clear piping gel (she had her's tinted blue).  Then you flip the wax paper onto your cake and press the gel down to get the outline of the design, in my case a fish, on the cake.  Then as you start filling it in, you just cover over the gel and no one is the wiser :)

I decided to do the body of the fish in the star shapes, but the fins, eye and mouth are in a bubbley shape, which I do not ever remember seeing before.  It looks really cool and, I think, gives it a more 3D effect.

Once the fish was done, I did a boarder around the bottom, I decided to go with the up and down one from the practice board because I wanted to test it out.  I ended up putting some purple dots around the side of the cake too to give it some more colour.  Here is the final product, which I am quite pleased with!

Next week we get to do cupcakes, which we will be filling!  I'm really excited to do this! Tune in next week to see how they turn out!

Cake Decorating Class #1

My mom has always made (and continues to make) the best cakes.  For our birthdays growing up, she would always take us to the local bulk store in town and we'd get to pick out whatever cake pan we wanted and that's the cake that she would make.  She's made Winnie the Pooh, Ariel, Blue's Clue and many many more over the years.  She also would make them for the church, which everyone always loved (and still does!).  Thus, it is not surprising that I have always wanted to decorate great cakes too.  I want my children to be able to have great birthday cakes like I always did, so I have finally signed up for a Wilton Cake Decorating class!

I had originally signed up for one back in February, but it got cancelled, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as my friend Amanda was able to sign up with me for this one!  It is a lot more fun to take a class like this with someone.

Last night we had our first class, it was basically the teacher telling us all about the great Wilton products out there to buy, which let's face it, if I plan on making these for my kids, I probably don't really need, so while it was interesting to see the products and how they worked, I would have preferred to have had more time decorating.

The teacher did show us how to make the buttercream icing we'll use in the class and the different consistency you need it to be, which I found very helpful.  She also showed us how to ice a cake without getting crumbs in the icing, which come in handy because I tend to have that problem a lot...

Finally, we were able to start practicing making stars on a little practice board we have in our kits.  We had to buy Wilton's ready use icing for the first class, which comes in a stiff consistency, so we had to water it down, which was fun because the container was completely full and it was hard to stir.

 

This was after I had scooped some into my icing bag.

Once we actually had it the correct consistency, we started practicing.  While my mom let my sister and I play around with her bags and tips when we were younger, I never realized the strength and control you need to be able to consistently get the icing out.  I just did this little board, but my hand was shaking almost this entire time.  I have a new found respect and sense of awe for my mother who decorated our cakes using this technique.  Amazing!

My first time making the little stars. 

All my tools and my practice board.

 

Our course book.  The page on the right is everything that we need
to bring next week...the teacher knocked it in half, but it's still a lot of stuff!

Once we all completed the practice sheet, the teacher then was to take us all to the Wilton aisle and pick out all the things she talked about and let us ask questions, but she told us we didn't have to go, and that we could decorate our cookies (which we had to bring for the class) instead, so my friend and I decided to do that while the majority of the class left for the Wilton aisle.  Unfortunately, we were so focused on decorating our cookies, I never thought to take pictures of us decorating until afterwards, so here are some pictures of the finished project!

Pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Next week we get to decorate a cake by using a stencil for the top.  They give us three shapes to use or we can pick our own, so I have to start thinking about what I want to make!!

Home Renos 2.10

Another weekend of renos, thus another update!  We (and by we, I mostly mean John) got the painting completed!  The green wall is done and the strip around the ceiling of the grey walls are done.  I was even able to start putting away all the tools (never thought about taking a before and after picture of that...oh well).  Things went really well and we are really pleased with the end result!  Next steps now is to paint the baseboards (my job) and redo the entry closet (John's job), which, Lord willing, we will be doing next weekend! Woohoo!!

Here's some pictures from the progress this weekend...

Painting in progress

All done!

I am going to pause here and point out the new ladder John bought for the job.  You see, originally we were going to use the one ladder we own, which can be extended to reach the very top of our house...if you haven't seen our house, the top is very high therefore, it is a very tall ladder.  We were able to get it into the house and positioned on the stairs, but then realized that it was too tall as it scraped the roof a little bit while we were trying to make it lean against the grey wall in the picture below.  Once we did get it up, the top of the ladder was basically to the ceiling.  We realized this was not going to work.  We had already been to Canadian Tire Saturday morning to pick up another can of paint and some paint brushes, where John had seen this nice 4-in-1 ladder on sale, but he didn't want to spend the money.  After bringing in the ladder we already own, we quickly realized that we needed a smaller ladder and perhaps that one from Canadian Tire would work.  Therefore, we ended up returning to Canadian Tire like a half an hour after we left only to pick up the ladder he was looking at on our trip.... In the end, I am happy that he bought the ladder, although I was less happy when he tried to lean it across the ledge there in the picture to climb across and put tape on the ceiling, which he wanted me to do....fortunately I had plans and left and have no idea how he got the tape up there and is still alive :)

Back to the pictures...

View looking up the stairs.

View from the hallway.

Completed the grey strip along the ceiling

Electrical outlet changed! (This is one of my favourite things to
do because it makes the space look complete.) 

Until next weekend...

Home Renos 2.9

Well after a month and a bit since we did any renos on the house, we finally got back into it this weekend.  John finished patching up all the holes in the walls and sanding etc. in preparation for painting!  We only got the gray walls completes (which was the majority of the walls), as it turned out we didn't have enough green, so we are going to wait to do that next weekend.  Here are some pictures of what we finished this weekend!  We should be done the painting by next weekend! Eek!!

Getting started.  Have everything taped and plastic
down to protect the floors.

The little bit of paint we put on the walls before.  We were trying
to decide if we wanted grey or green on the one wall.  Green has won.

First coat of paint under way!

John hard at work.

Grey is complete!

I find the baseboards and doors really
pop now.

Tape is removed.

So fresh and clean looking now!