Stormie created a 12" x 12" white and chocolate marble cake for her good friend, Elise, while I was in Maui. In the pictures the blue looks turquoise, but the leftover icing in my kitchen was "dustier." My "baking center" is somewhat askew now, but I heard it was delicious and I know it was made with great love!
Update (Jan. 17) I was trying to remove that music so that it wouldn't assault you everytime you came to my site and I accidentally removed the whole slide show (I'll retrieve it later), but if you click on View All Images you can see the photos I posted from Christmas 07.
Pictured: The whole Rhoades tribe, left to right – Stormie, baby Gemma (7 months) held by Stephanie; Tristan holding Guini, Hunter in front of him, Gavin just behind Hunter; Tara snuggling with Dave; Rocky behind Jovan (8 months pregnant with our next granddaughter); me, Tredessa in front of me, and Dave, the patriarch
Stormie had a book bound for me for Christmas with pictures of cakes I have made in 2007. She just uploaded the pictures and made up some script and voila-I have a published volume, looking ever so official, with a UPC code and everything. It was such a cool gift. She also made me an "official" sign to hang in the car window when transporting cakes so that cars passing by won't flip me off for going slow: CAKE ON BOARD.
It is amazing. It really is. If you are driving carefully so the cake won't spill and people don't know your reason – they are mean, grouchy passers. But if you have a Cake-on-Board sign, I've discovered, they go by with a big smile and a thumbs-up. So – anyway, my sweet Stormie put together those thoughts in honor of all the cakes (see here and here, or just do a search of "cakes" on this site) I have been making.
So, my sons-in-law and other kids got to joking around on Christmas morning as they were all telling me I should go into business making cakes and off they went on a secret mission. A few minutes later I was called to the computer where they had quickly put together a website called "JeanieCakes." You can even see it here: www.jeaniecakes.com
Crazy kids! Crazy, sweet, wonderful, honoring kids!
Guess I should put together a business plan?…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Practice cake baking. Watch more Ace of Cakes! www.charmcitycakes.com
Pictured: the already well-fingerprinted cover of the book from Stormie; a view of the back part of the dust jacket featuring Audrey's wedding cake in up-close detail and a little bio of me inside; a random spread from inside showing Hunter's fire truck cake; the book face down
Well, as the first to be married, you were the ones we really practiced on! Six years ago, only 2 days after Christmas (I thought you were trying to kill me), you were married and danced your first dance – under the upside-down-white-tree-trimmed-in-crystals-and-strewn-with-thousands-of-white-lights-looking-ever-so-"giant chandelier-ish" (a similiar version hangs in The Celebration Center at Northern Hills this year, courtesy of your brother, Rocky). And Christmases have changed in their look and feel and sound ever since!
December 27, 2001 was relatively quiet and oh-so-lovely. You chose old world, and elegance: deep wine and winter white with lots of sparkle and candles in a church that overlooked the Boulder Valley-shimmering in Christmas lights – all for your wedding! It was regal and traditional with a twist: Radiohead provided the background as you danced and I am still wondering: what the heck were they saying??!?
Your love and the family you have created have, in many ways, have shaped the landscape of our family celebrations and certainly led the parade to the joyous festivities we now experience. Yes, in six, short years you've gone from being just the ever-cool, cutting-edge, on-their-way-to-London Tristan and Stephanie to the ever-cool parents of 2 awesome redheads and an adorable blond. As your family has grown, our whole family has, too, and life is a little more exciting and interesting and louder than it used to be and that is OK! It is, in fact, great!
Steph, you know we know you got the best! You chose well. Tristan, thank-you for choosing Stephanie and fearlessly becoming one of us. We all love your love for each other!
Happy Anniversary, my darling ones…mom
PICTURED: Steph & Tris with Gavin, early 2004; just the 2 lovebirds in Dec. 2004 (pregnant with Guini); Easter 2007, about a month before Gemma was born; Thanksgiving 2007 – the whole Kelley family.
My treasure has no value on the open market. My treasure is in the faces of the people I love, the letters with their kind words, the pictures small hands have painted for me. My riches aren't even the thoughtful and loving gifts my family bestowed upon me on Christmas morning (though they divined my true needs, my heart's desires in the most carefully attentive way), but the time they sanctified, the hours they set apart to spend with me. My fortune is in the minutes I collect from the people I am most passionate about – this is the true measure of my wealth.
Pictured: Hunter, age 3; Guini, age 2; Gavin, age 4; and baby Gemma, age 6 months.
Thanks to Tredessa for snapping the shot, Steph for cheerleading the smiles out of the kids and Stormie for creating my "card" to you!
Merry Christmas, with love…Jeanie
This is it. These are the final cakes of 2007, I am telling you! Even Jesus will not be getting a "Happy Birthday to You Cake" from me this year and I think He is happy to allow me that!
Each year when the kids were little, we acknowledged Christ's birth with a red and green jello-infused white cake topped with whipped cream confection. Though that "tradition" became more sporadic as they got older, it has not been unusual to have one of them ask yearly if I'll be making one. I am planning to resurrect it with vigor for the grandbabies, but not in 2007. OK? OK.
However, for Jovan's baby shower last week, I made a cake at her request. The thing about Jovan is first, she actually LOVES cake! Second she loves to dream up fancy cakes so she is challenging me, pulling me in deeper to a land of flour-and-eggs-and-sugar-and-buttercream-and-extra-ordinary-flavors-and-extracts-and-exotic-fillings I never knew existed. So, for sweet Jovan, whether I feel I can do it or not – I try and she rewards me with oohs and aahs and "I love it"s and so I attempt again, even though right in the middle of the process I am always wondering what am I doing????, to create the cake she has envisioned!
This one was much smaller than the wedding cake from the previous week. It was a 10" lemon-poppyseed with lemon-curd filling and an 8" chocolate butter cake with fudge filling.
The whole shower, thrown by her mom and sisters, was pink and brown and polka-dots at Jovan's parent's home in Frederick. It was "Jovan!" through and through.
This other cake was actually Tara's brainchild. Her good friend, Marianna from Brazil (www.thewakefields.wordpress.com ), who moved here in the spring when she married a worship pastor from Northern Hills Christian Church, was having a birthday and Tara decided to honor her with a cake of her homeland. Tara drew Brazil on foamcore, cut it out and covered it in foil. Then she baked a 16" x 16" chocolate-swiss cake (3 augmented Duncan Hines mixes). After it cooled, we placed it on the "Brazil-board" and cut the cake in the shape of the country. It was iced in the colors of the Brazillian flag and a replication of the flag was done on top in tiny stars. We wrote Marianna's name on the flag in place of the word that is usually there and Tara presented it to her, a cake that could have fed 36 people, for Marianna's and Dan's own quiet celebration. Yowzers!
I hope Duff from Ace of Cakes is happily busy while I am semi-cake-retired…until the New Year!…Jeanie
Growing up in the 60's and 70's, Christmas trees were much different than they are now. These days everyone has their very own designer-collection-themed-one-of-a-kind-specially-lit-custom-skirted tree…or two. But in the 60's and 70's there were only a couple of ways to go: a real tree, which was like 88.920173% of the population, or a you-can-really-tell-it's-a-fake tree. Ornaments were simpler – mostly shiny, round balls with a few special pieces here and there. Garland? Silver or gold, run in either a straight, but descending line or fancily looped.
We had the big C7 lights on our trees in the 60's that morphed into the tiny twinkle lights of the 70s, but since they were so small and we weren't used to that then, they had these multi-prismed, plastic cuffs that fit onto them to reflect more light.
But the one thing that was so prevalent back then – on nearly every single tree in some quanitity, something that you don't see much, for it has been out of vogue for so long now – was tinsel. Placing tinsel on the tree was the final, crowning glory – that last touch that suddenly made all the pieces a congruent work of art. My neighbor's family blanketed theirs with so much tinsel that you could barely make out the colored lights or decorations. There were friends who would place one strand of tinsel per branch-creating a tree that spoke of scarcity to me – did those people give out presents with the same reservation?
But my mom was the perfect tinsl-er. She could stand back and look and know exactly the amount of tinsel that was needed and where and would lovingly distribute it about. And suddenly, we would all step back and look and the tree had all of the tiny streamers of glittering silver tinsel it needed. It did not need even one more strand. It did not need less. It was perfect.
But tinsel became so passe. In the late 80's I moved to designer colored tinsel for my trees, which was long, and sleek and came in purple or mauve or country blue, perhaps white. But by the 90's, really, people, it was so out! There was no way I would use that stuff!
But then, I got nostalgic.
So – we have THE tree in the living room. It is well-coordinated and I do believe: lovely, and tells, through the materials I have carefully chosen, my faith story, my celebration of Christ, my decorative taste for Christmas.
But the tree in the family room, full of odds and ends from so many Christmases past, packed with school-made ornaments and artwork from my 5 children, laced with a paperchain and candy canes and C7s burning alongside tiny twinkle-lights in white, yes, but colors, too! – That tree is my Christmas past (lots of "Baby's first Christmas" found here!) and my Christmas present (now I have grandchildren adding to the ornamentation) and it is what I cherish most as I look ahead. It is heavily-laden. Stormie asked, "Where are the branches?"
It's true, as I finished I noticed that all of the stuff was was obscuring some of the light. But I knew just what to do. I grabbed a handful of wadded, fine, silver tinsel and began placing little tufts of it here and there. I actually got teary-eyed at the memory of it, but also at the revelation I received, for everywhere I tucked some in, that branch, that little area, suddenly became sparkly and well-lit, as the tinsel reflected the lights on the tree.
"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord…" 2 Cor. 3.18 NIV
I am Christmas tinsel. Some may welcome what I bring, others eschew it, but wherever I go, no matter how much darkness was there, I am a reflector and that darkness is a little less powerful.
No kidding-that is really what I got as I hung tinsel!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am happy to reflect HIS glory in the heavily-shadowed places I encounter each day. Unveil, soak up the glory.
Pictured: the family room tree, topped with my own childhood angel-hair angel from 1964
Whew! Wow, that was hard work!
Yesterday was baking day for the Rhoades women and their offspring, accompanied by Christmas music old and new. Grocery bags littered the cupboards as fresh eggs and butter and flour and all-things sugary lept from our recipe pages into Christmas-feasting existence. That is us (pictured) barely started on what would end up being nearly 100 decorated sugar cookies (from the most reliable recipe in the ever-loving world!), chocolate chip cookies from scratch at son-in-law, Dave's, request, dozens of peanut-butter blossoms and pb-wrapped Snicker bar cookies, piles of knock-off Girl Scout thin mints, tantalizingly smooth and delicious "Patrice's Perfect Truffles", my gourmet real-chocolate (both white and dark) peppermint bark, hundreds of sparkly dipped pretzels and peanut butter balls up to our eyeballs, Steph's homemade Werther's-rivaling carmel candy, raspberry ribbons from the most decadent butter cookie recipe and one slightly burned batch of English Toffee (I won't say who, but she just returned from a month in South Africa).
Guinivere joined us this year, proving to be a very dedicated cookie-decorator, along with her baby sister, Gemma – thus enlarging our circle for our girly-er family events.
The guys came over after several hours for a great meal (great because my husband took care of it!!) and we set up a gigantic Christmas train with the grandkids and watched the "Christmas Muppet Movie," as we continued to taste-test our goodies.
Oddly enough – we did not finish everything. No- there are still ingredients for the we-must-haves of the holiday season sitting here this morning. There are also balls of dough in the fridge awaiting completion. I actually made a much shorter list of things for baking this year than last (which was way shorter than the year before) AND we accomplished way less yesterday than last year. But my girls didn't think so. They looked around at the end of the day with big sighs of accomplishment and smiles of satisfaction at the 5 huge catering trays (one for each household represented) piled with all the goodies (and the promise of more to come) and said, "Well, this was the best baking day we have ever had. It was so much more organized and we got so much done." I quietly slipped my yet-to-do list into a drawer knowing that what they were really saying was: the time we spent laughing and loving each other is the sweetest of all the treats. That IS a good day, an accomplished day.
Need something sweet to eat?…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Less next year, less. It's more.
Pictured: Guini delighting in the stirring; all of us l-to-right, me, Tredessa, Stormie in the back, Tara holding Gemma, Jovan holding Guini, and Stephanie; Dessa helping Guini, the serious decorator; Tara and Stormie focusing on cookie designs; 1/1087 of our completed stuff