Whitney's Baby Shower Cake

I have decided that baby shower cakes are my favorite. There was one I worked on at cafe Columbine (well I think it was a baby baptism cake) where I made cupcakes with white calla lilies on top. There is just so much more you can do with baby colors and designs...that don't look too cheesy/ themey (I know, not a word... but there is just not a better substitute for what my friend Kristy called-- in reference to an elephant themed room she had seen-- like an elephant threw up all over the room).

And my latest undertaking was inspired by this Land of Nod bedding:





This was what I came up with:



The above pic is a back view, which I was not anticipating (for some reason I pictured it being on a buffet or something where no one would see the back...but I thought it turned out not too hideous from a 360 view :)

Me and the soon to be mom of "CHC"--love how the monogram looks! (I refrained from giving the name out yet in case she changes her mind on baby boy's name. Also, in case there are haters out there that have something to say about the name of an unborn child whose parents have every right to name him/her Green Bean Jones if they want...don't read too much into that one :).

Congrats Whitney, and cannot wait to meet your new addition!

Valentines Day...and older stuff

***Warning: REALLY, REALLY Long post because I have a lot of catching up to do!***All events are in reverse order***

Valentines Day (or Balemtimes Day)

David and I haven't really ever celebrated V-day, but this year we have been a part quite a bit so far, and David planned a really romantic date for us on Sat (which is really the 13th so we still haven't celebrated Valentines Day ON V-day). So the first part of this post is going to be me bragging on my wonderful husband, so please bear with me :)

David is really creative. He probably would disagree with that statement; however, he's funny.... I think funny people are naturally creative. So here is what he did for our Valentines day (which he calls Balemtimes Day so that we have a holiday that is all our own :) Let me back up and explain...sometimes funny turns into ridiculously silly, but that's why I love him! When we were dating we he started this thing where he would switch the v's for b's. Then he started saying things where he switched the w's for m's...now I gues it has progressed to also switching out n's for m's. He likes to have a language all his own (If you know a Jones this would not seem so strange :)

So we get in the car and he has a CD playing of songs that mark our history together in somewhat chronological order. For example we used to sing this song together in the car when we were dating by the Postal Service that had a guy and girl part and that song was right after the son Forever, by Ben Harper which he put on the first mixed CD he made me after we had been dating a month (this mixed CD also had songs like "I'm gonna love you more than anyone" by Gaven DeGraw...I was wondering if he was trying to tell me something :)...but to his credit he wasn't, he just really likes those kind of songs!

Then we head to one of my favorite restaurants, the Mad Platter. Here is a pic the waiter took of us.

At dinner he had cards to give me at different courses... most of them we had gotten in the mail from my grandparents or mom, but it was still fun (The last one was a Balemtimes card made by David:). Then he had a final "card" but it was a gift certificate for a massage! I cannot tell you how much massage is my love language (Gary Chapman, you left one out!). I was totally NOT expecting any sort of gift...because just going out to eat together is a gift these days! And my week this past week was terrible! Car broke down, forgot two appointments, bombed a test, had a million things do PLUS a presentation...I guess he felt sorry for me.

Then, we headed to The Boiler Room Theater for Fiddler on the Roof. (David had planned on taking us to my fav frozen yogurt place, but dinner was three courses... and took a long time.) The guy who played Tevye was AWESOME....the papas........tradition. It was a pretty good show and the theater only seated 100 or so, so every seat was a good one. This is us just before the show...in the car....I don't document very well so most of our picture consist of one of us with an extended arm holding the camera.


Then we came home and attempted a full outfit pic...that didn't work out so well...

So we took this :)

We had gotten some ice cream on the way home and decided to eat it while we watched Community...hilarious! David usually gets comfortable (and by comfy I mean down to his skivvies), so I look over and this is what I saw on his arm.

Now, I know he hadn't had time to get a tattoo, but it looks kind of real... I wasn't too worried though. This was the final surprise of the night...for those of you who know us well, the picture will make sense...for those of you who don't David has called me this since I can remember. I don't know, it just stuck! (This came from a fortune cookie we got on our anniversary weekend to PF Chang's!) Maybe he will start calling me Nan-gua!


Snow Storm 2010
(For our friends in CO, this will seem humorous, and yes...everything was shut down for a couple of days :)
Here are some pics:



Notice the U-Haul in the background......poor people who had to move in the snow!

We stayed in ALL weekend... it was a nice retreat for the two of us to not have to go anywhere (we both work three out of the fourish days David is home). This is mostly what we did........fix food!


Also, the snow here is not quite the wonderful powdery goodness that we got in the big CO. It's more like this...


And finally, David's First Day of School Pic:
I think he was re-enacting his first day of kindergarten pic... all geared up for the great unknown of Chiropractic School, armed with burnt almond flour cookies and a suitcase :)

Merry Christmas...............hey better late than never!

SO... we have been a bit delayed in our 2009 Christmas Card.
Here's why: January's seem to bring a lot of change for the Jones family. January 2006- marriage, January 2007- moved, January 2009- moved across the country on a whim :), January 2010- decided to live in two separate cities... and also move again (just to the other side of town for now)!

So here is our 2009 Christmas Card... (see past years below if you have no idea what I am talking about)
2008
2007
2006

(Eryn Here) David has decided to be a Chiropractor! Let me back up a bit to the beginning of last year. You may have read a year ago in our 2008 Christmas Card that David had mono... well it turned out to be a bit more chronic than that. Over the last year he suffered quite a bit of health trials. We tried many things that did not seem to work. I decided to go to the chiropractor in September and David went along with it, getting a set of free x-rays because he was a relative of mine. Then he got his x-rays back and saw that his spine was pretty jacked up. We noticed a change in his energy levels a few weeks after beginning treatment, and now, with living a healthier lifestyle, he seems better than I can remember him being! I am so grateful that he is back to his usual funny, energetic self. He also gets to take in an Ultimate Frisbee game or two on Saturdays.

He is currently staying four nights with his sister Sarah in Atlanta, GA. Sarah and Chris have been so gracious to let him stay with them so much! He comes home on Thursday afternoons and leaves Sunday after church [our church (which we love and feel blessed to have found) is at night]. So I relish my time with him. Even though he is tired from driving, he works teaching a weekend class at a community college (so we can live :). He also teaches an online class in his "spare time". Even though he does all of these things, and is tired from driving when he gets home, he still finds time to serve around the house. I'm so glad I married such a servant-hearted man!

This past year God really blessed him with jobs tutoring and adjunct teaching. He brought home the bacon but didn't have to work a 9-5 job when his health wasn't 100%. His most interesting teaching stories came from the community college. There were government incentives for moms who didn't finish college to go back to school this year. David taught many middle age ladies who called him "son". David, being the polite southern boy he is, would answer, "Yes, ma'am?"! Must be weird giving out grades to people who you feel you should call "ma'am".


(David here) Here’s an update on what has been going on with Eryn in 2009. First, the supportive wife that she is, she transferred from Colorado Christian University to Lipscomb to continue her Master’s in Counseling after I got sick. Once back in Nashville, Eryn committed herself to her studies (4.0, baby!), and also helped to support us by babysitting on the side. As a matter of fact, she basically raised a pair of newborn twins for a few months. Their mom was from Hong Kong, and their dad was in the Italian mafia (we don’t know this for sure, but he would use terms like “I took care of it” and “I know a guy”, and he paid her large amounts in cash saying “I know I would prefer cash, so here ya go”, and he was very vague about what he did, explaining it in a way that sounded suspiciously like money laundering).

Over the summer, Eryn’s mom Rhonda got very sick, having multiple surgeries on a large tumor in her abdomen. This meant that on top of her other responsibilities, Eryn also traveled to Memphis and back every week for a couple of months. Basically she’s amazing. More importantly, though, we were both so glad to be so close (not in Colorado) and be able to be with Rhonda and the rest of Eryn’s family during that hard time.

In the fall, Eryn started an internship at the Agape Counseling Center on top of her other classes. She is learning a lot and has about 10 clients now. I am constantly amazed at her insight into people and her counseling intuition. She has helped me a lot too as I have been struggling with a new direction in life. She asks “how does that make you feel” a lot (not really, but that’s what I always think of when I think of counselors….in fact, she asks very good penetrating questions that always help me to see things more clearly).

Well, I think that’s all that’s been going on with Eryn. She continues to do wedding cakes on occasion, counsels all day long, takes care of me at night, and is all around the best wife I can imagine.

So to recap 2009:

- Moved across the country in one weeks time (from the time we decided to the time we moved into our Nashville apartment)

- Eryn went to Grad school

- David made life-changing health decisions and got his energy back

- David made a career change

- We moved, again (if you count December 31^st move to our new Nashville apt)

- Will move again in a couple of months to Atlanta… oh yeah, move number 6, here we come!

Fall Photo Shoot

As promised (from several blogs ago), here are some pictures of me and David in case you forgot what we looked like.

The first ones are of us at a park nearby. The sun was setting so we got some good ones with a handy flexible tripod (I'm not sure about the brand, but we love ours... it hooks onto lots of things like trees etc. and is really small and lightweight).





This one....

.. was actually cropped from a picture like this one to look like we were sitting on something.. we were trying to go all Olan Mills on a budget, ok!


And here is the only picture I got of us from Aly's wedding. I guess I was too focused on taking pictures of my cakes :)

Wedding Cakes Galore

This weekend David and I ventured to believe (or really I did) that we could pull off three wedding cakes for two weddings, nine tiers in all, two chocolate iced German chocolate cakes, and seven buttercream frosted cakes in flavors butter pecan, vanilla, chocolate, carrot, and strawberry!

We really felt blessed by several things along the way. First, a church that we no longer go to (but one I once worked for) allowed us to use their church kitchen space for free. Second, my industrial mixer broke halfway through the icing making process, but after seven or so hours it still wasn't going. So we prayed over the mixer (sounds corny, but we needed God to heal it through the laying on of hands :). David took it apart, looked around, got some goo on his pants, and then decided to put it back together. Then after a few times of starting it it magically worked the rest of the day!

The deliveries went pretty smoothly and I was proud of the weekends worth of work. God really help me not to stress out like I would have. Actually a friend of ours talked about the verse where the Israelites ask God to give them only what they need for the day (not too much so they would forget Him and not too little so that they would be angry with Him). Sounds weird to have a scripture motto for a cake making process, but it totally helped me!


Here is the first cake. Please ignore the fire extinguisher in the background. We set up the cake in the kitchen because the wedding and reception were all in the same place. So they did a turn around after the wedding-- everyone went outside and they transformed the sanctuary.

This next cake was of my friend Alyson Williams' wedding. She married Stephen Strickhausen (think about that monogram for a sec...and we'll come to that in a bit:) Her wedding was in downtown Franklin. Cute church and old historic home that is not a catering company. It was beautiful. This was the first wedding where I made a cake that I actually got to go to and hear peoples comments. I would try to be all stealthy and walk around the tables of people eating cake and watch their faces and try to hear their reactions :)

Funny side note: We had stored the cakes in the freezer the night before the weddings. Apparently the freezer was negative 100 degrees because after five hours the bottom two tiers were still frozen when they cut the cakes, well there was an outer perimeter of about two inches that they could cut. I was really embarrassed at first. The catering guy who was cutting the cake was like, "Oh don't worry about it, you're new at this.... you'll know for next time". HA! Little did he know this was my twelfth or so wedding cake + delivery! It turned out to not be that big of a deal. Except that they broke their lovely serving knife on the cake toward the end, oops :) But one of my friends I overheard saying, "Wow there is one chocolate cake that has a frozen strawberry center.. I've never seen that before!" Even though that wasn't the intended effect, I think the frozen thing turned out to not be too big of a deal after all.





Here are Aly and Stephen taking their first dance.

And here they are cutting the cake.


***WARNING*** ***CENSORED***




So back to the monogram thing. Alyson and Stephen decided that it would be a funny joke to put their monogram on the grooms cake. They had been getting wedding gifts with their monogram (towels and mugs and such) with "SSA" and they just wanted to have one momento of the "real" monogram. Since their parent okayed it, I decided it would be alright to draw a lovely A** monogram for them, trying to make the middle "S" look significantly bigger and pronounced. Apparently someone took a picture of it and sent it to Jay Leno for his headlines bit!