I absolutely love to cook! I don't so much care for the clean-up (that's why my most wonderful husband does it for me!), and I sometimes don't really enjoy the process, but the final product is very often worth every drop of blood, sweat & tears!

Tonight after church our Sunday School class is having a fellowship dinner in honor of a guy in our class who has just returned home from Iraq. This was his 3rd and hopefully his last tour. His wife and I went to college together and 2 of their 3 children are my childrens' ages. The meal theme is Italian. I signed up to bring stromboli! I love stromboli!! I will be making 3; one will be cheese, one beef & one pepperoni. I was also asked to make a cake for the occasion. I have been making cakes for about 5 years now. I love making people happy and sometimes the money is quite nice, but making the cake is pretty much torture! I'm amazed that I am still in this business. Actually baking the cake and making the icing is fun. Seeing the end result is fabulous (once it is delivered all in one piece). I am sure I make it much harder on myself because I am such a perfectionist when it comes to the way the cake looks. I must give my customers something they will be insanely proud of, something that I myself would pay for. And so I stress and usually I throw a few fits, sometimes there is crying involved and then I am finished. (You thought the blood, sweat & tears was just figurative didn't ya??)

So anyhoo -- here is the cake I made for tonight's shin-dig!

My handwriting is not normally so terrible. I don't know if it was sheer exhaustion or low sugar, but I nearly passed out as I was making the "my" in Jeremy. Also, the bow ... it was my first attempt at making a fonant bow. It turned out OK ... next time I'll know to do things a bit differently.