Catching up...Installment 1: Katie's Kakes

You know how, when you stop doing something you know you should be doing, first you feel kind of bad, then you feel really bad, and then you just get defiant? That's how I've been with regard to so many things this past month- one of which is blogging. The problem is that I've got a huge backlog now of things I've been meaning to write about so I feel like I have to write a HUGE post, which, of course, only makes me procrastinate even more. So I've decided to catch up in installments (and they're in no particular order). Here's #1...

I am now officially a Kitchenaid devotee. My stand mixer ran for two days straight last week while make a wedding cake for my friend Cindy Lynn's reception. If you've ever made 6 batches of Italian meringue buttercream frosting in one day, you know what I mean. I was holding my own until it came to the assembling and decorating part- that's where things took a decidedly Dr. Suess-ish turn (picture a lopsided, asymmetrical, Cat-in-the-hat-style job). Luckily my friend Lindsay, who is much more aesthetically attuned than I am worked some magic with a bunch of fresh flowers and saved the day, as you can see, below.

Linds and me with the finished product...



As soon as I get them, I'll post the pictures of Cindy Lynn looking STUNNING in my wedding dress, which, I must say, is one of the few very, very, very nice things I own, right up there with my engagement ring and my drop-dead gorgeous dog. More on that in a minute...

An hour before the reception started, the clubhouse was filled with bustling, capable women on a mission: to make it a night that Cindy Lynn and Mahon would always remember as the perfect start to their lives together. For me, it was the partial fulfillment of a promise I made to myself a little over eight years ago. I can picture a similar scene in the hours leading up to my own wedding reception, the wonderful sisters in our ward working their fingers to the bone so that I could feel some of the happiness and significance of that day, even as my mortified family and friends looked on, baffled as to how exactly it had come to pass that the feminist/ROTC cadet/sorority girl they knew and loved was getting married at the tender age of nineteen. And I do admit, after all this time, that at nineteen, I was a little on the young side to be getting married. But I also still believe with all my heart what I did on that day: I had found the person I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with- there was no doubt in my mind, and there still isn't. What would have been the point of dragging our courtship on? We'd found each other and there was nothing left to do but get married and grow up together. Anyway, I promised myself that someday I'd pay forward at least a small part of the kindness that was shown to me. There aren't too many things I can do that would be useful in that sense, but I can bake a cake and I can certainly lend out my wedding dress and it felt so, so good to do both of those things for Cindy Lynn, who is truly one of the most amazing people I know. Check out her blog (follow the link to the right) and you'll see what I mean.

At the end of the night I gave the boys a five-minute warning and collapsed into a chair in front of the continuously playing slideshow of pictures of the bride and groom. The emotion of the night hit me all at once and I started crying at the picture of Mahon (a boy I had know all of two hours!) and his brothers digging up potatoes. Apparently they actually do that in Idaho- kind of cool. Anyway, at that point, I knew it was time to go home and go to bed. But the hope and happiness of the evening has stuck with me, and I can't stop thinking of how almost everything that's precious to me began on my wedding day, and how I never could have imagined back then the incredible, loving, weird, hilarious, imperfectly perfect family that is my life today.