Chef Sam

Sam's mom came by for a quick visit last Friday night on drive back to St. George from Milwaukee. We only got to see her for a few hours, but she brought us a treasure from Sam's first grade class:



The booklet has a little caption for each kid, "Most likely to be a teacher," "Most likely to be Mayor of Mequon," "Most likely to be an astronaut." They are all darling, but this one is obviously the cutest.

A lot of times people ask me what it's like to be married to a chef, especially a pastry chef. People ask me (sweet) things like, "How do you not weigh 600 pounds?" after eating one of Sam's delicious treats. [Nevermind I feel like Cate and I are getting there even without tons of treats, but that's another story.] People usually preface a dinner invite with something like, "I'm sure you're used to much fancier meals than what we'll have, but we'd love to have you over."

The truth is, Sam doesn't bake much at home in our barely mediocre oven, we don't eat dessert with every meal, and we take the easy way out and have spaghetti a lot of nights just like every other family.

Nevertheless, it's a sweet life.

I love my Chef Sam.

Heidi and Larry's Wedding

Our friends Heidi and Larry got married this weekend! The reception was at Em's Restaurant on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake. It was a beautiful August day. Here are the new bride and groom:



And one where you can actually see the groom--here they are: Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Jameson, III



It was fun to see so many friends there! Allison and Brett get a special shout out because Allison is one of the few people I know for sure actually reads our blog!



Here is one of Sam and me--Cate is actually in this photo, too. She's all around the edges of my cheeks and just below my chin, particularly on the left.


Seeing this photo makes me realize why, as we were walking up the stairs at the temple to get to Heidi and Larry's wedding, one of the people working in the temple said to me, looking at my belly, "Oh, you should take the elevator on the way down," as if I might or might not go in to labor during the sealing. Oh boy. If only she knew Cate wouldn't be here until Christmas. It was kind of like the lady at the Southwest check-in counter who said to me last weekend, "Is someone due soon?" to which I responded (nicely, very nicely), "Um, I'm sure someone is, but I'm not!" Or the very kind woman at church today who said, "How much longer do you have to go?"

Do I really look that uncomfortable?

Anyway, back to the wedding. Here are the Cabo girls:



A lot has changed since our awesome trip to Cabo in May 2008. Back then Allison had just gotten married, and now she's had one adorable little girl and is pregnant with number two. I've gotten married and Cate is on the way. Heidi's gotten married and both she and Melanie have bought condos! All of which seem like very grown up things to do compared to racing out to the beach and seeing how much guacamole we could eat and how many fruity drinks we could drink in a day!

Another Cake

Here are some photos of a cake Sam made this weekend. Sorry about the bad lighting, but hopefully you'll get the idea. The most impressive thing about this cake? It really does look exactly like the picture the bride gave him. Oh, and that he made it on Day 20 of 22 days of straight work without a day off. It's wedding season!

It's a GIRL!

Sam and I got the biggest surprise of our lives this week when we found out Cate is on her way to join our little family! Wow, we were both SO SURE it was a boy! It has actually been fun to be so surprised--I just love surprises--and if it had been a boy I wouldn't have been surprised at all!

Within about 5 minutes of leaving the dr's office we had decided that what I had thought was a great gender-neutral nursery idea (vintage carnival using primary colors) would simply not do for our little princess. In fact, a few weeks ago after seeing a very girly rug in the children's section I said to Sam, "You know, if it's a girl I might regret not doing pink and purple." He said, "Well, if it's a girl we can just change it. We haven't done that much." But, we both agreed, it's a boy. That conversation is one of maybe three we've had in the last five months about the possibility of having a girl. We were both just so sure it was a boy!

We are sure excited about filling our Cate's room with sugar and spice and everything nice: our carnival is about to turn in to a soda shop! The pinking and purpling of Cate's room has begun in earnest! Next step: change the red and blue on the dresser we already painted for her to pink and purple and get her bookshelf painted pink (with some sparkles if we can find the right supplies!). We're keeping the lime green and yellow from round 1. Sam is about to have two sparkle loving, sprinkle loving ladies around (at least until she's old enough to announce herself as a bug-loving tomboy!).

We are so excited. Here are some pictures of Miss Cate! She is perfect. Her little four-chambered heart is about the size of the tip of your thumb, starting with the nail. She has two kidneys, a bladder, a spine, a good looking brain, and a stomach that was full! That full stomach means she's swallowing away, just as she should. Her diet is pretty bland right now, just amniotic fluid, but she seems happy enough--she was spinning and rolling all around! She even stretched out her legs and arms for us. She is about 10 inches long and weighs about 9 oz. She's in the 78 percentile for growth and our due date was adjusted to December 22, giving her a few additional days to bless us with a tax credit (kidding, just kidding).

Here she is, looking like a human for the first time:
Miss Catherine Lee Major!

Another Post: I'm Getting Serious about Blogging. Seriously.

So Sam made yet another amazing cake today. Here it is:


And up close:


The branch part is made out of chocolate fondant. Sugared kumquats and lemon leaves top it off. Oh, and yes, it is sitting on a bed of wheatgrass.

I'm pretty excited about some of my recent projects, too! First, the food I made for my friend Karen's baby shower:

(Confession: Sam made the macaroons.)

And the little signs I made to say what everything was:

And, my most recent project, centerpieces for 6-year-old Kelsey's upcoming birthday party (there's a magician coming!):

Thanks for visiting.

Cakes, Cakes, and More Cakes

We're pretty sure no one even checks our blog any more, but now that Baby Major is on the way we figured we'd better start ramping it up again. Sam has made some pretty amazing cakes lately ... so we'll ease back in to this with some photos:

This is a cake Sam made for his co-worker's daughter. The baby's name is Brina, hence the giant "B." I actually helped with this--cut out the dots of fondant for the top layer and stuck 'em on there. Obviously the real talent is in the harlequin pattern on bottom.

And now for something a little different:

The bride's dad cut down a tree to make that cake stand! The meringue mushrooms were the bride's special request, and as you can see, they cover up a bit of the bottom layer. Here's a closer look at those beauties, which Sam made by hand:

When the bride's mom saw Sam putting the cake together she asked if she could take one of the mushrooms up to her daughter in the bride's room! Sam obliged and picked her out an extra good one.

All right, folks, that's a wrap for tonight.

Our First Post

We had big plans to have this blog up and operational before our wedding, hence the blog address on the favor tags,but that didn't really work out. So if you're here because you read the address on our favor tags, thanks for coming. Or if you came after seeing it on our favor tags and there was nothing here but you decided to try again, thanks for coming. Or if you came after you saw it on your favor tag and there was nothing here but you came back because you saw our next shameless plug for ourselves on the return address labels we put on our thank you cards, thanks for coming (back). We knew building readership for our blog without an adorable toddler would be hard enough. We've found it's even harder if we don't post anything. But if you'll promise to stick with us, toddler-less bloggers though we are, we'll promise to start posting. Deal?

Where shall we start? How about with a photo of our beautiful, delicious, amazing wedding cake:

Sam's boss, Raymond Lammers, made our cake. When we arrived at the reception location to change in to our wedding clothes, Raymond was there working on the cake. I was so mesmerized that I couldn't get myself to move from in front of the cake to the dressing room! I just stood there staring as the catering people bustled around, as the florist pinned corsages on, listening in a daze as my mom reminded me that I needed to get into my wedding dress.

One common question we get is whether we saved the top layer, as is tradition. The answer: No. We ate it the day after our wedding. The whole thing. Sam said we could eat it and he'd make me a new cake for our anniversary. So we did, and I'm sure he will. Ah, the joy of being married to a pastry chef!