Cake Pop Catastrophe!

I had a learning experience yesterday.  Not always the most fun thing to have, but failure is an option if you can learn from it.  I made cake pops.  I was really excited to make them.  I thought for sure it would be a success.  And in a way it was. 

For those of you who don't know what cake pops are, they are cake that has been crumbled and then mixed with frosting.  Then a stick is stuck in them and they are dipped in chocolate or candy coating.  And they are tasty.

My first mistake with making these was following the directions.  The directions told me to use nearly all of the frosting, and I should have just used half.  The cake was too soft after I used all that frosting and I had to grease my hands to keep the cake from sticking to me and turning to mush in my hands.

My  second mistake was my fault.  I guess I need more patience. I didn't leave the cake in the freezer long enough to set up properly for dipping in the white chocolate.  

My third mistake was following the directions.  The directions said to stick the sucker sticks (in my case: coffee stirrer straws cause the store didn't have sucker sticks) in a little less than half way.  I should have but them in 7/8 of the way.  I ended up having to shove the sticks in further after the first attempt at coating them in white chocolate ended with the ball falling into the bowl of ooey gooey white chocolate.

My fourth mistake was my fault.  I didn't have the proper kind of styrofoam.  I needed florist styrofoam, but I had packing styrofoam.  So I wasn't able to stick the handles of the cake pops into the styrofoam and ended up having to set them down on the ball part so all my cake pops have flat tops.

Also, I should have bought two bags of the white almond bark instead of one.

I'm going to make them for my family reunion coming up soon.  Hopefully all goes well with the cake pops then.

Here's a happy little picture of my tea party with Joy last night since I didn't have good pictures to share of the cake pop making process:

Thank you, no really, Thank you.

My kitchen table is littered with the efforts of writing out 58 thank you cards.  I have paper, envelopes, stamps (both rubber for decorating the envelope and the us postal service kind), addresses, pens, and wedding cards that were given to us.  Oh, and my coffee mug and cell phone.  I think I'm done now with the cards...At least I hope I'm done.

It is finished!!  We have completed the kitchen and bathroom paint jobs!!!  

Here's the after!

And, here's the bathroom:

So, I'm going to paint the bathroom too. I figure why not? We already have the supplies. It's going to be a light grey.  I'm so ready for it to be painted. It will look cleaner. The bathroom is small, so it's hard to take pictures of, but here is what it looked like when I moved in:

The Mister and I are going to paint the kitchen today.  His mother gave us some yellow paint and we've decided that today is the day.  We went to Ikea earlier and just got back.  We bought some shelf brackets that will go up once the paint dries.


Here are a few "Before" pictures so that you can see what it looked when I moved in:

This was the view when you stood at the entry to the kitchen, not so pretty.

The sink and scant amount of counter space.  Again, not so pretty.

Okay, lets face it, it is an ugly kitchen.