Becka's blog

I headed out to the Farmer's Market on Saturday and on the way passed an estate sale. On the way back I decided to stop and check it out. There was a lot of furniture and quite a few dishes. Way in a back room I spotted these:

I already have a small set of dishes in this same pattern, so I purchased them to add to my collection. The challenging thing now is to find a place to keep them.

We also drove out to Mark and Katie's house Saturday evening and spent some time spoiling I mean holding Ryan. He's filling out nicely and weighs over ten pounds now. Here are a couple of pictures:

Hope all you moms had a wonderful Mother's Day.
Becka

I truly don't have much to write about recently. We are finally about recovered from our big weekend just one month ago. I've got the house pretty well back in shape and Rob has been working on the yard and planting a few things in the garden.

It's exam week at school. Rob gave his first one on Saturday and has three more to go and then has to grade them all and figure final grades. Nora brought some things over here on Saturday morning for our subdivision's spring yard sale. She was able to get rid of I mean sell quite a few things. I didn't have much to sell this time because I usually donate things to a local charity pretty frequently to get them out of the house. I did manage to give away a couple of things and to sell one pair of shoes. I was really hoping to sell my vacuum cleaner — we recently replaced it with a newer model of the same brand. Anybody looking for a used vacuum that is a little worn looking but works well? It has loads of attachments and comes with eleven new bags.

I did manage to visit a couple other homes in the neighborhood that were having yard sales and found this item that I have been looking for:

We will be needing it in a few months when this little fellow comes over to visit:

I love Ryan's curly black hair.

For those of you in the Greenville area on Monday, May 2nd Pebble Creek Pizza is having an anniversary sale. 14" cheese pizzas will be sold for $3.99 from noon until 9 PM. (The flyer said there is a limit of 1000 per customer!) Additional toppings are $1.50. They do have very good pizza and this is a good price.

Becka

DD Nora wanted me to make a key lime cake with coconut icing for the wedding. She had a recipe for the icing, but not for the cake. I did a lot of experimenting over the last few months before finally coming up with a recipe we approved of. Many of the recipes I found contained lime gelatin, but we didn't care for the color of that cake and the flavor wasn't quite what we were looking for either. I'm definitely not a professional baker and assembling the cake outdoors on a very windy day was rather daunting, but fortunately it all stayed together.

Today I'm going to post the recipe I used for the wedding cake. One thing that we discovered added a nice lime flavor was the lime oil. I ordered this from the King Arthur baking catalog. I had experimented with lime zest, but the oil was definitely our preferred flavor booster.

Key Lime Cake

1 box Duncan Hines lemon cake mix
3 Tbps. instant lemon pudding mix (dry)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs
5 Tbsps. key lime juice (I used bottled juice)
3 drops green food coloring
1/4 tsp. lime oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease, flour, and line baking pans with waxed paper. In a large bowl stir together the cake mix, instant pudding, water, oil, eggs, key lime juice, food coloring, and lime oil. Mix on low for about 30 seconds and then on medium for 2 minutes. Pour batter into prepared pans and then bake according to the time recommended for the size pans you are using. (For 8" round pans it takes about 35-45 mins.) Test to see if the cake is done. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 mins. and then carefully turn out onto cooling racks. While the cake is cooling you can make:

Coconut Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
dash salt
1 tsp. coconut extract (I used McCormick)
5 cups powdered sugar (sift)
1/4 cup cream (approximately)

In mixing bowl cream butter, shortening, salt, and coconut extract. Add powdered sugar and cream and mix well. This should be plenty for a two layer 8" or 9" cake. Frost cake and then you can add fresh coconut on the sides and top of the cake if you wish. This frosting is delicious!

I had not used coconut extract much before, but have decided it is a wonderful flavor even if you don't like actual coconut. I recently tried this frosting on a chocolate mayonnaise cake and it was a great combination.

As we cleaned up from the wedding I was very happy to see this:

Aren't the little cake toppers that Nora painted cute?

Becka

Thanks to all who have made such nice comments about the wedding and our new little grandson, Ryan. We could tell that people were praying for us that day and we were truly blessed. It certainly is a date that no one in our family will ever forget.

As I promised in my last post here are some pictures from the wedding:

Here's a shot of the back of Nora's dress:

Here is DH Rob walking Nora down the aisle:

Here are a couple of shots of the bridesmaids:

Topher's parents and Rob and I had a few minutes to relax just before the ceremony:

Here is Drew, our grandson, who was one of the bell ringers. DD Megan, his mother has posted a video of him walking down the aisle ringing his bell.

This picture (one of many attempts) shows some of the many children who were at or in the wedding. Nora is a nanny and wanted all the children to be involved. They were all remarkably well behaved during the ceremony. (My friend Sandy did tell me that she saw the two ring bearers having a pillow fight with their little pillows as she was leaving the church though.)

Here are Nora and Topher in front of the church:

As they left the church people tossed gold candy coins at them. The coins were immediately gathered up by the children in the crowd. (For those in the Greenville area you will not be surprised to learn that we were able to find a couple of boxes of the candy coins at Wilson's. We have found over the years that if you are looking for a hard to find item they often have it or can get it for you!)

And, finally, here is a picture of the bride and groom speeding away from the church in a ... rickshaw!

The rickshaw company actually decorates this way for weddings. The newlyweds' house is just a few blocks from the church so the driver drove them around downtown for a bit and them dropped them off at their front door.

I hope you have enjoyed a pictorial view of the wedding. I'm planning just one more post about the wedding and then have some other topics to explore. Hope you are having a wonderful week.

Becka

Over the weekend Nora and Topher got back from their honeymoon in Chicago. They had a wonderful week and enjoyed visiting many interesting sites in the city.

People have very generously shared their wedding photos with us and we now have quite a few to choose from. I thought I would try to do a couple of posts showing a few more of the little details and of the people involved in the wedding. So, if you're not interested in wedding details you can opt out.

Here is the big cardboard "C" that Topher was painting in a previous picture. It is covered in paper flowers that Nora made and that several of Topher's relatives helped "fluff."

Megan and I stitched these pew banners and then Meg and Nora painted them.

Several of the ladies helped to make these large paper flowers which were used to decorate the tent. My nephews graciously helped to hang them on the very windy afternoon of the wedding.

This was the wish tree where the guests could write out wishes on cards and attach them to the tree with ribbons.

This was the guest tree which Nora drew while she was recovering from her back surgery. The guests inked their thumbs and made thumbprint "leaves" on the tree and then wrote their names by their print.

This was what the food tent looked like without the food.

We had a small tent outside the main tent for the wedding cake. The girls all put their bouquets on the table which made it quite beautiful. We have known the girl who did the flowers since she was a small child. She now works with flowers up at the Biltmore House in Asheville. We thought they were very lovely. I got to bring several bouquets home and enjoy them for several days after the wedding.

In my next post I'll include pictures of the families and the wedding party and give you a few more details.

Becka