Erinn's Edibles

Super 17 Birthday

2010-09-01T23:08:00.003-04:00

I had an order for a 17 year olds birthday. They liked the flower cake from a few weeks ago, but wanted it in more fun, trendy colors. So we went with pink, purple and yellow.I think it turned out pretty cute.

I already have another order for this style cake – it may just become a signature design.

2010-08-22T22:23:00.003-04:00

I made a cake for consultant for a project I am working on at work. We have 3-4 hour meetings about every other week and this meeting happen to be on this person’s birthday. I figured if I am going to make someone sit through a long meeting on the afternoon of their birthday the least I could do was make them cake.

I continue to update my photo album with new cakes, if you want to check them out, you can find them here.

100% Pure Boy

2010-08-08T23:11:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine ordered a birthday cake for one of her sons. As they were looking through my album of cakes the almost 6 years old said all my cakes were for girls. I thought about it, a lot of my cakes have been for girls or younger boys, or were sport themed. But this was not what this young boy had in mind. He wanted an action figure for “The last Airbender.” The who I asked? Obviously I am not up on my cartoon action figures. I asked them to send over a picture of what they wanted. This is what I got. Hmmm… I think I can do that. Here is my version in frosting.

When I delivered the cake my friends reaction was “I think that is the ugliest cake you have made, but it is perfect.” The birthday boy was pretty happy as well.

They can’t all be cute.

Red Velvet

2010-08-08T00:50:00.002-04:00

This summer there has been several new TV shows and specials on bakeries, cakes, cupcakes and all of them talk about their Red Velvet Cake. Admittedly I did not know a lot about this type of cake, and not sure I had ever eaten it, much less made it. I had heard some people say they just add a bottle of red food coloring to chocolate cake. Which did not make a whole lot of sense to me – what was the point?

So I set out to experiment with some authentic Red Velvet Cake. I found a recipe that looked good and I went to town. I also did some research on what exactly Red Velvet was. According to my good friend Wiki….

A Red velvet cake is a cake with a dark red, bright red or red-brown color. It is usually prepared as a layer cake somewhere between chocolate and vanilla in flavor, topped with a creamy white icing. Common ingredients are buttermilk, butter, flour, cocoa, and red food coloring or beetroot; although beetroot is traditionally used, many prefer food coloring since it is seen as more appealing.

A red velvet cake was a signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City during the 1920s. According to a common urban legend of the 1960s a woman once asked for the recipe for the cake, and was billed a large amount. Indignant, she spread the recipe in a chain letter.

In Canada the cake was a well-known dessert in the restaurants and bakeries of the Eaton's department store chain in the 1940s and 1950s. Promoted as an exclusive Eaton's recipe, with employees who knew the recipe sworn to silence, many mistakenly believed the cake to be the invention of the department store matriarch, Lady Eaton.

I decided to make the recipe into cup cakes and over all pleased with how it turned out. I do think they baked for a minute too long and could be a bit more moist, so I will continue to play around with the recipe.

The cake recipe I found was paired with a meringue frosting. I decided to try that as well. That turned out wonderful and it a for sure winner.

Here is the result.

I realized when taking the picture that it was hard to see the shiny frosting against my white counter tops, so here it is on a better background.

I also think I achieved another baker’s right of passage with this experiment. On several of the shows, especially the challenge ones, people often get burned while melting sugar. In a recent episode one of the people needed medical attention due to the burn. I didn’t bet why this was such a big deal, until I experienced it. I got splattered with some melting sugar and it hurt a bit, but I did not think it was that big of deal. But then it I noticed it blistered almost immediately – crazy – that means it is a 2nd degree burn. Thankfully it was only a small splatter on my finger, but I can see how a large area would not be a good thing.

Last minute cake

2010-07-30T13:10:00.002-04:00

At the end of the work day on Thursday, it was determined that food had not been figured out for a co-workers going away party. I was not part of the party planning to begin with, but as I was leaving, as I usually do, I asked if we were all set for the next day. When the answer was not really - I began thinking what could I easily whip up. Sadly, the default was not a cake- I was thinking my strawberry dessert or fruit pizza…. Then it hit me, I had everything in the house for a cake and a ton of colored frosting in my fridge. So I cautiously said I could make a cake.

On days that I work I like to bake the cake the night before I need to decorate to give it sufficient time to cool, settle. Trying to do it all in one night is really pushing it and usually means being up half the night. Especially when you find out at 5 p.m. But since it was a dear co-worker, I agreed to scrap all my plans for the night to make a cake. On the drive home I thought about the design.

This is what I came up with for the top.

And on the sides.

I have to say I think it came out cute. It is by far not my cleanest cake – I knew when I was doing it the lines were off, but it was getting late and I didn’t care so much. My co-worker loved it and that is what is important.

Here is the whole cake.

I also put several of my cakes into an album. I thought having once place for people to be able to look through the different cakes I have done made some sense. Here is the link….

Two days, two cakes, two anniversaries

2010-07-25T21:38:00.002-04:00

This weekend I had two orders for anniversary cakes for two couples who have both been married for over 40 years. Each of these cakes was a surprise gift for the couple.

This was the first cake. I added a ribbon of yellow on the bottom. This is the second cake. I have total freedom with this cake and wanted to try doing a pattern around the side. Here is one side. Here is the other.

These cakes topped off a busy week of baking, Congo bars, Turtle Brownies and Blueberry muffins.

Peace Cake

2010-07-11T23:06:00.002-04:00

My oldest niece turned 10 and the in thing these days for tween girls are peace signs. They are all over clothes, bags, shoes, school supplies…. So she wanted a peace sign on her cake. I thought just a plan peace sign would not be very cute, so I decided to make a striped one with her favorite colors – hot pink, lime green and electric blue. I then decided to do stripes on the side of the cake. While it turned out really cute, it did take a while to do since the frosting kept getting warm.

Here is another view of the cake.

A birthday cake

2010-07-04T16:16:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine was having a birthday party over the weekend and I made a cake. It was one of the few times that I was given freedom to do what ever I wanted on a cake. I always enjoy those opportunities so that I can experiment. I wanted to do something bubbly and cheerful to match the birthday girl. This is what I came up with. I tried a new boarder on this one, and really like how it came out. I think it is a keeper.I had some left over cake batter, so I think I might play around with some filled cupcakes. Will let you know how they turn out….

Another Dora Cake

2010-06-30T23:00:00.003-04:00

I had an order for a Dora cake for the 4th birthday of a darling little girl. When I was talking to her about what she wanted on her cake she mentioned she wanted Dora to have backpack on her back. So I found a picture showing backpack and went with that design. She also requested that she have chocolate cake and pink frosting.

Here is the cake. I still can’t quite nail Dora’s facial features, I am not sure why, but I will have to keep working on it. When I was taking pictures I realized I had forgotten Dora’s cowlick – so I quick added it.

Cake Balls Galore

2010-06-08T23:07:00.002-04:00

In addition to the cakes I made last week I also continued to experiment with cake ball combination. I was not thrilled with the yellow cake/milk chocolate frosting/dark chocolate shell, so I thought I would try something new. Here are a couple of the chocolate ones. I decided on a cherry cake/cherry frosting/dark chocolate shell. Here is the outside of one.And the inside – see that moist cake!! I also tried a carrot cake/cream cheese frosting/white chocolate shell. Here are some of the white chocolate covered cake balls.

Here is the inside of the carrot cake ones. I had some left over chocolate cake and butter cream frosting, my decorated cake stand by, so I threw those together and added a white chocolate shell. This is what these look in the inside.So far the verdict is that the carrot cake one were the best, but they all were good.

Hmmm….there might just be something to this Cake Ball thing…….

Hello Kitty Supersized

2010-06-05T22:09:00.002-04:00

I had an order for a Hello Kitty cake for a little who was turning 6 and wanted to bring it in as a birthday treat. The cake needed to feed 25, so I went with a half of sheet cake, which meant Hello Kitty’s head was going to pretty big.

Here is the cake. From the side. Here is the birthday girl and her class enjoying the cake.

Twilight – take 2

2010-06-04T10:43:00.003-04:00

I had an order for a twilight cake and this time I added an apple to it, from the cover of one of the books. This was what I had intended to do on the first one, but ran out of time. Here is the final product. Here is the cake including the sides with the red stripe at the bottom. A close up on the side. I have another order this week for a Hello Kitty cake to feed 25 – pictures will be up soon.

Baseball Cake

2010-05-30T23:51:00.002-04:00

Baseball is a big part of my brother in laws life right now, so I wanted to do a baseball themed cake. Originally I wanted to do a baseball diamond with a large bat and ball on top of it. As I was looking for pictures of a baseball diamond, I found a cute one with a glove. I liked how it looked and decided to go that route instead. Of course once I decide this, my printer was having some issues, and I was not able to print out the picture I found. This meant I had to draw it by hand. My nieces and nephew were over at the time and quite skeptical that I could draw it. They were quite impressed when they saw the finished sketch. They were even more impressed when they saw the finished cake.

Here is the baseball cake. With the side included.

I was pretty happy with how is turned out.

Cake Balls

2010-05-27T23:08:00.008-04:00

Recently at work several co-workers were talking about Cake Balls, a trendy new gourmet dessert treat. After doing some research and finding out how super easy they were to make, I thought I would try them out.

First you start out by making a cake. I chose a classic yellow cake. Here it is cooled.Then you crumble it up into fine pieces. I have to say this killed me a little bit to ruin a perfectly fine cake.

Once the cake is crumbled you add frosting. I decided on milk chocolate.

Here is it is mixed together – the “dough” for the cake balls.

Then you shape them into balls.

I need to work on the consistency so that I can make them more spherical. Then you dip them in chocolate, I used a darker chocolate. The end result was cake balls. So far the reaction has been pretty good and I keep thinking of all these yummy combinations.

Side story - Caught in a Seattle Police Chase

2010-05-25T08:37:00.000-04:00

I often find it interesting how seeing something on TV or in a movie can trigger a vivid memory of mine. Many times it has to do with travel, a scene in London will remind of wandering down Piccadilly Street, or the view of the mall in DC reminds me of the some crazy late night “adventures”, I see a location where I have been and all of a sudden I remember some random detail or event. Last week I was watching the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy (the most intense season finale of any show I have ever seen) and I found myself yelling at show, where is the rest of your swat team because I was suddenly brought back to the time I was caught in the middle of a police chase in Seattle.

Let me set the scene for you, it was July 1, 2008. I had been in Seattle for about a week at this point, for the start of the 9 week cross continental bike tour, called Sea to Sea that I was working on. In that week I had arrived in Seattle, finalized last minute details for the tour, met the 145 cyclists and 26 support staff, coordinated the weekend orientation, participated in a public celebration service, saw the cyclists dip their tires in the pacific ocean, dealt with the first fall, injury and hospital visit, and made sure things were all set for the first night in camp – nothing stressful at all. The night before I had left the tour and stayed at my cousin’s house, to spend a little time with her and her husband while I was in town. That night I was taking the red eye home. My cousin took the afternoon off of work so we could do some touristy things, so I decide to run downtown that morning to pick up some gifts for my nephew and nieces, and to make some rental car arraignments (in person since I was getting conflicting answers on the phone) for my trip to Seattle in September.

Prior to this morning, I had only been downtown once, but thought I remembered how to get there with out getting directions, and knew I had a map with me. I did fine, got off at James Street, but then turned the wrong way. I knew I was going the wrong direction as soon as it happened and looked for the first side street to turn around. The first street is 9th Ave, and that is right in the medical area of the University of Washington. I turned the corner and pulled over to check the map to find a street to take me back towards downtown. All of sudden, out of no where a tan/gold Jeep Grand Cherokee came flying past followed by a multitude of police vehicles. There must 40 – 50 police cruisers and motorcycles in pursuit of the Jeep. After the first 5 or 10 went by, I looked over at this older woman standing on the sidewalk at the bus stop and we just look at each other with a “what the heck is going on” look. After a few minutes (and I am not exaggerating here) the police vehicles stopped coming and I once again looked at my new friend on the side walk, non verbally asking do you think it is safe to go? We kind of nodded and said, I think it is okay, and I pulled away from the curb, thinking my adventure was over.

9th Avenue there turns into 8th and that bring you to Yesler Way, which would take me to where I wanted to go. As I got to the corner of 8th and Yesler, I once again found myself in the middle of this crazy scene – several of the police vehicles were parked all over the area and the officers were on foot, some running, looking for something or someone. At this point I was really wondering what was going on and called my sister to see if she could find anything online about what was happening. She was not able to find anything so I continued on. My plan was to head over to the Pike’s Place Market area and park, from there I could walk to the places I wanted to go. I planned to take Yesler to 1st Ave and cut over. As I was making my way, I began to hear the helicopters over head. I began to think, obviously something big is going on. I turned down 1st Ave and went for a couple blocks until the road was blocked off by the police and I saw that the Jeep was stopped in the middle of the street with several swat teams approaching the vehicle. As much as there was a part of me that wanted to stay and see what happened, the sensible part of me thought I should get out of there and go someplace safe.

I then cut over to Alaska Way and was right near the rental car place, so I decided to go there. I went in to make a reservation and saw the 4 or 5 helicopters circling the area. Thankfully they had a TV on and I asked what was going on. It was at that point I found out there had been a bank robbery and police chase and there was now a stand off on 1st Ave. I watched with the reservation specialist for a few minutes and actually corrected some of the information that was being reported. For one, they were reporting it was a black truck and I said, actually I am pretty sure it was a tan Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was at that point that the whole scene became very surreal, and it hit me that I was seriously caught in the middle of a police chase, I could be a witness. After making the reservation I continued down Alaska way and found a place to park there. I decided to go to some of the souvenir stores in the area, instead of trying to go back near the crime scene. The robbery was the talk of everyone at that point and in one store I learned that one of the suspects had jumped out of the Jeep at Yesler and 8th while the vehicle was moving. That explained what had been going on at the corner as I passed, and it was little scary, considering I was only a couple minutes behind the Jeep, and chances are the suspect had not been caught yet as I passed by.

After I finished my shopping and learning more and more details about what had happened I began to make some phone calls, to my sister again who had found the story online and filled in some final details, like the fact that the police had shot the man in the Jeep on 1st Ave. I also called a couple friends to tell them about the craziest thing that had just happened. I was then done with my errand downtown and went on with my day, not giving what had happened too much more thought, other than mentioning it to my cousins. A couple days later, once I was home, I looked up the details of the story, which you can find here http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008027502_webbankrobbery01m.html

This is just one of the many crazy stories I have, but don’t often think of or share, until something like Grey’s Anatomy brings back the memory, because I know the Seattle law enforcement community can capture two suspects in a vehicle driving all over the city much quicker than it took them to find a lone gun man in one building.

New Cake Brochure

2010-05-09T22:11:00.001-04:00

Each time I make a new cake, it becomes my new favorite and I think it is really cute. Over the past months I have made several new cute cakes and I decided to feature these in my promotional flyer. If you would like a hard copy, I have plenty and am happy to get it to you. Also feel free to pass this along to all your friends and family or anyone else who needs a cake.

Train Cake

2010-05-07T21:00:00.002-04:00

This week I had another cake to make. This one is for an adorable almost 2 year who is the son of friends of mine. He has the greatest smile and lights up any room he walks into. He wanted a train cake for his birthday and I was pretty excited to make it for him.

Here is what I came up with.

I think it turned out pretty cute.

Cupcakes Galore

2010-05-01T22:40:00.003-04:00

I was one of the hosts of a Mother’s Day lunch today and my duties were to make cupcakes. Due to the quantity needed I enlisted the help of my 9 year old niece who is a great help. The color scheme for the event was purple and green and the table setting had a floral motif with pink, orange, blue and yellow flowers. So that is what I used as a base for the cupcakes. In addition we had one table that needed gluten free food, so I decided to make a cake for that table since it would be easier to keep that separate from the cupcakes.

Here are all the cupcakes and caked finished A close up of the cake Just the cupcakes A tray of purple ones A tray of green ones One of each I really like this green one And a cute purple one The cupcakes served as the center piece at the event. Here are the ones at my table.

Sometimes my cakes go in streaks – this week I have a train cake to make, I am excited to make it. Will post pictures when it is finished.

Twilight Cake

2010-04-24T23:33:00.002-04:00

Yes I know I have neglected this blog. There is really no excuse, but I have been diligently working on my travel blog about my big trip last fall. It is a very daunting task since I have about 2000 pictures from the 19 days. If you are interested check it out at http://erinnsediblestravels.blogspot.com/

Today is my sister’s birthday. A few weeks ago I asked her what she wanted on her cake, she answered as normal, I don’t care. Then my 12 year old nephew spoke up saying you should have a Twilight cake, since that is my sister’s latest obsession. So a Twilight cake it was.As I often do, I went online to get some ideas on what to make based on other Twilight themed cakes. I noticed many of the cakes had a black and white chess board base like the cover of one of the books. I was pretty excited about the prospect of doing a checked cake and decided to go that route. I will say it took quite a while, like an hour, to map out the boxes on the cake (then had to fill in the squares with frosting), but over all I think it turned out pretty good.Originally I planned to put an apple (from another one of the book’s cover) on the top, but ran out of time. I actually think this turned out cuter. Now that I have this checked design figured out, there are endless possibilities…..

Too Long...

2010-02-15T22:06:00.001-05:00

I know it have been way too long since I have updated this blog. It is because I have been focusing my attention on my travel blog trying to document my trip. It takes a while when you have 2000 pictures. :)

More cakes

2010-02-15T22:00:00.003-05:00

Last week I have several cakes to make. Two were for my friends Beth and Andy. Beth was celebrating her 2nd 29th birthday with a bowling party. It was held on the actual birthday of Andy’s dad. So I made two cakes. Beth’s was chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Andy’s dad was white cake, cherry frosting and chocolate cream cheese frosting.

Here is Beth’s cake.

I also made a cake for my Mom’s birthday which we celebrated on Sunday. One thing I like about making cakes for my family is that it gives me a chance to experiment a bit. This was my first time trying tulips.

Clubhouse Mickey Mouse

2010-01-01T15:08:00.002-05:00

This is the Clubhouse Mickey Mouse cake I made earlier this week. I thought it turned out pretty cute. Even added some Mickey ears on the sides.

The Challenge

2009-12-06T01:33:00.003-05:00

Make a birthday cake for 12 year old boy and a 10 year girl who are second cousins for a large extended family Christmas party. (It falls on the birthday of the boy.)

And the girl, Ashlyn, is into movies and drama and had asked for “Lights, Camera, Ashlyn” on her cake.

The boy, Nick is totally into sports (see his other cake below.)

The result…
I thought primary colors and a star theme was a good way to cover all the bases.

Time for holiday treats!

2009-11-30T20:57:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is December and that means it is once again time to place your order for some of Erinn’s Edibles Holiday Treats.

The perfect gift for your co-workers, clients, and extended family members.

Or do you need something delicious to dazzle at the office potluck, family gathering or friends gift exchange?

Or what about that someone on your gift list that is impossible to buy for?

Give them a box of Erinn’s Edibles Christmas Candy.

Homemade Candies in six varieties are now available –

Heath
Double Delight Fudge
Peanut Clusters
Peanut Butter balls
Coconut Delights in Milk Chocolate
Coconut Delights in Dark Chocolate

Small boxes containing 10-12 pieces are $5.00
Large boxes containing 20-24 pieces are $10.00

You can choose one type of candy or a mixture in each box.

OR

Do you need cookies for a cookie exchange –

Meringue cookies with chocolate chips have become a huge hit at every gathering. They are a holiday must.

New are Chocolate Crème de Menthe cookies – a special just for the holidays.

As always there are breads, bars, brownies, and specialty desserts available. A complete list is to your right. To place an order you can email me – Erinnsedibles@gmail.com or call 616-735-3643

Sports Nut

2009-11-29T18:50:00.002-05:00

For all of you sports fans out there, here is the cake for you….

This one was for my nephew’s birthday which we celebrated today. He could not decide which sport or team he wanted on his cake – so we went with his top 4.

Baking up a storm

2009-11-21T23:56:00.003-05:00

Over the past week I have made applesauce, pumpkin bread, meringue cookies, chocolate crème de menthe cookies, and two cakes. That is a lot for even me, at least recently. I thought about taking picture at some point with each of these, but of course never did. Except for the cakes.

Today is my youngest niece’s 4th birthday – I can’t believe she is so old. She had a big party with lots of friends of the family tonight with a Hello Kitty theme. So I made her the original Hello Kitty cake.

Here it is

From the side

Because they had so many people they needed more then just a round cake. So I made another cake for them to serve. I did not decorate it, but let her pick what color frosting she wanted, pink and yellow where her choices. Here is the cake they ate.

Here is the vat of pink frosting that I needed.

Crafts

2009-11-21T23:34:00.004-05:00

This week I also made a blanket for little Ava Grace. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Here is the poke a dot side out And the pink side Recently at the girls group I work with, we made the cutest head bands. I have to take some pictures of it.

From the top From the side

Europe Trip

2009-11-03T22:24:00.002-05:00

I posted a little bit about the trip on my travel blog - check it out. http://erinnsediblestravels.blogspot.com/2009/11/tease.html

Fall

2009-11-01T22:40:00.002-05:00

Just a couple days after returning home I decided to whip up a yummy fall treat to bring into work. Pumpkin Bars – these are moist fluffy bars topped with a maple frosting.

Are you hungry yet?

Getting Ready to go.

2009-10-08T00:32:00.002-04:00

First of all, I am a bit disappointed, I did not get the Mexico Blog finished on the travel blog. I still have the last day to do. But it will have to wait until I get back.

Tomorrow I leave for my vacation. I am feeling pretty good about things. I am going into the office in the morning, and then I fly out of GR just after 4:00 pm. I decided to wait until tomorrow to actually put everything in my suitcase, but I have everything set out in the guest.

Here it all is – remember I will be gone for 19 days. Can’t forget my dresses. Here is my itinerary…

Pre-Cruise travel
Oct 8 – Leave GRR
Oct 9 – Arrive London 1
Oct 10 – Leave London and go to Venice
Oct 11 – Leave Venice and go to Rome
Oct 12 - Rome
Cruise portion of trip-
Oct 13 - Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy
Oct 14 - Capri/Naples, Italy
Oct 15 - at sea
Oct 16 - Athens (Piraeus), Greece
Oct 17 - Ephesus (Kusadasi), Turkey
Oct 18 - Istanbul, Turkey
Oct 19 - Mykonos, Greece
Oct 20 - at sea
Oct 21 - Port said, Egypt
Oct 22 - Cairo/Giza(Alexandria), Egypt
Oct 23 - at sea
Oct 24 - at sea
Oct 25 - Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy
Post Cruise
Oct 26 – Leave Rome and arrive in Grand Rapids 11:30 pm

I am not expected to be able to blog at all – but I guess there is always a chance – but more likely I will just be able to update on Facebook.

See you all when I get home!!

Embracing the Crazy….

2009-09-22T12:49:00.004-04:00

So I am in the end stages of planning for a trip in October. I am feeling pretty good about how things are going in terms of getting things accomplished. One big task still on my list (yes I had a task list) was planning out London. This is something I tackled this weekend and I am so happy to have finished. It is a great plan. Then I realized that this plan that I put together totally exemplifies my craziness….

I joke around about lacking even an ounce of spontaneity, I have been told I have contingency plans X-Z planned out before step A has even occurred, my friends tell me I am the one who keeps us on task…. these traits are great for my work planning events, but combined with the fact that I can have a hard time relaxing, my brain never shuts off and I have a millions thought running through my head at all times, I need vacation time to just let go and have some fun.

I thought I was getting better at this…. But this is just proof otherwise….

This is just the first part – I am happy to share more with you if you would like. :)

Now I know, like every good plan the timeline will most likely get thrown out the window at the airport, that we will get stuck in line at customs, the tube will be late or the bus will be stuck in traffic. I know that there is no way we are going to stick to the plan and that is fine. Like every event I’ve done there is a point where you just let go and what happens will happen. I am fine with that because I have a plan and contingency plans…..

Sometimes, I just have to embrace my craziness and realize it is just me.

New Camera for pictures

2009-09-07T18:00:00.001-04:00

I got a new camera and I am so excited, it is so much better then my old one (which is literally falling apart.) So I took a few pictures of the only baked good I had around, Zucchini Carrot Nut Bread. I can’t wait to make my next cake just to take pictures of it. Anyone want to order one?

Oh and I keep working on the Mexico blog – check it out.

Mexico

2009-08-23T23:45:00.000-04:00

I finally started bloging about the Mexico Cruise on the travel blog – check it out.

Cake Flyer/order sheet

2009-07-17T20:02:00.002-04:00

I put together a new flyer/order sheet for my cakes. I have it as a .pdf file, so if you would like me to send it to you, I am happy to. Feel free to pass it out to all your friends and family.

Hannah Montana Cake

2009-07-13T21:13:00.002-04:00

My niece is having a birthday party/ sleep over this year to celebrate her 9th birthday. She wanted a Hannah Montana cake, so here is the result – a Hannah Montana guitar cake.
I think it turned out pretty cute and she loved it.

I really enjoy coming up with ideas for a cake and planning out how to do it. If there is a cake you want me to try, just let me know.

Back to baking

2009-07-09T21:26:00.004-04:00

Now that I have finally, finally, finally finished documenting my Alaska trip I need to up date everyone on my baking. Over the past several months I have had the opportunity to make lots of fun cakes, which seams to be one segment that is taking off. Of course you can order anything anytime, I am always happy to do special orders.

Here are the cakes…

In February I made this cake for a darling 3 year old. It is sleeping beauty. Then I just played around with this one for my Mom. Next was a birthday cake for “Grandma Bunny” And then a cake introducing my cousins twins to the family – they live on the west coast and this was their first time home since the boys have been born. Then was my sister’s flower cake – this was one I threw together while her kids were decorating cupcakes, so not my best work. Here is an Elmo cake for the cutest 1 year old! And some cupcakes for a Mother’s Day luncheon. My Tiger’s baseball cake for my Brother in law. This is the cake I made for my birthday – to bring into the office. It gave me the chance to experiment some more. Here is a Tinkerbell cake for an adorable 3 year old. And last a Disney cake for my niece. Like the little Mickey’s on the side?

Saturday, September 20 - The End

2009-07-05T21:25:00.008-04:00

I woke up Saturday morning so sad, this was our last day on the ship and I did not want this amazing week to end. We slept in a bit, but got up in time to make to the last TV Trivia challenge. I got there early and found a seat. JJ walked in and said – Hey I am surprised to see you up so early. We chatted a bit about the night before and then he went up to set up for the game. Shannon came in and we joined another couple to form a team. Again we did not know many of them, but it was fun. Afterward we chatted with JJ and then decided to stay for the regular trivia game.

We did much better on the trivia game then the TV tunes one – we actually knew some of the questions. One thing that happened during the trivia game was that Zoe, the crew member who was running the game all of a sudden looked really ill and quickly walked out of the room – Meg another crew member in the room picked up where Zoe left off and finished the game.

There are also the big Princess product sale that they do everyone week. Normally these sales have a few good deals and then the rest is just them trying to push products. Well since this was the last Alaskan cruise of the season, and the last one before dry dock, they were really trying to get rid of everything. I got the cutest black polo shirt for $5 – which I totally love! I also got a cute blue purse. It was lots of fun.

After shopping, Shan and I went to get lunch and then back to the room for a nap. I was so tired by this point, it had been a long week and I had not gotten much sleep the night before. I felt much better after a rest and then it was time to start packing – it was so sad, I could not believe our week was almost over and that we soon had to go home. As we were packing we took some pictures of the room.

Here is the number of our room and our names Here is the closet and shelves, Shannon is already packed at this point and I am working on it.This is the power cord – there is only one plug in the whole cabin so we were advised to bring a power cord – as you can see, it got a lot of use! This is the bathroom – it was pretty small – the shower was really small – I flooded the floor almost every time I shaved my legs. This is the desk/vanity/tv area. And here are the beds – the room is small, but it was fine for the small amount of time we spent in there. Over the course of the week Shannon and I had gotten our pictures taken a ton by the ships photographers. In fact, one of the times I pretty much, in avertedly flashed the whole atrium when the photographer had me lay on the floor in my blue dress. You could see right down my dress. While it was pretty funny at the time, I did not find it very funny that every time I walked by the walls where the pictures were displayed that picture was out front –it was so embarrassing. I would put it in the back or middle of the pile of pictures, but someone would always put it back on top…. Anyway, Shannon and I had a stack, a really big stack of pictures that we had taken over the week and we needed to decide which one or ones we were going to buy. We decided to take the whole stack of pictures into the wheelhouse bar and to start eliminating which one we did not want to buy. Not long after we sat down, this cute old couple sat down with us, one on each side of us to help us with the process. They were not at interfering or overbearing, but would make sweet little comments like, that is not your best picture, or we agree with this one. In the end they were really helpful in our decision on what pictures to buy and it ended up being one of the most endearing moments of the cruise.

Shannon and I each purchased two pictures, one the same and one different, this is the one just I bought – this was taken on Tuesday night – And this is the one we both bought – from the second formal night. Around 6 pm the ship docked in Victoria, CA and Shannon and I went up on deck to watch.

Here is the welcome building. There were all these people there to welcome us, dressed up in Victorian clothes – ringing a bell – it was kind of strange. Too bad we did not get any pictures of them. Victoria was the one port we did not plan an excursion for; we just planned on wondering around the city.

We got off the ship and had to take our pictures in front of the welcome to Canada sign.
Here is Shannon And me. I have to admit I was a bit nervous about going through Canadian customs, the last time I had entered Canada was in August with one of the cyclists who had some issues at the boarder, while I did not have any issues, I was with this cyclist and flagged while we dealt with the issue. Not knowing if they had put anything in my record, I was slightly apprehensive about crossing for the first time. Thankfully they just waved us through and there were no issues.

We then jumped on a bus to take us downtown. After about 10 minutes the bus dropped us off downtown by the Empress Hotel. The Empress Hotel is a famous hotel in Vancouver – we could have had Tea or taken a tour of it, but decided not to, we just took some pictures. This is the legislator building – very pretty. I found this sculpture in town. I have to admit I was not overly impressed with Victoria, I know we were there on a Saturday evening, from 6:00 – 11:00 but there was really not much open. A few souvenir ships and some restaurants, but that was it. I wanted to find a Tim Horton’s and take a picture in honor of all the bike tour folks from Canada, since I was only in CA with them for a short time, but I could not find one. I saw several Starbucks, which makes sense since they started on the west coast and Tim Horton’s on the east, but at the time I was surprised and disappointed.

There were some funny things that happened in Victoria.

Most notably - there were many pedicabs around trying to solicit everyone’s business. Shan and I were not interested in taking a ride and passed up the many offers. At one point Shannon really had to go to the bathroom. We were standing out on the sidewalk trying to figure out where the closest bathroom was located, since so many of the stores were closed. There was a visitor’s center a couple blocks away, and we thought that might be the closest one. Well, while we were talking a pedicab driver saw us looking around and asked us what we were looking for – we said we were looking for a bathroom and he was like I know where one is, let me take you there. We declined and said we would just head over to the visitor center. The driver was very insistent and told us he knew of a place much closer and to jump in. We reluctantly got in, but since Shannon really had to go, we thought if it was quicker we would do it. So the driver starts going down the main street, then turns down this side street and keeps going and going. Shan and I keep looking at each other, like where are going? We could have been to the visitor’s center by now. The driver finally pulls up in front of a restaurant and says, my friend works here I will clear it so you can use the bathroom. So Shannon and I nervously went in and used the bathroom. We were a little concerned the pedicab driver was going to be waiting for us outside, so we hung around in the restaurant for a while before going back out, thankfully he was gone and we walked back to the main street.

We did find this map painted on a wall. And then there was this street performer – Darth Vader playing the violin – hmm…. not sure about that, but thought my nephew would like it. After wondering around for a bit we were ready to go back to the ship. We took the shuttle bus back and when we got back on the ship it was like we walked into a totally different place. Evidently the workers started getting the ship ready for dry dock a day early. We kind of felt like we were walking into a construction zone – the railings were all covered in paper, the floors covered in plastic, all the boutiques were completely empty or in the process of being emptied, even the cousins of the lounge chairs were being thrown away over the side of the ship (into a dumpster). Excuse us for wanting to finish our cruise. We did not talk any pictures of it, but we should have since I do not think it is something I will see again.

Shan and I went up to the food court and grabbed some dinner and then decided to go watch the finals of the Princess Pop Star. It was okay, I think at this point we were both just so tired and sad, our absolutely amazing week was coming to an end and there was nothing we could do about it. The ship was very quiet that night, so we went to bed at a decent time.

For those of you who have never been on a cruise before, you have to put your luggage out the night before so that it can be taken off the ship for you, so there is always some creative packing that last night and planning ahead. So the when we got up the next morning, we had our limited supplies and got ready. Because my flight was at 11:20 am we had a pretty early disembarkation. We were to go to the wheelhouse bar and wait until we were told to go. When we got there, all the furniture had been push into a corner and all piled up, again getting ready for dry dock. We did not have to wait too long and then we got off the ship for the last time. It was so sad walking off the Star Princess- this ship that had been our home for a week, but felt like a life time, this place that had been this oasis and fairy tail and fantasy for our time on it. I still cannot verbalize how at home, at peace, how I was completely me on that ship. I just loved it.

From the ship we had to go through customs and then get our luggage. I had to do some quick rearranging of some of my luggage so I could fly, and then we got on the shuttle bus. As we drove to the airport the women sitting behind us was reading Harry Potter to her kids. Shannon and I talked about the week and about her plans for the day. Due the hurricane her plans had to be all changed and she had an extra day in Seattle. Her plan was to go to Mt. St. Helen. I wanted to stay with her and be there for another day, but I knew it was not feasible.

Shannon came into the airport with me, she had to go get her rental car, and we both weighed our luggage. As we were standing there I started to cry. I did not want to go home. I wanted to stay, even though I knew the ship was being torn apart and would not sail for another 3 weeks, that the crew we got to know were leaving, that all the friends we made over the week were going home, I did not care, I wanted to go back to the Star and continue the dream of the week I had just had. I did not want to return to reality. But I had to. With a big hug and many tears Shannon and I said goodbye and I went to check in for my flight.

My trip home was not ideal, but since I was using frequent flyer miles I could not be too picky. I flew from Seattle to Portland, Portland to Chicago and then Chicago to Grand Rapids. It was going to be a long day of traveling. My flight to Portland was on this little puddle jumper – here are some pictures of it. The quick flight to Portland was fine, but the airport was really busy. I was hungry, and went to this little sports bar in the airport to eat. It was packed, there were no tables open and a line of people. I ended up sitting with some random guy who was next in line so that I would not take up a whole table by myself. I tried to be friendly, but he just went on and on about how crappy his day was going with how busy the airport was. It ended up being fine since I was too sad to be too friendly. I then got on the plane to Chicago and spent that leg sleeping, reading and crying. Then we landed at O’hare – I am one of these people who actually likes the O’hare airport, in fact it is one of my favorite airports. Yes it is big, but so are many other airports. I know my way around it, have had very few problems with it and it is clean and things are open. At O’hare I made some phone calls, talk to Shannon about her day and then hopped on the quick flight home. My Mom was recovering from surgery and could not drive so Jessica my intern came and picked me up. Poor Jess, she got a non-stop earful the whole way home. I went on and on and on about what an amazing week I had. Next stop was my mom’s which is where my car was and I again I told my Mom about the amazing trip. By this point it was after midnight and I needed to be at work in the morning. So I finished my journey with the drive home and walked into my house. I was home.

Leaving for this trip I had no expectations, I was warn out, tired and ready to be done with the bike tour that had occupied the previous 18 months of my life. Physically, mentally and emotionally I was just done. The only thing I had cared about when leaving for the trip was that I could go some place where no one could find me. This trip ended up being a once in a life time journey that has changed my life forever.

Friday September 19, 2008

2009-03-31T22:33:00.005-04:00

Friday was our second full day at sea and after 3 really busy days in port Shannon and I were really looking forward to a quieter day. The only thing we were had scheduled for the day was the Cruise Critic meeting at 11:00 am in the Wheelhouse bar. At 10:00 in the Wheelhouse was TV tunes trivia, which we thought might be fun. We had not made it to any of the trivia games yet, and I had wanted to go. So we slept in a bit, ate breakfast, took our time to get ready and then wandered down to trivia.

As we walked into the bar I hear over the speakers, coming from the front, “You guys are way too young to know any of these. Find a team to join.” I looked up and it was JJ talking to us from the stage. I smiled and we saw Mike and Chris from the Cruise Critic group and we joined them. We did okay, but most of the shows were from way before our time. There were a couple of ones that we knew and JJ would make a comment like – even you guys will know that one. After the trivia ended, we had a little time before the get together, so I went to the bathroom. As I walked back in JJ was talking to Shannon. When he saw me he started walking towards me and we chatted. He asked if we were getting dressed up for formal night and if we were going to go to the show – he said the one that night was his favorite of the production shows. He said we needed to come to the Champagne waterfall at 11:30 pm- which he referred to it as the obligatory dance party. JJ also mentioned that after the Champagne waterfall he and the crew go up to Skywalkers and that we should go. We said we probably would go.

After JJ left we helped move some chairs around to set up for the Cruise Critic group. We had another great turn out and it was so fun to see everyone again after several days on the cruise to hear what they had done. Mike and Chris had put together a trivia game based on the posts on the roll call thread on Cruise Critic. They put so much work into it – I was blown away. Again we could work in teams and we joined Bob and Candace. We were all actually answers in the game – one question was who worked on a cross continental bike tour. Shan was the person from the furthest away. Bob was mentioned about his screen name. Over all we did really well – just one less then the winning team. We had a great time with the group and stayed there for a couple hours.

Lunch was next on our plan. We went up to the 14th deck where the food court was located. There was also a pizza place and a grill where you could get hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches. That is where we ate lunch every day. Pretty much every day I had a salad and a piece of pizza. After lunch Shannon decided she wanted to go check out the big Champagne art auction. I had no desire to go, so I went back to the room to read, relax, maybe take a nap – since it had been such a taxing day so far. :) Shannon only planned on staying at the auction for a little while, so I was surprised when she came back over an hour later. Well it turned out the DJ saw Shannon at the art auction and started talking to her.

Shan decided to relax for a while before starting to get ready for dinner. 13 going on 30 was on the TV, so we watched that for a while. Every afternoon in the food court they serve free ice cream and I decided I wanted to get some. I could not remember if it started at 3:00 or 3:30, so I went up just before 3:00. Unfortunately it did not start until 3:30. So I sat down at a table and waited. Of course the staff was so on top of things a server kept asking me if I needed something. Finally I admitted I was waiting for the ice cream. During my wait I read a little, but I was more fascinated by the family sitting across the isle from me. This family consumed more food then I have every seen four people eat before in my life. It was like a train wreak I just could not turn away. The waiter was so great, he kept coming back and giving me updates on the status of the ice cream. When it was ready he let me know and also told me the caramel ice cream was his favorite, so I tried that and it was great. After my snack I headed back to the room to start getting ready for dinner.

Now I enjoy getting dressed up, there have even been times in my life getting ready is more fun then actually going out. Shan and I were going to wear our fancy dresses for this, the second formal night. A couple months before we left Shannon sent me a picture of the dress she bought for this night and I was in a total panic, I did not have any that fancy to bring along. So in between traveling back and forth across the country I needed to find a dress. It was quite stressful. Finally a couple weeks before we left I found one I loved. The problem was that it needed to be altered a bit and I had not had time to do this before I left. So I tried to make due with safety pins and it just did not work very well. I was so uncomfortable and fidgety all night. It was the only negative thing of the night, other then that we both got all gussied up and got ready for our fancy night.

Once we were ready we went down to dinner. This night we were seating more the in middle of the room then the other nights, and we ended up at the greatest table. Dinner was a riot!! The other people at our table were a couple from Boston, a missionary couple from Ravenna, MI – not too far from me, and a couple from Oklahoma. The whole group just talked and laughed and told stories, it was great! My favorite story happened when we were in a hockey discussion. The woman from Oklahoma was a very petite Asian woman and she was talking about how hockey was way too violent for her all that fighting. Her husband piped up something about how it was so much less violent then wrestling. It turns out she was a huge WWE fan. Then he went on to comment about her getting thrown out of a wrestling match. We all just looked at each other wondering what that was all about – she went on to tell us that her grandsons wrestle and she would get so worked up she would start yelling at the officials or the other kids that she was asked to leave. I so wish I had a picture of this lady, looking at her she would be the last person you would expect to be asked to leave any where or to be a fan of the WWE. The food at dinner was good as well and I ordered the Love Boat Dream dessert. When it came it was so cute I decided to take a picture of it. After dinner Shannon and I decided to get some more professional pictures taken. We then went to go watch the Newlywed not so Newlywed game show – another one of those cruise favorite activities. We could only stay for a little while since we wanted to make sure we got seat for the show. We got to the theater and found seats in our regular section. The show was destination anywhere and it was based on a around the world theme. It was really good and we both enjoyed it. I did think it was a little funny when they did a segment on Africa and they sang In the Jungle from the Lion King. After the show we headed back over to the atrium to get ready for the Champagne waterfall. At one point we asked this gentleman to take a picture of us together. He was quite particular about placing us in the right light, almost to the point of it being creepy, but it ended up being my favorite picture of us. Don’t we look nice. We then went into the art gallery and had a little photo shoot.

Here I am

Here is Shannon More me More Shannon Fun times! Then it was time for the big party!! Here is Shannon getting ready for the fun! I would compare the Champagne Waterfall to a New Years Eve countdown type party. People line up on all three levels of the atrium to watch as the maitre d stacks hundreds of champagne glasses on top of each other. Once all but one of the glasses is in place the Cruise Director and Maitre D do a little program and then the champagne is poured. Here is a picture of the glasses.
Before they start pouring the champagne there is a count down and people have streamers to throw. This is just after the streamers came down.

Then everyone has an opportunity to pour the champagne if they want – we chose not to, but here is someone doing it. Here are some people dancing. Shannon and I walked around and watched people. I was laughing at these two boys – I would say about twelve years old who went around picking up as many streamers as possible and they were covering each other with them – you could not even see their clothes – it was all streamers.

At one point JJ came up to me to give me a hard time about not joining in the dancing. It was so funny – he was in total cruise director mode – big grin on his face, moving to the beat of the music – Mr. Social Director. I made some comment about the music being kind of old and if they played something a decade or two newer it would be more my speed – he said they needed to cater to the crowd and to come up to Skywalkers later for newer music.

We stayed around for most of the party and then we ran up to the room to freshen up and then we made our way up to sky walkers. We walked in and found a place to sit over in the area where the crew was hanging out. The DJ saw Shannon and pulled her into the DJ booth with him to chat. After a few minutes I was not sure if she wanted to hang out there or not, so I went to rescue her – she was okay that I came over.

The music in Skywalkers was better and I danced to a few good songs. At one point Staying Alive was on and I pulled out all my disco moves. Suddenly I was surrounded by 60 – 70 year old men who were emulating every move I made – it was both hilarious and frightening. I decided to stop dancing for a while.

After we had been for a while Shannon got up to go somewhere, and I looked over and saw that JJ was standing alone, so I got up to go talk to him. We started chatting and had a really great time. Shan got sick of sitting alone so after a while she came over and we all chatted. Since the ship was going into dry dock in two days and most of the crew was leaving there were huge crew parties going on. Shan and I so wanted to go to one of them, just to get into the crew area and see what it was like, but that did not happen. JJ kept getting paged to come to the crew party and finally he decided to go. It was getting pretty late at this point, close to 2:00 am. After JJ left Shannon and I stayed at Skywalkers for another 10 minutes or so and then we decided to leave. Shannon wanted to say good bye to the DJ since he was getting off the ship the next day in Victoria. When we got up to leave we saw that he had gone down a level to go to the bathroom so we started headed down that way. As we were walking down Shan went one way to say goodbye and I went the other way to go to the elevator and much to my surprise JJ was standing there….

It was another great day!

New Blog Update

2009-03-21T19:04:00.001-04:00

Since the travel website has not gone live yet with the section that my blog is going to be in, I decided to spruce up the post that is going to be featured – the one on the Seattle Underground Tour. I added some history on the area and even found pictures online to fill in some of the holes I had. Here is the link to the new post http://erinnsediblestravels.blogspot.com/2008/10/history-lesson_14.html

Thursday Night

2009-03-10T23:10:00.004-04:00

Sail away from Skagway was at 4:30 on Thursday night. I was pretty tired that night and needed to take a shower, straighten my hair and get completely ready, so I choose to take a little nap instead of going out for the sail away. I think we both laid down for a little while and then I jumped in the shower. I was pretty excited to wear my blue dress that night. Right after we booked the cruise I started doing some shopping for a few things I needed. One of those things was a dress (or dresses). Finding dresses that fit have always been a struggle for me, I am not proportioned right and they never fit me correctly. So one day I went into Ann Taylor Loft and literally tried on every dress in the store. I was shocked to discover the one that actually fit and looked good – it was a style I would have never even tried. Unfortunately the dress was not dressy enough for a formal night, but it was on clearance, so for $12.97 I could afford to buy it for one of the other nights. Thursday was the big night to wear it. Of course Thursday was also the night we barely took any pictures and I don’t have one of me in it.

After getting ready we headed down to dinner. This night was a bit different from the other nights when it came to the time of the shows, the early one started at 7:00 and the late one was at 8:45, this was because the crew talent show was at 10:30. Shan and I were both very excited to see the talent show – it is always a high light on the cruise. So our plan was to go to the 8:45 show and then save our seats for the later show.

When we got to the dining room we were seating more in the middle of the room at a table for 6 people. There was an older couple there when we got there and then a women who was cruising solo was seated just after us. The women was from Portland and her husband had decided they were going to move to Hawaii – he was already there getting things settled and she was back in Portland getting the house ready to sell – she was not too excited about moving to Hawaii and quite stressed out, so this cruise was her treat to herself for dealing with it all. She was the most entertaining lady – we heard all about her life – her really old cat, her son who had many issues, her grandchild who was adopted by another family in a really open adoption, her husband – our dinner that night was so interesting!! I almost didn’t want to leave. But we had other things to do that night.

Shannon and I have always been big fans of production shows – we both love musicals and plays, watching people dance – it is just our thing. To this point both of the shows had been good. The lead female singer was Becky. She was a total diva, seamed much older then she was, and a really good singer. The show on Thursday was Words and Music and it was the Broadway themed show. Being huge Broadway fans we were really excited for this show. As we went to the theater and sat waiting for the show to begin we talked about what shows might be included. We didn’t really think there would be anything from Mamma Mia, Moving Out, or any of the really recent show, but we were thinking along the Andrew Lloyd Webber lines. We were way off – the show featured Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein… stuff that was so old and just not what we thought of when we were thinking Broadway. I can’t say the show was bad, it was just not our taste and I was actually bored. After the show Shannon and I just stayed in our seats for the Crew Talent Show as the crowds all left. We both had to go to the bathroom, but I went first. As I was walking back over to our seats is when it finally happened!!

JJ was walking up from the stage area and came over to talk to us. He asked us if we had enjoyed the show – which we both totally lied and said yes, if we were staying for the crew talent show, if we were having a good time this week. We chatted for a few minutes and then he was off. I was so excited, I had finally talked to JJ – my cruise goal was complete and I was so happy.

Shannon then ran to the bathroom and while she was gone an announcement came that everyone needed to leave the theater. So I got up and left and met her in the hall. A few minutes later we were allowed back in and we sat back down. The theater started getting filled up and some of the crew handed out balloons. They had everyone hang unto the balloons until a certain point when said to blow them up and start to toss them around. The entire theater came alive with people throwing and hitting balloons all around. It was a riot. I am convinced I was the target of a group of older men who were excited to see me get up to catch or throw a balloon. Here are some pictures of the balloon party.
JJ then came up on stage to start the show and said “We spend millions of dollars each year on entertainment and all it takes is a bag of balloons.” I laughed, it was so true, it was the most excited the crowd was the whole trip. Then the crew talent show began. The first crew member was a bar tender who sang “Sex Bomb” He totally hammed it up and you could tell he totally loved being up there. Then the cruise director staff (minus JJ) did a little skit in a doctor’s office. Then another crew member came out dressed as a man on one side and a women on the other – “he” sang a duet with himself. During the show they showed some video clips of the crew performing in their quarters and some of it was pretty funny. Then Meg, the host of Princess Pop Star sang and did a great job. The show ended with the cruise classic of “If I were not upon the Sea.” It was as funny as usual. Shan and I both really enjoyed the Crew Talent Show.

After the show we left the theater and as I was walking down the stairs I caught JJ watching me. I smiled. It must have been the cute dress. After we left the theater we went up to get some dessert from the food court and then decided not to go to Skywalker, since we were both tired, but to go to bed. Tomorrow was our day at sea and we were both excited for a more relaxing day. . I went to bed pretty happy – it had been such a great day!!

Official Stats

2009-03-09T21:24:00.000-04:00

When I got home from the cruise I decided to post the stats of my bike trip to the cyclist’s forum from the tour I worked on. During the tour many of the cyclists kept stats each day on their ride. I spent hours over the summer reading their blogs (to monitor them) and so I thought I would follow suite. Here is my post….

Hi Everyone

Last week I had the opportunity to take a wonderful vacation to Alaska and after watching you all cycle all summer long, I decided to take my own little adventure. I rode a section of the Klondike Highway in Skagway, otherwise known as the White Pass. Like so many of you, I thought I would provide my statistics for the day. (I didn’t have a bike computer so I am relying on some info from the group guide)

Falls – 0
Flats – 0
Miles – 15.1
Beginning Elevation – 3292 feet
Ending Elevation – 33 feet
Average miles per hour – 15 – 20 MPH
Number of SAG (Scenic) stops – 6
Countries – 2 USA and Canada
Time – 1:30:00
Animals – Mountain Goat
Ice Cream stops – 0 too cold!
I have attached my picture with the bike – just to prove I really did ride. I hope you are all doing wonderful!

I included the picture of me all decked out in my bike gear and got a lot of positive response from the real cyclists.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changing….

2009-03-08T21:25:00.002-04:00

I have decided to make a few changes when it comes to Erinn’s Edible blog.

Originally this blog was set up as a way to market my emerging baking business, but over the past year it has been hijacked by some of my personal adventures, including my traveling adventure. Despite having some apprehensions I did not feel I could keep up with more then one blog so I decided just to use this blog.

But… there have been a few recent developments.

I was recently contacted by an emerging travel website, asking to use excerpts from my posts on the Alaska trip – specifically on Seattle – on their site. The material they use will have a link to my blog. I am still working on some of the details about this all, but will keep you posted. Since this has all come up I have decided to start a new blog that just covers my traveling adventures and gives me an additional level of privacy – the new blog will be linked from this one, but it will not be reciprocal. Erinn’s Edibles will make its way back to baking – if fact I have several cakes I have made recently I need to post.

Currently my new blog By Land or By Sea, has basically the same content as was on this one – just a bit of editing. :) and at this point I do plan to finish the Alaska trip on both blogs. After that I am not sure what I will do with the Mexico trip or anything else – it is all up in the air right now. But potentially this could be an exciting opportunity.

I will keep you posted as things develop……

Check out my new blog http://erinnsediblestravels.blogspot.com/

Summit to Sea Bicycle Adventure

2009-03-02T23:20:00.009-05:00

After all of the planning that went into this trip I can’t say I was more excited about one thing more then another, but the cycling excursion held a special place in my heart. The day before leaving for this cruse I officially ended my work on the Sea to Sea bike tour. For 15 months I planned a nine week cross continental bike tour with out once getting on a bike. I would not have minded riding a section of the bike tour, but these were serious cyclists with very expensive bike and most of them had clip-in peddles. Now I had never used clip-in peddles before, but I have dispensed advice to many of the cyclists that they take some time to get used to and that it is not uncommon to fall when you are learning to get out of them (I can talk such a good game when it comes to cycling). So I did not want ride and fall potentially damaging one of the cyclists bikes – because they are so expensive. This cycling excursion became my own little mini Sea to Sea adventure – which I called my Summit to Sea Adventure.

After wondering around town for a while Shannon and I went back to the ship to get ready for our adventure. It was a relatively cool morning and we were going to start at the top of the summit so we dressed in a few layers. It was so funny, that whole morning my mind was racing with all the knowledge I had picked up over my time on the bike tour. As I was getting dressed, I kept thinking that I needed to make sure I had the proper clothes, layers, things that were easy to take off if needed. Then I started thinking I needed to make sure I had the proper hydration – I had one water bottle, but wondered if I needed a second. Then I was thinking what I should eat – was a getting enough calories, had I eaten the right amount of protein, I needed to make sure I grabbed a banana for the potassium… Then I just started laughing at myself. I was going to be riding a bike for about 90 minutes, basically down hill the whole way – I was not going to be spending 6 or 7 hours in the saddle riding 70 or more miles – I didn’t have to worry about all this stuff – it was definitely a case of having too much knowledge!!

Once I relaxed about everything, we were on our way….

We got back down to the dock a little before 10:00 am and found the people for the bike tour. Once everyone was accounted for we headed over to the van and got in. We started our journey up the Klondike Highway to the summit. On the way up the staff of the Sockeye Cycle Co introduced themselves and so did everyone in the van. Gordon was the lead guide, and he started things off – everyone had to say their name, where they were from and something interesting about themselves. HP was the driver (his real name was Ryan) and he claimed he could hold his breath for over a minute. Emily was one of the other guide and Jacob was the mechanic. Shan and I were in the back of the van and tried to think of something interesting to say. Shan decided to say that she was on the synchronized ice skating team in college. I mentioned that I had worked on the bike tour and not ridden a bike.

As we were driving up, there was a mountain goat on the side of the road. HP quickly pulled over and Gordon took pictures for everyone who wanted one. The mountain goat was beginning to go back up when our picture got taken, but here he is.

We started our journey at the top of the White Pass summit at 3292 feet. Here is the sign showing the elevation. It was really cold up at the top – pretty much the coldest temps we had the whole trip. The summit is right on the international boundary, so we never really crossed into Canada except when we walked over to the sign, we might have taken a few steps out of the Country. Here is the sign. Here is the gorgeous view from the top. They then pulled the bikes out of the trailer and we had to find a bike that fit us. We also had to find a helmet and gloves. No safety vests though.

Here is Shannon in her gear. Here I am with the red bike I picked. Shan picked a red one too. Here is the trailer from the cycling company. Much like the start of all of our excursion there was the 15 minute overview/safety spiel from the organizers. This was one I could have actually given. We were going to be riding on a highway and sharing the road with buses, trucks, cars… so there was a level of danger there, but seeing as I had just lived 9 weeks knowing full well of the dangers on the road I did not think much of it. Shannon on the other hand was a bit scared by it all. One thing I was surprised by, but should not have been, was that if you had a moving fall they would pull you off the road for the trip. Good thing we did not do that for Sea to Sea – no one would be left. We let people ride with broken bones if their doctors cleared it. :) Then we were on our way. I rode behind Shannon, at the end of the pack – I let her set the pace she wanted to go. I would have gone faster, but did not want to leave her. So I actually rode a lot with Emily the guide and we chatted.

The first scenic stop was at Bridal falls. Here are the falls. Me by the falls. Shan by the falls. Us together by the falls – don’t we look cute in our gear. Along the route we stopped at several other spots to take in the beautiful scenery.

Here is a waterfall. Some Mountains. Way in the back there is the Denver Glacier – the 3rd glacier we saw on this trip.
Some clouds hanging over the mountain. A sign talking about the highway.As we got further down the mountain things were getting more green and vegetative. Midway down the ride we had to go through customs. Even though the actual border is at the top of the summit, due to grade of the mountain it made more sense for the custom offices to be further down road and not right at the border. So we all rode through customs with a quick check with the customs agent.

This is a bridge we rode over. I love this bridge – it is located on a major fault line so when they built it, it is suspended on one side, but not on the other. This way is should withstand a major earth quake. At this stop we saw the train go by. It was fun to see that we were riding parallel to the train.
After one of the scenic stops we had our only incline of the ride – about 200 yards – it was the only time we really had to peddle.

Once we got back into town we got to ride through some of the residential area, past the school and the airport. It was so fun to see a part of Skagway that was not so touristy. When we got back into town we were at 33 feet elevation - so we had ridden about 15 miles, downhill dropping 3259 feet!

The bike ride ended at the cycling company’s store a few blocks away from the ship. We dropped off our bikes, grabbed our stuff and then wondered back towards the ship.

Around the corner from the bike shop is one of the most photographed buildings in Alaska. The face of this building is completely covered in driftwood. Then we headed over to the Red Onion Saloon. The Red Onion Saloon was Alaska’s most exclusive brothel in the days of the gold rush. It is now a restaurant/bar on the first floor and you can take a tour of the brothel on the second floor. As we approached the building we took a picture. Then I noticed the Obama sign in the window – I thought that was the funniest thing. Then started thinking of all kinds of campaign slogans – “the red onion mama’s for obama” “Brothels for Barack” “Madams for a change” I could go on and on…. So I went in for a closer look. Then Shannon and I went inside where we ran into Chris and Mike from the ship. We chatted with them for a while and then Shannon decided to buy a t-shirt. While we were in line I got the opportunity to get this ultimate picture.
I am not sure how the campaign would have responded to this, but I think it is great!!

We then headed back to the ship and took another great picture.
If this is a small boat, I would like to see a large one.
Here is another picture of our lovely home.

We then got back on the ship to get ready for another busy night!!

Thursday, September 18 – Skagway

2009-03-01T01:02:00.004-05:00

When we initially booked this cruise I saw we were going to Skagway and I have to admit the first thing that came to my mind was who would name a city Skagway – it sounds like “skank way” Shan admitted later that she actually had a similar thought. Then as I was putting together the shore excursion excel sheet (yes I did put together an excel sheet of all the excursions – there was so many I needed them organized to figure out what to do.) I noticed there were options like learn to cook in the red light district and take a walking tour with a madam. Hmm… it got me thinking maybe there was some connection. So I consulted wiki and found out that “Between 1897-1898, Skagway was a lawless town, described by one Royal Northwest Mounted Police "Mountie" as "little better than a hell on earth." Fights, prostitutes and liquor were ever-present on Skagway's streets.” Interesting… Anyway…

The ship docked at Skagway at 6:00 am and we had planned the mountain biking excursion, but that did not start until mid morning. Since we had gone to bed early the night before we got up early to go wonder around Skagway before the bike trip. One of things we had heard about was the cliff bordering the pier, every time a new ship comes into port, someone from the ship gets off and paints the name of the ship on the cliff. Here is some of the artwork.

We talked into town and found this handy map of the city.
I have to admit I really liked the town of Skagway – it was so cute and so quant. I know so much if it touristy, but I didn’t care. Here are some pictures of the main street.

Isn’t it cute?

We found a new friend – Mr. Moose giving a hug Shan visiting the moose This was another little street with the mountains in the background The Alaska Shirt Co – was a store that had amazing deal. I got a couple long sleeved t-shirts for $5 each. The big excursion in Skagway is the White Pass train ride. People take the train that was built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. The route climbs 3000 feet in twenty miles and provides breath taking views. Shannon and I did not take this excursion, but we did get our picture taken with the train Here is Shannon. And the mascot of the train.

After we wondered around town we went back to the ship to get ready for our excursion.

Juneau and our kayaking adventure

2009-02-15T00:07:00.010-05:00

After the scenic cruising Shannon and I went back to the room to take a nap before our big kayaking adventure.

Shan decided to raid our stash of desserts Tiramasu of course – her favorite We were scheduled to arrive in Juneau around 2:15 pm, so after eating some lunch we went up on the deck to take some pictures of our arrival. Pulling into town
Such a beautiful back drop of a city. Here is another ship pulling away to make room for us. There is goes. Looking out to the water Once we docked we had some time before we had to leave for out excursion at 3:30 pm. We knew we would not have a lot of time to go shopping and sight seeing since our excursion took up most of our time in Juneau. From the ship we saw a building on the dock that we hoped was some stores so we decided to check it out. We also knew that JJ was going to be out on the dock and I was hoping to come up with some “legitimate” question to ask him – unfortunately he was talking to someone else when we walked by. The building did not contain any stores, so we went back to the ship to wait for a while.

It was then time to go to our Kayaking adventure. Now if you have not heard this story brace yourself – hilarity ensues.

We got on our shuttle that took us to Auke Bay where we were going to go Kayaking. Our driver told us that it had been cloudy and rainy that morning, but it had burned off and it was a gorgeous, sunny fall day.

Here are a couple pictures of the Mendenhall Glacier
Here is Shannon in front of the Glacier
Here I am – when else in my life I am going to have this opportunity? Then we started piling on the gear – I am going for the Gordon Fisherman look. Here we are with everything including the life jackets And the complete look – I love this picture of us, despite the ridicules attire.
Since we were in the water I took a disposable camera with me – this next group of picture are from that camera.

The Mendenhall Glacier from the water
We saw some seals out there, but with out a zoom, no pictures. Some of the other groups
This was Jesse our guide. He was my age – mentioned he was born in the same year I was. He grew up in Juneau and told us all about the area. One of the things he mentioned was that Juneau only had a few chain store – Home Depot, Walmart, Sears - Shannon made a comment about how the internet must have changed their lives – opening a while new world for them. Jesse responded – I have never been on the internet – he continued by saying that it was so funny, he knew how to type but didn’t have a computer, but his roommate had one, but didn’t know how to type. Shan and I just smiled and nodded to that one, we had to try so hard not to laugh.

Here are some more pictures from the kayak. One of the other kayakers was Kim who was the night hotel manager on the ship. He took some picture of Shannon and I out kayaking and delivered then to our room. He was so nice we decided to nominate him for the crew member who went above and beyond.

Here is a picture of Shannon and I in the kayak.

Now neither Shannon nor I had ever kayaked before and Shannon had never even canoed before. So we were not very good at kayaking and could never really get in sink. Jesse stayed with us and tried to help, but bottom line – we sucked.

Let me set the scene for you – Shannon was in the front of the kayak and it was her job to paddle and set the pace. I was in the back and it was my job to steer and to match her strokes when we were moving. At first when I try to steer I actually slowed us down or even stopped us. Then when I tried to match her strokes I just couldn’t, so we were totally working against each other. We were kayaking in the sea, so there were waves to contend with and a strong current. Due to that we barely ever went straight - we zigzagged our way along the way. We are much better on a tandem bike and should stick to our Olympic time rides around Mackinac Island. We did make it over to area to see the Seals and despite our terribleness; we did make it out quite far. Jesse was so good about checking in on us and keeping us entertained. After being out on the kayak for about 90 minutes Jesse came and told us it was time to head back to the shore – we needed to be back there in 30 minutes in order to get everything packed up and head back to the ship. Shan and I turned toward the shore and started paddling back and we were actually doing okay – well okay for us. Jesse went and conferred with another one of the guides and after a few minutes he came up to us and said they were concerned we were not going to be able to make it back to shore in time. The first thought that went through my mind was why didn’t you send us back earlier and what can we do about it. Jesse then went on to say they were going to have someone tow us in. Now many people would be so embarrassed about this, but Shan and I were like okay – sounds good – and I was a bit relieved we would not have to struggle so much to get back. So out came a motor boat and they tied us to it. Shan and I just started laughing about the whole scene. It was the funniest thing in the world – here we were in a kayak with out paddles up out of the water being towed by a motor boat. I am not sure which one of us coined the phrase Alaskan tubing – but we decided it should totally be a sport – it was so much fun. We literally laughed the entire 20-25 minutes it took to get us back to the shore. Of course me, being me and wanting to capture every moment took pictures….

Here we are being towed.
Look no hands.

Out of the wake This is how you kayak – or the start of Alaskan tubing.

Once we got back to the shore our stomachs hurts so bad from laughing so hard, our abdominal muscles got such a work out! After getting out of kayak I went and took a picture of the don’t feed the wildlife sign. And the port a potty – I took this in honor of Cory the port a potty driver for Sea to Sea. We had to get a picture with Jesse – after our special time together. He was lots of fun!!
We got in the shuttle to head back to the ship, still laughing at the adventure we had just had. We wanted to wander around Juneau a bit, but didn’t have too much, thankfully the shuttle driver mentioned to us he was supposed to take us back to the Star Princess but couldn’t do anything if we got off at the other ship which was much closer to the shopping area. So Shan and I got off.

Here is Shannon at City Hall. We then did some retail therapy and again found great bargains since it was the end of season. We wondered around for a while and even saw JJ across the street on the sidewalk.

It was getting to be time to be back on the ship so we headed that way. The one thing I had hoped to do on this trip was take the tram in Juneau, but we just didn’t have time. Here is a picture of it. Once we got back on the ship we decided we were not up to getting ready for dinner and opted to eat in Horizon’s Court instead. Since it was such as long day there was not as much to do in the evening as usually, there was not a show in the theater, but a illusionist and neither of us had any desire to go see that. We also had decided we wanted to stay away from Skywalkers and the DJ. Shannon actually went to bed pretty early, but I was not ready to go yet, so I wondered around the ship for awhile, lost another $10 on the penny slots and listened to some music.

When I got back to the cabin I jumped into the shower and as I was getting ready for bed, around midnight, I heard the phone ringing, I ran out to answer it, but missed it. Whoever called didn’t leave a message, I suspected it was Tony who was calling and I was not very happy – we had not given him our cabin number but he obviously found it somehow. After that I was off to bed to get some sleep for our biking adventure in Skagway.

Wednesday, September 17th - Scenic Cruising

2009-02-09T23:30:00.007-05:00

We were scheduled to go scenic cruising in Tracy Arm Fjord from 6:00 am – 10:00 am, but due to the weather we could not go there, it was too foggy. Instead we went to Endicott Arm. The scenic cruising was the only time during the whole cruise that we in climate weather. Shan and I decided to go up on the deck around 7:00 am – thinking that would be more then enough time. We knew it would be cold so we bundled up in many layers and headed up.

Good thing we had all the clothes since it was hailing out.
I can not even begin to tell you how amazing this was. I have tons of pictures, but they just can’t do it justice. I was seeing colors I have never seen before naturally, it was just amazing. Trevor was the naturalist on board and pointed out a few things, but mainly just let everyone take in the scenery.

The water was really green and the ice blue. Here is a picture of some ice- it looks like a snow cone.
This one was a deep blue.

This had more rock in it.

A mixture of rock and ice. A big blue one.
Here is Shannon and I all bundled up on the deck.
Shan is freezing.
Hot Chocolate makes everything better.

Shan is even smiling now.

It was pretty foggy, so we couldn’t see Dawes Glacier all that well. Here are a couple of pictures.
Here are some pictures of the cliffs and more floating ice.

The clouds and the hills

One more blue ice.

These waterfalls were the coolest things. Here is a wide one.

Lots more pictures of the water falls

Ketchikan Continued

2009-01-20T23:02:00.010-05:00

Ketchikan was one of our longer days in port and we went Ziplining in the morning, so we had time in the afternoon to explore the town.

Here are some pictures of the town from the bus on the way back to the pier.

Here is a handy map of Ketchikan.
Shan and I returned to the boat to drop off some stuff and stopped to poise for a picture.
When we got back off my favorite tour – the duck tour vehicle was close by.
As you can imagine the area surrounding the pier is filled with souvenir shops and since we were there near the end of the tourist season everything was on super clearance specials. Shan and I were able to get all our gifts for super cheap!

Alaska is known for their wildlife, but many people who visit never get to see any live wildlife, so many of the stores have large animals to take pictures with. Shan and I decided to have a little fun with the bear.

Can you tell me where this store is?
Let me tell you about my morning…
Here is a cute little street.
I loved the salmon store sign – totally me!! Here is the fish house.
The local marina
The town looking out to the rainforest.
Ketchikan is known for their Lumberjack show – we didn’t go, we didn’t even think about going, so not our thing, but in case you want to go – here it is.
Here is our home for the week!
Another view. The afternoon in Ketchikan was just beautiful – the weather was a sunny fall day and we enjoyed wondering around town. Since we were in the States we were both able to use our phones and took some time to contacts our families. When it was time we got back on the ship and got ready to sail away. Shan decided to take a nap and I went out on the deck to watch as we left.

Here are some of the beautiful sights of Alaska
Here is a float plane

Here it is closer.
Here are docks for the barges. Here is a barge – this is the most common form of transportation in Alaska. If you look closely you will find a pick up truck and two boats among the cargo. This is the city from the ship.
During the election one of the big buzz themes was the bridge to no where in Alaska. This bridge was going to be built to connect the Ketchikan airport to the town – currently the only way to get to the airport is by ferry – but the ferry only costs $3 each way – so it is not a huge expense and the airport is pretty much off by itself – there is nothing else around. Anyway – here is the famed airport the subject of the bridge to no where.
As I was wondering around the deck I found the kids area of the ship – yes cruise ships have areas and activities for kids of all ages – I was a bit jealous when I found out the teen area had a wii and rock band and no adults were aloud. Here is the kid’s pool
Here is an area for kids to ride some bikes.
I also saw this black smoke coming from the ship – not sure it that is supposed to look like that.

Tuesday night at dinner we sat with two other couples and conversation lagged a bit. It was the only night we didn’t really enjoy our dinner companions. After dinner we had some time before the show so we went to the casino and Shannon won $20 on the penny slots. We were captivated by these people putting quarter after quarter into this game that has a pile of quarters that get pushed towards the end and any that fall off you get. On the quarters are two piles of money and you try to get that to fall also, because you then win the money. We saw people spending so much money for such a little return. We went to Steve Morris's show, but did not enjoy it as much as we had during the opening show.

We then went to the Vista Lounge for the Motor City show. It was good – all that great Motown music and costumes from the 60’s and 70’s. During the middle of the show Shan and I had a conversation about wither or not the dancers were singing back up. I think being in this venue we were that much closer to them and could tell they didn’t have microphone battery packs on – they had the mic, but they were not hooked to anything. It was quite entertaining trying to figure that one out. After the show JJ was standing outside in the hall talking to some passengers – as we walked by I caught his eye – it made me happy. :) Now I just needed to talk to him.

After the show we went up to Skywalkers and good ole DJ Tony was over talking to us before we even sat down. It was very obvious he was only interesting in Shannon and he became a bit over bearing. We didn’t want to be up too late since the next morning was the scenic cruising through Tracy Arm Fjord beginning at 6 am. Tony wanted us to wait for him and then go up to the buffet for some dessert, but we declined. Then he wanted to join us during the scenic cruising and asked for our cabin number – we didn’t give it to him, but took his instead. After we got some dessert and went back to our room, Shan and I had a long chat about Tony and decided not to call him in the morning. We then went to bed with the alarm set for the 6 am scenic cruising.

Tuesday, September 16 – Ketchikan, AK

2009-01-13T23:20:00.019-05:00

Tuesday was our first day in port. It was a foggy day in Ketchikan, a city that measures rain fall in feet, but we did not have any rain. Here are some pictures of the sea as we are approaching Ketchikan. We planned a zip lining excursion for our adventure in Ketchikan and we were scheduled to go at 8:30 am. Getting off the boat was no problem – other then the fog the weather was fine – temps were in the mid to high 50’s which is the best you can ask for in Alaska in September. Here is the boat docked. It is not a blurry picture, just the fog. Here Shannon and I are at the Ketchikan welcome center. To get from the pier to the Zipline we had to take a bus. The bus was a classic – I think it was from the 60’s or 70’s. So we got our picture taken by that too. The bus driver served as a tour guide as we drove, he pointed out salmon in the river and taught us the five types of salmon- chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink and we passed a bald eagle perched in a tree. The driver also told us about the history of Ketchikan and that they average over 250 days of rain a year. With all the focus on Sarah Palin the driver also gave us his opinion on her.

We arrived at the Alaska Canopy Adventure and we were so excited for this crazy adventure. The zip line course consisted of 8 lines and three bridges through the rain forest canopy around 150 feet in the air.

Here I am in front of the sign.
Here is Shannon.
In order to get up the Mountain to start the zip line we had to ride in this contraption…
Before we left we both ran to the bathroom – a port a potty – which is so ironic after avoiding the Sea to Sea port a potty for the entire tour, it is on my vacation that I have to use one. Shan and I were the last people to get on the vehicle and our “seats” where literally a seat on a wooden crate.

Shan was not sure what to think of it all.
I was just happy to finally be on our way.
As I mentioned before it was pretty foggy - here is the rainforest on the way up.
Here is a tree that has fallen down – they were so tall!!
These are the trees as we got at the starting point.
When we got to the start we needed to get all the gear on. Here Jacob is helping me make sure everything is secure. He also had me put my hair back – the last thing we wanted was my hair to get tangled in the lines. This is Bob and Candace – they were part of cruise critic group who had decided to go zip lining with us before the beginning of the cruise. Here they are all ready to go, while one of the guides is passing around a trash can for anyone who had gum to spit is out – it can be a choking hazard when you first take off and gasp from the sensation. Here Shannon is ready to go.

So am I –
At least I have all the gear. Once we were all set they went over the mechanics of zip lining – where to put each hand, how to keep your legs, how to lean back, how to break, how not to break, how to make sure you make it to the platform, how to land…. Basically 15 minutes of what to do and what not to do - so much to remember. I was a nervous wreck – not from fear of falling or the height, but from not remembering everything. The first line was a short practice one. Shannon was the first of the whole group to go.
Ready to go
Waiting for the signal.
I was the second to go and I totally forgot to break at the end. When I got to the platform I was told I needed to break, I would fall off the platforms if I didn’t. So now I was even more nervous. The second line was a bit longer but still not too long – this time I did everything right, but was still nervous. Here I am getting ready to go on the third line.
At this point we had slip into smaller groups and we had Christopher and Jacob as our guides. Christopher is the one who pushed us off and Jacob is the one who caught us at the end. I was standing on the platform getting ready to go on the third line an Christopher asked me how I was doing – I said I was okay – he said just okay? You need to be doing better then that. So Christopher get me on the line, hanging off the platform ready to go when he stopped me. He then swung out next to me and started swinging me all around. I just started laughing and totally loosened up. He obviously knew I needed to stop thinking so much and relax. That totally did it and from that point on I had a riot.

Here I am in the middle of the third line.
Remembered how I mentioned it was foggy – here is one the lines – we could not see the where it ended – I was not scared, the line was up it had to be over there.
Here is Shannon coming on one of the lines – can you see her way out there?
Here she is getting closer
And closer
This was one of the bridges we walked across. Shannon again was the first to go and I asked Christopher if we all went at once (when we zipped we went one at a time) He said yes and so I followed along and so did the people behind me. Once we got a few feet onto the bridge, Christopher said stop – only one at a time and Shannon said the look on my face was priceless – I along with those behind me rushed to get back to the platform when Christopher said I am just kidding. It was too funny – he got us good!! As we were crossing the bridge we saw a black bear eating salmon from the stream.

He is really down there – just not the greatest picture, but we were 150 feet above him.
This was when I learned that salmon die after they spawn – it is kind of sad.

After the bridges we had a few more lines to go. Here is Shannon on one of the lines
Here I am.
At the end we got a medal for our work and here we are with Jacob and Christopher.
Here is the company’s sign if you are every in Ketchikan I would highly recommend this adventure.

Shan walked over to get a picture of this caribou

We also got a picture with the totem poles out front.

Monday Night

2009-01-11T01:23:00.006-05:00

We had decided to keep our really formal dresses for the second formal night, so I pulled out my $25 TJ Maxx outfit for this one. I also decided to throw my hair up – sometimes it is just easier that way. It took us a while to get ready, but I so enjoy getting dressed up – I have not had too many opportunities recently to do it. Shannon was not sure how she felt about her hair, so she took a self portrait to see how it looked.
One we were ready we headed down to the main atrium where the Captain’s Gala Welcome Cocktail Party was taking place. During this time the Captain speaks and introduces some of his key staff including the cruise director. After that we went to the dining room. We sat on the same side of the dinning room as the night before. The other people at our table were three ladies who all worked together in a post office in California and a couple. It was another fun dinner time – I think I had pasta and some yummy dessert.

In the evenings there are photographers set up in the lobby where you can get your pictures taken. On the formal nights there are a ton of different backgrounds to choose from, Shan and I took a few different pictures. Then we decided to take some our self.

Here we are together

One of our self portraits
Shannon by the wall

Me by the same wall
After we took some pictures we wondered around the ship for a while and ended up in the Casino – we both played and lost $10 on the penny slots. Then we decided to check out the Princess Pop Star competition – this is Princess’ take on American Idol – as a karaoke contest. At first no one wanted to sign so Meg, from New Zeeland one of the cruise director’s staff started signing New York, New York with audience participation. Then this girl from Texas got up to sing Sweet Dreams (are made of these) by the Eurythmics – she did a good job, but she had such a strong accent it sounded a bit different. The funniest thing about her performance was a lady in the audience who was way too into the song, she was chair dancing and shaking her head all over the place – which earned her the nick name of crazy Eurythmic lady from Shan and me. Next a guy got up and wanted to sing Behind Blue Eyes by The Who, but the only version the had was the Limp Bizkit version, which the man had never even heard. I am pretty sure Shan and I were the only people in the audience who had heard that version. He did okay considering the circumstances, but we did laugh a bit. Then Judy got up and sang something, I forget what, but she was really good singer. Then a younger guy sand Sweet Caroline – which I enjoyed.

After the Pop Idol Shannon and I made our way over to the Theater for the big show of the evening. The show was “Cinematastic” which was a movie themed show. The shows were one of times you could tell Princess caters to an older crowd – the newest movies they used the music from were Ghost and Titanic. During the show one of the funniest moments from the cruise occurred. At one point the show does a three song tribute to Mary Poppins. During the first song I could tell Shannon was agitated about something. I was thinking she was sea sick or not feeling well from dinner, I was slightly concerned when she turns to me and says “I ride the bus everyday with Mary Poppins, that is no Mary Poppins.” I laughed so hard, I still laugh when I think about it. We both thought the show was pretty good and we enjoyed it. I was happy when near the end of the show JJ walked by me to go up on stage as the MC.

After the show ended we decided to go up to Skywalkers to see how things were up in the disco. There was a small crowd of people up there. We went and sat down in an area where we had the great view the day before. Soon after we arrived the DJ Tony came up to us and said hi. We didn’t think too much of it at first, but soon Tony was spending more time talking to us then he was being a DJ. One funny thing that happened was that Tony had turned on some new fog machines and despite telling the bridge he was going to do it, they were all in a panic thinking Skywalkers was on fire. I dance a bit, but Shannon doesn’t like to dance (who knew?) so she and Tony chatted a bit. Crazy Eurythmic lady was up there and I actually danced with her a bit. Then there was jean girl (a girl wearing tight jeans) who starting freaking me and I decided I didn’t need to dance anymore. Plus it was getting pretty late so Shannon and I decided to leave. We probably stopped at Horizens food court to grab some food – it became a nightly tradition.

The next day we were headed to Ketchikan and our first excursion – Zip lining!

Back to Alaska

2009-01-11T01:10:00.003-05:00

Holiday Wrap-up

2009-01-05T22:41:00.006-05:00

Now that the holidays are over, I am finally feeling like am able to breath. :) I had many orders and many things to make for my friends and family. The final of which were my frosted Christmas cookies – they are not my favorite thing to make, but I won’t stop making them because they mean a lot to those who receive them.

Cookies anyone…

2008-12-21T21:05:00.006-05:00

Yesterday I may tinkered around with a new twist on some Christmas cookies, I found some peppermint twist and crème de mint chips that I added to some yummy chocolate cookies.
The end result was really good. I added in some meringue cookies for an order and it makes a festive plate.
The rest of the cookies I made for our Christmas Candlelight service tonight at church – unfortunately due to the snow it was postponed until next week – so now I have dozens and dozens of left over cookies….

The aftermath of a storm or the calm before the storm…

2008-12-21T17:58:00.002-05:00

With GR being hit hard with a snowstorm and predictions of another one coming on Sunday everyone hit up Meijer on Saturday. I have never seen my nice, little college town Meijer this busy.I do have to say the staff was doing everything they could to make the lines go as fast as possible they had people bagging in the self check out lanes – including the store manager – kudos to his great example.

Candy Anyone?

2008-12-16T21:44:00.015-05:00

Saturday night I recieved an order for 10 large boxes of candy to be delivered on Tuesday - so I have been making candy like crazy the past couple days. Here is how I fill the orders....

ARE YOU HUNGRY YET? THERE IS STILL TIME TO ORDER...

Cupcakes anyone?

2008-12-15T21:26:00.006-05:00

Lord Stanley's Cup on a cake

2008-12-08T22:35:00.005-05:00

Saturday was my nephew’s 11th birthday. He asked for the Stanley Cup on his cake. Here are a couple pictures of how it turned out.

It just so happens that Chris Chelios was playing for the Grand Rapids Griffins on Saturday and what a more fitting way to celebrate a birthday then to watch a Stanley Cup champion play hockey.

Holiday Happenings

2008-12-01T21:40:00.005-05:00

Now that December has arrived it is time for Erinn’s Edibles to start accepting orders for holiday goodies. The updated order sheet is on the top left side of the blog. You can email your orders to Erinnsedibles@gmail.com (or any other email address you may have for me.) In case you need some visuals…

Heath Candy and Peanut Clusters

Coconut Delights - in dark chocolate- also available in milk chocolate.

Gift boxes which include a "Made Especially for you by Erinn's Edibles" tag inside.

Family favorite Meringue Cookies - loved by everyone, even my cousin's dog who was fed an unknown number on Thanksgiving by my young niece. Opps.

Dora Cakes

2008-12-01T21:32:00.003-05:00

This fall I have been busy baking including not one, but two Dora cakes for one special little girls 3rd birthday. The first cake was for her party with friends, the second for the family party. She liked both of them and I think they turned out pretty good.

The 1st cake

The 2nd cake.

Hiatus

2008-12-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

Over the past couple weeks I have been gearing up for the holiday baking season of Erinn’s Edibles. Which means I need to turn the blog back over to it’s original purpose, all about baking. Once the New Year comes I will continue with the cruise adventures – if you are still interested.

Monday, September 15 - Day at sea

2008-11-17T22:57:00.001-05:00

Monday morning we woke up pretty early – with the 3 hour time difference we were still living some where between the actually time and the time back home. When we woke up we discovered that the cruise director did a morning show every day that went over the details of the day and gave other pertinent information. We watched JJ every morning and often referred to the information he gave. After the crazy year and half that I had it was so great to have someone tell me what to do, where to go and not to have to make any decisions. I think the most difficult decision each day was what time to go to dinner.

I had ordered breakfast the night before to arrive around 8:30 so I could eat before the massage, but woke up early enough to run upstairs to the horizon court – which is the 24 hour buffet. They had a big pot of oatmeal, and that is what I ended up eating every morning for breakfast. On Monday I brought it back to the room so that I could get ready for my massage. We then went upstairs to the spa they led us into the nice waiting room where we filled out a bunch of information. Long story, but two week prior to this I flew home from New York City after the conclusion of the bike tour. For some reason, which I still do not why, after I got home my right ankle and foot started swelling quite badly. On the Saturday between the trips, I went into the doctor’s to get it checked out was immediately sent to the hospital to have an ultra sound to make sure I did not have blood clots. Thankfully I did not, so they put me on water pills and the swelling went down. The first day of the cruise I noticed my leg beginning to swell a bit again. So I put that on the form. My masseuse was Wandi and she was from South Africa. She was very nice and we chatted a bit. Our cruise was the last one before the boat went on dry dock so the majority of the staff had 3 weeks off after us, including Wandi who was going home for the time. Wandi did a good job giving me a massage, and I have had no trouble with my foot since then. Of course as with all the other massages I have had I was left with some bruises. It is crazy how easily I bruise. After our massages, Shan and I went back to our room to get ready for the first of our Cruise Critic gatherings.

Cruise Critic is a website I found at some point early on in my cruise planning/research. On the site you can join a roll call for your cruise and get to know people online before you leave. I really enjoyed getting to know this group in the weeks and months prior to the trip and was looking forward to meeting them in person. We met up in Skywalkers and walking in was reminiscent of my summer on the tour. I walked in and said Hi I am Erinn and the whole group was like Erinn – so good to meet you. I so touched when one of the couples from St. Catharine’s brought me some news paper clipping from when the tour went through. We sat down to chat for a while, but it was pretty rocky up there and Shannon was really feeling it. So she went back to the cabin to lie down and I stay up there. I think we were there for over 2 hours. It was so great to have a group of people that I ‘knew” on the ship for the week. After the cruise critic gathering I went back to the room to see how Shan was doing and then grab a bit of lunch before our Pilates class. Now neither one of us had done Pilates before, and Shan had never even done Yoga, I had at least done that before and knew not to go too crazy. Shan on the other hand gave it her all. Now for those of you who have not done Pilates, there is a far amount of balance involved. It is not such a great idea to try to learn these positions on a rocking boat. I spent half the time laughing at myself and was not taking it all serious. I think Shannon was trying to impress the cute instructor. After word Shannon needed to take a nap. Here she is recovering from Pilates.

Next we needed to get ready for the 1st formal night.

The rest of Sunday September 14

2008-11-12T22:54:00.009-05:00

After we sailed away Shannon and I went off to explore the ship.

This is Skywalkers – the night club/disco what ever you want to call it. Some one was thinking when they designed the ship. Skywalkers is on a deck of it’s own suspended a floor above the top deck of the ship. It has a walkway leading up to it with a people moving up the middle. I enjoyed taking that up. Shan preferred to walk. The only flaw in the design is that there are no bathrooms up there, you have to go back down to the deck below.

Skywalkers offered great views and during the day it was often empty. We went up there during the sail away to watch for awhile. Shannon decided to take this picture of me relaxing. Just as I am saying don’t get my feet in there. We also sat and relaxed by the indoor pool for a while. Sadly it was too cool to spend much time by the outdoor pools.
At some point during the afternoon we finished unpacking and getting our room set for the week. Around 5 pm we headed up to the Lotus Spa where they were giving tours of the spa and at 5:30 raffling off certificates for services. We figured we could sit through the sales pitch if it meant winning something. Sadly we did not win anything, but we did decide to sign up for pilates on Monday our first sea day and spinning on Friday our second sea day. Neither one of us had ever tried pilates or spinning, but that was our mantra for the cruise – lets try new things! Of course it helped that one of the fitness instructor was pretty cute – just ask Shan about him. After the giveaways we deiced to schedule massages. That was one thing we had both talked about doing on the cruise, but had not fully decided on. Unfortunately there were not too many open spots left, but we were able to get appointments on Monday at 9:00 am.

After we left the spa we decide to go get some dinner. We had anytime dinning which meant we could eat in one of two dinning rooms anytime between 5:30 – 9:30 pm. We went to the Portofino dinning room – not sure why, I think it was the first one we found and there was not a wait. Once we were seated Shan let the waiter know that she has a shellfish allergy. He went to get the headwaiter; Andrew who put Shan on his list of food allergies and told her to ask for him as soon as we came in each time and he would make sure her food was prepared separately. I have to say I was impressed with Princesses handling of food allergies, my nephew has a peanut allergy, so I have seen restaurants handle it both good and bad. I would not hesitate to recommend Princess to anyone with dietary concerns. Here are Shannon and I at dinner.
We sat with three other couples that night. I think two of them were from Seattle or had lived in Seattle and the third was from Portland. They were very nice and the conversation never lagged. I had some sort of pasta that night – I don’t remember exactly what kind it was. The food was good and so was the service. No complaints. After dinner we wondered around the ship a bit, stopped in at the different lounges to hear the music, looked around the casino and then went to the 10:15 Welcome Aboard Show. It was at the show we found out the person who had walked by during the muster drill was the Cruise Director JJ. Over the week, JJ became a source of entertainment for us, the inside joke, the diversion, and our source of amusement. Anyone who knows me well knows I often find my comic relief in this fashion. The Welcome Aboard Show was good, it had a sampling of the shows to come, including the comedian Steve Moris who made me laugh a lot at his musical parodies. I will never sign little bunny foo foo the same again. (Yes I do often sign this song, I know lots of 2-3 year olds).

After the show we headed up to bed for the night.

Getting on the Star!!

2008-11-03T22:54:00.021-05:00

The Star Princess we docked at terminal 30 and we had to go through the whole boarding process. Here is our first view of the ship.

We got into line and dropped off the majority of our luggage. Then we proceeded into the building to fill out some paper work ensuring we had not been sick recently. Then we waited in line until we could check in. The line kept moving, and we really did not wait that long, it just felt like it since we were so excited to be there. Once we checked in we moved toward security with a quick stop to get our first of many professional pictures taken. I was carrying our large bouquet of flowers and they were included in the picture. As we entered the ship they took our picture, a mug shot, as we swiped our card for the first time, this was for security reasons. We were finally on the Ship!! We decided to go to our room first and drop off our carry on luggage and get a vase for the flowers. When we booked the cruise we book a guarantee cabin – which as the name suggests, we were guaranteed a cabin on the boat. We joked about how we were sure we were going to be on the lowest deck, under water, in the crew quarters, but we were pleasantly surprised with out assigned cabin. We were in Baja 416 – which is on the 11th deck. The 11th deck was mid way between the Lido, deck 14, where the food court, pools and decks were located and the Promenade, deck 7, where the theaters, lounges, and shops were located. Our cabin was mid-ship, port side, basically in the middle of the ship down the left hallway. We were just around the corner from a set of elevators and a staircase. It was a great location, and if we had booked it originally, it would have cost us both several hundred dollars more.

When we entered our room, we met our room steward, whose name escapes me. He introduced himself and asked if we needed anything. We asked for a vase and he quickly returned with one for our gorgeous flowers.
Look at how pretty they are.
Only $10.
I enlarged this picture to hang up in my house.
We then wondered around the ship for a short while. The passenger muster drill was at 3:30 pm and we had to be in our rooms to get our life jackets. When we got back to the room our luggage was there and we started to unpack while we were waiting for the drill to start. Princess handles the muster drill nicer then some other cruises, they just have you go up to your muster station, not out on the deck by the life boats. They also have the room stewards go through the rooms to make sure everyone is there instead of doing a roll call. They also only have you put on your life jacket and then take it off, not stand around in them. Our muster station was in the hall by the picture gallery and Wheelhouse Bar. When the announcement was made, we headed down there and waited for the instructions. While we were standing there, the cruise director, walked by. It was the first time we saw him and I have to admit I thought he was pretty cute. We did not know at the time who he was, but soon found out.

After the muster drill we went up on the deck for the sail away. It was such a beautiful day, near 80 degrees and sunny. Here are Shannon and I on the deck.
Here are some pictures of the skyline of Seattle as we sailed away.
This is the building we went through to check in, and go through security.
At the time of Sail away the Seattle Seahawks were playing the San Francisco 49ers. As we went by we could hear the roar of the crowd. More pictures of the skyline.

Notice how short the space needle is?

Not happy with Thrifty!

2008-10-26T22:47:00.000-04:00

We ended the underground tour right by a Starbuck’s – go figure we were in Seattle. It was not the original Starbuck’s but I figured I needed to go to at least one while I was there. So I went in and got a “dessert in a glass” since I don’t drink coffee. As we walked back to the car we came across this great little boutique – Divas Dollz – it had vintage and vintage inspired clothes, lingerie, shoes, jewelry… everything was so girly, lacy, frilly, so up my ally! I didn’t buy anything since we were short on time, but I am definitely putting on my list next time I go to Seattle. I think the Pioneer Square area is becoming my favorite part of Seattle. We then jumped in the car and drove over to Pike’s Place market to pick up some flowers for our cabin for the week. Since it was as crazy over by the market as the rest of downtown, I dropped Shannon off with $10 and drove around the block while she picked up some flowers. They were so beautiful and lasted all week. (Picture to come soon)

We then drove to the Thrifty car rental place by the piers. I had found this place in June during the crazy police chase I got caught in. I know I have not told that whole story, but I will some day. On the June trip, I had a few issues with Thrifty, it took an hour at the airport just to get the car – it was so frustrating. But after searching they still had the cheapest rate to pick up at the airport and drop off at the pier. So I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and try again. This time getting the car at the airport was a breeze and I thought the June incident was a flunk. I was wrong. We pulled into the lot and tried to figure out where to park, we finally saw an employee wave us over to parking spot. We parked the car and started gathering our stuff and the worker kept rushing us to get out. I found it a little rude, but thought, fine you can take care of the trash. We brought our luggage up to the sidewalk and Shannon stayed outside with it while I went in to pay. When I walked into the building I noticed a huge difference from when I was in there in July. There were office supplies and files all over the floor, trash all round and it was just filthy. I could not believe it. When I walked there were 5 people in line in front of me. It was then I found out that the employee outside was the only one working there and every time a new car came in to be returned she would have to run out and check it in. I waited in line almost 30 minutes just to pay. It was crazy – poor Shannon had no idea what was going on until I texted her. After I finally got through the line I went back outside to wait for the shuttle. We were a bit worried since the whole time we were there no shuttles came. In addition there were about 30 people all waiting. We talked about walking to the pier, but with all our stuff I am not sure we could handle it. Finally the shuttle came and it was so tiny – there were seats for about 10 people and 30 to fit in. I wish I had a picture of us all crammed in the shuttle. I sat down and Shannon was practically floating on everyone’s lap. It was insane. Thankfully it was a short ride and we were on our way to our home for the next week – The Star Princess.

Pictures of the History lesson

2008-10-16T22:49:00.017-04:00

Here is the city before the fire. Here is a plaque telling about the fire – how would you like to be forever known as the guy who set Seattle on fire.
Here is a plaque on the actions the city took. This is a common use of the underground – a storage area for trash.
Here is a picture of the rebuilt city before the streets were raised.
This is now the original “street level” which is now underground.
This is a bank before the streets were raised.
This is that same door way, underground.
This is a teller cage. We also walked through the bank vault that was used then. They claimed it is haunted, but we did not see anything. These are the floors that are sinking due to the fact that they used sawdust to originally fill the tide plains. In order to have light in the underground, the city put in some sky lights. This is one looking up from the underground.
Here it the same sky light from the side walk.
This was the door into Doc Maynard’s where the underground tour starts.
This was a cool building in the Pioneer Square district.
And for some reason I love the “Ride the Ducks” tours – it goes on both land and in the water – I did not go on it, but maybe someday.

A History Lesson

2008-10-14T22:44:00.002-04:00

Sunday morning Shannon and I got up, packed up our room and set off to go to Pioneer Square downtown to take the underground tour. This was the thing I was the most excited about (besides seeing my cousins) on this trip to Seattle. I know I am a nerd, who loves history. J Before we went downtown we needed to find a store to pick up a few things and for Shannon to double check that her camera memory card was working. We found a Walgreen’s and both went off to grab what we needed. As I got into line I noticed this man in front of me in line. He was wearing denim dickie overalls, a dingy t-shirt, a straw “cowboy” hat and a Bluetooth. I don’t have a picture cause I thought that might be kind of rude, but the song “One of these things does not belong with the others” was going through my head.

We then drove downtown to go on the tour. We had hoped to go on the 10:00 am, but realized we were not going to make it, so we then planned on the 11:00. It is good thing we had that option since downtown was crazy with the Seattle Seahawk, San Francisco 49ers games going on. We search all over for a place to park. The lots were charging between $25 and $40 for the day, and we really did not want to pay that for a couple of hours. While we were driving around we saw some pretty random things, people tailgating is some park not very close to the stadium, a marching band walking and playing down the street and your typical football fans. We drove around until 10:45 looking for a spot and could not find one. At that point Shannon jumped out of the car to go buy tickets and we thought we were just going to have to bite the bullet and pay that much for parking. UGH! Then as I turned the corner to go to the closest $25 lot I noticed a girl getting into her car at a meter. I could not believe my luck. She pulled out and I quickly claimed my stop. Of course I had to parallel park, which is something I don’t do too often. But I performed a perfect maneuver and made it to the tour in time to quick use the restroom before the tour started.

The Seattle Underground Tour started in Doc Maynard’s Public House, a restored 1890s saloon. Where the guides tell you a brief history of Seattle, while I remember some of it, I will revert to Wikipedia for the summary…

Seattle's first buildings were wooden. In 1889, a cabinetmaker accidentally overturned and ignited a glue pot. An attempt to extinguish it with water spread the burning grease-based glue. The fire chief was out of town, and although the volunteer fire department responded, they made the mistake of trying to use too many hoses at once. They never recovered from the subsequent drop in water pressure, and the Great Seattle Fire ended up destroying 33 city blocks.

While a destructive fire was not unusual for the time, the response of the city leaders was. Instead of rebuilding the city as it was before, they made two strategic decisions. First, they ordered that all rebuilding use stone or brick—insurance against a similar disaster in the future. They also decided to take advantage of the destruction to regrade the streets one to two stories higher than the original street grade. Pioneer Square had originally been built mostly on filled-in tidelands and as a consequence it often flooded. The new street level also assisted in ensuring that gravity-assisted flush toilets didn't back up during high tide in Elliott Bay.

To regrade, the streets were lined with concrete walls which formed narrow alleyways between the walls and the buildings on either side of the street, and a wide "alley" where the street was. The naturally steep hillsides were used, and through a series of sluices, material was washed into the wide "alleys", effectively raising the streets to the desired new level, generally twelve feet higher than before, though some places were nearly thirty feet.

At first, pedestrians climbed ladders to go between street level and the sidewalks in front of the building entrances. Brick archways were constructed next to the road surface, above the submerged sidewalks. Skylights with small panes of clear glass, (which later turned to amethyst-colored because of manganese in the glass), were installed, creating the area now called the Seattle Underground.

When they reconstructed their buildings, merchants and landlords knew that it would just be a matter of time before what was originally the ground floor would be underground, and what was originally the next floor up would be the new ground floor. As a result, there is very little decoration on the doors and windows of the original ground floor, but extensive decoration on the new ground floor.

Once the new sidewalks were complete, building owners moved their businesses to the new ground floor, although merchants carried on business in the lowest floors of buildings that survived the fire, and pedestrians continued to use the underground sidewalks lit by the glass cubes (still seen on some streets) embedded in the grade-level sidewalk above.

In 1907 the city condemned the Underground for fear of bubonic plague, two years before the 1909 World Fair in Seattle (Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition). The basements were left to deteriorate or were used as storage. In some cases, they became illegal flophouses for the homeless, gambling halls, speakeasies, and opium dens.

Only a small portion of the Seattle Underground has been restored and made safe and accessible to the general public on guided tours

Pictures to follow in next post.

Up to the Market

2008-10-13T23:11:00.030-04:00

For those of you who have not been to Seattle, the city is built on some very large hills, actually cliffs. To get to the Pike Place Market from the water you have to go up about a million steps. I might be exaggerating a bit, but while you are in the process of climbing it feels like a million. Once we arrived I showed Shannon where the first Starbucks was located and then we made our way over the main part of the market. The market was much busier then the previous time I was here, I have to imagine it was due to the fact it was a Saturday and many of the locals come here to get fresh produce, fish, flowers, etc. Here we each are with the “infamous” sign.
Then we were successful in taking a picture of the two of us by holding the camera out in front.
And an up-close one of the sign. We went over to the fish stand and watched them sell and throw some fish.
Then they handed this big fish to a boy in the crowd. Yuck, I hope he washed his hands after holding this.
We then went over the pepper stand. For some reason I just love how they put these displays together. This wreath was something new, I had not seen it in June. Very cool!
Then there are all the flowers. I absolutely love fresh flowers and they are all so amazing at the market. Here is some pretty statice Here is a nice fall bouquet
And these pretty pink stargazer lilies – I took these in honor of our cruise critic group – we were named the Stargazers.
Here are a row of flowers for $5 each! The flowers are so cheap here it is unbelievable. You would pay so much more for these anywhere else. We then moved onto the fresh fruit
- quick update on the this fruit picture, Shannon and I have both gone through these pictures several times, and it was only today, 10/14 that we noticed the huge lizard eating a peach. Hmm... not sure if it was take your pet to the market day or not.... And vegetables
Pasta anyone?
As we were leaving we saw this cute parking sign.
We then walked behind the market to the fun little park I had found in June to get some great sky line pictures. Here is Shan with the city behind her.
After we left the market we headed back to our hotel. Here is our room for the night - much bigger then our cabin for the week. We then headed up towards Kirkland to have dinner with my cousin, Betsy and Rob for dinner. I wanted to take Shannon across the floating bridges, which is one part of Seattle that I absolutely love and I am fascinated by.
Evidently Tampa has floating bridges, so Shan was not as impressed. We also took the tunnel under Mercer Island – Shannon was glad she was not driving. We had dinner in Kirkland, which has a fun downtown area. We went to an Irish Pub and had a great dinner! When we got back to my cousins house we saw the nursery which is awaiting the arrival of twin boys (they are scheduled to be born this Thursday, October 16th) It was great to be able to spend time with Betsy and Rob again, we had a great time both in July and September. I hope to be able to visit them again soon – I am sure they will welcome any help with the boys.

Space Needle and the Real World

2008-10-09T21:12:00.019-04:00

We decided not to go up in the space needle. It was $16 a person and after talking to a couple of people who got off the elevator, we decided it was not worth it. We did lose each other in the gift shop. It is a circular shop on the ground floor and we were both circling it looking for each other. It was pretty funny.
We found this nice spot to take some pictures with the space needle.
We then left the Seattle Center and headed back down to Alaska Way, which is where the Real World House was. Here is a picture of the space needle as we drove away. As we were walking down the street we saw the Golden Princess leaving. The Golden is a sister ship to the one we were on. Here are some pictures as it sails away.
I admittedly did not watch the Real World Seattle season (I have only watch one season in my life.), but Shannon was a big fan. Finding the house was high on her list of things to do in Seattle. The funny thing about it, is that when I was Seattle in June she was telling me she wanted to go while I was stopped at a railroad crossing directly in front of it, but had no idea that was it. The house was located at Pier 70 Evidently this is where some fight took place and somebody threw something into the ocean – guess you had to watch the show. The things about this location, is that after the show was over a new owner bought the place and had totally redone the whole thing. So it does not look anything like it did during the Real World and the house is gone. But the door was here.
Here is Shannon by the door.
Now there is a nice restaurant where you can go eat (or in our case walk around and take pictures of.) This is one of my favorite pictures. Over the course of the cruise Shannon and I took many pictures of the two of us by holding her camera out and taking the picture. This was our first attempt. As you can see we failed. I was standing to the right of Shannon. Many times during the cruise we would find this picture for a good laugh.

From the Real World house we headed towards the Pike Place Market. On the way we saw this road sign...

Seattle Center in September

2008-10-08T22:42:00.015-04:00

I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel around 1:30 or 2:00 pm on Saturday, I can’t remember exactly what time it was. Seeing Shannon walk out of the door hotel made everything real. Traveling so much this summer the beginning of this trip felt like every other trip, not like the start of a wonderful vacation and with Shan living in Orlando we only see each other about once a year. Finally seeing her in person made the realization that our vacation was actually beginning. After a quick trip to Wendy’s, dropping off my luggage in our room for the night, and a changing into cool clothes – it was around 80 degrees out we jumped in the rental car to head into downtown Seattle.

I was pleasantly surprised how well I remembered the city and how to get around. This was Shannon’s first time in Seattle and she was excited to see the city. As we approached she took this picture from the car.
The first “landmark” we saw was Safeco Field.
We then traveled down Alaska way and Shan saw Puget Sound for the first time. We decided to start our sightseeing at the Space Needle. Parking around that area was quite expensive and hard to find. A few blocks away we found some on street parking, but you had to back in on an angle. Normally I would not think too much of this, but being in a rental car, that I had only driven for a few hours, I was a little nervous. But I did really well. We are the little black car in the middle
We walked a few blocks to the space needle, which is surrounded by the Seattle Center which has sculptures, gardens, museums, and kid’s area. Here is the space needle as we approached it.
This is one of the sculptures – it is not a Calder – but it looks like one.
Shan and I both had our pictures taken by it. While we were there a little girl was using one of the tubes as a slide, I tried to take a picture, but she was bored at the point and went to play with something else. Evidently grass is not very nice in Florida, so Shannon as excited to walk on some real grass.
These are some of the pretty flowers
I found this mural and I liked it.
Shannon wanted to go play in the kid’s area, but she was too tall.
This is a lightning bolt sculpture – I liked this too.

On the road again

2008-10-04T14:23:00.007-04:00

So much of this summer still seams so surreal, including the fact that I was in Seattle twice in less then three months. I have to say I really like Seattle – the area is beautiful, the people friendly, and during the 8 days I was there the weather was beautiful, warm and sunny, no rain!

Getting to Seattle was uneventful for me. For the 3rd time this summer I the Grand Rapids to Denver flight and for the third time the time was moved up to 8:30 am, which meant I needed to be up and out of the house by 7:00 ugh – not ideal for the start of a vacation, but thankfully I was able to sleep most of the first flight. As we were approaching Denver I was looking out the window and notice a plane was stopped on the side of the road out near the runway. Approaching the plane were several emergency vehicles, obviously something was wrong. I found out later the plane was from Little Rock, and a tire blew during take off. Thankfully they were able to land without incident, but they had to sit there for a couple hours and several people missed their connecting flights, including a several couples who were on their way to Seattle to catch a cruise ship and were in danger of missing it, which is why I am glad I flew out a day early.

The second flight was also uneventful and as I approached Seattle I was able to get some great pictures of Mt Rainier. With all the time changes, I spent 8 hours traveling, but arrived in Seattle at 1 pm.

Shannon’s travels to Seattle were decidable more complicated and stressful. Originally Shannon was scheduled to fly from Orlando to Seattle on Saturday with a lay over in Huston. But with hurricane Ike quickly approaching, the Huston airport was to close at noon on Saturday. Shannon received this news on Wednesday and so her flights were moved to Friday. She was able to get into the hotel a night early and everything was set. So we thought. Thursday night Shannon received another phone call from the airline telling her that the Friday flights were now cancelled and she had two choices, take a flight that lands her in Seattle an hour after the ship left on Sunday or pay an additional $1000 for the final first class seat on Friday. Neither one was a valid option. So Thursday night, just hours before she was scheduled to leave Shannon was ticket less. Thankfully she found a flight on Air-Tran that got her into Seattle on Friday, but didn’t get here home until Monday. This worked out due to the fact that Shan’s roommate works for the Marriott chain and was able to get us rooms at the Courtyard by Marriott for $50 a night.

On Saturday Shannon hung around the hotel until I arrived, thankfully I landed early, quickly picked up the rental car and drove over to the hotel. Our adventure was about to begin….

Alaska Overview

2008-09-22T22:47:00.016-04:00

I just returned from the most amazing vacation ever! I was on a 7 day Alaskan cruise out of Seattle. I am just beginning to go through my pictures and I am not sure when I will have them all, but I thought I would do a quick overview and then go into more details as I go through the pictures.

I arrived in Seattle on Saturday September 13th on another beautiful sunny day. Here is a picture of Mt. Rainier from the plane
We spent Saturday afternoon, evening and Sunday morning touring around Seattle. My favorite thing was the underground tour. A must see if you are in Seattle
Then we boarded the Star Princess – our home for the week. We bought some flowers from the Pike Place Market to bring on board; they brightened up our room for the week.

Our first port stop was in Ketchikan – the weather was beautiful – no rain, which is rare the city has 280 days of rain a year. We went zip lining there – this is Shannon on the zip line.

Our second stop was in Juneau – there we went kayaking. Here we are with our kayak guide.

Our third stop was in Skagway. We went mountain biking here. It was so much fun! Here is Shannon all decked out in bike gear. Our days at sea were filled with activities too. We got lots of pictures taken – here is us one of the not formal nights.

Here we are on the second formal night.
Our cruise director was JJ Ullrich. Every morning he would host Good Morning Alaska which went over all the activities of the day and give any pertinent information. Every morning we watched to see what was going on. I am going to miss having someone lay out my plans for each day for me. Here is a picture of him on TV.
JJ was a great cruise director and I enjoyed chatting with him a bit.

The week went by so quickly and I was so sad to have to leave. I miss the boat and the great people I met. I will post all the fun stories from the boat as I am able.

Back to real life…

2008-09-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

I had every intention to relate the tales of the bike tour over the summer, but for a variety of reasons I was not able to. Part of it was time, some of it was emotional and part of it was just mental over load. I have posts started and will at some time go back to tell the stories from this summer. Until then a bit of catch up; during the summer I did minimal baking, but I did fine a great cheese muffin/roll recipe. Of I forgot to take pictures of them, but I will the next time I make them.

I also made, what turned out to be one of my favorite blankets, for a darling new daughter of a dear friend of mine.

As seen in Time Square Sunday night

2008-09-02T21:39:00.003-04:00

For a closer look...

Tour Mom

2008-07-16T23:36:00.000-04:00

Before I continue on with each day I wanted to share a cute story that occurred on Sunday. Early on during the Seattle visit it became increasingly obvious that I was the person all the cyclists turned to with questions, concerns, or when they just needed reassurance. I was the tour Mom. At one point a co-worker and I were standing in the cafeteria talking about my status as “Mom” and two of the cyclists came up to me and asked “Erinn do you think we should get dessert?”

Yup I was Mom all right.

Totally missed the boat!

2008-07-14T23:26:00.002-04:00

One of the most retold story of the entire Seattle trip happened during registration.

Over the past year or so I was the main contact for the cyclists and many of them I got to know well. From these interactions I was able to tell a lot about the cyclists, how they handle certain things and put them into their groups based on these observations. This was true about all of the cyclists except one. Now I am going to admit some things that well do not put me in the best of lights, and is kind of mean, so I am going to be as generic as possible in describing this cyclist.

From the beginning there was just something off about this cyclist. Every contact that was made to Sea to Sea, was made by a 3rd party. From the application being sent in, the email address, phone calls with questions… nothing came directly from this cyclists to myself or to our communications director. Now this cyclist is over 25, old enough to take care of their own business, so it struck us all as a little odd. (Yes I am admitting we as a staff talked about the cyclists) I was giving the cyclists the benefit of a doubt and thought perhaps their place of employment did not allow personal calls during business hours. Other thought there was just something wrong with the cyclists. Well a couple week before the start of the tour, a 3rd party is on the phone with me, asking questions on the cyclists behalf and in the middle of the conversation the person on the phone says “just a second, cyclists has a question” and then after silence the 3rd party asked the question. Well there went my work theory. Of course I hung up the phone and shared this with the office full of staff. (This is where it gets mean) We all went off, about how there had to be something significantly wrong with this cyclists. We were thinking, deaf, speech impediment, mentally challenged, and on and on. Admittedly this was during our crunch time and we needed a stress reliever, but this cyclist became an inside joke and we mad all kinds of predictions about how many people would come to registration with the cyclists.

Fast forward to registration… It was actually a pretty slow time when this cyclist came in, alone. So I watch as the cyclist crossed the room to come to me at the start of the line. The cyclists gave me their name and I am not going to lie, my jaw hit the table. This person standing in front of me could not be the cyclist we had spent days joking about. The cyclists is a very attractive person, well spoken, personable and by the end of the weekend I discovered very helpful and willing to jump in and lend a hand. I could not believe it, in fact I wanted to text the other staff to tell them, but didn’t get a chance. But as soon as I saw other staffers, it was the first thing I told them.

I can’t believe how off I had been about this cyclist, I had the completely wrong impression. Although I do still find it weird that a 3rd party handled everything.

Bit of a delay

2008-07-14T22:53:00.000-04:00

Sorry I have not continued with the Seattle saga for a few days. I had to deal with life…

Now, back to the story.

Saturday June 28th

2008-07-10T00:12:00.005-04:00

The bat phone rang at 4:45am Saturday morning, less then 4 hours after I went to bed. It was a cyclist calling with travel changes. I am not going to lie, I let it go to voice mail, but did check it before rolling over to go back to sleep for another hour. Phone calls at all hours of the day and night have not stopped and when they are from a cyclist or a cyclists family I do not care, when they are the wrong number in the middle of the night, I get a little upset.

The team breakfast was at 7:00 am on Saturday, and our group was considerably larger, and so were our tasks for the day. The first order of business was setting the airport shuttle schedule. I also had to change the name on the reservation for the mini van we were renting for the day, which turned out to be the biggest pain!! Another black mark against Thrifty rental car.

Another task for the morning was purchasing a printer cable. Evidently when you purchase a new printer it does not come with a cable.

A few hours of my morning was putting together 12 groups of cyclists for the bike safety course. Now this was not quite as easy as just throwing together groups. The bike safety practical training was taking place in two sessions on Sunday, the 1st from 1:00 pm – 2:30 and the 2nd from 3:00 pm – 4:30pm. At 1:00 pm 30 or so cyclists needed to be at one type of leadership meeting and at 3:00 pm 10 different cyclists needed to be at another meeting. So I had to make sure these cyclists were in the groups that met at the opposite times as well as make sure that family members were in the same groups. After working on this and getting the printer up and running I had everything I needed for registration.

Registration was from 2pm – 5pm and I was so excited to finally meet many of the cyclists in person. During registration one of the funniest moments of the entire trip happened – see the next entry for that story.

Here are some picture I found on other blogs of registration.

Look me on the phone - big surprise!

We actually extended registration until 5:30 since we had a steady stream of people coming in. I knew I was going to have to hold late registrations, so I was okay with staying later if it meant less people to track down.

With the longer time, it meant I had to go right from registration to catering to pick up the cakes for the Meet and Greet starting at 7:00 pm and needed to set up the patio. We got that all set up and soon the patio was filled with cyclists.

Here are a couple pictures I found.

The sea of yellow was a common sight
There was program on the patio, but I missed it, I was on the phone with cyclists who were at the airport. Big surprise.

After the meet and greet I held another registration for the late arriving cyclists, then cleaned up both the patio and the registration room. Lisa Brouwer, one of the cyclists was a great help to me that night. She jumped right in and help out. She is great about doing that. I miss Lisa. After another long day I finally fell into bed around 1 or so.

I do still bake…Occasionally

2008-07-08T20:52:00.004-04:00

Let me interrupt my Seattle adventure with a couple pictures of the cake I made last night for my niece’s birthday.

She wanted a High School Musical cake- which is hard to make cute.

I did my best.

The pictures are not great – I sure it had something to do with the warm, humid air in my kitchen.

Friday June 27th

2008-07-08T20:47:00.004-04:00

Friday started off with an 8 am meeting with all the staff and volunteers in Seattle to receive our marching orders. There was a lot to be done, so we went with a divide and conquer method. Ed and I started off meeting with the person conducting the bike safety course. Then we met up with Kylie, our event coordinator at the UW. I was so happy to meet Kylie in person after months of working together via phone and email. She was a great help and I enjoyed working with her. During the walk-through we had a few things that needed attention, but they were all things that could be easily fixed. Those meetings took up our morning and we met up with the rest of the group for lunch. After lunch I went to Costco with Bud, a local volunteer who had taken time off of work to help us out. A couple hours later I had all the food we needed for the cyclists for the weekend stored in the living area of our room. I took care of a few other odds and ends until a 5 o’clock Spiritual Support meeting, which I moved to the patio.

Here is a picture of the committee members present at the meeting.

While a meeting took place, I was only present for pieces of it. The rest of the time I was answering phone call after phone call after phone call. I literally was on the phone during more of the meeting then I was off it. CRAZY!

After the meeting it was time to organize the staff dinner. We wanted to have one last time together before all the cyclists came. Our group included the staff, committee members present, support staff (volunteers) and our local volunteers. Bud chose Ram a local brewery. The food was good and plentiful and the bar had more varieties of alcohol that I have ever seen. Of course a portion of the dinner we were working.

Here in a picture of us at dinner

After we returned from dinner Jen and I had some additional things to work on and I fell into bed around 1 am.

The UW

2008-07-06T23:39:00.004-04:00

The University of Washington has got to be one of the most beautiful collage campuses. The buildings are old stone and brick buildings with a ton of character, the streets are lined with mature trees, providing cool paths and the building we stayed was located on a hill overlooking Lake Washington with Mt. Rainier in the background. It was just gorgeous. The back of our dorm had this huge patio that I absolutely loved. Boy I wish I took some pictures. Once I discovered the patio, I moved as many meetings there as possible.

I found this picture of the view from the patio on one of the cyclists blogs.

Unfortunately the dorm rooms left a little to be desired. This building had it rooms arraigned in clusters. There are 4 two person bed rooms surrounding a living area and a bathroom. The bedrooms are relatively big, but the furniture is bolted to the walls. The beds are a slab of wood attached to the wall with some deluxe blow up mattress on it. Each room also has two closets that take up way too much of the floor space (never thought you would hear me complain about a closet being too big :) ) and two desks again bolted to the walls. Most of the beds had drawers under them. While it was fine for me for the weekend, I can’t imagine living there for a year. And I had a room to myself (Jen, Ed and I all had rooms to ourselves since we had work to do until all hours of the night.) Then there is the bathroom – it had one toilet, one shower and two sinks, for 8 people! My sister and I had that set up growing up and I can’t tell you the number of fights that ensued between the two of us. Just imagine 8 people for a year. We did fine with the 6 of us for the weekend, but there were several discussions on who was going to take a shower when.

The staff was amazing. At the beginning of each new shift I would introduce myself to the new staff, explaining I was the coordinator of the event and chances are, I would need something. And I always did, carts to move stuff around, keys to various rooms, directions to the place, copies, things printed off. I am not going to lie, I asked for a lot. The staff consistently was friendly and quick to help. I need to look into talking to their boss and let them know how accommodating they all were.

The weather in Seattle was abnormally warm and the UW does not have air conditioning, which was one downside. Thankfully it is really not humid there and there was nice breeze to cool things off. The cafeteria was big and had plenty of selections. When I had a chance to eat I was happy.

Being a tourist pt 2

2008-07-05T20:44:00.010-04:00

Located in the market is the original Starbucks. Even a non-coffee drinker like me can appreciate the significance of the location. I have to admit I like the brown coloring better then the trademark green

Inside the store

The acknowledgment of the store

Just behind the market there is plaza where we took some great pictures

We left the market area in search of dinner. We found this great place right on the water, Fisherman's. It was wonderful! I am not the biggest fish fan, but I am a big "when in rome" person, so I had to order fish for dinner. Even with the prices being more then I often spend a week in groceries, I ordered the Alaskan Halibut. It was amazing! It melted in my mouth and the best fish I have ever had. I would highly recommend both the restaurant and the meal to anyone.

After a nice, leisurely dinner enjoying the view of Elliot Bay, we headed off to the original REI. Now if you don't know REI it is a big sporting store - much like a Cabela's and the closest one to GR is in Novi. Again not a store I would usually go to, but my co-workers wanted to pick up a few thing for their nine week trip and I was looking for a bargain on water proof shoes and a good rain coat for the Alaska trip. I didn't find either, so back to the online shopping (or taking up some offers of borrowing.)

The flagship REI is located in the middle of Seattle, but you would never know it. There are trails that lead up to the store - here is the view from one of them

Looking up from the trail, this is the entrance of the store.

After leaving REI we headed over to the University of Washington, our home for the next few days and the start of all the insanity.

Being a tourist

2008-07-05T20:25:00.002-04:00

Thursday afternoon we left from the airport and headed downtown for a little sight seeing. Jen wanted to go to Pikes Place Market, so we headed in that direction. Ed drove since he has been to Seattle and at least had some idea of where to go. He pointed out some of the landmarks including The Space Needle, which is much shorter then I expected, and the Experience Music Project, which has some cool architecture. We then parked and made our way up the million stairs to the market (I am only slightly exaggerating on the number of stairs) This time is one of the few times I was actually able to take some pictures.

Here is the entrance to the market.

A close up of the flower boxes

Looking out at the skyline of Seattle from the market.

I couldn't not take a picture of the bakery.

The produce looked wonderful - but it didn't make much sense to buy anything to bring to the dorm.

Peppers anyone?

A closer look

Travel to Seattle, Thursday 6/26

2008-07-05T02:12:00.000-04:00

My day started out early because my flight was moved up to 8:20 am. I arrived at the airport slightly after 7:00 to check in. My first flight was a direct flight to Denver – this is the first of three times I will take this flight over the next few months. The flight was fine, a little turbulent, but over all a good flight. Unfortunately I was not so great. Something did not sit well with me or I was just over tired from the lack of sleep and I forgot to take some ibuprofen when I first started getting a headache. By the time we landed in Denver, I was not feeling well at all. Thankfully I did not get sick, but it was touch and go for a while. During the layover I drank sprite to try to settle my stomach and thankfully it did. I was not looking forward to getting on another plane in such a state. I was also very thankful to be traveling with my co-worker Jen – she was a great help in watching my stuff as I tried to recover. By the time the second flight took off I was feeling better, but already behind schedule as I planned on working during the lay over. The flight between Denver and Seattle was much smoother, and I was able to sleep for a little while, which I needed.

As we approached Seattle the scenery was amazing. We were on the left side of the plane and had the most amazing view of Mt. Rainer. The snow topped mountain was breath taking, and I made sure to change my seat on my flight out in September to be able to see it again. As we were flying over the city I noticed the bridges over Lake Washington. They looked so low, I could not figure out why they were like that. I later found out that they are not bridges, they are floating highways.

We landed on time, around 1:15 Western time, so it felt like 4:15 EST. The airport was easy to navigate and we quickly made our way to the baggage claim. Thankfully I was feeling fine by the point. The plan was for Jen and I to pick up the rental car and wait for our other co-worker, Ed to arrive. He was supposed to be about 45 min behind us. Thrifty car rental was a fiasco – it took us forever to be waited on. I was not happy. I waited over a half an hour for the clerk to wait on the two people in front of me. Then I needed to make another reservation for Saturday, we needed a mini van to serve as a shuttle on Saturday. The clerk could not help me, so I had to call the reservation number as I stood at the counter. I can not recommend them for future rentals. By the time we got through the rental issues, we found out Ed’s plane had been delayed until after 3:00 pm. So Jen and I sat down in the waiting area and did some work. I can only imagine the sight, with four cell phones and two lap tops between us, we were constantly on a phone or two and checking multiple email accounts. It set the tone for the entire weekend.

Once Ed arrived we picked up the car and decided to go downtown for a bit of fun before the real craziness ensued.

Where to start?

2008-07-05T01:43:00.001-04:00

What is that they say about the best laid plans? I had intended to update each day I was in Seattle, but obviously this did not happen. I was just way too busy. So now I will try to recount the details. I think the best place to start is at the beginning of the trip. I will try to go chronologically, with a tangent or two thrown in.

Wednesday

I want to include one small detail from Wednesday, because it is so telling of what would come. Around 11:45 pm I was finishing up packing when my phone rang. I have been given the cell phone that will serve as the emergency contact number during the tour as well as the number the cyclist were given to call with any travel issues/updates. I have nick named this phone the bat phone. So 11:45 pm the bat phone rings. The caller, one of the cyclists was calling from the west coast and didn’t think about which time zone he was calling. I laughed it off, since I was still up, but other times this will not be so funny.

Blogjacked

2008-07-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

Over the summer the focus of Erinn’s Edibles will be my reflections on the Sea to Sea bike tour. Beginning with my trip to Seattle, WA for the kick off. I just returned this morning, around 9:30 am after a delay in Seattle. I have so much to share about my 6 days in Seattle. Over the next several days I will post several entries about my travels, the tour, the cyclists both as a whole and some individuals, my transformation, the send off, the first day, time with my cousin, and being caught in the middle of a high speed police chase in downtown Seattle. Stay tuned for all the excitement.

An Update

2008-06-21T23:53:00.003-04:00

Like so many other things in my life these days, my blog has been neglected. A little while ago I sent out an email with an update to many friends and family. I thought I would post it here too - just to let you know what has been going on.

Hi,

Can you believe how quickly this year is flying by? My life has been downright crazy and I wanted to send out an update on what has been going on since I have been so terrible about emailing, calling, and seeing everyone. Thus a mass email.

For the past 14 months I have been working on planning the Sea to Sea bike tour. This event, which starts next week, is a 9 week, cross continent bicycling event to raise money for poverty alleviating causes; to date the group has raised over 1.5 million dollars! I have been one of 4 staff members who have taken this crazy idea and made it a reality. We have 128 cyclists who will start the ride in Seattle, WA on June 30th and end in Jersey City, NJ on August 31st. In addition there is another 92 cyclists who will ride a 4, 3 or 2 week portion of the ride. Add in 25 support staff and you have about 250 people taking part in the event. One component of my job has been “taking care” of all of these people. Right now I feel like I have 250 children who are about ready to be set free on the open road. For those of you who have been involved with planning an event, I am sure you can imagine the work that goes into planning a 63 day event that travels through 14 states and one province. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that about half of our cyclists are Canadian. I have had quite the lesson is the cultural differences between the two countries, many times the smallest difference manifested into a major issue until I figured out the root of the miscommunication. Thankfully I know my hockey. J

The first question I get from everyone is “Are you riding?” Ah, No. I still do not own a bike, although I have picked up on cycling lingo and can talk a good game. But I will be with the tour about 3 weeks over the summer. Thursday, I leave for Seattle to get ready for our registration, orientation, bike safety course and then to see everyone off. I will return on July 2nd. A few weeks later I will head out to Denver to do it all again for the new cyclists starting there. Then the tour arrives in West Michigan, where we have 65 people joining for the last two weeks. I will be offering the orientation and bike safety classes a few weeks early and the day before the tour arrives in Grand Rapids to try to split up the group of new cyclists. After leaving GR the next stop for me will be meeting the group as they cross into Canada. Over the past year we have had quite an interesting adventure with border crossings. After consulting congressional offices, homeland security, two immigration attorneys, and now being on a first name basis with officials from both the US and Canadian border patrol, we would like to think the crossing of our tour will go smoothly, but we are not counting on it. So I will be there with a vehicle for any one who is unable to cross into Canada. Then I will be spending Labor Day weekend in Jersey City for the end of the tour and it will finally be over! If the next 10 weeks go as fast as the past 10, the tour will be over in a flash. Part of me is really looking forward to this adventure being over.

Once I close down the Sea to Sea office on September 12th, I will be taking a much needed vacation to Alaska. I am really excited about this as the more I talk to people the more I hear about how amazing this area is. We are taking a cruise and part of me is just excited to have a week where someone makes my food, cleans for me and entertains me. Plus I am thrilled about not being able to be reached while sailing in the ocean. After a summer of being leashed by multiple communications devises, 9 days of no email or cell phones sound glorious! When I return from my vacation I will be starting my full time work as the assistant to the director of denominational advancement. I have been doing a little work for this position since the first of the year, and I am looking forward to this being my main focus.

During the tour, you can follow along with the cyclists on our website, http://www.crcna.org/pages/sea_front.cfm each day one of the cyclist will be carrying a GPS so everyone can see exactly where the cyclists are. If you wonder why the route is not straight across the country, it is because we tried to pass as many of the churches as we could.

So far the past 14 months has been very interesting and things are going very well, for being less then a week out. But during the tour safety of the cyclists will be the main concern. Most people don’t realize how dangerous it is for cyclists as they ride on busy roads. Statistics are not in our favor to complete this event without major injury or a fatality. Please keep the cyclists and the tour in your prayers over the nine weeks they are on the road. A continued outpouring of prayers has gotten us to this point and will bring all of the cyclists home safe and sound.

I do hope you are doing well, I know I have missed lots things, but for me it is almost over and soon I will be able to reconnect with everyone.

Erinn

WE WON!

2008-06-04T23:12:00.004-04:00

Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Champions 2008

Bring on the parade!

Another Birthday, another cake

2008-06-01T21:06:00.002-04:00

My brother in laws birthday was on Friday and I went with a bit of a theme cake for today’s family birthdays celebration.
The picture does not show all the details, it actually looks better in person. With the excitement of the game last night, I didn’t even start the cake until after the end. It was pretty late so I didn’t attempt the white details, maybe next time.

Hey Hey Hockey Town Game 4

2008-05-31T23:09:00.003-04:00

Det 2

Pit 1

Detroit up 3 -1 (they lost game 3 - I forgot to post!)

Hey Hey Hockey Town Game 2

2008-05-26T23:03:00.002-04:00

Det 3

Pit 0

Another shut out - Osgood Rocks!

My other favorite hobby

2008-05-26T22:36:00.008-04:00

As many of you know my other favorite hobby is to make blankets – wonderful, warm, cozy fleece blankets that require not a stitch of sewing. That is because I still do not know how to sew – someday I will learn – it is goal. These blankets just require a scissors and tying. I love to make them and actually have it down to a science. Over the past almost 4 years I think I have made over 100 of these - I will admit I have lost count. The initial batch consisted of over 30 blankets that I gave to pretty much everyone I knew one Christmas – everyone but one of my closest friends who lives in a warmer climate – I am not sure why I didn’t make one for her – I think it was a year we decided not to exchange Christmas gifts – but for some reason I still have not made one for her – Hmmm… Anyway, since that point I have made them for wedding gifts, graduations gifts, and countless baby gifts. Today I attended a graduation open house for the girl I took care while I was in college, who somehow grew up and is now headed off to collage, and her best friend who I used to have on Thursdays when I would bring them to dance lessons. The friend is headed off to MSU and she is off to Loyola, Chicago. She also has the distinct honor of being the first person outside of my immediate family who has received a 2nd blanket from me. Here are a couple of blankets I made for some children along the way….

Hey Hey HockeyTown

2008-05-24T22:59:00.005-04:00

1 down, 3 to go!!

Det 4 - Pit 0

Sesame Street Cake #2

2008-05-14T23:01:00.007-04:00

A dear friend of mine asked if I would be able to make a birthday cake for her adorable daughter’s 2nd birthday today. With work being so crazy right now, I have not been able to do much when it comes to Erinn’s Edibles, but thanks to a series of meetings that was moved from Wednesday to Tuesday this month; I was able to make the cake. She requested the Ernie, Elmo, Cookie Monster cake I had made for my niece’s second birthday. I think it turned out pretty cute. And I found out that making a design a 2nd time is so much easier then the first time.

Here is the original... Which one do you like better?

Long over due update

2008-04-27T19:17:00.000-04:00

Yes I am still alive.
Yes I do remember I have a blog
No I have not been away or ill
No I do not have any big or exciting news to report

So what have I been up to – in a nut shell – working! I have mentioned my day job a few times in passing, but without going into a ton of details. About a year ago I started working for an organization putting together a cross continent bike tour for the summer of 2008. As with any time of an event things start out slow and pick up speed until you are just plain crazy. That is where I am now, 9 weeks before the start of the tour. I am pretty much working all the time. Just ask anyone who has emailed me over the past several weeks, my response time is very very slow, if at all. A brief overview of the tour – it is called Sea to Sea, the tour begins June 30th in Seattle, WA and ends in Jersey City, NJ on August 31st. Over those 9 weeks 218 cyclists will be riding close to 4000 miles. No I am not riding. Each participant is raising money to end the cycle of poverty, one person at a time. In the end we hope to raise 1.5 million dollars. I am the project manger of this tour and have just been swamped with work and will be until June 26th when I leave for Seattle. While I am not staying with the tour the full 9 weeks I will be traveling to several of the locations and will end up being with them 2 – 3 weeks. So on top of the work stuff I am also preparing for my personal travel which includes having 4 registration points on the route. For more information check out our website.

In addition I have been planning my post bike tour vacation. I am so excited and can’t wait for a week away. This will be the first time since my 1999 trip to London that I will be with out my laptop (or access to my email) and unreachable by cell phone for a whole week. It can not get here soon enough! I am going on an Alaskan cruise! I have had so much fun learning about this area I don’t know much about and can’t wait to see it in person.

But before that happens I have 9 weeks of planning, 9 weeks of a bike tour and 2 weeks of wrap up. UGH!

What does that mean for Erinn’s Edibles…. That is a really good question. I have renewed the license for the kitchen which is an essential part of the operation. But it is becoming more and more evident that I am not going to be able to do the Farmers Market as much as I had thought, if at all. So stay tuned for further updates.

I’m dreaming of a white Easter?

2008-03-23T23:07:00.000-04:00

Hmm… something does not sound quite right there, might it be the six inches of snow we got Friday. I know Easter was early this year, but come on!

Some fun facts about the date of Easter –

The dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people use to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar. Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon that follows the Spring Equinox which is March 20th. Only the most elderly, 95 years or older, of our population have ever experienced an Easter this early, and it will be the last time living person walking the earth today will see it happen again. The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 which is 220 years from now. The last time it occurred on March 23 was 1913. Furthermore, it will happen one day sooner, on March 22, but not until the year 2285 (227 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. No one alive today has ever seen, or will ever see an earlier East than this year!

Due to the weather, the Good Friday service at my church was cancelled on Friday and I have to I was pretty disappointed. I understand it was terrible out, I was driving in it, but if there is one day I want to be in church it is Good Friday. To me, Easter is just not the same.

I do hope you had a blessed weekend and understand the wonderful day we celebrate today.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T12:39:00.004-04:00

While I don't think I am techincally Irish (I am a little fuzzy on some my genealogy) One day each year I find it hard to escape the notion. When asked if I am Irish, I answer with "In name only" So today I thought I would share this connection with you.

Erin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ErinGiven Name

A topographic map of Ireland, which Erin is named after

This article is about the meaning of Erin.
Erin is a Hiberno-English derivative of Irish Gaelic Éirinn, the dative case - and also locative case - of Éire, the Irish word for "Ireland".[1] Poets and also nineteenth-century Irish nationalists also used Erin in English as a romantic name for Ireland, as shown in the catchphrase (when speaking of Ireland's experiences with Britain), "Let Erin Remember". Erin has also been used as a poetic name for peace and love. According to Irish mythology and folklore, the name was given to the land by the Milesians after the goddess Ériu. Erin Go Bragh (Éirinn Go Brách, in standard orthography), often heard during St. Patrick's Day, means "Ireland Forever". The etymological history of the word as it drifted throughout the Gaelic region gave rise to its use by the early Scots to both mean "Ireland", as well as "West", as Ireland lay to the geographic west of Scotland. [2]
Erin is a given name sometimes for both sexes, although it is essentially and foremost a female name.
Erin has been used as one of the many spellings of the name of the Scottish Clan Irwin, which has been involved in the Scottish Plantations of Ireland.[3] However, their name was originally derived from the place of the same name near Dumfries, and means "green water", from Brittonic ir afon. [4] [5]

Beware the ides of March

2008-03-15T22:54:00.000-04:00

Ever since reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar my sophomore year of high school, I have enjoyed this phrase. I don’t put a whole lot of credence into it, but maybe I should be alarmed since a friend called the other day to see if I was still alive. I know it has been a while since I have updated, not because nothing has gone on, but I have just been overly busy with my day job.

Last weekend I was asked by three separate people about what my plans were for this summer and the farmers market. I have firmly planted on the fence when it comes to deciding what I am going to do. On one hand it is not a necessity this summer as it was last summer and the thought of keeping up the pace of doing it every week again makes me a bit nauseous. Plus I will be traveling for work quite a bit this summer so every week is not possible. But on the other side, I don’t want to give up/lose all momentum I built up last year. It was profitable and my Christmas season rocked. So I don’t want to lose that. Plus another friend called this week to see if I wanted to go on vacation with her this fall and I have to say that is quite an incentive. So I am leaning towards doing the farmers market every other week? Or as much as I can? I have a little bit of time before I have to decide. I will keep you posted.

Finally – I made my first batch of Strawberry Shortcake of the season a couple weeks ago. It was just what I needed to start thinking about spring.

Family Favorite

2008-02-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I had my 10 year old nephew over. Like his sister who came over in January, he also wanted to bake. His choice was an old family favorite, potato chip cookies. No pictures, I forgot to take them, but they turned out great. He did a wonderful job making them. The only thing I did was get out the ingredients and put them away and give a little elbow grease to finish off the blending. The whole scene was a bit of a flash back to when I was that age baking cookies. :)

I don’t know how many of you know have had potato chip cookies, the best way I can think to describe them is to compare them to the hard cookies you get at Chinese restaurants with your fortune cookies. They are kind of like them, but not really. I also was trying to remember how they became a family favorite. I am pretty sure I found them one day when I was trying to find something to make with the ingredients in the house. Evidently we did not have too much around (which was actually a pretty common occurrence) So I was going through my Mom’s old recipe books and found potato chip cookies. I can still tell you which book these came from and consider it one of my favorite books. It is a church book from the 60’s with good old ditch recipes. Anyway I made the cookies and they soon became a favorite. I even remember taking a cooking class as an elective in Jr High and sharing it with them.

Two Days, Two Cakes

2008-02-17T23:07:00.006-05:00

This weekend I found myself making cakes for two different occasions. Saturday was my Mom’s birthday; she didn’t care what, if anything was on her cake, so I went with some flowers. In the picture the border and flowers look blue, but they are really dark purple, her favorite color.

Sunday I made a cake for a shower. As you can see I used the same colors, which was very nice, I almost always have a ton of colored frosting left over. Making cakes two days in a row let me use up some of the frosting.

And to report from the cookie baking last week – the cookies turned out in the end with only a few tears and pouts during the process.

Enough!

2008-02-13T12:45:00.001-05:00

I have finally had enough with this weather. Actually it is not the weather so much as the mixture of elements that has made the roads impossible to clear. The frigid temperatures that make road salt/sand ineffective and the snow and ice on the roads that have turned every road into a skating rink. This week these conditions started on Sunday, last week was no picnic either. I am hoping the temp makes it up to 20 today so that the salt will start to work. They are forecasting a high of 30 tomorrow – which is a heat wave and it will feel like spring. I am not asking for much, just for a day or two when my normal 18 minute commute into work does not take an hour or more!

On a baking note – I am a leader for our Girls Club at church, and I have been working with some girls teaching them how to bake. Tonight is the night they make cookies on their own (with my supervision). I hope they turn out okay.

Happy Super Fat Tuesday

2008-02-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

In the political arena today is known as Super Tuesday, the day when 24 states in one way or another take their part in voicing their opinion on who should be the next president of the United States.

In many Christian communities, today is Fat Tuesday, the day before start of the Lent season where people spend one last day indulging before the turn their focus to this Holy time.

I am not sure if these two day have every occurred simultaneously before, but it made me laugh last night when I thought of it being Super Fat Tuesday.

What significances does this have on every day life? Well it means tonight’s prime time television will be non – stop coverage of election results, much like that of the general election night. And we may or may not know who each party’s candidate is. It will definitely be interesting to see how it all turns out.
And if you live in my neighborhood, the polish Westside – it means that the grocery stores and bakeries are filled with their yearly yummy treat – Paczkis and if you stop by the local store you are apt to find a polka band performing and handing out beads. If you time it just right you might just get to meet the local Pulaski Day Queen. Fun times.