Happy New Year...the cakeballs roll on

New Year's Eve we had breakfast with Tim & Marlene (thank you SO SO SO much for such an amazing breakfast to both of you!!)

Ty and I had been talking about how we had forgotten to buy an ornament for 2010 the day before (which is very uncharacteristic of us) and much to our surprise Tim & Marlene had a surprise waiting for us!

Cakeball Ornaments!

Danielle is the chocolate one, Tabor is the white snowman & Ty is the cakeball with the "stach"

They also gave us Reiny the Reindeer. The traditional Pitchford Christmas reindeer :-)

We had a lot of cakeballs to roll for an order that night so I begged everyone to help me roll once we finished eating.

Tim won the award of Employee of the Month for the month of December. He was a pro on his first try! Seriously a pro!

Tim Pitchford Kruffles Employee of the month

Marlene has been a pro for months now. Take a look at how round & organized her cakeballs are!

Gooftroop also has his rolling down to an art, but he loves to play around and pop them in his mouth still. You have to watch him carefully! Ha! Not really! My hubby has been a huge help lately! I don't know what I'd do without him!

Ty threatening to eat another one!

We got them all finished so fast! Thanks again to all my New Years Eve helpers! I couldn't have done it without you! Thanks for the breakfast & the ornaments Tim & Marlene! We love you guys!!!

We hope everyone's New Years is full of many wonderful blessings! Happy 2011!

Kimberly & Ted get hitched!

We just got back from Texas where we got to celebrate Kimberly & Ted's wedding!

We had an amazing time celebrating this special part of their lives with them!

Here's a few pictures from their beautiful wedding!

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Ted Jakus! We love you guys so much!

I have to show off some of the pics of the blushing bride because she looked AMAZING!

 The Bridesmaids & Bride after makeup and before getting ready for pictures!

The Bride with her Bridesmaids!

The girls in the wedding party! What a fun group!

I love you Kimberly! I think this picture is so much fun!

The Bride with her Maid & Matron of Honor! We were honored to hold these titles!

Showing our true colors. :-) We are still little girls at heart! (The florist said we weren't allowed to play until AFTER the ceremony - oops)

I lost to Erica & Kimberly everytime!

Erica and I got to deliver a letter to the Groom while he was getting ready! So fun!

Mr & Mrs. Jakus with their Bridesmaids & Groomsmen!

The entire wedding party playing outside!

I'm pretty sure I accidentaly kicked a groomsmen while I tried getting my prego belly off the ground!

Aww! Husband and Wife so excited to be married! They are so precious together!

Of course you know I would include a picture of the cake! YUM! Panini Bakery in Dallas, TX. (Go cake tasting & have a boxed lunch beforehand...delicious!)

I may be a little biased, but personally the Grooms Cake (truffles) was my favorite part!

Isn't the photographer amazing?! I'll have more pictures on the Kruffles blog soon! Stay tuned! Here's a link to the photo gallery though if you're interested!

http://www.jmayphoto.com/ and enter weddings.  Click on client proofing.  The login code is ‘kruffles’.

Cake cutting is my favorite part of weddings!!

 Ty and I after eating our yummy meal! (Prego chic likes food!)

Kristin & Erica - what hotties! 

Us again! We had a fun table!

We sent the Bride & Groom off in Bubbly style! (We were lucky because Ty and I got to take them to the airport the next morning so we got to see them again after this!)

So there you have it! Our fun filled week of wedding cakeballs and wedding celebration in sunny Dallas, Texas! We had such a great time with Kimberly & Ted! I wish we could've stayed longer and seen everyone else, but I'm sure we'll be back soon enough!

Here's a few pics from the Bachelorette party & Bridal lunch. I'm still waiting to get more but here's what I have so far:

Maid & Matron of Honor enjoying lunch at one of their favorite places: Hotel Palomar

The girls at dinner before the Bachelorette Party!

Kimberly & her Bridesmaids!

New Challenges

Well my Product Developer LOVES giving me new ideas AND especially new challenges. Last week she (Marlene) requested I make a "tower of cakeballs" for a friend's birthday.

Well...I did.

I then texted this picture to her and called her in a panic. Her Cakeball Tower looked like a pile of poo.

Even her husband replied, "Quick someone find the escaped Camel!"

Everyone's suggestions were to change it up and make it look different, but I stood strong. I KNEW she had something in mind so I waited until she finished her meetings and talked to her about it. She wanted a Cakeball Croquembouche...aha clear as mud!

I googled Croquembouche and found out it was a pile of cream puffs (or macarons or profiterols) and was actually a beautiful dessert in France served at weddings and important events. Usually they decorate it with spun sugar and I believe they are a more golden color so the next one will be a bit closer to the real Croquembouche image, but I think for the first attempt it turned out really great!

I just needed to disect Marlene's brain to get the image out of her mind and into mine! I've blogged about it on the TST blog and now here are a few pictures of Marlene & Tim with their first ever Cakeball Croquembouche!

Thanks Marlene! You have a VERY creative eye! One I couldn't live without!!

Presenting the NEW Cakeball Crouqembush:

Monica in LA!

I'm totally stealing this blog so if you'd like to see the original you can HERE! For Monica's birthday her hubby and family sent her to see me!! June 12th seemed SO far away at the time, but it finally came!!!

She flew in late Saturday night and we took her straight to Manhattan Creamery! It's always a MUST after a long flight! We walked down Manhattan Pier afterwards to show her the ocean, but it was too cold to go play in the sand. It's still beautiful to walk down at night but you know how cold June can get!

The next day we had beach plans, but the weather did NOT cooperate! It was so frustrating because we were all so excited about our beach day. We had packed all our beach gear in the car and thought that by the time we finished lunch the sun would be out to burn the June Gloom layer of cold grey clouds, but no it only got colder the closer we got to the beach.

It's hard to explain June Gloom especially when January had its warm days and even our May Gray wasn't that bad this year. We try warning people, but I think we forget that it really happens until June arrives every year. I did have a Cakeball order that day and Monica helped me with it! Thank goodness because it was probably my most challenging order yet! We made Apple Cakeball Bouquets for Teacher Appreciation orders. Wanna see?

Click HERE to see them all.

We finished at 10am right when Ty walked in the door from teaching Children's Church. It was perfect timing! We got dressed and headed off to the beach for brunch! We walked out to the beach for a photo shoot (to prove there IS a beach) and then we had a great Brunch at Martha's. It is THE place to Brunch on Sundays so Monica got to meet our friends Sarah & Richard who were also eating there with a friend!

We shopped along Hermosa Pier and after we decided it was MUCH too cold to lay out we took a much needed nap and then had dinner at PF Changs before seeing Iron Man 2 on the IMAX! We hung out at Starbucks before the movie started and warmed ourselves up with warm teas and coffees! Thanks Starbucks! We needed that after our freezing cold day!

Monday was BEVERLY HILLS day! Monica had never been to Rodeo Drive so we had a blast walking through all the shops!

We had lunch at 9021-pho. It was Mon's first time to experience Vietnamese Pho! It is my & Ty's favorite dish!! The bowl was bigger than her head, but it was good. I wish we had ordered the non-meat one though because they added some weird meat ball things (beef balls in Vietnamese =) and they just looked weird. Veggie would've been less intimidating for a first timer! I think she liked it though!

Dessert was at Crumbs (which in my opinion is BETTER than Sprinkles!) for a huge and yummy cupcake. It was vanilla and chocolate filled with vanilla and chocolate and topped with cookies and brownies! We split one! Then we were off to our shopping excursion. She bought her hubby a Father's Day present at the Polo store and we felt SO COOL to be making a purchase on Rodeo Drive!!

We walked and walked and shopped and shopped and even found a place that was giving 10 minute free foot massages. YES PLEASE. I think we were supposed to buy something afterwards, but we didn't. =)

After Rodeo Drive we headed to the Santa Monica Promenade where we had some coffee (Danielle had a Nutella Latte- super healthy!), people watched (it was very entertaining!), watched the sunset behind some mountains, and ate at Buddha's Belly...Thai Food. Are you noticing a trend here? Yes we ate LOTS of asian food, it was delicious! Monica's baby is going to need an Asian name because that's all he/she is going to eat!

Tuesday was "Operation Beach Day". We were determined. One way or another we were going to the beach. We decided to try out Laguna Beach. I hadn't been there either so it was an adventure for us both. We drove down there that morning, had a nice lunch, found some AWESOME candy/caramel apples for dessert (seriously, they were sinful!) and went to the beautiful beach. It was gloomy. We were hesitant to even go, but we thought we might as well. We got our chairs all situated and sat there in our dresses/jackets for a while then decided to take them off. Sure enough, the fabulous SUN came out! It was PERFECT weather. As soon as it got to be a little hot, a cool breeze would blow. Ahh it was heaven. We could have stayed there forever. We both got some sun (YAYAYAYYYYYY!) and caught a nap or 2 also. We did a little shopping on our way out. Laguna Beach was a really cool little town. I can't wait to go back! That night we went to In N Out Burgers, and yes totally went Animal Style! I probably should've let Monica get regular fries because they were too animally for her but it was a yummy meal!

The AMAZING (totally healthy) caramal + some apples! I'm craving another one right now!!

  

Her last day...Wednesday. She was to head home around 3:30 that afternoon, but we wanted to squeeze in some HOLLYWOOD action before that.

We drove there and started on our journey through the street of Hollywood.

We saw tons of stars and the Grauman's Chinese Theater where all the handprints/footprints of the stars were. We hit up Zara for some last minute shopping - I LOVE that store!  After our shopping it was time to find some lunch (we were starving) and head home to get her stuff and head to the airport.

We found an awesome sushi place and we chowed down (no worries, we only got COOKED stuff...it was still awesome!!!) Then came crunch time. We were still in Hollywood and her stuff was still at the house and she only had 2 hours before she HAD to be at the airport. YIPE! I got her there in time though! It was easier to say goodbye because she had to RUN to catch her flight. Otherwise that would've been really tough! I had such a blast with you Mon! It was great to get some girl-time in with you! I feel like I got a birthday present too! I LOVE YOU!! (Thanks to everyone that sent her to me! You guys are AWESOME!)