As you may well know, spring and summer are my favourite times of the year. I hate the layers and shivering of the cold winter months, and the warmth and sunshine just makes me want to be outside all of the time!
So I've been kinda absent for a little while, and it's because I've been partaking in a new hobby with my family. I say family but it's more my husband than the boys.
A good friend of mine introduced me to something called geocaching, and if you're my friend on Facebook, you've likely seen some updates from me about it (sorry I went crazy on the finds that one day, the settings were messed up for FB!) So anyway, geocaching is a world-wide GPS treasure hunt. You probably have some right around where you are, yes, right now. I had no idea so many people were involved in this "secret", like, where have I been all my life?
So, people take a little container, sometimes include a pencil and a log book, and if the container is big enough, you can exchange little dollar store trinkets when you find them. They hide the container, log the coordinates with the GPS system and it's put on a geocaching map. When you go to www.geocaching.com, and look at the map based on your current location, these coordinates pop up around you and you're on your way to the coolest couple of hours you've ever spent outside.
So, back in December, when I gave my husband his Year of Dates, this activity was included, but not until June. We were on vacation in March, and went for a walk one day with the boys, and I decided to test it out. Devin was completely hooked, right from the start. We've found, at the present time, 21 geocaches in our area. We've gotten muddy and scraped, and we've scaled the side of the escarpment, (it can be dangerous at times!) but it's all in good fun, good exercise and it's just so darn awesome! If you're looking for some fun outside, definitely check this activity out.
So, as you can see, I've not been spending a lot of time baking lately... No matter where we go, we're trying to find a geocache. We went to check out vehicles in Cayuga, and found two caches out there lol! We picked up our son where he was tagging for cadets, and found a cache. It's just too fun!
But anyway, this is a cake blog and I did bake a pretty awesome cake for my son's 15th birthday. It's funny because I'd been researching ideas for awhile and didn't know until the day before his birthday what I was going to do. Then when I wanted to put it together, I had no cake boards. I need to shake the dust off and get with the program, I am so out of practice lol! But I think it turned out amazing, and he was very happy with the nautical theme of the cake. Even his friends were asking, "Did you MAKE this???" I was tickled pink =)
This awesome cake was a two-layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and white, vanilla fondant. Two blue stripes and fondant rope decorate the top, and the elements included an anchor, a lighthouse and a ship's wheel. Tyler's name was spelled out on a banner underneath the rope. The rope was draped and secured in place with toothpicks and sugar-glue.
SO fun to make this one, and it really didn't take too long, because my husband and I put the elements together two days before, to give them time to harden.
And that's all, folks! Stay sweet and enjoy the amazing weather we're coming into, finally. And look into geocaching! =)
