101st Post!

For the last ten posts, I had been counting down to get to my 100th post. Yesterday I was still blogging about our anniversary. Right after I hit "publish" I thought, "Oh, no!" I missed the 100th post. I contemplated going back and changing it, but decided to highlight my 101st post instead.

I know I didn't start blogging right after my diagnosis, but when I did start to blog I found it to be gratifying. The first couple months were the hardest and I felt so many different emotions from relief, to anger, to confusion. Writing about eating gluten free has helped me grow. Plus, it's really fun and something I look forward to. It's a release (similar to how working out can be a release, if that makes sense).

Baking has been a challenging endeavor for me. I was a wonderful baker of gluten-filled treats. Baking GF is a completely different make up. It took me a while to even get back into the kitchen, but I baked! I'm taking steps, trying different recipes, and products. I hope to be as good as the Little Aussie Bakery some day...

I'm currently taking a baking step that I didn't even take while baking with gluten! I am taking Wilton decorating classes at Michael's. I'd been wanting to do it for years and my friend from work asked me to sign up with her, so it was the perfect opportunity.

This past Monday we had to bring a cake, so I made it easy on myself by using the Betty Crocker yellow gluten free cake mix. I didn't want to try a recipe from scratch and it not turn out. I figured I was concentrating on the decorating not the cake. But let me tell you, I was a little disappointed in the cake, you could tell it was a box cake. The next class we need to bring cupcakes, so I'm going to make some from the Amsterdam's cupcake cookbook.

This is my decorated cake...a fish cake! I think I did pretty good for my first try, but I know I have a ways to go.

Another angle

Complete with strawberry filling

I also need to play around with the frosting more, because I followed the Wilton recipe so it would be the correct consistency. The butter cream was too sweet for my liking, but I'm going to try to add some different flavors. 

I'm also excited because my hubby insisted on buying me a new camera! I was torn for so long on what to get because I liked various features on different cameras. There wasn't one camera that had everything I wanted. I ended up getting a completely different camera than I was even looking at. My new prized possession is a Nikon Coolpix S8100. I hope I love it, (so it could possibly make my favorite things list.)

*Please note the above pictures of the cake were taken with my old Sony. The pictures below are from my Nikon.*

I've been practicing and playing around with the features on who else, but Iivana! 

Check out her new dress!

I'm impressed my camera caught this action shot of her running.

My princess