Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Crazy Month of December

This month was crazy busy for us.  We had something going on every weekend.  We started the month out with a girl's Secret Santa party.

For the party, I decided to do a hot chocolate bar, which was an idea I found on Pinterest (duh.) Target had different flavors of marshmallows, so I bought chocolate mint and gingerbread, as well as regular marshmallows and peppermints.  I found the little green pails at Hobby Lobby and the chalkboard stickers on Etsy.  After the party, I put the labels on my flour, sugar, brown sugar, and coffee canisters.




 Here is Vanessa texting her husband on her iPhone using her new gloves that allow you to text without taking off your gloves.  She was pretty excited!


 Lauren got a Mario poster as one of her gifts.

The weekend after the Secret Santa party we had a Lord of the Rings marathon at my in-law's house.  The marathon has been a Keck family tradition for several years. I got to attend my first marathon only a couple months after Garrett and I had started dating. After I spent 14 hours in the Keck's living room, they knew I must be "the one!" I have no pictures to document the event, but it is pretty hard core.  This year we bought my father-in-law the movies on BluRay and a BluRay player so we got to watch the movies in top viewing quality. We started Fellowship of The Ring at 8:40am and finished Return of the King around 10:30pm. 

The next weekend was Christmas!  We started the celebrations at Garrett's grandparent's house were we had a Dirty Santa exchange with the extended family. The next day we went over to my in-laws house.  Check out the tree with the presents!




The day after Christmas was the most exciting part of the month for me!  My friend Brady from high school came to visit for 4 days. We actually weren't extremely close in high school until the end but we have been really good about keeping in touch ever since I moved to Oklahoma. He came down here for my wedding and now he is friends with my good friend Devin. Here is a picture of the 4 of us at Tapwerks in Bricktown. Having him here was a great way to finish off this crazy month!  Happy New Year everyone!




Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Festival of Lights!

Two weekends ago, I talked Garrett into driving me down to the Festival of Lights in Chickasha. I was having a rough week and Christmas lights always make me so happy!  Plus, it was pretty much the only lights display I hadn't already dragged Garrett to. Poor boy. Good thing I got major points for his Christmas present.
The drive was a little longer than I expected, but it was TOTALLY worth it.
The battery in our camera was dead (of course) so all these are phone pictures.  Hopefully they aren't too terrible.  Here are my favorite pictures!


This one was taken from the car window...







 This tree was freaking ginormous! It was awesome!















This church was at the exit of the park where the Festival was. I just thought it was cool. :)


I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!  I have the next week off work so be looking for more posts.  I still have to put up our girls Christmas party and I will be working on some of my 25 before 25 list during my break!


Wednesday, December 7, 2011

25 by 25 List

As promised, here is my "25 by 25" list.  It was actually really hard to think of 25 things that I could potentially do on my own.  I wanted to put things like "buy a house" but that is something that is kind of out of my control.  Let's just say that I'm not exactly the breadwinner of the family.

1. Successfully make French Toast.
The very first meal I made when Garrett and I got back from our honeymoon was French Toast.  It was completely terrible.  Burned on the outside but still gooey and raw egg-y on the inside. It was so disgusting. Of course, I was convinced that it was a sign I was going to be a terrible wife and not be able to feed my husband, so I have banned it from the house.  But, I really like French toast, so I want to learn how to make it!

2. See the Atlantic Ocean.
Somehow I have managed to visit Flordia twice, and I still haven't seen the Atlantic.

3. Grow a vegetable garden.
Granted, it will have to be one of those super small vegetable gardens that you grow in a wooden box or something, considering we don't have a yard, but I want to successfully grow something.  Garrett and I don't have the best track record of keeping things alive.  Our first fish, Hobbes, only lived 30 minutes. :/

4. Learn how to change a tire/jump a car.
Let's just say that if I ever get a flat while I'm on the highway, I'm totally screwed.

5. Go to an NFL game.  Preferably The Bears, but I'm not picky.

6. Open an Etsy shop.

7. Read through the entire Bible.

8. Cook all the way through a cookbook.  Even the weird recipes that have ingredients that I have never heard of.

9. Eat a weird food.  I'm probably the most predictable person in the world when it comes to food.  I get the same thing at Braums every single time.  The same soup at Panera. (If they are out of potato, I go somewhere else for lunch.) The same drink at Starbucks.  This "weird" food doesn't have to be snail butts or something like that, just something that I wouldn't normally eat.

10. Get back down to pre-engagement weight. 

11. Finally make a album/scrapbook of our wedding.

12. Watch a sunrise.  And not because I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn for work.

13. Clean out/organize the house.  For two people, we sure do have a lot of crap.  I blame the wedding.

14. Run a marathon.

15. Spend a night sleeping outside.

16. Don't buy new clothes for 6 months. (Something tells me that this will be Garrett's favorite.)

17. Make a theme cake.  Not just a regular old chocolate cake. A pirate ship cake, or something like that. 

18. Sew something.  I recently got my grandma's old sewing machine from my aunt.  My mother-in-law got it up and running, and now I'm itching to make some pajama pants.

19. Read the Naria books.  I've only listened to them on tape, and that was on family road trips when I was a teenager.  I hid my headphones under the hood of my hoodie and pretended to be asleep.  I was not big on family togetherness.

20. Travel to a state I have never been.  Preferably Massachusetts or New York. *cough cough* (I think my husband reads this ...)

21. Find somewhere to volunteer.  Church, Feed the Children, Christian Services, etc.

22. Get my husband to actually shave without having to nag him about it every day of my life. 
(This could potentially take my entire life.  If I can accomplish this in the next 14 months, I'm throwing a party.)

23. Start couponing.  Get that grocery budget cut down a little bit.

24. Start teaching piano to at least one person.

25. Go back to Colorado and climb a mountain.

I turn 25 in 2 days short of 14 months. Better get crackin!


Monday, December 5, 2011

Blogger's Block

Hello to my 9 readers.  Maybe you have noticed a lack of posts coming from this blog.  For some reason, I have not had a whole lot of motivation to blog lately.  I have still been baking, but I either:
1. Forget to take pictures
2. Take pictures and let them sit in my mobile album for days and then completely forget about them
3. Make something that I don't really feel is "blog worthy."  I mean, anyone can make chocolate chip cookies, right?

So, this blog is going to be changing a bit. There will still be recipes, but less deserts.  Best friend is complaining about Pinterest and this blog making him gain weight, and I am complaining too.  Therefore, the blog is getting a facelift.  It will still be called Keck's Cakes (yes, I realize I have only posted one cake, and it was a total failure) but only because I don't know how to change the title of the blog without completely making a new one, which just sounds like a lot of hassle. 

Coming soon to this blog ...

1. A 25 things to do before I'm 25 list.
2. Everything you can make with a food processor. Let me tell you, I have owned one for less than 2 weeks and I have used it 4 times.
3. More about me and my best friend.  We don't have the most exciting life, but I still love it.  I don't have the money to scrapbook, so I'm turning this blog into a scrapbook of sorts.  If you don't like reading about people who are madly in love with each other, maybe you should stop following me. Haha. But really.

I'm challenging myself to post at least once a week.  Keep me motivated, people!

Love,
Kenzie