Happy Birthday, Faith

Our family spent this last holiday weekend celebrating cousin Faith’s 8th birthday.  Faith had a small, all be it, lively party at everyone’s favorite pizzeria!!

Here’s the beautiful birthday girl.  Did you notice her cute corsage?  Her crafty dad made it just for her.  Way to go, Daddy-O!

Miss Lucy never gets tired of cheese pizza.  Come to think of it, I have yet to meet a kid who gets tired of pizza.

I had the privilege of getting to make Faith’s birthday cake.  With total creative freedom, I decided to try out one of those ruffle cakes I’ve been seeing on Pinterest.  I loved how the cake turned out. I’ll post later with some more pictures of the cake, but today is all about the party!

O.K.  So maybe just one little pic of some cake.

Time for presents!  Lucy was a little confused because there weren’t any presents for her.  She’s still got Christmas on the brain.

Mom helped the birthday girl try on her new watch.

I found myself taking tons of photos of the kids.  They were too distracted by the party to notice me snapping pictures of them.  Candid shots always make the best pictures.

Grace.

Abby.

This little sweetie lost a tooth while eating her pizza.  Now when I say “lost,” I mean lost.  For a while she was sure she had swallowed it, but luckily Ty found her tooth on the floor underneath the table.

Hunter.

Faith, admiring her new watch.

Not sure who this monkey belongs to.  He sure is cute though.

Little Lucy, still working on that pizza…

As if the table cloth, streamers, and balloons didn’t give it away, Ty had to make a reserved sign to put on the party “tabel.”

Grammie helped Lucy eat her cake and ice cream.

When they were done with their pizza, all the kids headed outside for a game of freeze tag.  Then we rounded them all up for a group picture.  It’s amazing, but I actually got several shots of them all looking at the camera…at the same time!

Happy birthday, “Fay-fee!”

Lindsey

You’re Getting Very Hungry………

Y’all are going to be craving something sweet after reading this post. The Tool Man and I are working on getting some pictures of my pies and cakes for some advertising for Fox’s. Some customers seem to have a hard time believing that these desserts are really homemade. So we figured what better way to prove it than to take some pictures of me “homemaking” them.

I think it’s only fair to warn you that the following pictures may cause your stomach to start growling.

My first Apple Pie in the pizza oven. It turned out PERFECT!!! No one was more surprised than me. It ain’t easy to cook anything but pizza in a pizza oven. The oven has blowers spaced throughout that blast the top of the pizza with hot air. This is good for pizza. But for pies and cakes? Not so much. So you’ve got to be mighty particular about how you cook in there.

Strawberry Cream Pie. Tastes like strawberry cheesecake ice cream…Yummo! (I used to get that at the Derrick all the time.) This pie sells like crazy. We can’t keep enough of it on hand.

The Tool Man’s favorite…Lemon Meringue Pie. Another thing about pizza ovens…the cooking space is very “short.” The first meringue pie I tried to cook in there was too tall to fit in the oven.

One of my favorites…Hershey Bar Cake. Cakes are terribly hard to cook in the pizza oven. The blowers I mentioned earlier cause the cakes to cook very unevenly. I’ve had cakes come out a whole inch thicker on one end than the other.

Hope I haven’t made you too hungry.

My mission for the day is to find a great recipe for a cheesecake and bake it. Whoop! Whoop! That is my all time most favorite dessert ever!!! Just cheesecake. No cherries. No strawberry sauce. Not even chocolate. Just cheesecake! Picadilly has the best. One of the best presents I ever got was when my dad secured a whole cheesecake from the Picadilly for me the day Lucy was born. I say “secured” because the Picadilly had caught on fire the night before, and they were closed for business. I don’t know how he did it, but he got me that cheesecake. Miraculous!

Lights, Camera, Quack-tion

I don't know if you've heard about all the happenings at the pizza joint last week, but we had a commercial shoot at the restaurant. Benelli USA (that's a gun manufacturer for all you womenfolk out there) contacted us 2 months ago about doing a commerical at Fox's. Apparently they were looking for a drive-thru window for their commericial.

Why they chose us out of the gazillion drive-thrus in the US-of-A I'll never know. But let me tell you, the Tool Man was sure glad that they did. You see, the best part about this whole deal was that the stars of the commercial were the Duck Commanders - Phil Robertson and his "boys." If the Tool Man could pick any job in whole wide world to have it would be to join this hairy band of duck destroyers!

So the producer, director, and about 30 other folks rolled into town last Friday and set up a TV studio in our parking lot. You would think they were shooting a feature film. Lights, cameras, mics, booms, screens, computers, tents, wires, hoses, ladders, you name it! I had no idea what all went on in the making of a simple commercial. Tedious work! Every detail had to be just right. It took them two days to get enough footage for a 30 second commerical. Yeah, that's right. Approximately 25 hours of work for 30 seconds of TV. Of course that's not counting all of the editing that has to be done.

The Tool Man had a great time hanging out with all of the Duck Men. He even got an invite to their new warehouse. I hope they were being serious, because he just might show up!

We took quite a lot of pictures of all of this. I hope you enjoy them!

Custom tags for the Cadillac...

We were told that one of the HD lenses for these cameras cost over $100,000. You read that right...over one hundred thousand! Yow-za!

"Would you like fries with that?"

The director was watching every shot on this little monitor. It looked just like real TV! :)

This is Willie a.k.a. Boss Hog. I think he's the brains behind this whole Duck operation.

The car looked nice. Unfortunately, it didn't run so well.

Jep, Phil, Willie, Dad, Me, Tool Man, Jase, Ty and Lucy. We took this picture to send to my little cousin, Mark...just to make him jealous!

Fox's got rave reviews from the boys. I'm not making this up. The Duck Commander himself, Mr. Phil, said that we had Johnny's pizza beat!

Jep is the camera man for the Duck Commander show. He was a super nice guy. He and the Tool Man palled around.

Now, the Tool Man didn't say this out loud, but trust me, I could read it in his eyes...

This is Si, having some fun with a rubber duck. These poor guys must have sat in that car for 6 hours.

She's no Duck Man, but she is a little bit cuter, don't you think?

Free from the Cadillac, Willie took a rest right in the middle of the drive-thru. Doesn't look very comfortable does it?

You know these guys...

We actually had a customer pull up to the duck and try to place an order. Ha!

The commercial should be airing on the Outdoor Channel some time in late January. I can't wait to see how it turned out.

Pizza, Anyone?

One of our "foxy friends" up at the restuarant had a birthday yesterday, so I was recruited to make him a pizza cake.  The "sauce" is just colored icing, and the "cheese" is grated white chocolate.  The pepperoni?  Fruit gummies rolled flat and cut into circles.  I wasn't there when the crew tore into the cake, but I think it was a big hit!

How to Make Your Own Pizza

We finally had a little down time at the restaurant the other day, so the Tool Man decided to let Ty make his own pizza.  Ty loves to cook, so this was right up his alley.

Step 1.  Docking the dough.  This step is the most difficult part of the whole process.  There's a little trick to getting the dough the right thickness while making it just the right size for the pan.  Daddy was there to show Ty just how to do it.  (FYI:  The Tool Man has taken to throwing the pizza dough on occassion.  Show Off!)

Step 2.  Sauce the pizza.  Pretty self-explanatory.  Get a scoop of sauce, dump it on the pizza, and spread it out.

Step 3.  Top it!  Definitely the most fun part of the process.  Ty chose to go with your basic cheese and pepperoni.

Step 4.  Into the oven.  About 5 1/2 minutes from the time it enters the oven til it emerges on the other side.  I'm telling you, your tummy will start growling when you see and smell all that bubbling cheese coming out the other end of the oven.

Step 5.  Slicing and Dicing.  I love the way that fresh baked crust sounds as the cutter is rolling through it.  Just a little crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.  Yumm-O!

Step 6.  Enjoying the fruits pizza of your labor!