Cake Decoration - Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid

Ariel - The Little Mermaid

My daughter's favorite Disney princess is Ariel from The Little Mermaid. This cake was made for her by her grandmother. I'm always impressed by the talents that people have and especially for the amount of work they are willing put into making a little girl happy. There must be thousands of little stars in homemade icing on this cake.

Bellagio Las Vegas Botanical Gardens Christmas 2013

 Over the New Year's Holiday we made it to Las Vegas and got to see the Botanical Gardens at the Bellagio. The Bellagio is always impressive and this time we were lucky enough to see the Christmas decorations at the Botanical Gardens.

Bellagio Botanical Gardens - Christmas Bells

 Giant Christmas Bells were an intimidating sight hanging in the air above all those flowers.
The Christmas Train was an exciting sight. There were two trains that went in circles and a third that went around the other trains and around the central Christmas Tree. This third train had a camera mounted to one of the cars and the live feed was playing to monitors throughout the gardens. It was neat to see the crowd around you on what would otherwise have seemed fantastic movie footage.

Bellagio Botanical Gardens - Christmas Train

Great Reno Balloon Race

The Great Reno Balloon Race

The Great Reno Balloon Race is the world's largest free hot air balloon event. The race is held each year at Rancho San Rafael park in Reno, Nevada. The event takes place the Friday through Sunday following Labor Day.
This year we went on Saturday morning in time to see a few balloons still giving rides to guests. The butterfly and stylized bee balloons were very colorful and impressive. They inspired us to wake up at 5 o'clock Sunday morning to watch the Dawn Patrol and the Mass Ascension. It was very impressive to watch almost 100 balloons take off from the park at the same time. The park seems really big until you place 100 huge hot air balloons on it.