Belleville News Democrat

Belleville News-Democrat Building

I have a certain fondness for the Belleville News-Democrat building located at 120 South Illinois Street. We can’t visit downtown Belleville without driving past it, and while I know quite literally almost nothing about the building itself, I admire the bell (which I believe used to be installed at one of Belleville’s elementary schools), and I love the blue accents on doors and fences. I’m also intrigued by the fact that it seems to match the building directly across Illinois Street from it.

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Maybe someday I’ll learn more about the history of this familiar Belleville building!

Belleville family finds all 250 St. Louis birthday cakes

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So excited to see an article about me in our local newspaper this morning!

Amanda Markel of Belleville was excited when the organization to celebrate the 250th birthday of St. Louis decided to put large artist-decorated plastic birthday cakes at sites all around the region.

via Belleville family finds all 250 St. Louis birthday cakes | Features | News Democrat.

A Heart-Warming Christmas Story

I love reading this kind of story at Christmastime. I especially love when newspapers actually choose to focus on the public service that police officers do for their community, instead of only focusing on the arrests they make, and the negative situations they’re forced to deal with.

More than a dozen police officers played Kris Kringle as they roamed the floors of the Belleville Wal-Mart Saturday.

“This is the safest place to be today,” joked Belleville Police Officer Geoff Wells.

He organized the Shop with a Cop event, which paired 14 Belleville officers as personal shoppers with 25 needy school children from the city.

Through a grant from Wal-Mart, cops helped the children pick out $100 worth of clothes and $100 worth of toys.

“A lot of the kids go for big ticket items,” Wells explained. “Some get a lot of little things.”

But for all of the children, who were selected by school social workers, the day aims to bring a bit more enjoyment to their holiday season.

via Belleville cops shop with needy children – .Breaking news – bnd.com.

A Zeppelin Airship–Not to be Confused with a Standard Blimp

While we were out today, we saw this beast sailing through the sky:

Moose immediately called it an “R2-D2 ship,” which is pretty much what it looks like from a distance–R2-D2 tipped on his side. We discovered that the children had never seen a blimp before, and after reading about in the newspaper this afternoon, I discovered that they actually still haven’t!

What we saw was actually a Farmers Insurance Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik airship. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ve heard of zeppelins as different things from blimps, but you might not actually know what makes them different. Fortunately, the newspaper article also cleared that up for me:

“A blimp is a big non-rigid bag of gas. A Zeppelin is a rigid inner structure covered with a space-age laminate — filled with gas.”

Now I can say I’ve learned something today, so obviously the day wasn’t a waste! I also learned that Goodyear is no longer go to be using blimps for their advertising, but will also be switching over to Zeppelins. I don’t know…the Goodyear Zeppelin just doesn’t have the same ring as the Goodyear Blimp.

Artistry on Cakes

I had the chance to attend the Belleville News Democrat “Lipstik” Women’s Show at the Gateway Conference Center with a friend this morning. There were some pretty strange booths there, but there were a couple of real treasures, including Artistry on Cakes. It was so much fun to look at all of the different cake (and cupcake) creations!

I don’t know why I showed Turkey this picture of a Lego cake…I’m pretty sure he wants to fire me as the family baker, now!

I love the sparkle on these cupcakes–I’m going to have to try some of that at home.

There were all kinds of amazing baby cakes–it makes me wish I knew someone who was having a baby shower!

And the wedding cakes! Pictures really don’t illustrate their beauty, but you get the idea:

It’s hard to see in the picture, but this cake had an amazing wavy top.

I can’t believe the amount of time, (and patience!), that must go into these creations. My hand cramps up by the time I’m done doing one birthday cake–I can’t imagine an undertaking something the magnitude of what I saw at the show!