Baking, baking, and more baking

OK, I've wanted to learn how to decorate cakes for some time. For years, actually. And this last year, my mother-in-law gave me (among many other things) several baking items. So here is some photo documentation of what I've done so far:

The most recent thing is the Green Lantern Ring cake that I made for dear husband today, for Valentine's Day. He loooooved it. No one has ever made him a superhero cake, much less a GREEN LANTERN cake!!!! It even has a center glowy part, see?



Here are some of the steps, in reverse:


Carving and frosting the ring part (on a slant, so it'll lean upward once placed on the cake):




Slicing the ridges off the giant cupcake very carefully and with as little waste as possible:



The base, also green, because it's a GL cake after all, but a lighter shade so the ring will stand out more:


The original parts. If the two cake shapes in the back look suspiciously like the bottom and the very tip of the giant cupcake pan, there's good reason for that:



I also made some Valentine's Day cupcakes for work:


























And a giant cupcake and regular-sized cupcakes for my sister's birthday:


















And this last one is Brian's work, not mine, but I'm going to post it anyway because it was truly wonderful and he deserves credit for it. He made salmon-en-papillote, which is simple but a little time-consuming to make, has wonderful presentation (you open the pouch at the table, right before you serve), and is absolutely delicious. Not only that, but since it was for the whole family, he doubled the recipe (and we still had 2 rotisserie chickens that were consumed almost completely as well; but what are you going to do with several adults and multiple teenagers?):

"Top notch!"

As we left Elliot & Cindy's last night, I said "Top notch!" We had a lovely evening. For one thing, it was completely relaxed. Cindy is a most gracious hostess and the conversation was really quite pleasant - there were several times when all of us just burst out laughing at whatever had been said. Real laughter, that lingered and stayed a chuckle for even a few more seconds, not just polite affectations. After a tour of the lovely home - she favors antiques and staying true to the original architecture - we had dinner and then two rounds of Scrabble on the game set that Brian just got me. Good, good time.

This year has gotten off to a good start, actually. New Year's Day, Bri made sushi. No kidding. He and I love it and he loves to cook, so I got him a how-to-make-sushi kit for his birthday. Turns out, you also need a rice steamer, so I got him one of those for Christmas. So New Year's Day saw us here, with good friends in the dining room while he stood on the kitchen side of the counter and gave us a show. I made some run-of-the-mill cupcakes but they looked really cute on the cupcake tree that I just got. Pictures are worth a thousand words:

May we all live long and prosper.

Nanu-nanu.

Oh, wait, that's a different alien.

:-)

And one that stands out

OK, there is one gift that really stands out. It doesn't diminish in any way the other gifts that I got but I really think it deserves special mention: Brian took pictures of our names at places that are significant to us presently or have been in the past, and spelled out our names. He also did one for our last name.

It blows my mind that he did that - he had to go out more than once because he decided the signs that lit up at night didn't look good enough during the day, so he went back again once it was dark out to get the letters when they were lit up.

Does that not blow your mind? It blew my mind completely. What an awesome gesture of love. I'm pretty sure that I don't deserve it.

One of the best Christmases...

... I've ever had. The mood was joyous, everyone was happy to be together, all went as planned. You know how sometimes family can get together and people get on each others' nerves and stuff? Well, this was pretty much the opposite of that. If anyone did get on anyone else's nerves, it didn't show. It was very pleasant. The one thing was a really bad headache I got on Christmas Eve over at Brian's grandma's, but other than that, it was great.

We also gave and received many, many gifts. Granted, we have 3 families involved but we really, really got a lot. I put everything on our dining room table. In case anyone's still reading this blog, or for when I/we come back to this entry in the future, I want the record to be clear - I didn't do it to show off. People were asking, of course, what we had gotten for Christmas and I couldn't remember everything. That really bothered me because we had gotten so much that was so cool that I wanted to be able to give credit where credit was due, as it were, but that was precisely the problem - we had gotten so much and it was one celebration after another, so I kept leaving things out. Hence this documentation.



Including what we gave each other, we got:

• A (large) donation in my name to Heifer International, specifically to a knitting project (2 sheep, 2 llamas that they can then use to sell yarn with, make products to sell, etc.)
• 2 knitting books
• 1 mag subscription (Martha Stewart Living)
• Cupcake series: Book, stand, giant cupcake mold, supplies
• Box of greeting cards
• Word game Origins
• Movie series: Silent Screen comedy
• Clothes - several pants, several shirts, a tie and a really attractive tie clip
• All red kitchen implements (spatulas, etc.)
• Red stick blender
• A brownie pan designed so that they all have edges
• Gift certificates/cards to Aya Sofia, Sekisui, BreadCo, Amazon, DressBarn, Whole Foods, one of my favorite knitting shops, Knitorius, Barnes & Noble, FYE
  
• Day of the Dead t-shirts w/themes
• Flat screen TV (from the dogs to Brian; he has to pick it out because the dogs and I don't know from flat screen TVs)
• A rice cooker to supplement the birthday present I gave Brian, a how-to-make-Sushi kit
• AAA cards for each of us
• An absolutely fabulous scarf pin from Brian to me
• A toaster oven
• 2 very nice sheets sets - 100% cotton, 700 ct
  
• A scrapbooking organizer
• Salad dressing that someone had mentioned to me a couple of months ago that we might like, and brought it for us
  
• An old-school Canon camera
• Family pictures
• Tree ornaments
• Silver earrings
  
• A funny thumb drive
• Hot chocolate supplies, a knit hat, and a can of pringles ( :-) ) that we got at the rob-your-neighbor game at Grandma's
• Miniature nativity scene for my collection
• A copy of the family cookbook we made for my mother-in-law
• A diary for each of us
• A book for Brian, The Prisoner
• A special print from the US Dept. of Treasure on our birth year and its significance in the Chinese Zodiac calendar
  

Wheew! If that isn't something to be grateful for, I don't know what is. If I haven't mentioned anything, it's not to offend, there was just so much on the table that I might not have seen it on the picture while I was blogging and listing everything out. Here are some detail shots.















While the stuff is great, it's what's behind it that's important. Each family member received and gave us something. That means, among other things: We have relationships with every single one of our sisters, moms-in-law, etc. They took the time to pick something out, get it, wrap it, etc. We are blessed that we don't have any estrangements in the family (you know, like siblings that don't speak to each other for 20 years or whatever). Everyone in our families was physically healthy enough to go procure something for us. Everyone is sufficiently stable financially to do that for us, and we are financially stable enough to reciprocate. In this economy (if in any economy), that is something to be tremendously grateful for. Although the Christmas holiday is about 28 hours of family fun (with a couple of small gaps for rest/sleep), we are close enough geographically that, in the space of 28 hours, we can see everyone and even most of our cousins/extended family. Although we have both lost our dads, we are blessed with a Grandma, both of our moms, all of our siblings, and many close relatives and friends. I mean, the individual items are great, but that's what they symbolize.

This year, we got a lot. Other years have been leaner. But ALL of the years, the relationships that the gifts represent have been there, aging like so many fine wines, into the fabric of our lives.

We are having the time of our lives

So, on Halloween this year, we had a Fire Night. We had my family over for a "bonfire" (really, just a fire in our fire pit on the patio) with dogs, ribs, and smores. The boy my niece is dating had some fun, as you can see here. He should be a roofer or something else high - absolutely no fear of heights.

Because we had company, we didn't have time to buy groceries, so we ended up eating out several days in a row. Way too expensive so we really can't do it again for a while, especially with Christmas coming up, but we had dinner at several Asian restaurants and once I had had four Asian meals somebody said I should go for a flush, and we did. It was Japanese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Vietnamese, Vietnamese. Mmmm-mm! Love it. And healthy, too, because we didn't get a lot of tempura and stuff - Nigiri is our favorite Japanese food.

We also had dinner with my husband's family on November 2nd and celebrated Guy Fawkes' day (11/5) with our friends, Rob, Janet, Jeff, and Michelle at the Scottish Arms. We even burned Parliament. Turns out there is a brand of cigarettes called Parliament so Brian picked up a pack. We don't smoke so we had intended to just light a couple but we had some smokers in the group so one of them actually smoked one. Brian and I had haggis for the first time. I'm glad I did it just once but I am so completely going to pass on it the next time... A couple in our group were actually repeat haggis eaters, bless their hearts. Gonna pass on the Scottish Eggs next time, too (hard-boiled egg ensconced in pork sausage, I believe, and fried). But there again - some in our group liked it. More power to them! ;-) Some gentlemen from another table even wanted to buy Brian's mask but he had just gotten it and had wanted one for a long time, so he preferred to hold on to it...

Friday closed out the week with a moviepallooza at home. Very nice to chill after so many outings. Saturday evening saw us at a friend's mom's house, who I hold very dear, because another friend of his has recently become a chef and wanted to demonstrate his culinary skills, then hand out his cards for a catering business he has started. Lovely house, lovely dinner, lovely company. And I told my friend that he absolutely needs to marry the nice lady he's been seeing for the last couple of years. Apparently, I'm only about the 100th person to have told him, but it was the first time I had told him. They are so good together. Plus, got to hang out with a couple of people that I haven't seen in a while and that I'm quite fond of, in a familial kind of way. Also, the new chef dude did an excellent job, particularly in light of the fact that my friend had told him there'd be 12 people and it ended up being 20. Trial by fire, I told him (the new chef). If you can handle that, you can handle anything!

Sunday was the St. Louis Symphony for an homage to John Williams. And we wrapped it up by coming home to watch Star Wars with our good friend Tim, who had gone with us to the concert and whose idea it was in the first place. I'm not much of a fan there - if I think about it, I can remember to call it Star Wars and not Star Trek. If you ever want to see people start twitching and looking like they're going to pass out, let me call these two series by the other's name and watch my hubbie and Tim react. It's kind of funny although I really don't do it on purpose. We whipped up some pasta and had a great time. Brian had to run get pasta because somehow we were out and very sweetly got multiple kinds so that we could pick whatever we wanted.

So that was the week that was!!! Lots and lots of fun with really, really nice people that are dear to us. A nice balance of family and friends, at-home and fancy meals, movies and music. Just awesome.

A great big shout out to my friend, Ricardo

Who I have now known since I was 15 years old.

¡Que viva México!

Mexico lindo y querido....
si muero lejos de ti
que digan que estoy dormido
y que me traigan a ti

Assignment 5

TITLE: Red Berry Things, 9/26/09

My husband's relatives have some land out in the De Soto area, about 1 hr, 15 min from St. Louis. It's lovely out there; they're wealthy, so they have all the amenities plus fresh country air, etc. I love going out there, because I get to enjoy the fruits of all their labors, which they are very generous with. Granted, only when I'm invited, but still, it makes for a nice day out. The funny thing is, we had hail on the way there. I was thinking, so much for my nature pictures. But then, the storm passed, and we had a solid 3 hours of nice weather mid-afternoon. Then a little more rain. I think these red berry things were weeds of some kind, because they were everywhere.

TITLE: Reflection on the Lake

Lake edge, Rich & Bernie's. You could read this picture left to right or right to left, depending on what your cultural custom or preference is. I was just talking to my husband about how I can't believe I've taken these pictures. Hopefully, I'll get a good score, but regardless, I feel like my photography skills have improved dramatically in even just a couple of weeks since I started this class. I tried to address light, focus, and composition, all of which were things I had no idea of just a couple of weeks ago. Not to get ahead of myself; I kn ow they're not pro or anything, it's just that I'm finally getting somewhere! :-)

TITLE: Rocks along the Lake, 9/26/09

Rich & Bernie's.

I really struggled with which photo to submit for the third picture. I feel like I'm taking a bit of a risk with this one, but I like how the movement of the water contrasts with the solidity of the rocks, and yet the rocks have been shaped by the water, and even modified (wet vs. dry rock). Also, the texture of the rocks echoes the ripples in the water, and the perspective changes in the center of the picture, where the light has bent and you can see under the water. I also like how the shapes in the water are sharp and the rocks a little softer - it's a contrast with the materials themselves. If I were going to photoshop this, I'd blur the rock's edges even more and see if I liked that...

Good heavens, the last post was months and months ago

Why no blogging? Well, first off, I was knitting and crocheting like a fiend. Please refer to the pictures showing many, many throws, for almost everyone in my family (the specific number is 10 out of 11 - I'll be making the 11th for next Christmas). What in God's name possessed me to decide that everyone should get a throw (as opposed to much smaller projects, such as scarves or potholders) remains a mystery. But knit and crochet I did. Although not to misrepresent, 3 of the throws in the steps picture had to be taken back temporarily to finish the fringe, last few rows, etc.

So when I thought of blogging, I'd think of these projects but they were X-mas presents so I couldn't blog about them. Didn't feel like blogging without mentioning the gi-normous amount of needlework I was doing, so... no blogging.

Next, Gally's surgery (mentioned in the preceding post) at the end of August '08. All went well, but we were... challenged... by the whole process. He had to be separated from all of us in an enclosure of our own making because he really wasn't supposed to move the leg a lot except in specific ways. The enclosure was of our own making because there was nothing that we could find on the market that was large enough for his needs but then again small enough so that he didn't have too much movement. So 8 weeks of carrying then supporting him every time he went in or out, new rugs on the kitchen floor so he wouldn't slip, monitoring his food very closely so he wouldn't gain weight, putting a TV on the first floor in case we wanted to watch a movie so he wouldn't be by himself (the regular TV is in the TV room on our 2nd floor), and even then only being able to be close to his enclosure because he still had to be separated so he wouldn't get too much movement... You think your dog gives you baleful eyes when you leave for work. Try sitting 10 feet away from him with his life-long pal at your feet, while he stares at everyone glumly through the grate of his enclosure... Just loads of fun.

And yet, when I see him bouncing around in the back yard, objecting stridently to the mere notion of any squirrels passing by that dare think they might come in our yard, or making sure everyone within a 5 block radius knows that someone is coming down our alley, or running around, trying to steal a ball or stick from Nenny, it was all worth while. I mean, who wants to go to England on vacation anyway, to see some dude in a Shakespearian play?

It was either use our vacation time and money for the surgery or make a horribly, horribly difficult decision. So surgery it was. His little soul gets to stay with our family for that much longer.

And you know the best part? At least, the best part for me, who had the dogs pre-Brian and who hadn't encountered a major pet expense with Brian yet? Brian didn't bat an eye. No questions asked, we want to take a vacation but we need the surgery, so not a problem. Pretty nifty for a brand new dog daddy.

On with the chronology - of course, the holidays, lots of family event but more manageable every year.

...Well, I was going to continue with this entry but then my lovely hubbie came home and we had a nice dinner, took care of some home organization stuff that we had talked about earlier today (we check in with each other a couple of times a day), and then watched Lost & Life on Mars. I'm ready for Lost to be over and am mildly intrigued by Life on Mars. Anything's passable as long as one is knitting. Or crocheting, as was the case tonight. So I'll have to continue blogging sometime soon, 'cause I'm gettin' in bed to read...

.

Less than two weeks...

OK, these last two weeks have been a little crazy. How to explain it all? As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words...

CRN	Subject	Course	Section	Course Title	Campus	Final Grade	Attempted	Earned	GPA Hours	Quality Points
12761	PE	103	591	Aerobic Fitness	Florissant Valley	A	1.000	1.000	1.000	4.00
12571	PE	131	463	Fitness Center II	Forest Park	A	1.000	1.000	1.000	4.00
11388	REL	100	650	Real Estate Sales Procedures	Meramec	A	4.000	4.000	4.000	16.00

OK, it's a bit braggy to paste in my grades. But I'm particularly proud of the phys ed classes because I really am trying to work out more and get healthier. Plus, for the aerobic fitness class, I sucked at sit-ups, so I was really worried about that one... But it's just grist for the mill, baby, fodder for the... whatever. I really improved my time on a one-mile walk in the 8 weeks of that course, so now I just gotta do sit-ups, that's all there is to it. And truth be told, I'm at least somewhat proud of the RE grade. I mean, that little puppy represents a significant time commitment, let me tell you. Probably wouldn't have taken the class, if I had know ahead of time. Besides, I've been wanting to do something RE related for years, especially after I was less than 100% thrilled with the last agent I dealt with. So it's a little bit of attaining a goal in that regard.





That brings us to: My very first vest. It was supposed to be a sweater, but the pattern was wrong. I know enough about knitting to figure out that it was wrong, but not enough to figure out how to fix the mistake. So I improvised.

I almost gave it to my friend Elyssa, as she has a 2 year old, but she said, no, she thought it was special and we should keep it (or so she said :-) ). Brian was nearby when I had that conversation with her, and I found out later he held his breath waiting for her response, because he really likes it for our future child. I just didn't like the idea of holding on to something for 3-4 years, 'cause that's probably how long it's going to take for that little vest to get used...




This next picture carries two meanings. First, that's Gally-boy in the car. We're on the way home from the vet, having just found out he's going to need surgery on a tendon that's making him limp. Fortunately, nothing particularly complicated and well worth the investment for his health, both short-term and long-term.

But next, can you see how crumpled up the rear door is, and a little bit over the rear wheel? The front door is dented, too, but not nearly as much. That's how my car looked after I got hit by a lady that ran a red. She says I ran the red. The police report says either one of us may have run the red. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Really, if it had been front to back rather than a t-bone, it would have been more of a fender-bender. Witnesses, if any, were unavailable, at the time the report was written.

The car insurance totaled it. I bought this car with inheritance money from my dad. It may sound silly, but I've always thought dad bought the car for me, and I cried this weekend for maybe the fifth or sixth time in my entire relationship with Brian at the thought of losing it. I didn't know I was so attached to that little car, but we've just been through a lot, that little car and me - we even took a trip around 14 or 15 states, can't remember exactly. Just me, the car, and my dog.

We're still deciding whether to buy the car back from the insurance company and try to repair it, or just take the total amount and apply it to a new car. The votes from friends and colleagues have come in about evenly split. Noticeably, the 2 most financially solvent people I know - my mom and my friend Ed - say to repair the car. I had put a note on the car three years ago to pay off credit card debt and had made the last payment about 2 and half months ago. Go figure. So that makes it really hard to stomach the idea of a brand new car payment. And who wants to buy a new car right before they have a kid or two, so they can urp and burp all over it?

In any case, these are some that we're looking at:

TOYOTA MATRIX



Or possibly a MAZDA 5...




I can't photo-shop it right, but imagine my little gray car up there, with a few of the dings beaten out, enough so it's drivable. Because we're considering that, too, for sure.

Of course, my sleep stuff is acting up, my usual response to stress. That's why I'm blogging at 2:34 in the a.m. More's been going on - my division was getting down-sized, so my job was on the line, but now it's not. And other things. But I'm going to try to get some rest now.

My, oh my. Could it be that it's already one week into May? A good portion of Spring gone by?! Where has this year gone, for cryin' out loud?!?

Well, I know for us, it's been craaazy busy. We're still setting up bank accounts together, joining our car insurances, and so forth. Structural integration, as it were.

I'm getting my real estate license. I've loved all things real estate for some time now, and have wanted to learn more about the field in general in preparation for when we sell this house, buy a new one, etc. I knew taking that class was a significant commitment of time and energy; turns out, it was substantially more than I had originally calculated. But I've quite enjoyed the class; it's kind of a hobby-type interest that will probably help us in the long run.

Brian's had to work late a lot lately. I wonder how often it happens that a spouse doesn't really understand that much about what the other does? He understands much more about my work than I do about his, for sure. If he doesn't know something, I can get my meaning across in a few sentences. But for me, on the other hand... Obviously, I can tell from his tone and demeanor whether he's had a good day or bad day, but too much more than that and I get lost pretty quickly. But I think he's more looking to vent or to share something he's proud of, not give a two hour lecture on the inner-workings of his job. So I listen and try to be supportive.

We've been watching with baited breath as the primaries have unfolded, happy with the results so far, wishing things were clearer, and not envying the super-delegates, who are going to have to finish this, with one side or the other unhappy with their choice. Hopefully, in the end, people will support whatever dem takes the nomination.

I haven't got much else to memorialize here. The point of the blog is to help us remember later what's happened but honestly, things have been so busy, we've barely had a chance to hang out with anybody, do anything besides work on the house, work on my class, trying to work out more (just Saturday, I downloaded a bunch of songs to work out to onto my mp3 player that Brian gave me, filling it up with my favorite songs from the 80s that he had ripped onto his computer from his CD collection) (it's funny to me to think of how we were growing up, listening to the same songs at the same time, not knowing that years later, we'd meet, get married, and how our favorite songs would match up), working on our respective projects (I long ago conceded the lawn to nature and the dogs; Brian has taken up that mantle and is doing a good job of it. I continue to knit knit knit, as the exemplars here show, and thanks to the dogs for modeling some of the projects I've made for myself), work at our respective jobs, enjoying each other's company, as always.

Ooo. I will spend a second on that - how we enjoy each other's company. I do so love pal-ing around with Brian. We just like to hang out with each other, you know? I'm sure I've blogged about it before. We complement each other nicely, I think.

Last thing - we've discussed with both families that we're not going to go to both families for every holiday. Seriously, every single holiday was becoming a marathon, bouncing from one family event to the other. It had gotten that we weren't enjoying them anymore. The first one we missed was Easter on his side; that was de facto because he needed to pack for Canada, not the result of a strategy on inter- and intra-familial dynamics. But it went over OK. And, since the next big thing is Mother's Day, we announced we won't be hanging out with my family for that. The announcement was not met with gut-wrenching dismay or anything, although I think my mom did sniffle once or twice while we were talking. Just kidding, actually both moms have been very supportive, I just know she would have enjoyed having us over... And it's not like we're going to ignore them, we get together almost every week, so we'll celebrate the moms in my family then, we're just not going to kill ourselves this weekend to make sure we're at all the special gatherings known to mankind. Depending on how things get planned out, we may actually be able to stop in on our way there or back...

So we'll see how the new dynamics work out. I don't like that we have to miss one or the other, and we probably will try to make it to both for the big holidays. Also, once we have a kid or kids, it'll all have to change again, most likely, but at least we're finding a way to balance things in this phase. We'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there. And we'll just say ooooooommmmmmm and breathe until then, as much as we can.