Pictures, not words...

Hannah's Wedding Cake, pumpkin and chocolate cake; gumpaste leaves, daisies, roses, mums, and calla lillies; and fondant pumpkins, gourds, and acorns.

MIA for at least another week...

Yup, I've been busy. Too busy to post. Particularly this week, as my house has been turned into a gumpaste and fondant factory, cranking out fall-themed decorations for the lovely Hannah's wedding cake. So, you see, I'll be MIA until that little all-consuming project is complete, and Miss Hannah is Mrs. Hannah. But I've got SO MUCH to show you all, and I've been thinking about you, every single day. Just haven't had much time...so until the deal is done, I'll have to leave you with just this sneak peek, a picture of fondant pumpkins. And if you'd like to see what I've been up to at work, I just dumped a couple dozen cake pictures on Flickr...

A'ight, y'all, see you in a week, I promise!

Things

First and foremost, how precious are these cupcakes? Like, are these not the most adorable cupcakes you've ever seen? Big gorgeous red Poppy blooms...on a cupcake. Genius. Genius, I tell you, and I wish I could say I came up with the idea, but I didn't. I only executed it. This design is courtesy of the follow-up book to my beloved Whimsical Bakehouse, a book focused on small cakes and cupcakes, which I "checked out" of the bakery's "library" of recipe and design books this week. I made a set of three florals--the poppy, a blue hydrangea, and a pink gerber daisy, and displayed them in the case at work yesterday. Today when I came in, I already had an order for tomorrow, and another promised for next month.

All this was prelude to say, yeah, things are going well with my new job.

I love the schedule. LOVE it. But more importantly, I love the work. Even Fridays, when I wind up putting in an 11-hour workday on my feet with no break (after my cushy 3-5 hours a day Monday thru Thursday), I walk out with a smile. Exhausted, but smiling. I also love being at home when Matt get's off work, I love sitting down for the brief 30 minutes we have for dinner before LAW SCHOOL every night, which has also been a big adjustment. Lots to adjust to, but we're doing well, and though I can't speak for Matt, I know I'm beginning to hit my stride. It's a nice feeling, since the truth is I haven't felt really happy in a long long time. But lately, I've been good. Productive even...my house is cleaner, I'm on top of the laundry (well, ok, more on top of the laundry), and the guestroom is freshly painted and waiting for me to start the next phase--ripping out the carpet.

All that was prelude to say, yeah, things are going well in general.

Maybe it's the mood elevators talking...

...TOTALLY kidding...

I haven't forgotten you, my bloggy friends...

...I've just, well, been busy! Finally ;)

First and most importantly, how fantastic does my husband look in his new suit? He looks like a lawyer already. We've survived the first week of law school beautifully, and next week when I start my new schedule, I anticipate life at home to go even more smoothly. He, in the mean time, is adjusting to all the reading, reading, reading...

In addition to my crazy back and forth schedule at work (oh, how I long for routine...), I've had a couple extra cakes to do at home. My first and biggest cake project to date was a Jimmy Buffett-slash-golf themed sheet cake, which was a gigantic undertaking but really turned out to be a fun cake. Not one I'm looking to repeat any time soon, since I spent hours hand making all the decorations out of tinted white chocolate, but it looked impressive enough to justify it's price tag anyway. The other cake was a cute two layer 10 inch round cake for a little boy's cowboy themed birthday. He requested a horse. His momma requested chocolate, and something that would work with her decorations, which were all bandana-inspired. NO PROBLEM. I think it turned out really cute, and I hope Preston and his momma were as pleased as I was. The bandana sides in particular were a blast, and I really feel like they *made* the cake. That, and the rope border, which is one of my favorite borders to do but I rarely have such a perfect opportunity to use it. More pictures of both cakes and all the details will be up on the cake blog shortly. Also cake related, the lovely Hannah and I have done some conferring on her upcoming wedding cake, and it's going to be just fabulous! I've never been more excited about a cake, and couldn't be happier about who I'm making it for!

So, thanks to the extra income from the cakes, I found myself in the unusual-of-late circumstance of being able to buy a lil' somethin' for myself. Man, I miss shopping. Anyway, while out shopping for ties and sock for the budding lawyer, I found these shoes and absolutely fell in love. Everyone deserves some fancy dancin' shoes, now I've just got find myself somewhere to go ;) I mean, really, how adorable are these? Clinton and Stacey would be so proud...

So, yeah.

Hey, August, huh? Yeah, it's, well, it's been that kind of month. Where a whole lot of nothing happened, but enough of it to keep me from the blogosphere like a good and proper communicator. So, July went something like this--Matt got into Law School, we elected to take a "staycation" to celebrate his final moments of freedom, it rained approximately 25 of 31 days this month, I grew the pumpkin vine that ate Knoxville, and the decorator at my bakery announced she was moving to Dallas at the end of August. Or something like that.

So, once the two big life events presented themselves (Law School, Check! New Job for me, Check!), the rest of our time (in between hiking trips and Rug Doctoring the carpets) was spent figuring out just what the heck our lives were gonna look like come, say, September. The good news is, I think we've got it all figured out. The bad news? We're gonna be pretty damn busy for a while. Anyway, it looks like it's gonna go a little something like this....

Matt starts school August 17th, Monday through Thursday, 6:15 to 9:45 pm. If the decorator job hadn't come through, this would mean we'd see each other about 2 hours a day, but thankfully that won't be an issue now. I'm going to finish out my current schedule at the bakery (Tuesday through Friday to 6 pm) in August, with a few Mondays as the decorator to make sure I'm up to speed (today was one of those Mondays, and I'd say my speed is A-Okay). Starting in September, I move to an early shift (finished by 2 most days), and Matt will go to work a bit earlier as well, so that he can be home by 4:30 or so. I'll have dinner on the table at 5, we'll get to eat together like normal people, and he'll be off to school by 5:30 or so. So what am I going to do with my 4 1/2+ hours a night during the week? Good question. If I had any money, I'd go back to pottery class, and maybe by next year I'll be able to. In the mean time, I just so happened to have invested in some ceramic paints, oh, AGES ago, and finally am going to have the time to put them to use. These things are a blast, and maybe this will be the thing to get my creative juices flowing and that long-ago promised Etsy shop opened. Also, I have a few dozen home improvement ideas kicking around in my head, and the fact is that, when I get bored and I'm all by myself, I tend to go drastic. So don't be surprised if I tell you I've dug a fish pond, repainted a room, or ripped out some carpeting on a whim. That's just how I roll...

And now we interrupt your programming for a special announcement....

MATT JUST GOT ACCEPTED TO LAW SCHOOL!

...you may now resume your regularly scheduled activities. Us? We've got to get back to partyin'.

When celebrating this weekend, please keep this in mind...

Originally from Salon.com:

It's time to stand up for homemade potato salad

Come on, people, it's not that hard to make. Do you really think we can't tell the difference?

By Garrison Keillor

July 1, 2009 | I walked the length of the westbound Lake Shore Limited as it left Albany last Sunday, six crowded coaches, and counted three Twitterers and a couple of phone texters, six laptoppers (two of whom were watching movies), four video gamers, and 27 people reading books. Books made of paper! Turning the pages with their fingers one by one, reading the lines left to right, just as people have done for hundreds of years. Ain't that something?

I didn't lean down for a close look at the books they were reading -- I was not brought up to do that -- so perhaps bodices were being ripped and stalkers were stalking and meteorites were heading straight for Earth, but no matter. Books were being read!

Along with live theater, monogamy and the bald eagle, the paper book has been despaired over and its demise freely predicted, and yet, among people heading west, it seems to be the diversion of choice. So Dickens and Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor are not dead yet.

And the bald eagle is coming back, along with the gray wolf and the Yellowstone grizzly -- though less attractive endangered species such as the glassy-eyed smelt and the orangefoot pimpleback mussel and various arachnids are still in doubt -- and theater seems as alluring as ever, judging by the number of young New York waiters with large personalities. And as for monogamy, it's there, waiting to be rediscovered.

So let me speak up for an endangered menu item this Fourth of July weekend and that is homemade potato salad.

When the family meets this weekend to hobnob and burn burgers, the family member assigned to bring the potato salad is likely going to walk in with a couple of gallon plastic buckets of yellowish muck bought at a convenience store, the price stickers still on them, and set them down on the table with no apology whatsoever.

Or, if they have more disposable income, they'll bring paper containers full of brownish muck from the natural organic sustainable united empathetic co-op.

If you bring garbage to share with your family, the least you can do is tell a lie and say, "I couldn't make the potato salad myself because I am bipolar and my lover left me and my dog has leukemia and I have an oozing leprous sore on my mixing hand."

It is not that hard to make potato salad, people. Take half an hour away from your Facebook page and do the job right. Boil some eggs, chop the celery and chives and green onions, boil the potatoes, make your mayonnaise, maybe toss in a little sour cream, use plenty of dill, and sprinkle paprika on top. The eerie-yellow store-bought stuff in the tubs was manufactured at Amalgamated Salad in Houston by undocumented 12-year-olds from the hills of Michoacan. Worse, it is teaching our children that accomplishment doesn't matter.

A child served yellow slop from a bucket is being told that it's OK to plagiarize a term paper off the Internet just so long as it's poorly written.

What if Thomas Jefferson had been too busy hobnobbing to write the Declaration of Independence so he just downloaded a bunch of stuff he found Googling "independence" and coming up with stuff about indolence, pendants, incontinence, but hey, close enough, and he pasted it together and they all signed it and went out to a movie? Not good.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the potato salad that has connected them with another, they will do it, believe me, so why insult us? Just because we're polite, do you think we can't tell the difference? Are we demented? Does this not seem self-evident to you?

Attend to the details. Teach your children manners. Write cogent paragraphs. Drive carefully. And make a good potato salad, one with some crunch, maybe accompanied by a fried drumstick with crackly skin -- the humble potato and the stupid chicken, ennobled by diligent cooking -- and is this not the meaning of our beautiful country, to take what is common and enable it to become beautiful? All our beautiful young people -- so diligent and focused and powered by hope -- you can't tell me those kids didn't have parents who took time to chop the celery and onions and experiment with the ratio of mayo to mustard to achieve a potato salad that is worthy of our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of "77 Love Sonnets," published by Common Good Books.)

© 2009 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

These are a few of my favorite things...

I'm currently sitting under an umbrella in my new favorite spot on earth. There are baby housewrens chirping from their nest in a birdhouse just above my head. The water is splashing melodically in the fountain behind me. A wonderful breeze is rustling the limbs and leaves in the woods directly in front of me. I'm surrounded by gorgeous, cloudless blue skies. And in the distance, I KID YOU NOT, a train whistle just blew.

It's like movie out here today.

I'm speaking, of course, of my deck, and my glorious back yard, where lately I find that I am happiest. I suppose I could update you on our lives (as though there were much to report--beyond Matt applying to law school, everything is pretty much the same), but instead I'll give you pictures of my new found oasis, and invite you all over for barbecue, anytime you want.





More pictures on Flickr.

A mama blue bird just landed on the pergola to my left, she and papa are scouting our bluebird house on the tulip poplar. Linus is rolling in the sunshine on the hill. A cardinal is splashing in the birdbath.

It's a good day out here, y'all.

Some baking...

Working in a bakery and wanting to actually *keep* my paycheck means I have to come home and bake all the tempting treats I work with all day.

My first official Challah loaf

Pineapple upside down cake, from scratch. Well worth repeating all summer long!

Love for the Kitties...

The cats don't make it on the blog as often as they deserve. So, today, it's all about some kitty love.Marley's calendar shot. This picture should be framed and hung in my house. Isn't he beautiful? Marley is my boyfriend...

These two are exact opposites in disposition--in fact, I can't believe Zoe was being so tolerant as to let Nilo share this much space with her. I blame it on the sunshine--the pure joy these cats get from rolling on the deck in the sunshine gets them both high (or, perhaps that was the catnip Matt had just sprinkled liberally on that very spot? Hmmm....). Normally Zoe would not condone one of my cats *touching* her. And we call Marley a princess...