Sunday, June 17, 2007

Whole Lot of Caking Going On

My friend Janae and her kids are living out of suitcases at various friends' houses, waiting for the school year to be over so they can join her husband/their dad in Utah. She volunteered to make a graduation cake for the son of one of the friends she is enjoying the hospitality of, before she remembered all her cake decorating paraphernalia is already in Utah. I have cake decorating paraphernalia to spare, so she came over Friday night and made it at my house:

Janae's Graduation Cake

(The picture is small because it's just a trifle blurry.)

Since the cake decorating stuff was all out, and Audrey loves to dabble in the frosting arts (or maybe it's just Audrey loves to dabble in frosting,) she wanted to make cake, too. So she did, and quite nicely, too, I think:

Dinosaur Cake

Following a field trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Audrey and her friends split up a package of plastic dinosaurs from the museum gift shop,which they now have named, given personalities, and take everywhere they go. They have even started a web page dedicated to them at http://www.freewebs.com/dinoclubhouse to post pictures of their dinosaur exploits (though there isn't much there yet.) So following a brief Hello Kitty phase, she is currently dino-obsessed. Since it's a little early for James' birthday, and James is more of an armadillo or dragon kind of guy, Aurey decided the dinosaur cake could honor Father's Day, complete with one (relighting) candle for every year of John's fatherhood.

After the completion of the cake, Audrey and I went shopping for a bit, and when we returned John met us at the door with bad news. There had been a dog related cake incident, and the cake now looked like this:

Dogged Cake

Sigh. The dogs were already in the proverbial doghouse for a prolonged deer-chasing incident earlier in the day. Fortunately Audrey had a sackful of new clothes, lip gloss and hair thingies to soothe her wounded spirit.

Cake Post Script (Later in Day of Posting)

Oh dear.

John and I were dutifully going to try to find a little bit of un-dogged cake to taste, to make Audrey feel better. We put it in the oven to keep it safe from the dogs, AND. . . you guessed it:

ruined cake

I turned the oven on to preheat.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Taking a Break

Bob & Me

I took a non-blogging computer break yesterday and my cat Bob crawled up in my lap and went to sleep. The dogs were asleep at my feet, Bob was in my lap, and life was very cozy and quiet for while.

Friday I spent a lot of the day making popcorn at school for a cancer research fundraising carnival the 7th grade held. Later that night the whole family went to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot) at a book talk/signing at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, actually, the whole family went, and everyone but James stayed to hear her speak (no accounting for taste in some people's children.) John regularly reads her blog, and Audrey just finished her first two books.

Sunday while walking the dogs up on a logging road, a COYOTE crossed our path and the dogs pulled their leashes right out of my hands and took off after it. Stupid, stupid #&*#@!!!! dogs. When the coyote couldn't outrun the dogs after about a quarter mile, he made straight for the most densely wooded area he could find and the dogs went right in after him. A few minutes later the coyote came loping leisurely out of the woods and went on his merry way. The dogs didn't come. I called. I whistled. I cajoled. I threatened. The dogs didn't come. Of course they didn't come, they had their leashed wrapped around trees and were stuck and needing to be rescued. Stupid #&*#@!!!! dogs! Forcing my way through blackberry brambles is not my idea of fun. They were relieved to see me, but as soon as I got them loose they both wanted to know which way the coyote had gone. Stupid dogs.

My dishwasher broke, going out in a floor-flooding blaze of glory. You know that saying about "I wouldn't wish fill in the blank on my worst enemy?"" I've decided that having their dishwasher quit is EXACTLY the sort of thing that is appropiate to wish on your worst enemy. It causes no karma-crippling lasting harm, but it's damn inconvenient.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Dogs and Daisies

It is very hard to be Sherry-Nature-Photographer with two eleven month old pit bull/boxers in tow. ("In tow," implies I'm towing them. . . . which I'm working on, but right now I definitely spend more time being the tow-ee rather than the tow-er.) When I'm taking pictures, first there is the problem of manuevering two dogs on leashes and the camera when I only have two hands. Then there is the problem of standing still while holding onto two distractable dogs (we're also working on that.) And there is also the problem of the dogs wanting to figure out what it is that I find so interesting and getting in the picture, like so:
Daisies and Red Leash
And so:
Daisies with Blue Leash
Despite all of that, and a disagreement over whether or not they were going to take off into the woods after some very fascinating and urgent smell (possibly deer,) we had a good walk up on one of the logging roads this morning, and I did take a couple of pictures:
Sword Ferns

Foxglove Close-Up

Thankfully the weather is back to normal, upper 50's in the morning, 60's maybe 70 in the afternoon.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

I Think I'm Melting

On one of the warmest, stickiest, most humid days of the year so far, the masochistic homemaker does which of the following:


A) Starts the day by making homemade Caramel Pecan Rolls, and leaves the oven on while they rise
B) Takes the dogs on a 2-3 mile walk (partly uphill) in the middle of the day
C) Goes grocery shopping and comes home with a buggyload of fruit and veggies that require nearly two hours of washing and cutting before putting away
D) Makes Pot Roast for dinner, contributing to the heat and humidity with a pot simmering on the stove all afternoon (including during the two hours of fruit and veg prep)
E) All of the above

Caramel Pecan Rolls

If you answered "E," you would be absolutely right. My excuse is that my brains were already parboiled from having no air conditioning during the current "heatwave" (and in SW Washington, a week of almost 90 degrees qualifies as a heatwave,) and I was out in the sun yesterday for about 6 hours of soccer and end-of-season soccer party related goodness. Read that: END OF SEASON. We are sports-free until August. YIPPEE. I'm too hot and tired to do the official End-of-Season Dance, though.

Friday, June 01, 2007

I Just Don't Want To (Whine)

Wallpaper Stripper

The ceiling tiles are in. They are even grouted. Now I have to finish painting the kitchen, and to do that I have to remove the wallpaper paste from one last wall. Sigh. (I just started reading a series of mystery stories. . .I'm not typically a mystery story reader. . .and I'm in book 4 of 11, and caterer/heroine was stood up at her own wedding when the groom was abducted, and he's still missing. Reading would be so much more fun than scrubbing off wallpaper paste and doing paint prep-work.)

Unfortunately all that prepping and painting has to be done so we can put up some of this:

Moulding

Although the fancy "egg and dart" one on the bottom is lovely, it competes with the ceiling tiles, and we're going with the simpler (and easier to clean) one on the top. Power tools will be involved.