*YAWN*

Blogging is weird for me. For a while I'll think about if I could blog about what I'm doing at any moment of the day - and freak out if I don't have the camera readily at hand.
Other times, I entirely forget I have a blog.

Anyway. Here are a few things I've been working on.

First off, the table. The table is done! The wall-table has been posted on freecycle, and the new table is in use and happy.


Next - Pineapple Upsidedown cake for Dan's Mom's birthday! Lucky me - My Dad, Dan's Mom, and Dan all request this desert on thier birthdays! (almost unluckily though, their birthdays are all within 2 months). This is the first time I made the cake from scratch, and I tweaked a few other things... next time I want to tweak that even further. Once I get it right in my eyes, I'll post a recipe.



Two bloggers have recently posted recipies which caught my attention - Cinnamon Roll Muffins (Cupcakes, come on), and Cinnamon Roll Cookies - I want to make both, so I polled my coworkers on which they would like to try first. Cupcakes won by a landslide - 10 to 3. So that's what I made! They nummers. These were posted by Joy The Baker (who took them off of Baking Bites).


Mine are hardly as pretty as Joy's, but they're tasty! (I don't want to put frosting on them until they get to work, messy!) And I have tons of leftover cream cheese buttercream from an old project that goes so well with them!

Next week.. Cookies!

Bah, told you I suck at this.

Chris works for Excelligence - a toy distributor - they have a website - and printed catalogue. Tons of really awesome toys, children's furniture, and craft supplies. For this they like to have photos of kids enjoying the toys, and so, she asked if Des would be interested. Thus, we went for her first shoot this last week. It was pretty cool, all she did was go in and play with toys in front of a camera. I worried it would be stressful, but that worry went away because the first moment she seemed grumpy, the photographers called it a day - no pushing to continue unless she was totally up for it.



She also got to hang out at Chris' desk with her co-workers and play with crafts (I have no idea exactly what these people do all day, but it involves being SURROUNDED by piles and drawers and shelves full of toys and craft supplies, quite a heaven for a curious little girl). She was talking about the visit all that night when we got home, it was fun, and they asked if we could come back again this upcoming week for some more photos.



I'm still unsure if I feel like it's fair to have Des model - I don't want to be exploiting her in any way - but as long as she enjoys it, I don't think I mind - there's no makeup, no costuming, just her being herself, the photographers were so nice and didn't ask anything from her but to check out the toys and be cute - also, she gets credit at the company for toys! They also sent me a few of the photos they took!



Now I'm pretty sure we have no legal ownership of the photos I've posted, they belong to Excelligence, so no distribution or copying of them for commercial use, OK? :p

Oh and I was planning on trying to keep it a secret from some people until the catalogue was out, but that won't be until January or so - and there's no guarantee whatsoever that they'll use her photos.

I've got a secret

And I'm soooo bad at keeping secrets.
I also like to confuse any annoy people by being vague.

Bruin Bear brings the love

Bruin Bear: I love you. Who do you love?
Daddy: Who do you love Des?
Des: Mommy!
Mommy: *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE* *tear*

Working on progress

This weekend has been busy! Amongst cleaning and toddler-chasing, I've been sanding, lacquering, baking and tasting (tasting.. and tasting..)

Indoors, I've been working on my most recent cakecapade. I have a few recipes I want to try and baked two of them today with some rich success.

The first is a Cola Cake, which is very interesting. I made it as directed in single cups to resemble a cup of rum and coke. I then made the frosting, replacing half of the Coke with Malibu Rum (maybe a bit more than half). I poured the frosting equally over each cake and let them sit. I didn't have pecans, so I used walnuts.


They came out rather neat looking, and insanely rich. Chocolatly and rummy. Not so much Cola-y. Very tasty, not sure if it's what I'm looking for for this project though.

The second cake was a rum cake - made using Malibu again, and in coffee cups. After pouring on the glaze I poured an extra capful of rum over each cake. Over two of them I poured a few capfuls of Coke.

The cake turned out lovely, tasty, I'm not so sure about the extra rum or coke on top though. Coke just doesn't carry on very well as a flavour - it's not strong enough. I might try cooking it down to syrup or something.

In the end I'm hoping to create a "Rum and Coke" cake. But we'll see how that goes. In this theme, I also tried making Coke candy the other day.

I ended up with carmely candy, with only the slightest hint of a cola flavor, if any. A waste of time, I think.

Outdoors, I've been working on our new (old) dining table. A while back - this was crazy-nesting-pregnancy-time - I cut our dining table in half, re-stained it, and attached it to the wall, because I thought it was too big or something. Well.. it's been 2 years, and the wall isn't faring so well, that is... I'm worried one day the table will rip out and land on Dessie's head. So, I picked up this solid oak table off of Freecycle a few weeks ago.

As you can see, it's a little worse for wear. (and in pieces, but that's because I took it apart)

At this point, I would like to interject me love of Freecycle. It's a fantastic place. While feeding the need to feel helpful, you are able to get rid of things you no longer use - which maybe aren't ready for the trash, and may or may not be sellable. I've been able to hand off many baby items, some furniture and dishes which we just weren't using to people who I hope are finding great use from them. At the same time, I've picked up this table and an immersion blender (YEY!!!). After getting the table and remembering the sore arm which comes from refinishing by hand - I put out a request for a sander, and got one from a lady who just wasn't using hers anymore! She thanked me for helping her reduce her "stuff" load, while I thanked her repeatedly for making my life infinitely easier - and with our tight budget of late, I am ever so thankful to avoid the extra expenditure.

My plans for this table were to sand out the old stain, and then add some detail with a wood burning tool, or maybe some *tasteful* decoupage.. however, after sanding off the stain, I realized how gorgeous the wood is, and have decided to simply lacquer it as is.

I've only finished sanding this one leaf, and it's only two coats of lacquer in, but I'm very excited by the potential elegance of the table.

Small Town Labor Day Parade

Apparently Marina has had a Labor Day Parade every year for the past 39 years. I've lived in Marina for about 8 years now, and this is the first time I've seen the Parade (or, uh.. heard of it..)

So anyway, we were supposed to try to meet up with the Boyds, but an early morning conversation gave me the impression it started at 10am, instead of 11 am as I'm sure Erin actually said (oops..) So Des and I got there very early and sat in the single set of three level bleachers that were brought out for the occasion. A definitive part of Marina's character is that the weather is unpredictable. Yesterday was warm, sunny, beautiful... today however was cold and foggy, which means that my lack of foresight to this left Des dressed in a skirt and tank top - so she spent the parade wearing her daddy's sweater, which was luckily available in the back of the car.

Sweet little girl in Daddy's sweaterI didn't take photos decent enough to truly represent how small and.. sad this parade was. It was cute, there was lots of fun had, but man.. when one of the most entertaining (because I was crying inside for Marina and the sadness) parts of the parade was a bunch of dancing moneybags advertising RaboBank.. well.. you know it's a sorry situation.

Dancing money bags
But anyway.. after the parading there was food and a small petting zoo, Des enthusiastically pet the little goats, and was so good with them - sadly, I spent so much time taking photos of old cars for Dan, that the camera's battery only lasted a moment in the petting zoo.

Very cute indeed.

A few more photos of the parade..

A Sentence

As Dan and I debate who gets to go to bed and who has to stay up to watch Des - She pulls out a book (Cookie Monster) and says "Read a book about.. cookie!" "Read a book about Petee" (We figured out peter after a little while) and sits down in her chair with her cookie monster book - Peter Rabbit near by... to read on her own as she repeats "Read a book about... cookie!"

She's made a sentence. Not only that, but she's not just copying what we said, she's assembling this sentence on her own.

wow.

A sweet summer day

I mentioned a "personal" blog.. well.. sorry to disappoint, but, here it is! Dividing the two seems silly, I'd never update, so here and there I'll post smatterings of life amongst the powdered sugar, oven and spatula.



Today started out rather rough. I had some trouble with work which kept me telecommuting all night. I did not sleep - and ended up at work at a lovely 5:30 am. This did however have some benefits

• Driving to work I saw a deer, and about 50 fully clad soldiers. The dear was grazing, the soldiers were disembarking a bus and queuing up to get checked off on a roster. I assume they were going to do some back Ord training.


• I had the first few hours at work in total peace. During which I did an insane amount of work, as well as was able to enjoy a lovely sunrise over the Fort Ord fog.
  


• Oftentimes, on a Friday before a long weekend, we are given the opportunity to leave 59 minutes early (yes, 59, not 60). This was one of those - so being that I got to work so early I was able to leave early in the afternoon.

Aside from these things, I was deliriously tired a good portion of the day (I remember when I could stay up multiple days in a row and not feel as loopy as I did today).
When I got home, we all went out to the Child Development center to see if we could get Des signed up for the daycare waiting list. We aren't sure exactly when we will start needing it, as plans are nebulous right now as we try to work out what will be best for the family, but we figured we should at least get the info and give them ours so that getting in when we need to will be easier. Turns out the people we needed to meet with about this also got the 59 minutes of administrative leave - and so we didn't really accomplish much.
After this, we went to the park. A family outing to the park - together! I came armed with the camera.







It turned out a rather nice day, and there's still evening left :) Tomorrow Des and I will meet up with the Boyds to see the labor Day parade in the morning (if I succeed in waking up in time)

I'm so full of lies. And I bought new toys!

Ah ok, so I said I was going to work on a personal blog.. but I'm liar. I did, however, update this blog's layout - granted, I didn't make the layout, just updated the banner to match and chose one of Blogger's templates.. but I'm rather fond of the new look.

My current project is a cake for a friend's girl. While I highly doubt she even knows this blog exists, I'm going to keep the planning under wraps - however, I will divulge the items which I am working on for this cake. Among various other ideas I had and am working on for this cake, many of them so far being rather big failures (note: 2 liter bottles literally crumple under the heat of poured sugar), the most recent is sugar shot glasses!

These molds by Fred (a favorite designer of household things - I want prettymuch everything they sell) are made of silicon - which means two fantastic things for me and sugarwork - they will be able to withstand the high temperatures - and I will be able to get the candy out once it's hard!

While shopping, i gave in to pressure from Amazon to get my products faster for free and signed up for Amazon Prime for a free 1 month trial and ordered these two other ice cube molds to maximize the use of this free shipping fantasticness - for future candy making joy.



Oh the joy! Toys are awesomeness.

Fried... what!?

Oh! And at our recent venture to the fair I found the most miraculous and devilish things... FRIED REESES PEANUTBUTTER CUPS

I stole this photo. from here
Yes. Fried.

and they are *GOOD* if you ever come across 'em, I highly recommend.


That is all.