Winston

Last fall my doctor told me that I needed to get a dog.

Well, that's not exactly how it went. That was the phrasing I used when I approached Eric about adding another animal to our already cramped apartment.

I had been seeing a few mental health professionals trying to get back on my feet and ready to return to work after my miscarriage in the summer. My psychiatrist suggested the usual- getting out of bed, taking a shower and doing my hair every day, keeping a journal, and taking walks. I told him about feeling unsafe walking around my neighborhood after dark, and with my return to work, I would not be home during daylight hours.That's when he asked if I had a dog. He said I might want to think about getting one.

"Dr. Duk says I need a dog."I told Eric as soon as I returned from my appointment.

He was rightfully suspicious that I had taken this recommendation to think about possibly getting a dog and blown it way out of context.

Eric had quite a few logical reasons not to get a dog. We had a tiny apartment, we had two cats that might not respond well to a dog, especially a large one, we had limited time, even more limited money, and we had a dog named Bella who ended up living with Eric's mom because it just made more sense that way.

I had no logical reasons. I just knew I had to have a dog. Plus my doctor said I should so that totally made it a good idea.

A few weeks later I was visiting my mom and we decided to go look at some dogs. Her friend operates an animal rescue and she had been keeping an eye out for the perfect dog for me. When we arrived a group of dogs came up to the car.

There he was, standing patiently in.the back of the group. He had the head torso of a large dog, but was curiously close the ground with tiny legs that bowed out. He looked ridiculous, like somebody just stuck random pieces of a dog together with no rhyme or reason, and called it a day.

I knew instantly that I had to have him.

Later I learned that he was a mix between a shepard and a basset hound and his name was Winston. I showed Eric the pictures I snapped on our visit, and three weeks later, Winston was home.

That was eight months ago, and I can't imagine our little home without  him.

Life preserves

When I started this blog I wanted to share the sweet and beautiful things in my life. And it turns out, my life is full of these things, but along with the sweet comes the bitter.

Over the past year, Eric and I have been dealt some blows.
We ended up having to leave the city we love and move in with my mother to make ends meet. Eric didn't get accepted into the radiologic technology program for 2012. We lost family members, a very dear family friend, and our first pregnancy- twins.

I didn't get out of my pajamas during the month of August. I barely got out of bed, barely spoke without bursting into tears, barely lived.

In September I tried to quiet my mind from the questions, the what-ifs, and the realization that the reality of my future was going to be wildly different than the dream I expected to come true.

During this time I went on a creative binge. First, I cleaned my house from top to bottom, doing all of the little things one puts off, like organizing the tupperware.  Anything to not think of how sad I was. I made lamps, three of them, in fact. I made mini watermelon cupcakes, macaroons, wrapping paper, tags, and paintings.

Most of all, I made preserves.

As summer fruit came into season, I canned everything I could get my hands on. Standing over that hot stove for hours was my therapy. It was a way to pass the time when time seemed to have no meaning to me anymore. By the time Autumn came I had over 50 jars of preserved fruit. Each one containing all of my love and grief, ready to be given away to friends and family during the coming holidays. I can't say that making preserves healed my broken heart or cured my grief, but when I saw the jewel toned jars lining my shelves I was able to see a glimmer of hope in them. I could see the sweetness and beauty was not gone from my life forever.

Yesterday marked the start of my summer canning. This year is different. My life is different, better in most ways. It's still nice to see the jars lined up though. My reminder that life can be lovely.

Hello world.

So my foray into formal blogging went about as I expected. A flurry of exciting activity followed by deep neglect.

When I began this blog I had so much to say, so much to show people. I think I still do. But I know a bigger part of it was wanting a lifestyle without the work. I am smart, capable, crafty. I should be the Pioneer Woman, or Nicole from Making it Lovely. I have ideas and great communication. Shouldn't I just type a few sentences, post a few photos and magically have a book deal?

Maybe in another life. Because in this one, the world is over saturated with people like me, who really like to hear themselves talk. And that's okay. I may not ever get a book deal from my blog. I may never get sponsored posts or tons of followers, but I will get the satisfaction of putting my fingers on the keyboard and thoughts out of my brain. Here they are, in all of their glory, for all the internet to see.

Succulents and sweets

I was lucky enough to have this weekend off. Other than the regular errands of grocery shopping, laundry and whatnot, I had no plans. I spent this weekend relaxing at home and working on a couple of projects.

This is the first weekend we have had of real spring weather. I like spring, but I lament the coming Summer, because it means nothing but misery in this neck of the woods. I was anxious to get some stuff planted while the weather is still agreeable. There were two things in the way. The first being a serious lack of funds, and the second being an uncertainty of where I will be living in the immediate future. It would be a shame to spend all that engery planting a lovely garden and then having to leave it behind.

I made do by using two cheap, old planters I had lying around the patio. I planted two different typed of tomatoes. Hopefully they will do better this year, than last Our patio doesn't get much sun, so the plants tend to suffer. By being in containers I can move them around to take full advantage of the small bit of sun we do get, and I can also take them with me when I move.

A lovely shot that includes our spool table and a rail road spike I found.

I was at my Mom's house a few weeks ago, and was going through a lot of old stuff. There was a lot of the standard baby stuff. Also, random things that I had thrown away but my mom salvaged, thinking I might want it some day. There was also a small amount of stuff that I had asked her to keep when I moved out back in 2004. This was very exciting. One of my best finds was a turtle planter. This planter lived in the yard at the house I grew up in. One day I brought it into my bedroom and declared it mine. When my Mom saw the planter she said "It is hardly crazed!" I learned that night that crazed has another meaning that I did not know about. But it was funny thinking that she was amazed that the turtle had kept its sanity all this time.
I decided to plant some succulents. I am terrible at keeping plants alive, and succulents seem to be very forgiving. I have also been becoming fond of them lately and was excited to have an excuse to buy some.

Looks pretty sane to me.

I was overly ambitious when buying succulents and I bought more than could be crammed into this tiny shell. I was left with one left over succulent and no place to put it. Luckily I had a plethora of left over mason jars from last year's canning.

Not the best shot, but you get the idea.

After having a lovely time greening up my space, I knew I had actual work to do, and I was dreading it. I had to practice making a 5 inch wedding cake. It has been going only so-so thus far, and I was beginning to get nervous. I am happy to say that today was a great success. I made a lemon cake and slapped on some cream cheese frosting I had in the freezer. It looks beautiful. One of the cakes broke in half, the cream cheese frosting was a runny, weird consistency from being frozen and I left the cake at weird angle in the fridge last night, causing it to be all slopey and uneven. With all those things stacked against me, it still turned out super cute.

I know. So darling. And my little $6 cake plate- best purchase ever.

If it is this cute now, imagine how fantastic it will turn out when I am making it up to my usual baking perfectionist standards.


Since I have no excuse to eat an entire top tier of a wedding cake by myself, I will be making a second attempt at cake balls tonight. I will be so happy after this wedding is done. I am burnt out on baking. It is just getting too warm. I do think my newest obsession will be popsicles. I already make a mean limber de coco. I do think it is time to expand my repertoire.

I'm still here

Jeez Louise, it has been almost a month to the day since I last posted. My blog is still a newborn and already I am neglecting it. Just like I do in The Sims...

Anyway, much has been happening.

On the home front, Eric and I both had terrible, awful colds at the beginning of the month. I wore myself out running around, and eventually it got the better of me and I had to stay in bed for three days. Eric had mid terms and finals while he was sick. But he really is the epitome of awesome, because he got all A's.

On the baking front, I had my first wedding consultation with one of my coworkers sisters. It was wildly successful. I am so happy to be making cupcakes for their big day. And I couldn't ask for nicer people to have for my first wedding clients. In addition to cupcakes, I am also making a small wedding cake for them to cut for photos and whatnot. This means brushing up on my fondant skills, so there has been lots of practice there. I made a few new cupcakes for them to try out, and I will be posting those soon.

On the job front I have my most exciting news. I applied for a higher position, and they made me an off, which I happily accepted. This new position includes salaried pay instead of hourly, and also four weeks of vacation a year. This is a big improvement over what I have now. This feels like such a grown up job. My goal was to be in this position by the time I was 27, so I ended up two years early. To say I am stoked is an understatement. The only downside is that I am not sure where I will be working yet. I have been assigned a district that is absolutely huge, and includes my home town.  Upside, seeing my family. Downside, actually moving back there and having nothing to do except go to The Walmart. Not Walmart, but The Walmart. Things are very, very up in the air right now, which takes me way outside of my comfort zone, but it is all very exciting at the same time.

Coming soon, two new recipes and perhaps cake pops.

Oh the one other thing. I finally saw Black Swan, like a year later. I am an old lady who hates kids these days and they are always out in droves at the movies, or the talkies, as I call them. It reminded me of Carrie with more lesbians,and less talk of dirty pillows. Also, I have not seen Avatar, but recently a friend described it as being exactly like Fern Gully, only the blue people rape everything with their braid/tails. Now I feel like I have seen it without having given up three hours of my life. I win!

Conveneience store cupcakes-redone part two

As fun as it was to revisit a cupcake idea I had previous done. I was much more excited to try out something new. Snowball cupcakes. They would look just like those little pretty pink cakes that I always thought would be better than they actually tasted, only these would be tasty, or at least that was my hope.

For number eight, I used the same chocolate cake recipe and filling as I did for number seven of my 26 before 26 quest.

One of the things I was looking forward to was dying my coconut. I had never done this before, and even though shaking a container full of food coloring and coconut may not be everybody's idea of a good time, I was jazzed. The first time I dyed my coconut, it was too red. Not a red red, more of a Sarah Goldfarb red. A strange dark pink/orange/red combo. Luckily I  had just enough to do over. The second time around they came out a very lovely and dainty shade of pink.

By the time it came to the frosting, I was pooped. I thought about making something from Martha Stewart, or numerous other places. Seeing some recipes prepared with fluff, I had bought some at the store on Monday when getting all my supplies. What I didn't get was cream of tartar, which just about all of the other recipes called for. So on Thursday night after work, it was decision time. I could go to the store again, or make some fluff butter cream. The more I thought about it, I didn't want to mix my fluff with butter. I liked fluff how it was, and I wanted a very marshmallow-ey taste.

I decided to use the fluff in it's natural form. Each cake was topped with a big mound of fluff, and then pretty, pink coconut shavings were mushed into it.

They were lovely. The picture of perfection. It did not last long.

By the time I put them all away in the fridge, I noticed the fluff was sliding. I was worried because I was all out of the good coconut and there was not incomplete coverage. I wasn't sure if I wanted to take them to work anymore, but I needed enough to feed everybody. I decided that having the pink coconut look more like a garnish than a thick, plush blanket of coconut goodness was still good enough.


The next morning I woke to an awful sight. I wasn't terribly surprised. I went to bed feeling uneasy, and when I woke up before my alarm, I actually got up to check on my cakes instead of savoring those last 10 minutes of sleep. When I looked in my fridge I saw that more than half of the fluff was all the way off of the cupcakes, dripping down the sides of the liners, onto the tray and even on to the innocent chocolate cupcakes below.

With zero time to waste, I scraped the fluff off of all the cupcakes, ditched the cute little aluminum liners and set them in some ill-fitting pastel ones. Yuck. A frantic search on my iphone lead me to this recipe from Paula Deen. I love Miss Paula. She loves butter and her teeth are a frightening shade of white. Plus there is this, which makes me laugh while creeping me the fuck out. This is like the salad fingers of our time.



Anyway, I got down a double boiler I had bought at a thrift store a few months ago and got to work.

I honestly don't know where I went wrong. Maybe it was the pan, maybe the mixer, maybe the corn syrup. The double boiler makes it almost impossible for water to get in and ruin the party, but perhaps that is what happened, because the entire thing seized up. The beginning of the recipe is very much like swiss meringue, which I have no problem with. But this was not happening. When I hit the seven minute mark, my sugar was still grainy. Not just a little grainy, but super grainy. I kept going on, hoping it would fix itself. After about 12 minutes I gave up. The frosting had a terrible texture, but was tasty. I ended up putting it on the cupcakes. It wasn't very good at all, but I think I was bothered by it more than anybody else. The silver lining is that these were covered in so much Sarah Goldfarb red coconut that the gritty texture kind of blended in with the texture of to coconut.

I would like to say that they looked better in person, but yeah.. nope.

They definitely weren't the lovely, light pink beauties I had imagined, but I am just happy that they made it to my break room. This will be one to revisit, but not for a long while.

Convenience store cupcakes-redone part one.

I barely made the cupcakes in time to commemorate my coworker's farewell. With preparation every night after work and an emergency frosting do-over in the morning, I was very tired by the time I was done. And cranky. Still, overall I am pleased with how they turned out.

I ended up doing variations of pre-packaged cake foods. The first one to be completed was the classic chocolate Hostess cupcake. My very first time making cupcakes as an adult was when my work was doing a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. We had a bake sale, and I thought cupcakes would be the perfect thing to bring. One of the types I made was a variation of the chocolate Hostess cupcake. It was fun to revisit it four years later. They turned better this time around, but looking back on it, I am impressed with the effort I made the first time around. I had never made anything other than a packaged cake mix, and I remember messing that up at least once in my youth. But still I went balls out and made chocolate cupcakes from scratch, filled them, covered them with ganache and topped them with a white swirl. I didn't even know what ganache was.

So here is number seven on my quest to complete 26 cupcakes before my 26th birthday.

They got a little roughed up on the way to work.

I used this chocolate cake recipe from Kevin and Amanda. I don't follow any blogs religiously, but this is one I am always coming back to. Full of great ideas, plus Kevin, Amanda and their dogs seem so cute and likable.

The cream filling recipe was from Retro Desserts. I found it though Baking Bites.

For the ganache I used my old standby of 9oz semi sweet chocolate with 8 ounces of heavy cream. I topped it off with a royal icing swirl. This was my first time making royal icing. It made way, waaaaay, more than what I needed, so it felt a little wasteful, but I had to have the swirls. I ended up going with this recipe from Alton Brown.

Overall, these were delicious. The chocolate cake was nice and moist, the filling was creamy and the ganache was smooth and shiny. You can't really beat that. They were very, very decadent. I would say that they are so rich that you really can't finish one by yourself, but that would be a lie. But they are so rich that I could share half of one with somebody and not feel gypped.

These were wonderful -a little time consuming, but not incredibly difficult. The other cupcake totally made up for how easy these ones were. The tragic tale will be highlighted in number eight of my quest for 26 before 26.