I made my cake yesterday for the Thread Cakes contest. Am I 100% happy with it? It could be twice as good and I'd still say no lol. But, for all the trouble it gave me, it turned out as well as it could. I made it hard on myself when I couldn't do it the way I wanted to and I made up some crazy way of accomplishing my task that made it take twice as long as it should have. There's a million things I'd do different if I did it all again, but it was good practice.
Here's my cake entry, with 24 photos and a bio on the cake process.
http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/466

I think I'm still going to do one more! I didn't realize that making a three tier cake would put me in the 3D catagory. I felt like this was a 2-D design :/ Soo... yeah, I'd like to make another cake to enter, either a full on 2-D cake or a full on 3-D cake.

Until then, I have SO MUCH CAKE. So yeah, everyone come over and eat cake tomorrow!! I'm working on eating some as I type this haha. It's dark chocolate cake with chocolate chips. So good.

Also, today will be a good day because when I got here there was no receptionist. The phone kept ringing and I was nervous we wouldn't have a receptionist today! Eep! Then I looked at the schedule... Cindy has been scheduled to cover the reception desk upstairs ALL DAY today!! YESSSS. A Saturday without Cindy right next to me is a total dream come true.

I work at the bar tonight too... and I didn't go to bed until like 3am, so I'm absurdly tired now.

*edit* THANK YOU to everyone who has said so many nice things about my cake! Sometimes it's hard to appriciate them for what they are after I get so intimate with every tiny crack and crumble. You guys always make me smile :)

Tomorrow I think I'm going to make my entry for the Thread Cake contest.

www.threadcakes.com

I've narrowed it down to two or three shirt designs, but I'm having some trouble deciding!! I was going to post a pole here, but I want to surprise everyone :)


Gonna try to go back to www.threadless.com and narrow it down! I'm only looking at designs no one has used yet.

This will be my first cake contest.

This is going too far. Wow.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/30/gates.police.apology/index.html

If you some how missed the original story:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massachusetts.harvard.professor.arrested/index.html?iref=mpstoryview


The point is... okay police guy, this is obviously a big deal. It's national news. You're under the microscope... why... just whhhhy would you send out a mass email to all your pals... calling this guys a "banana eating jungle monkey"...? Just... why?
And to say it's taken "out of context" is just ridiculous! I don't see any context that could have been in and made it okay. The defense is that he didn't "call him one" he said he was "acting like one." Now this is a bullshit excuse if I've ear heard one. This is what I say to my husband when we fight.
"Stop telling me I'm an asshole! I'm not an asshole!"
"I didn't say you were an asshole! I said you were acting like an asshole!"

It's silly, it's petty... and it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit and they know it's bullshit.

Is saying "He's a n-gger" and different from "He's acting like a n-gger?" Is it REALLY any differnt?

I did my best to get out of the bar as early as possible last night. I wanted to get my cupcakes fixed. I was tired as hell after 9-5:30 at the music store and I clocked in at the bar at 5:45. We were pretty slow and I didn't even get a table for the first hour I was there. It was blue grass night last night. There was a huge festival downtown by the river, so... yeah... I guess everyone was there.
I got a lot of tables who just wanted to drink and not get food. I had a table of five guys who felt the best way to get my attention when they needed me was to snap their fingers and wave their arms all over the place and generally be rude. They had SIX rounds and a basket of pita chips and hummus. They were just drinking domestics, so each round was $11. They paid for each round with a $20 bill, which meant EVERY TIME I had to give them a five and four ones. I had to break all of the $20s at the bar because I didn't have the change in my apron. When they left, they left me $3 and some miscellaneous change. Thanks assholes. That's not even $1 a round and between the five of you, you had PLENTY of ones after I gave you $9 back every time you ordered.

Annnyhow, after the kitchen closed, I told my tables I was out for the night and told them they could cash out with me or I could transfer their tab to the bar. No one ever transfers to the bar, so I got everyone cashed out and took off around midnight.

Thankfully, I was able to get the smashed frosting off the cupcakes without damaging the cake. I was a little upset because I was unable to match the original green when I remade the frosting. Sooo about a dozen of the cupcakes had a darker green than the others. Kevin didn't mind, of course, but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my baked goods. I was so frustrated by the whole ordeal that I didn't even take any photos other than these shitty ones on my phone, which were twitpics.
The smashed cupcakes: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The fixed cupcakes:

After the cupcakes, I cleaned the loft. I went to bed at like 2am but then Iron Chef was on, so I stayed up til 3 so I could see Mario win battle halibut.

The color was much better than this these shitty phone pics, they were more bright green. Hopefully Noble enjoys them. Kevin said they got him a really sweet bmx bike and he has NO idea. They told him he could see how much money get got for his birthday and he could buy the bike himself. He's got the bike in the car though! And he's going to park the car at Dorothy Lane Market, a block from where they live. Then he's going to offer to take him up there to get some snacks. Then they'll so go, "Oh looks what's in the car!!"
That kid is going to freeeaaak out haha.

Of course, kevin gave me more than twice what I asked for the cupcakes, but I took it from him, since it helped me justify all my extra work and we need all the money we can get for Nashville.
I found us the cuuuutest, most affordable place to stay while we're there! I called the Marriott and cancelled after seeing this. We called right away and put down a deposit.
It's an adorable little two room cottage with a kitchenette.

There's a back yard with a patio and a grill, there's musical instruments all over the cottage, it's decorated really cutely and it's 3 miles from downtown! Annnnddd overall, it's going to cost us $100 less than our hotel was going to cost us, and the hotel was going to be a half hour from downtown! The lady who owns it is SUPER nice and she's a local musician. She knows some people at some of the recording studios and she's going to try to get us a tour of Ocean Way studio, which would make Brian very excited.
I can't believe we've been married for five years. It's crazy. I'm sure our anniversary vacation will be lovely. We should really start actually PLANNING what the heck we're going to do lol. Considering it's coming up here soon.

I'd like to add that these photos really do the place no justice. It's so much larger than I thought it would be and way larger and more open than these photos make it look.
first floor:
garage: not pictured
laundry room: not pictured. Both garage and laundry room were larger than I expected.
bonus room:

looking up from the downstairs


Second Floor:
half bath: not pictured.
( see the rest )
outside


The lady was super nice, but we know the houses are completely out of our price range. Owning a home, for us,would just be kind of silly anyway. We're not house owning type people. It was fun to look and dream though! We ended up talking with the lady for over an hour and she told us all about her house and she was asking me about my cakes and stuff. She was great.


Also, I made thirty six cupcakes today and put them in a large cupcake box. They're for my tattoo artist's son's birthday. While I was gone earlier, Gibson LAID on the fucking box and smashed the amazing frosting job on like 12 of them!!!! At least 12. I'm going to have to scrape the icing off and redo them. Ugh. Hopefully, I can get away with doing it that way and make them look acceptable. I do nooootttt want to remake another dozen cupcakes. I could have twisted Gibson's little head off. They were all put up in a spot I didn't even think he could get it. It looked like he tried to actually get the box open and couldn't. THANK GOD he didn't get in to the box.

Well, tomorrow is another all day work day. Hauer 9-5:30 and the bar right after til... super late.
I'm out.

This is why I love dance. So much. This is why So You Think You Can Dance is more important than a lot of people realize. It brings art like this to millions of people across the country who might have never even realized how powerful dance can be.

After this dance last night, there wasn't a dry eye in the entire crowd and Nigel could barely even form words to judge the dance with.

Yes, Ellen was a sit-in judge last night, I don't know why they chose to make her the freeze frame on this video. She annoyed the hell out of me most of the night, but she gave some truly good commentary on this dance.
I encourage you to watch this video from start to finish. The beginning is imporatant to see how they prepared for this dance and the end is important to hear how this is so important.

This dance is about something so close to my heart. Anyone who has struggled with cancer, wheteher themselves or someone they love, I'm sure would be hard pressed to watch this without a tear. My mother has battled cancer not once, but twice. Some how Tyse Diorio managed to convey all the emotion of these battled with choreograpy. He's a man of amazing talent who I truly admire.

I don't have much to write about... just been working the past couple of days. More to come, of course. I'm still having issues breathing. Brian told me maybe it's all in my head. This bothers me particularly, because when I had the same issues as a child, my doctor told me the same thing. I'm not sure how I could make up in my head that I can't get enough air. Especially when it goes on like this all day long, even when I'm not thinking about it. My nose is also running and I'm congested. I don't know. It's hard for me to believe it could be in my head. Oh well.

On Friday we're going to go look at a house. It's silly. We can't afford to buy a house. We're just... curious and interested. It's something we may consider in the future. The kind of place we're going to look at would be the only way we'd ever consider buying a home. And for the record, the place isn't even BUILT yet, we're looking at a model. I'm sure you (who have been on my friend's list for a while) all remember my ongoing obsession over the past few years with www.livinghomes.net and their RK1 style modular home. Well, these homes are actually QUITE similar in a lot of ways. www.litehouseliving.com is their website, though it's not much to look at just yet. Brian brought me a pamphlet which offers more information than the website does. The home style we're looking at is not even on that page. It's a "four story" home... since they're being built downtown, they need to take advantage of vertical space, to save on the cost of the plot of land, of course. The bottom floor actually contains a one car garage and a bonus room, or a two car garage. The second floor has the living room, dining room, kitchen, a half bath and a balcony/patio/deck thing. The third floor has two bed rooms, a full bathroom off the master bedroom and a full bathroom in the hall. The "fourth floor" is actually the roof, but it's usable space. Half of the roof is a "living roof" which is a concept I've been obsessed with for a while. It's something the RK1 home has. Basically, there's a yard... on the roof... no joke. there's grass up there. Hey, if ya live downtown... may as well! The other side of the roof has like sloped covered area where the stairs come out and there's some area where you could could probably put chairs and a table and such. It's pretty much adorable. There's even a rainwater collection system to water the grass.

*edit* I almost forgot about all the built in shelving! And the built in California closet space in the bedroom. An ENTIRE WALL of built in drawers, closet and shelves in the master bedroom! haha.

Don't ask how much it costs. I'm too embarrassed to admit how much it is. I feel kind of bad because I feel like we're wasting this poor lady's time by having her show us this place Friday. Let's just say it's six figures... multiple six figures lol. Well, for the big one. I guess there's smaller ones. We'll see. haha. Not that we'd buy a house any time soon. We are in a two year lease with the loft. It's possible we'd look into it after that's up. We haven't even been here for a year! Look at me! I'm so damn fickle. I always dream so big haha.
However, the houses are fully furnished with amazing energy star appliances, including a stove with a grill top *swoon*, there's a lot of tax credits available because of the green nature of the home (did I mention the solar powered water heater? Evidently they're offering lower interest rates and all sorts of things. Blah blah blah. Again. Not going to happen.

Of course, I never thought I'd live here in this place. It once seemed like a distant dream.

So much for not having much to write about right now.

We have the window open... it's nice and cool out right now. Gibson is obsessed with sitting in the window, feeling the breeze in his little whiskers and hearing the city sounds. I never knew how well our windows kept the sound OUT until they were open! Downtown is LOUD! The train is suuuper loud! We barely notice it with the window closed though. There's lots of sirens and cars honking... You can hear music from the bar downstairs... I kind of like it lol. I can smell all the food from the downtown restaurants too... it's making me hungry.

Four things



Four jobs I’ve had

1. snow cone girl at a race track
2. hotel night auditor
3. Guitar Center operations manager
4. bar server

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. dawn of the dead
2. shaun of the dead
3. super troopers
4. high fidelity


Four places I’ve lived

1. Laurance Harbor, NJ
2. Dayton, Ohio
3. Austin, TX
4. Florence, KY


Four TV shows I love

1. House
2. Ace of Cakes
3. So You Think You Can Dance
4. Gray's Anatomy


Four places I’ve vacationed

1. Michigan
2. North Carolina
3. Las Vegas
4. Canada



Four of my favorite dishes

1. Cake!
2. Fettucini alfredo
3. medium rare steak with a baked potato covered in butter, cheese and bacon
4. french toast


Four sites I visit daily

1. Livejournal.com
2. twitter.com
3. icanhascheezburger.com
4. craigslist.org


Four places I would rather be right now

1. austin, tx
2. las vegas, nv
3. lexington, ky
4. the living room

I've spent a lot of time gasping for air lately. I haven't been able to properly catch my breath all weekend... ugh.
Not to mention my nose has been very runny. :(

I made some cupcakes today and decided to try to hand pipe some candy melt birds and twigs... they came out alright.






I also bought Jewels a new tank today!






It has a light which is cute. Gibson, however, is NOT amused... because he can't drink the water anymore since there's a lid! Jewels is completely confused... because there are corners haha. He was used to being in his little endless round space... he was inspecting all of the corners. It was pretty funny.

I spent all day shopping. Which wasn't as much fun as I expected it to be, I suppose. I went to a sale at TJMAXX looking for a new purse, but didn't see anything I wanted. I went to Michael's and got some new icing tips and a tip cleaning brush.

I went to the Dorothy Lane Market and kind of whizzed through and grabbed some things.

My mom and brother came over for dinner tonight. We grilled and ate on the roof.

I feel like the whole day went by waaay too fast and I wish I could have another day off before Friday. I just get SO tired and worn out. The fact that I have to close the next two days in a row kind of bums me out too. No time for meeeee.

This is my lolcat I made of Gibson while I was changing the fishes water in his bowl!
It's on the front page of icanhascheezburger.com right now! I'm so excited :D


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

it's about addiction and it stole my heart.

Okay, so some of you might thing I'm insane, just plain weird, have too much time on my hands... etc...
But I wanted to make my dog a birthday cake. I love him and evidently, I'm reproductively impaired or something so I don't have any children and he's what I've got. So I love him 110%. He is such a great little guy. I wanted to do something special for him. So I set out for the perfect recipe. I looked and discovered, for dog safe cakes, there are two options, sweet cakes... and meat cakes. The general conclusion, was that the meat cakes were, in fact, preferred and better for dogs in the long run. The pro of the sweet cakes is that a human would also be able to enjoy in this cake. The meat cakes, though made of perfectly human-edible grade materials... you probably wouldn't WANT to eat lol.
Grossed out yet? It's not as gross as it seems lol...

I had found a lot of recipes, but nothing was really standing out to me as something I wanted to make. A lot of them had a lot of things in common and I started to think, "What does any cake REALLY need?" Eggs, oil... flour? Okay... so I decided, I wanted my cake to be mostly protein. I sliced up an entire large raw chicken breast and dumped it in the food processor, I added two eggs, half a cup of rice, about 3 tablespoons of flour, a drop of liquid smoke, about 1/4 cup of olive oil, a dash of paprika and I pureed that shit until it was complete mush. I greased the heck out of my 4 inch round cake pan, poured it in and baked that sucker at 350 degreed for about 40 minutes. I expected it to take an hour, but it cake out perfect after 40 minutes.

After it cooled, I made some instant mashed potatoes and colored them with food dye. I smoothed one layer onto the cake and put the rest in piping bags to pipe the cake with. It was amazing. The potatoes went on almost just as smoothly as buttercream and everything held up wonderfully!

I'm not crazy, I just love my dog and I love making cake!







I'm convinced if it weren't for the rice, by just looking at this cake, even cut up, you wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't a normal cake. I am actually really proud of the whole thing. I didn't measure anything at all, to be honest, I just kind of eyeballed my ingredients and it turned out really well. I think it looks awesome, the writing is a bit sloppy, but piping mashed potatoes through a number 2 piping tip, turns out is the harder part haha. Eddy absolutely LOVED it. He went insane for it. He gobbled it up.
It was SUPER dense, so I gave him two small slice and the cat one little slice. They loved it so much!

This little man is Two years old today! I love him so much!





What a little guy.

Annnnd... today is the SIX year anniversary of my very first date with Mr. Brian Whitten...







He called me... I kind of wasn't sure who the heck he was... he told me he was that guy... from that band... the one from Troy... finally I figured out who he was and that my friend gave him my number. He asked if two of my girlfriends and I wanted to get lunch with him at Chipotle the next day. There was a Chipotle by my house and it was the only one in the city at the time. It was normal for friends to drive from surrounding cities to eat there. People called me to meet them there all the time.
Sooo... the next day, I showed up without my friends... (oops! I "forgot" to ask them!") and thus, we had our first date :D

It doesn't take much to make me snicker about someone at work. It does take a lot to shock me, but we deal with a lot of WTF people, aince we're downtown and all.
When I went to lunch today, there was a lady laying on a friggen beach towel in the little strip of grass behind our parking lot. Like... just... wtf?

I mean, there's a guy who sits out there on Monday nights and reads a book, in a lawn chair, under a tree... I mean... it's kind of weird, but whatever.

This lady was wearing a skimpy top and she was on a beach towel! We are DOWNTOWN! There is no beach anywhere near by. I understand that your kid is probably taking a lesson here... but the lessons are 30 minutes long. In rare cases, they might have a make-up session creating a one hour lesson or they may be learning two different instruments and taking their classes one after another. We have some kids who take guitar and then go to a drum lesson right after. So, at most, you have an hour to kill.

You'd really rather be laying in our parking lot sunnin' your leathery skin, then inside in our nice airconditioned building?

We have a strip of grass maybe 3 feet wide that runs about half the length of the back parking lot. There are a couple of trees and some mulch that take op most of the space in it. You look really silly. REALLY silly. Like people are pointing and laughing in confusion. Also, Our back parking lot faces a papermaking company. I bet all the guys in their shipping yard are staring at you. Can I repeat again WE'RE DOWNTOWN?

Some people confuse me... I wanted to take a pic of her... but she was gone when I go done with lunch.

Today didn't go the way I planned, but it went pretty well. We drove to ikea which didn't go well... we could not return the blanket and then brian and I bickered a bunch and just left. How pointless!!!! We drove 40 minutes to be in the store for 15 minutes. Ugh.
His parents were driving through west chester on their way home from somewhere further south. They got off at the ikea exit and met us for lunch. We went to red robin and I got the royale red robin burger (of course). We stuffed our faces.

Then suddenly everyone decided we needed to go swimming. Oh geez okay... this meant I had to buy a swim suit. Greeeaaat. its the same every summer, Im given like 20 minutes at fuckin walmart and expected to find something so we can omghurryupandgo. I hate what I got but whatever. Evidently it was on clearance and only cost me $13 so I don't really have to wear it ever again.

Brians brother and lisa brought the girls and we all met at the pool.

Oh my god... I love my nieces so damn much. Sophia just makes my life. She's so amazing. She loves me so darn much and it kills me. She's amazing. Her little face lights up and she smiles and giggles and bounces around. She could be my whole world. I swear. She's wonderful.

And lauren. She's so darn tiny, I always think im going o break her lol, but brian and I hung out in 2 feet of water with her, letting her feet dangle in the water, making her giggle and she loved it.

We want a baby in our lives so badly. Brian is so damn good with the girls... I don't know. Sometimes it hurts to kiss them on their cheeks and say goodbye. I want to be with them always. I love them more then they know.

And tori, I cannot believe she's going to be a teenager next year. Its crazy. She's such a little woman. She's so good with her little sisters. She's grown up so much in the 6 years I've known her.

After the pool, we decided to get food. I suggested KFC because I always eat grilled chicken there on sundays. Its my new ritual lol. Everyone thought that sounded good, but then we made a wrong turn and somehow we changed our minds and went to olive garden.

I'd like to take a moment to say I think I make better food than the olive garden does, but whatever, it was so much food and for the second time, I was full out of my mind.

Brians parents paid for lunch, the pool and dinner. Which was just wow.

After such a long day im sore, tired and in bed snuggled with eddy watching jelly fish on the discovery channel.

So tired. Probably won't make it until 1am for futurama.

Is anyone on my friends list from sweden? I've been reading about it all day! It sounds so cool. Other than the very high taxes, it all seems so nice.
The agriculture seems awesome, the economy sounds great. Gay people can get married. They've made a proposal to do away with fossil fuel driven vehicles by 2025.
Lots of chocolate and vodka made there it seems... two of my favorite things :)
The traditional foods are simple and include lots of meatballs potatos, fish, bread... few seasonings... sounds right up my alley!

Basically, it sounds awesome. I'd love to visit there sometime! The hubby and I thought it sounded so cool that I think we're going to ikea tomorrow because its as close as we'll get to sweden hahaha

Today I whipped up this tiki-style birthday cake for a 5 year old girl named Brooklyn. I hope she likes it.









Considering I made the entire thing today, I think it turned out pretty well. I had a lot of issues... like when I dropped one of the layers for the bottom cake. It was supposed to be a 4 layer cake, but it's a 3 layer cake lol. I wish I could be there to take a photo when they cut it! I made each layer a different color. I don't remember what the colors are! I remember I did pink and purple... but I forget the third one lol. Maybe green... or blue. I forget. Oh well. I'll try to get her to send me a pic!
My mixer also broke... when I was making buttercream. Bummer. It was only a $6 mixer though. So not a huge deal. I also had to make Brian buy me more stuff while he was out so I could finish it.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the whole thing. The tiki hut is a cupcake that I decorated with fondant leaves and buttercream.

Today has been a VERY long day. None of it really turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, but I guess it wasn't "bad" persay... I dunno. I missed out on Kristen's birthday thing. I should have been there. I feel like kind of a jackass about the whole thing. I just felt like nothing was clicking right in my schedule today.




one am... time for Futurama.


Big cake to make tomorrow. Should have started it today. Did not. I suck at liiiife.