This was a cake I made for Abel’s birthday on Saturday. I figured I’d be in a mid-week rush, so I saved it for today to show all y’all. The house was about 12″ tall by about 10″ wide. The names on the gravestones are his guests/friends. Everything is edible with the exception of the Walloping Willow which is made from vine-covered wire and then covered in chocolate fondant.
I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween!
Go here to enter to win a Dayson Pink Vacuum!
A bit ago I was fortunate enough to go to Podunk, Kansas (no, really, it was podunk. I didn’t have, gasp, cell coverage!) for a cake class.
It was great fun and I got to hang out with my cake friends whom I only get to see once a year. Although they’re all crazy, one of them, BW, is certifiable. No, really, I have proof! Actually, what’s the plural of proof? Proofs? Yes, I have more than one proof that she’s certifiably nuts.
Proof #1: she ADORES purple. Not because it’s a fashion statement. Not because she’s old and is wearing purple and red. Nope, she wears purple because her beloved Kansas Wildcats are purple.
Proof #2: she landscaped her backyard in PURPLE! I have it from a reliable source that she used purple flowers AND has a Wildcats waterfall.
Proof #3 (which is really about a dozen proofs as you’ll soon see!): She is taking my class cake (which I had to leave behind due to my fear of not being able to fit her on the plane) on a tour of Kansas!:
It all started rather innocuously with my classmates taking a photo of my class cake at the lake outside. (Well, so maybe taking a picture of a cake in front of a lake isn’t that innocuous, but still…)
It quickly turned south when someone had the great idea to show my cake being eaten by an Ass hat-wearing stuffed trout. (Sorry! I stand corrected! It’s a Bass in an Ass-hat!)
Willard continued in this theme after everyone left Kansas and returned to their respective homes. On the way home, BW mocked my complaints of Podunk not having a Starbucks by snapping a shot of “Dorothy” (Proof 4: she named my cake!) and provided this description:
“And on the way home Frank’s cake wanted to stop at Starbucks………….
so we stopped here for a drink instead Cattle Starbucks !!!!!
thats the cattle water Frank’s cake is sitting on. I wonder where his cake will go next???????”
Of course it was inevitable what happened next:
“Frank’s cake has gone K-STATE you guys knew this was coming didn’t you!!”
Notice the purple flowers (Please refer to Proof 2):
She put a Wildcats helmet on my cake!
And the Wildcats waterfall!
After a couple of days, the fun continues as BW writes:
“Well little Dorothy had quite a big day………..
Dorothy decided she wanted to go to the water park to play but it’s closed for the season…..she’s so sad she’s crying and won’t leave the gate.
Dammit Frank come get your kid!!!!”
“The nice but not hot firemen wanted to know why Dorothy is so sad.
Sorry not the shift of the hot fireman I swear we have a couple I did ask if they could take off their shirts,the guy holding the cake was up for it but the captain ask what kind of web site did you say this was for?”
“Well great the cops have Dorothy and I think they are going to arrest Frank for child abandonment.”
I wonder where in the World is Dorothy now?
Yesterday was Evan‘s first birthday! I was honored to be asked to do the cake for his party and this is what I came up with:
Allison, Jeff, and Evan, you are all an inspiration to me! I am happy to be able to call you friends!
Surely they’re are not far behind this! (Click on the center tile on the right)
I’m signing autographs after dinner… 😉
For those of you who live in remote Siberia, there are a lot of fires in Southern California right now. Don’t worry, yours truly is in the blank spot in the middle of all of them. As one of my friends from a cake forum put it, there aren’t enough trees in LA to keep a fire going.
The likely reason for the fires is because I had my car washed the other day. So it was either fires or rain. Although I would have preferred the latter.
Although we’re not dodging flames, we are definitely feeling the effects of the smoke and ash. Aside from the soot covering our cars, there is also the sore throat, burning eyes, and hacking from breathing these in. I heard on NPR this morning that all LAUSD schools (that’s like 800,000 kids!) were prohibited from going outside at recess due to the poor air quality. My school district didn’t make such a mandate, but we did caution our students (most of whom suffer from asthma due to living a mile away and under the flight path from LAX) to try to stay indoors. We also prohibited them from playing soccer and basketball. (Of course THAT was an argument. “But why? We don’t see anything in the air.”)
And then there is the dust inside the house. See, this doesn’t happen during cool weather when the windows can be closed (well, at least not for those of us without air conditioning). No, it has to happen when the freaking temperatures are near 100 degrees. So the only choice is to bake in your home or open the windows and breathe in the carcinogenic air.
Despite all this, we’re doing fine. Let’s just hope it cools down and even possible rains soon. Or we’ll be shopping for gas masks as early christmas presents!
First, I apologize for having made anyone worry. Second, I’m so flattered that someone out there would worry!
I’m doing alright. As the title says, just feeling uninspired.
We’re still waiting for word from HH about our home study. I left three messages and didn’t hear anything back from him. Finally on the fourth message I mentioned that I was concerned that he wasn’t calling back and that I would follow-up with his supervisor. That got a return call quick like.
Of course, his explanation was… You guessed it! He’s so busy. blah blah blah… He was very careful not to give any idea of a timeframe other than to say that we would be after the couple he is currently working on and that he needs to go through our application with a fine-toothed comb (code for he needs to read it for the first time I’m sure).
Whatever, I’m a firm believer in things happen when they’re supposed to happen.
I’ll try my best to get back to y’all real soon. In the meantime, know that I’m thankful for your well wishes and concern!
xo
My pal Joansy sent me this link. It’s rather interesting (and a wee bit scary).
The bad news: stuff like what happened to me happens all the time.
The good news: covering up your pin number is the most effective deterrent to being skimmed.
So go get your wallet, nestle it up to your chest nice and close, and watch that clip.
(Warning: This blog post has many insinuations of cursing. If you’re dainty that way, don’t read further!)
Or rather, defrauded. (Was I frauded or defrauded?! Regardless, I’ve got money missing!)
Monday morning I logged into my banking account to reconcile my account (which, THANKFULLY! I do every other week on payday cuz I’m crazy like that) and I see my balance and I’m like WHAT THE FROCK! It’s about half of where it’s supposed to be. I don’t use my debit card much, usually only when someone doesn’t accept my American Express (I’m all about the points baby!).
So I start to look at the charges and I’m like, hmmm, I don’t remember shopping at Autozone, or Marshall’s or Jon’s Market or Smart and Final… So at first I think I’m going freaking crazy.
I look closer and there are 15 debit transactions! As I said, I don’t use my debit card. So I have heart failure thinking I lost my debit card.
I get my wallet and lo and behold there’s my debit card. SO WTF?!?!
I go back in and look and they’re all transactions from 10/1 until today (FROCKERS!) at various stores totalling $2700+!!!! With another $470 in authorizations waiting to hit my freaking account for a total of $3100!!!!
So I wait anxiously for my credit union to open. I call 9 and tell them about what I found and they ask about my card. I tell them it’s in my wallet. She cancels my card and I ask how this can happen. She said all these FROCKERS need is the number from my card, the expiration date, and the CSV number from the back.
I tell her I don’t hardly ever use my debit card.
She tells me it only takes on time. I may have handed it to a waiter/waitress, they took my card to charge it, wrote down the numbers, and voila. She also said the waiter/waitress likely isn’t the one who made the duplicate card; they like SOLD IT! It makes me SO ANGRY even thinking about that.
She also told me that the technology to do this can be bought on the internet!
I feel so violated right now, I can’t hardly stand it. Thinking about the frucking fruckwad out there living high on the hog with my money! FROCKER!
So I hadto take 1/2 day off work to go to the bank and fill out a 1″ stack of paperwork! I’m still waiting on the provisional credit that will replace the money that was taken from my account.
Despite this, I still believe that plastic is much safer than carrying cash. If I had lost a wallet with $3100 in it (although who would carry that much?!), it would be gone. Period. At least with plastic I have the benefit of being insured. It’s a pain, but it’s there.
So to whomever did/does this (clearly none of my readers, but maybe they’ll find it on an internet search for “fraud” and “defrauding”.), I have one thing to say,
“It’s all about karma! ”
(It just occurred to me, this isn’t my karma is it?! My fear: it’s a karmic bite in the butt from when I stole that gumball from the 5 & 10 when I was like 4 years old. Although I would have thought the embarrassment of my parents making me take it back would have canceled that out. But what do I know?)
ETA: Oh, I forgot to mention, I am not allowed to request a new debit card for 45 days! I asked the customer service person why I, as the victim of fraud, was being punished and her curt reply was, “That’s the policy.” GRRRR!
I can figure out how to put a freaking zipper into a pullover sweater, but I can’t figure out how to link to my photos in Flickr! If anyone can PLEASE give me step-by-step directions, please comment! I’m going freaking nuts over here!
To let you know what I’ve done so far, I tried copying and pasting the URL. DOESN’T WORK!
I tried copying and pasting the html code at the bottom of the picture. DOESN’T WORK!
I’m at wit’s end. Please, HELP!!
Frank Notes 