Frosting Day (maybe?) - June 12, 2026

Today is the day I will frost the birthday cakes.  Cream cheese frosting.  The cream cheese and butter are already softening on the counter.

The cake layers are in the freezer.  To thaw or not to thaw, that is the question.

The sides of the layers stuck to the pans a little.  In an effort to reduce the amount of crumbs in the frosting, I patted the crumbly sides to neaten them before freezing the layers.  To my way of thinking, there would be less crumbling if the layers were still frozen when the frosting begins.  But I don't know what I'm doing, so my thinking might be wrong,

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After a bit of research, I decided to thaw the cakes in the refrigerator overnight and frost them tomorrow. 

The cream cheese and butter are back in the refrigerator.

Looks like I just freed up a whole day for craftin'.  :)

Fondant Part 2 - June 11, 2026

The kitchen ran at full capacity Tuesday from about 8 a.m. until 2 p.m.  There was a minor bungle with one of the 4 cake layers.  I must have lost count when pouring the batter into the pans, for one cake turned out thicker than the others, and it took longer to bake, and a crater formed in the middle as it cooled (even though the test stick came out clean).  I will putty the crater with frosting when I assemble the cake.

Everything else went fairly well.  Got the fondant equines wrapped, air tight, I hope.  Got the cakes wrapped and in the freezer.  For kicks, I cut out the letters of one granddaughter's school and set them aside to dry.

The frosting will happen Friday.  Cream cheese and butter and confectioner's sugar and vanilla.  Since this is an orange-flavored cake, I am considering flavoring the frosting with orange jello.  Might be orange overkill.  We'll see.  I have orange extract, but I don't like it.

I'm sweating covering of the unicorn cake with fondant (per the granddaughter's request).   I tried fondant for the first time last year and didn't do such a great job with it.  I rolled out a circle for the top and a long strip to wrap around the sides.  The seams were ugly.  I disguised them with wonky flowers.  Need to watch some videos and do some experiments before I tackle this cake.

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When shopping for groceries, I could not prevent myself from buzzing the craft aisles.  Found some new-to-me clay, cheaper than most other brands.  I bought the primary colors and white and black.  "Art Elements" is the brand.  Online video reviews say it's stiff.  One person called it unusable, another said it was so-so.  After I cleaned up the cake mess, I tried it.  It is stiff.  The dark blue color I tried first could be crumbled right out of the package.  I did not try to condition it.  Instead, I completely crumbled it, squirted it with liquid clay, gave it a shot or two of black alcohol ink, and smushed it into a ball.  Took a lot of smushing to get the ball to stick together, and when I cut the ball open, there were a lot of air holes inside, which gave a texture to the cut side.  I rolled some slabs out, would've had to roll them pretty thin - thinner than I wanted - to get rid of the texture.  So I just coated it with liquid clay and baked it.

The black clay was a little softer.  It crumbled the first time I ran it through my pasta machine, but I smushed it back together and rolled it a few more times.  Got a nice, even sheet after a few trips through the machine.

Fondant experiments - June 10, 2026

Ive got two birthday cakes to make for this weekend.  The birthday girls chose the flavor; they both want an orange crush cake.  No big deal, I've made this cake for years.  Decorating them is the problem.

Cake-decorating has never been one of my talents.  I'm not very good with a piping bag.  I'm not sure what the consistency of the frosting should be, or what happens to it under varying conditions.  One granddaughter (the gymnast) wants "a fondant cake."  I'm not very good with fondant, either.  

Yes, I just could frost the cakes with cream cheese frosting and be done.  But I won't.  

Yesterday, I decided to try painting a fondant horse and a fondant unicorn with gel food coloring.  It worked.  Kinda.

I rolled out some fondant to about 1/4" thick, maybe thinner, on a silicone mat dusted with baking powder.  I drew a horse on a piece of paper and used it as a pattern to cut out a horse head shape from the fondant, and started painting.  

Painting on fondant is kind of like painting on glass; it's hard (impossible in my experience) to get even coverage.  The gel moistens the fondant a little and changes the texture.  You can stir a mud-hole in it if you're not careful.  Light strokes and repeated coats (with drying time between coats) seem to be the keys.

I had trouble getting a good pink out of the red gel food coloring. 

In any case, there's a fondant horse head (with feathers in its mane) and a colorful, sparkly unicorn head drying on the craft room table as we speak.  They were supposed to be practice pieces, but I'm calling them good enough.  (Despite my measuring, the horse's ears and the unicorn's horn are going to stick off the edge of the cake.  Oh, well.)  However, the party is not until Sunday, and I don't know how to store them.  Should I freeze them, refrigerate them, or leave them out?  Will they dry up if left out?  What will happen to the fondant if frozen then thawed?   

The search engine says to store them at room temperature in an air-tight container.  These are good-sized horse heads, almost covering a 10" cake.  (I wish I'd made them smaller, as adding names is going to be a challenge.  Oh, well.)  I don't own an air-tight container big enough to hold them.  Plastic wrap will have to do.  

Cross your fingers that I don't wreck them while trying to store them!

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Last night, about 10 p.m., I was sitting on the back porch, playing my bedtime game, when I heard the most god-awful SCREECH/squawk/growl I ever heard.  And in the distance, something screeched back.  Just about raised the hair on my neck.  Had Sasquatch returned?

I stuck my head in the house and summoned The Husband.  "Is it the groundhog?" I asked when he came out and heard it.  He thought it might be a bird, and he went inside and got my phone and the big flashlight.  The phone said, instantly, it's a barred owl.  The Husband spotted them with the flashlight.  There were TWO of them, sitting on the big grapevine that hangs like a trapeze in our back yard, and at least one more calling from a distance.  We figure it was a parent and some babies.

We "know" these parent owls from regularly hearing their "hoots."  But this squawking/screeching were calls I'd never heard from the old regulars.  

Kinda cool.  :)

Regrouping - June 9, 2026

Over the next few weeks, two granddaughters, a son, and a BFF will celebrate their birthdays.  I haven't bought any presents, and I've two birthday cakes to make by the weekend.  A few minutes ago, I removed half a garbage bag of petrified stuff from the big freezer to make room for the cake layers. A trip to the grocery store is imminent.  Tomorrow the baking begins.  

I am stressing over cake-decorating ideas.  One birthday girl is a gymnast, but last year's birthday cake used that theme.  She loves horses, but I don''t have the skills to model one from fondant, and I refuse to just plunk a plastic one on top.  Wonder if I could paint one (with food coloring) on white fondant?  Maybe I'll give it a shot before the baking begins....

Yesterday, I spent a good bit of time tying up loose ends in the craft room.  The table is littered with baked polymer clay jewelry components in various stages of usability.  Some were ready to assemble, some needed sanding, or holes drilled, or a touch-up coating of resin.  I got busy doing those things and ended up finishing several pairs of earrings and three or four pendants.  Go me.  

I want to make BFF's birthday present.  I have an idea, but it'll have to wait until the cakes are done and the remaining ready-to-assemble jewelry components turn into actual jewelry.  Her birthday present might be a tad late this year.  ;)

Yardwork Part Deux - June 8, 2026

Backing out of our driveway is borderline dangerous.  There's a blind hill to the left, and a blind curve to the right.  By the time you check both directions, there might be something coming from the first direction you checked.  The trees and bushes add another layer of danger.

Saturday afternoon, I decided to do something about the trees and bushes.  Went to the shed for the loppers.  They wouldn't cut hot butter.  Watched a couple of videos on how to sharpen loppers.  I finally got the tip of the loppers reasonably sharp, but they wouldn't cut anything very thick.  And there were thick things that needed cutting.  

While I was out there sweating my butt off, The Husband was in his recliner, scrolling on his device.  I went back in the house and asked, "Are you able to run the chainsaw for a minute?"  He said he was.  I pointed, he sawed.  

We cleared out a good bit of stuff, then dragged it to the gulley, along with the pile of debris I'd made earlier in the week when I de-vined the forsythia and the rosebush.  I was plumb tuckered when we finished, but the result was worth the sweat.

The past week was moderately productive.  Mid-week, I had lunch with my brother.  Did a lot of cooking and a little cleaning.  Shopped for groceries, the regular stuff.    Made bracelets all day Sunday.  

I did some experiments in the craft room, learning to transfer laser-printed images to unbaked polymer clay using plain old copy paper.  I tried both heat and water to set the images onto the clay.  Using the heat gun was a little scary for fear of over-baking/burning the clay, not to mention the possibility of toxic fumes from either the clay or the laser print.  Also, the heat image came out a little fainter than the water image - maybe I didn't heat it long enough or hot enough.  

It was kind of relaxing to rub the paper off the water image.  However, it is possible to smear the ink if you rub too hard. 

Anyway, now that I know how to transfer images to clay, it's "Katie bar the door."  Much of my artwork has already been scanned to the computer.  Now I can put it on clay, if I want to.    And I think I do want to.  :)

Yardwork - June 2, 2026

Our yard has very little grass in it - at least not the kind people actually want.  What we have is ground cover, every kind of ground cover that exists.  Creeping Charlie.  Henbit.  Clover.  Chickweed.  Name it, and we probably have it.

And poison ivy.  OMG, the poison ivy.  It is everywhere.  I have sprayed it, chopped it, and dug it up, but there is just too much to eliminate it all, and unless you eliminate ALL OF IT, it's coming back.  Between the poison ivy and the English ivy, we may wake up one day to find that they have imprisoned us in the house.

All of these weeds are thriving from the good rains we've had over the past few weeks.  Yesterday afternoon, despite the rain that came in the morning, I decided that mowing the yard was absolutely necessary.  

We keep our riding mower in Nanny's big shed because we mow her yard, too.  Just after lunch, I walked down to Nanny's to get the mower.  Our yard has all sorts of places where the mower can't go - banks, ditches, etc. - so when I finished mowing, I cranked up the weed-eater-on-wheels and attacked the edges of the property, where the poison ivy thrives.  With the ground so wet, it was a battle.  About 4:30, I called it quits.  The yard looked nice.  I came back to the house cool off and drink some water.  While I was resting, it occurred to me that the garbage truck would run the next morning, so I got up to drag the garbage can to the edge of the road.  

I had not viewed the yard from this perspective.  The area at the end of the driveway was still a mess, a tangle of honeysuckle, wild grape vines, and poison ivy.  There's a 30-year-old forsythia bush in that mix, as well as a half-dead 40-year-old rosebush, both of which were entangled with vines.  Sleeping Beauty would've been safe in this corner.  I went back to the house for the weed-eater and the clippers.  It took an hour to cut all those vines out of the forsythia and the rose.  I cut the vines as close to the ground as I could and pruned that rosebush back to a nub.  

The Husband got home about the time I finished.  I told him he'd have to take the lawnmower back because I was too pooped to do it.  

The debris pile from that final assault is still laying by the driveway.  I should deal with it before it gets any hotter.

New Week, Same Stuff - June 1, 2026

It rained almost every day last week.  The moles have been digging so industriously that the yard is like soup, and the grass is getting so tall that it's hard to see the mole tunnels to set traps in them.  I was hoping to mow today, but it rained again this morning.  It is hot and muggy, a good day to work inside.

So I've been making jewelry.  

Last week was "clay week" in the craft room.  I fooled around with the gooey Creative Hands ClayStudio clay all week, trying this and that to stiffen it up enough to use it.  There is not much to show for my efforts.  I intend to use this clay to "stretch" more expensive clay, but I probably won't buy any more of it.  

My sweet niece texted me Friday afternoon to tell me about a hydrangea sale at the botanical garden in the big city.  The flyer that came with the text said that they were selling some macrophylla hydrangeas that I have been wanting.  I picked them up from her Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon I planted it about 4 feet away from an Annabelle growing at the edge of the woods., where we can see them through the living room windows.  These will be the only hydrangea blooms we'll see this year because of the late freeze we got in March.