Father's Day Cake

I am totally taking the Wilton I class in July. Totally.

This is Warren's Father's Day cake. Just a regular 9x13 sheet cake with chocolate buttercream icing and fondant details. Wish I could say I made up the design, but I followed a pattern from the Wilton site. This time, though, I made my own fondant from marshmallows. I used the leftover Wilton fondant for the tie. Wilton fondant tastes like crap, though. The marshmallow stuff is at least edible!

Forsooth, Forsythia

I came, I saw, I pruned. Have I mentioned how overgrown our landscaping is? How, once upon a time, there was a green thumb who cared tenderly for the plants and shrubs around our house? And how the place has been neglected for years? Do you KNOW what happens to forsythia if you don't prune it (properly) for, say... at least 5 years?

Well, a couple of weeks ago I learned a few things about forsythia.

• The best time to prune it is spring, after the blossoms fall off.


• Prune it by cutting off branches at the base of the plant.


• Branches that grow long enough to touch the ground will grow INTO the ground and take ROOT.


• If you only trim the exterior branches (like shaving or giving it a 'haircut') - all you get is a lot of dead wood in the interior of the plant because sunlight can't get in.


• Trimming 4 overgrown forsythia does not take "just a few minutes." It is a 6 hour job that involves gloves, pruning shears, a ladder, big hedge clippers, at least 6 enormous yard waste bags and a bow saw. Oh, and a big bottle of Tecnu.


• It's best to bag the trimmings as you go, unless you want to face a mountain of branches 5 feet tall at the end of the operation, when really all you want to do is shake the dead bugs out of your hair and shower. And drink a very cold, very large beer.


• At the end of it all, you won't be sure if you like the results or if you should have just left the d*mn things alone for yet another year.
  

In the end, though, I reclaimed a strip of valuable gardening space about 4 feet wide and 15 feet long! Now I just have to dig up all the weeds growing there and figure out what to plant!

I do have before/after pictures.... but as this post has been sitting in the drafts folder for a couple of weeks, I'll publish it now and get the pictures later. (Yeah, right.) ** ok, so the picture above is 'before'!

A new hobby?

W's Birthday Cake
Originally uploaded by littlepinksocks.

I had so much fun making this cake for W.'s birthday .... I've always wanted to take cake decorating classes, and I think I'm going to stop procrastinating and just DO it already.

Everything here is edible - I'll post components and 'how I did it' and 'what I'll do differently next time' soon!

now hear this

When I'm walking through my town (which is often, as I've got a large dog that doesn't like to pee in our yard), I notice things.

Dear Borough Resident,
It is May. Actually, it's June. And although you'd like everyone to think that the lights hanging on your porch/in your windows/on your shrubs are in honor of Memorial Day/Fourth of July, we all know that you are just too lazy to remove your Christmas decorations. I could almost forgive you for leaving them up into February, because this little 'burb we live in likes to decorate for everything and I know you were thinking the red and white strands could be passed off as Valentine's Day lights. But people, Christmas was nearly 6 months ago. I'm all for recycling, but you stretched the Christmas lights past Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day (you unplugged the red lights and plugged in the green ones), Easter, and now Memorial Day, with the Fourth just around the corner. Enough already. Besides, there is nothing patriotic about a plastic poinsetta wreath on your door.