Fall and Birthdays

During the fall, especially October, we have tons of birthdays around our house! I have become the official cake baker, since I love to bake. My cakes have previously been very unprofessional looking, but they have always tasted good! Currently, I have been decorating cakes a little better. I took four lessons in the basics of cake decorating, and I am getting a lot more creative and more steady handed.

This morning as I walked across the street to my Daddy's house, the leaves were blowing in the breeze all the way down the street. I love to see the leaves in the fall. Most people rake them up off of their yards and throw them away. I always let the leaves stay in the yard for deocration. Nature creates the leaves as a kind of cover to protect our grass in the winter, so why rake them up?!

Another thing that happens in October is the blooming of my Mamma's Confederate Rose tree. It is just beautiful. This year, it had blooms all the way from the tip top to the very bottom and all around it.
I have a couple of pictures of this pretty tree. The pictures don't do it justice, though. This tree has never had so many blooms! I guess Mamma is up in heaven enjoying the view of all of her pretty flowers.


The Confederate Rose blooms as a white or light pink flower in the morning, and it turns into a deep pink by the afternoon or night, as you see in this picture. The story behind this happening is that the dark pink represents the blood of the Confederate soldiers, thus the origin of the name of the tree.

The tree has grown to be almost as tall as the house, and the blooms were all the way to the top this year.



The October birthdays began with mine, on the 6th. We had a family celebration for my birthday on the 4th, at my daughter's house. We all had a good time. I made the pink ladybug cake for that day. Then on the 6th, we had dinner at my house, and I made the Sweetheart cake for that day. I am just cake crazy!!




The next birthday was Little Dewey, alias 3D, who celebrated his very FIRST birthday on the 10th.


My sister, Susan, had her 52nd birthday on the 17th.


I attempted to make a big cupcake cake, but it ended up looking like a basket of flowers! I found out that the cupcake pan is the same shape as a basket. I will know next time to start out making a basket!!


My cousin, Marvin, had his 58th birthday on the 19th. He lives in Alabama, so I didn't get to make a cake for him. I am sure Arlene had a very, very nice one for him. My sister-in-law, Amy, AND my cousin, Mina, both had birthdays on the 20th. Mina celebrated the big "6-0", and Amy celebrated the proverbial "39th" birthday. I say 'proverbial 39th', because so many people continue to say they are 39 for years and years! Amy's children had a surprise party for her, and they baked cupcakes for their mom. William bought her a pretty cake with roses.

The next birthday is Daddy who is 88 today, the 26th. Daddy had a red, white, and blue STAR cake. After all, he is the STAR of our family, and he served our country for many, many years of his life.









My neice Kate AND my little cousin Landon will both have birthdays tomorrow, the 27th. Kate will celebrate a special birthday - her big 21st. She planned a big party for herself and Daddy on Sunday. We were all instructed to wear PINK, in memory of my mamma, who had breast cancer and uterine cancer.

Kate's cake was a colorful, pink Daisy cake with purple trim. The daisy is her favorite flower.









Landon will celebrate his very FIRST birthday this year. He lives in Alabama, too, so I cannot make a cake for him. If he were here, I would make a nice football cake for him (which I heard is what his mom, Amelia, wants him to have). I think that about does it for October birthdays. We have a few in November, but not as many as October!

I love the fall. I was teaching a lesson the other day, and the word 'autumn' was used. Why don't we use that word much anymore? I think that autumn is the term we used forever, but somehow it turned to just 'fall'. I think the word autumn is much more creative.

I have been writing this blog since Saturday, and it is now Monday night! I think I just about have it finished.

I will update the pictures as the next couple of birthdays come upon us. We will have three during the first week of November. We have TWO birthdays on the 4th - Vicky and Lanier! Vicky will celebrate her 24th birthday on November 4th. I am contemplating what to make for her...maybe a pretty butterfly. My cousin, Lanier, will celebrate her 57th birthday on November 4th, in Memphis. I am sure she will have a wonderful cake made for her up there in East Memphis. My brother, William, will celbrate his 49th birthday on November 5th. Hmm, my baby brother is 49 and pushing!! Now what can I make for him??

Whew..Back to the mixing bowls!!!!

My Little Elf Village

Hi,
Do you have an elf village? I do sometimes. Whenever the toadstools, or mushrooms, grow in the yard, I have an elf village. I took pictures of it this summer and showed them to my nieces. I explained that little elves live under mushrooms like this. "Can you see them?" I asked. They looked and looked, and so did I!


A few weeks later, my nieces were over here with a friend of theirs. I went outside and saw Lauren showing her friend my mushrooms and telling her about the elves. They were looking really hard for them. I wondered if they found any, so I asked. Unfortunately, the elves were in hiding for the day!


I love elf poems and elf stories. If you look closely, maybe you can see the elves in my little elf village, too~

The Bathroom is Finished!!

I will attempt to put pictures in here, so that they appear in order. Arlene says that the first picture has to be the last picture entered. I always do it in a crazy, mixed up, long way by copying and pasting. I am going to try it a new way. Perhaps I should put all of the pictures in first, and then I could write what I have to say about them. I have been trying to download quite a few on Picassa since last night. I ran out of online disc space, so all of the pictures couldn't get downloaded. I decided to buy more space, in order to have more room. They are still running as I type! By the time that I am ready to finish this blog, I am sure they will all be downloaded.
A few hours later...the pictures are downloaded, and now I will try to do what I have been waiting to do for over a week ~ show you my bathroom from start to finish!!
Here I go! Well, they won't come from Picassa, so I have to get them on my computer somehow. THAT took me a while to figure out. I think I have it now. Seriously folks, I have been working on all of this since 4 pm. It is now 10:30, and I am still not finished.
Well, it doesn't work ~ I'm trying to get them from Picassa web albums, but that isn't happening. I have been working on all of this for HOURS! I even tried to 'self clean' the oven while downloading pictures. That was a disaster, because it sets itself for four HOURS not minutes. It took me forever to figure out how to get the door unlocked. I finally found the manual, and it said that the door would open when it was cooled off. Well, I was supposed to be baking a cake for 3D's first birthday tomorrow, so I panicked. I had already mixed it up and put it in the pan. (like the song goes, I can bring home the bacon....fry it up in a pan). I digress....sometimes I think my students' ADD traits are rubbing off on me.
Now, the house smells like burnt oven cleaning stuff AND oil based paint from the hall and bathroom! Oh well. I am trying to do a lot of things all at once, and it is crazy around here as usual.
(a while later)
I feel like I just gave stage directions!
I finally got the cake baked. I just took it out of the oven. After the stove cooled off, I was able to put the cake in. Now, I am DETERMINED to get this blog written!

SO, the saga started last Monday, and this is the next Friday! The guys worked on the bathroom for days and days. Here are a few shots of the bathroom as it has been for oh so long. As Amelia says, please don't judge me. I just couldn't get it done any sooner. Construction is expensive. I do feel better, though, without all of that mold and rotten wood, etc. The first three pictures are of the tub.
















Here are some pictures of the wonderful floor, with most of the tiles out and the floor a rotten mess!














When I got home the first day, the floor had been torn completely out. If you look closely, you can tell that what you are seeing is "THE GROUND". You can also see Rachel checking on the work and taking pictures!



(I am not sure why this next stuff is in blue and underlined. There is no telling what key I hit while I was doing my copying and pasting!! I will just have to leave it like this, because I do NOT know what HAPPENED!
I think I have been smelling too many fumes!!

Oh well, back to the saga...)

The tub was out, the walls were torn down, etc. Well, when you look at the before picture, you can see why. The holes in the wall had created lots of rotted wood. The floors were rotted out, etc., etc. So, the room was pretty much gutted.
Alan, the boss guy, said that they could put a new toilet in the bedroom where we took one out, or they cut tear out the wall in the bathroom and make the room bigger. I opted for that. Little did I realize that plaster dust was going to be EVERYWHERE after that. The two young guys who were working had quite a fun time tearing out that wall, hammering and pulling and knocking things out! Adam would have loved doing that! The dust was not apparent until the next day. Boy, oh boy was there a lot of it! It had all settled in overnight. A lot of it is still here, because I haven't had time to clean it up! They worked on the room for 8 days. I asked the guy Monday to please get the toilet in, because I had to leave very early the next day for a faculty meeting. Also, the next day was my birthday, and I wanted to at least have the toilet in. The tub had been in since the second day, but I couldn't use it, because he hadn't put up the shower curtain rod. So, he said he would get that in for me, too. Thank you! No more running across the street to Daddy's house for a shower and the facilities! On Wednesday, I finally had a finished bathroom. The tub is nice and clean (except for little cat pawprints every now and then), the floor is solid, the toilet stays still (rather than rock and roll, fall backwards, and almost make you fall down), and it looks pretty nice. The floor was so messed up that the toilet couldn't stay hooked down! My old, old house has settled so much, that the floors were NOT even. They tried to help that out a bit by 'jacking' up the house. When they jacked up the house, some of the plaster walls cracked big time. So, they put sheetrock up and fixed and painted the hallway and trim. They even fixed my bedroom doors that were messed up! That is why the house smells of oil based paint and stuff, though. They put it on the doors and the trim. Whew! I could smell that stuff all the way outside at my car Wednesday when I came home! It was pretty strong. It still smells, but not as bad.





I do believe I am going to just leave the rest of the pictures as they are. You can see the various progress that was done. I put them all in at once, and now I am getting tired of toggling back and forth between pages, pictures, etc. I have been copying and pasting, just like usual, so my new little inserting trick didn't really work very well. SO, you can just peruse the pictures and see the progress as it happened. A lot of work was done in a pretty short amount of time, really. The holes in the ceiling were made when they tore out the extra wall. I forgot to mention the new floor. I picked out big tiles in an Arizona sand color. The first pictures of the floor are of it the first day, with the little space holders in between the tiles. The walls are Yellow Buttered Corn, or Buttered Yellow Corn. Does it look like buttered corn?
You can see that this house is very old house by looking at the big wooden beams and stuff. They don't make beams like those anymore. You are lucky to get a little 2x4, much less a heavy, strong beam like in these houses. My house was built in 1929!! Anyway, I wanted to put the pictures up in order, but I seem to have gotten off track. Like I said, the fumes are getting to me! I have to make a bunch of icing for the birthday cake, too. I made a rocking horse. They bought him a giraffe, but I don't have a giraffe pan. I am going to use the colors on the giraffe and put them on the horse. I hope it turns out okay.
I am freezing myself out of the house right now, because I have the air on really low to try and get the smells out of here!! Hopefully, the fumes will dissipate in a few days. They are already much better than they were!
Here are the rest of the pictures.





















It is 11:25 p.m., and I am really tired and hungry. I think I have corrected all of my typos. I cannot figure out how to get the hyperlink off, because I do not know how it got on in the first place. Sorry about that. There is a whole section that is hyperlinked. As you read that part, you may see lines under the words and colors changing. The time stamp is incorrect on this blog, also. I need to figure out how to fix that. I did it once, so I should be able to fix it again!
I am just tired and goofy from paint fumes, so I will call it a night! I just hit some crazy keys, so I don't know what I just did to the rest of this blog.
Have a great night!

Before and after, what a difference!!





a

Cakes

I have been learning how to decorate cakes. I have always loved to bake, ever since I was a kid. I make birthday cakes for everyone, but my decorating skills have been Oh So Amateur. Everyone always laughs at my "decorations". This picture is of the one I did for my 'graduation'. You can see that I put a little bit of everything that I learned: clowns, roses, leaves, sweet peas, shells, etc. I thought it would be fun to put a hodge podge of things on there. It was for fun anyway. I am not one to go by the book or pattern for anything, so I make my own "designs", if you can call them that. Anyway, I signed up for cake decorating classes at Michael's, and I had four lessons in the basics of decorating. I actually learned some neat things. I can make a rose now! Of course, I make quite a few to get just one. haha!
I will put up some pictures of the things I have done, including my birthday cake for Sunday and the one for tonight.

This is a cake that I made for my cousin, Mina. I worked all night trying to make those roses, and I finally got four good ones.


This is my birthday cake,
a PINK LADYBUG. I think it turned out cute.


This Sweetheart Cake is the one that I made for my actual birthday, today. I worked on it late last night. I finally got several good roses, and I got a great pink color.
I have an 'order' to make a cake for 3D's first birthday. 3D is my nephew, and he will be one year old Saturday. I will eiher make a teddy bear, a rocking horse, or a dinosaur, or a giraffe. I have been collecting character cake pans over the years, and I am anxious to try some of them out.


Here I am tonight with my birthday cake. Rachel told me to hold it up. I think she was halfway kidding, because they always get on me about taking pictures of anything and everything! I posed anyway.


Here we are. One is of me and my dad, and the other one is me with my children.
Happy 54th birthday to me!