Cake Happiness

Yuuuup. I'm retarded.

I can bake a cake, but can I upload the photo correctly? No. I cannot.

Anyhoo, after only minor drama, which involved screaming at my family and a mushroom cloud of powder sugar hovering over my mixer, the cake was made. I wish I was exaggerating. Somehow, to no one's surprise but mine, we made it to mom's surprise birthday party with 2 cakes and all family members accounted for. And she was surprised, which is hard to do with my mother.

Dad and Mom enjoy the cakes

My niece MADE these yummy donuts. Which I also can't load right. CRAP. 

Also fruit salad and G's back up Wesley Fudge Cake. 

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

Wrapping up the school year

10 people read my blog...isn't that neat. I know 3 or 4 of them, I think. And I don't even pay them. Interestingly, 1 is from Canadia, 1 from Pakistan and 1 from Indonesia! Welcome, ya'all.

We have been lazily finishing up first grade at home. I finally found a homeschool group, now that they are also finishing up the school year, but they have some activities over the summer, so it'll be nice to get to know them. We went to a play group last week and I really like them. G says I should, cause they're flaky. Whatever.

S and I did some projects. Last week with Venus in transit, which we did not see a. cause it was cloudy and b. cause we didn't send away for special viewing glasses, gave us a reason to talk about how the earth goes around the sun, etc. From a neat book that Aunt Chris gave us, that's ancient (from the 80's), we learned how to make sun dials, so we made two:

the top one is your classic, horizontal dial and the bottom is the same concept, but with a little, bitty bead that casts a shadow.

Here is a neat page about sundials, from down under New Zealand, keep in mind when following the instructions.

S and her dad also started a garden. Our church's community garden had some room, so we took them up on their offer to use the space. They are keeping a journal of their activities. S worked hard, including turning the earth and staking our squares and deciding what was going to go where.

done tilling and weeding

boundary is marked off. with tiki torches, cause we're awesome!

someone has a bucket of tadpoles, so we took a picture. 

 S also finished up with her singing and dance classes AND there was Ag field day AND we took trips to the museum AND....we've been busy. More pics to come.

AND we won tix to see Cirque du Soleil in NYC! So we got dressed up all fancy and went to see a show in the big, big city like we are fancy people. Cause we are. 

Let them eat cake! (and fruit salad)

Next week is our Matriarch's 75th birthday. So we're having a surprise birthday party for my mom at my sister's house today (shhh, don't tell. Actually, this page would take 75 years to load on her computer).

I agreed to make a cake. A rainbow cake! Before he brings it up in the comments, rainbow cake was my husband's idea. I was gonna go with chocolate. Since I agreed to rainbow, he's going to make a chocolate backup in case the rainbow cake fails. Cause that's how he rolls. Also, cause he's nuts.

Now, there's two kinds of rainbow cake circulating the webs. The hippy, dippy, tie-dye version:

whoa, man, it's like cake

Or the more OCD, Martha Stewart approved version:

It is cake. Ja. 

I went with version deux. Cause that's how I roll, yo'. 

The first part is basically make some cake. I suppose you could use cake mix, but our house does. not. Then you have to divide 5 1/2 cups of cake mix into 6 parts. Like I can do maths and stuff. That's why we have programmable IV pumps, but I digress. After that, it's easy-peasy, just color them six rainbow colors, remembering ROY G BIV : red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Crap, that's 7. But if you notice, even Martha Stewart combines indigo and violet to make purple. And if it's good enough for Martha, etc. 

Then S starts singing the Cat in the Hat rainbow song. "red, orange, yellow. green, followed by blue! Indigo and violet, that's a rainbow song for you!" Listen, I say, we're combining indigo and violet. We're just making purple. "But mom! The song!"

Shut up, cat. 

Anyhoo. Here's some cake....

first 4 layers, check. Now I just need blue, indigo and violet-DOH!

For those not eating cake (?!), there's fruit salad, a la Alton, who is a minor deity in our house. 

I know they sell those little grasper thingies to take the core out of the strawberry. I do not have one. So it's either cut straight across or make a fancy, V-incision. Don't judge me.

fruit labels. The bane of my existence.

Lots of cut up fruit on the right, lots of compost on the left and that weird thing in the middle is a mango slicer, much more useful than you'd think and since it works on peaches, nectarines, et al, NOT a uni-tasker. 

Gotta go make frosting. More pics to follow.