Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Little Engine That Could... just barely

My little man had a birthday! You could probably guess his favorite book by the title of this blog, so I felt inspired to make him a train cake for his birthday. I figured it would be easy and fun.


Hello there, little cake train. I sculpted the cake from a 9 x 13 cake pan, a loaf pan and 3 cupcakes. That part was fun. I covered the cake with a crumb coat of buttercream frosting and put it in the fridge over night. At that point I hadn't decided if I was going to try fondant for the decorating or not. I was feeling pretty good so far.

Well, it's always good to challenge yourself, right? So the next day I decided to make the fondant. This is only my second attempt at fondant (my first was years ago, without children). The fondant was much easier to work with this time, but man, it sure takes a long time to make a cake look good. I always imagine my cakes much better than they actually turn out.


Once the fondant was in place, I realized I was running out of time. I hurriedly piped on the yellow and chocolate frosting, placed the candy, made the cake pops (this was probably pushing my time limit), then hurriedly made the toys. They're pretty ridiculous! The toy soldier looks like he's wearing a huge Russian ushanka, and my poor monkey fell apart two or three times. I just kept squishing him back together until he became a distorted Picasso-esque version of his original self.


It's hard work to make cute cakes quickly with little children nipping at your heels and stealing the decorations! The cake was delicious, though, and my little man was thrilled. That's all that mattered.

Tomato Finale

I know you're all wondering how my tomatoes fared through the season, so I thought I'd share.

This was the result of one day of picking in August.


I picked maybe 2-3 times a week and I had about three picking days of this sort of abundance. In fact, I still have about a blue bucket full of tomatoes in my garden right now that need picking, but it will probably be my last harvest.

What did I do with all those tomatoes? I gave a lot away, I ate a lot, and I canned well over 40 jars of stuff.


One cool benefit of living in a really old house is that there are built in storage racks in the basement specifically for mason jars. Of course, this is only considered 'cool' when I actually can stuff...

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Procrastination, thy name is dragon.


Isn't it funny how I never feel like doodling until there's actual work projects to be done? (The babe colored in the red tongue. She did pretty well for a 4 year-old!)