116 posts from 2007

Hey, I just went brunette!  Yeah!  I guess I should have gotten some photographs so ya’ll can approve – or giggle – whichever comes naturally. 

I am more or less naturally blonde.  Well, less blonde as the years have passed and the locks have darkened into this kind of musty rodent color.  Which I generally dye.  (Duh) 

And I’m very fair skinned also (which leads into an interesting discussion of why we are called “white people” when we aren’t white, just like black people are not black… I mean come on people, this is not a piano there are more than two choices…)  but I digress. 

Ok, so with the new dark hair and the gothic pale skin, I really have to do up my eyes.  Well, with the exception of the dark circles, which I don’t exactly “do up.”  More like I "do over." 

So… if I darken my brows, and really lay on the chocolate brown on the eyes – uh, (around) the eyes…  I suddenly have blue eyes.  Yeah, haven’t noticed that in a while.  So maybe this brunette thing will work for me? 

LOL! 

What does that even mean?

Oh Bliss!  I love days off with no Bakery work to be done!  I adore staying home and sitting on my sofa and sleeping late.  Yeah baby!  My little project for the day?  I’m going to decide whether or not to keep the mp3 player I was given for Christmas or cash it in on a bigger one.  Ok, I got a 2 GB player and I like it a lot.  I’m not even done downloading what we have in the odd stacks of CD’s around this place though and I’m out of memory.  Hmmm…  Do I just put on different playlists and use the smaller memory that way?  Or do I return it and get a bigger one?  I’ve got this marvelous little idea of what I’d LIKE to do…  I’d like to go up to my attic and pull out my old vinyl records and some old tapes and convert that stuff to mp3.  I think someone I know has the hardware to do that and I could borrow it I think.  That would be sooo cool to be able to listen to my old Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill and Mylon Lefevere music.  I used to love that stuff, and now it’s “vintage.”  LOL!  Kind of like me.  Ha ha!  So anyway, I’ve been comparing prices and considering my options.  I've got a Sony with 2 gb at the moment and I love that it has an FM tuner in it also but the whole thing with the video escapes me - who wants to watch a movie on a screen that small?  It gives me a headache just to watch a trailer on there.  I'm really giving some thought to the Ipod nano 8 gb though, though I think being able to listen to NPR FM radio without having to download stuff would be nice.  I’m not sure what I’ll do but I really don’t think I know enough about it to really know that I’m making the right choice, so if anyone has any advice – let’s hear it.

Merry Christmas all you foxy voxers!  We’ll go off to the feast in a little bit, but for the moment I’m really glad to be at home taking it easy.  I’m finally out of work and away from the Bakery.  I have a wedding cake for Jan 1 but other than that I have two vacation weeks away from the rat race.  I’m hoping that I can use this time to gather up a better attitude and a little less loathing for my life and my work.  Here’s hoping. 

New day, old complaints.  Yeah, I am that predictable.  I started this blog to write about politics and faith.  I know I've done little more than complain about my job and physical pain these days.  I've certainly had a wealth of that kind of complaint.  So why not share the wealth - right?

More of the same:  My boss is hanging in there for all she’s worth.  She’s working full tilt for long hours.  She’s really tired, and every now and then it really shows.  She’s really workin it, most of the time.  And then her adult kids show up, demand money, insult her and her bakery, and treat her like crap.  Stupid humans.

The elf who ices cakes for me makes it very clear that she only works when she doesn’t have anything better to do.  So she sets her hours and leaves when she wants to – not when the work is done.  Most of the time that is no big deal and I have never gotten on her case about it.  But right now she’s sticking me with extra work, and that’s getting old.  But it is better than not having her there at all.  So I try to make her happy that she is there and protect her from what some people dish out and hope that she sticks around for at least a while.  She has confided in me that her dream job is to make wedding cakes.  Uh, that would be my job.  Yeah.  Good luck with that.

I walked around the counter today and found two signs of interest.  One was “Try are struddel” and the other was “Try are sourdough.”  Kidding?  I wish.  That was our little Beret elf.  She recently used the bakery to make a number of decorated cakes on her own time.  Bakery supplies and bakery equipment.  What a weird little elf.  I wondered if she wanted to be a cake decorator.  Yeah, that again.  Good luck with that.  These people seem to want my job.  I've got this job.  And I don't even want it.  What a wierd wierd world I live in.

Boss Lady hired a kid who must be a family friend or something.  She’s the bare belly elf.  She comes in with tight little shirts that don’t make it down to her belt.  And if it was a nice skinny toned midriff it wouldn’t be so bad.  Then there is the mile of long hair – untethered.  Which is just wrong in a bakery.  But the worst accessory is the vacant look on her face.  She stands at the front counter and yells questions back to the Boss at the back of the bakery.  Right in front of the client.  That usually means she’s yelling over three or four people.  Amazing.  Where do we get these elves?  Hey, at least she doesn’t want my job.  She doesn’t seem to want the job she has either.  Or is that the rest of us that don’t want her to have her job… can’t decide.

And another elf who makes the icing is sick of making icing.  Can hardly blame her, it takes a long time and it is easy to mess up.  She put off making it until I was completely out.  Then we didn’t have the ingredients, so someone went to the store for them.  Then someone else was using the big mixer, so we had to wait on that.  Then it really takes a long time to get all the clumps out, so I had to wait on that also.  Argh!  So I looked for cakes to finish that used other icing.  We had plenty of coconut icing – but all the coconut cake was still in the oven. 

And this paragraph would be about how tired and ouchy my body is right now.  And more complaining because I missed a party tonight because I just wasn't up to going and playing nice.  And fill in the blank with any kind of creative way to say "ouch" and throw in a little pout and that would about cover it.  I bore myself. 

Chocolate and Gold square wedding cake

This ultra simple ultra sheik little wedding cake is chocolate through and through.  Yummm…  The wedding reception was at a local vineyard with chocolate hardwood floors, and the tables were draped in chocolate and the chairs were even chocolate brown.  It was a bit too much of one color but when it’s chocolate – all is forgiven.  The entire wall and ceiling were draped in sheer fabric except for the places where it was drawn back to let the doors and windows shine through.  The effect of the fabric was really beautiful.  Those pink flowers were everywhere in really beautiful vases, so I’m sure that by the time they had the whole room ready for the reception that it was really quite stunning.  This cake was covered in little dots that were painted with a mixture of vodka and golden powder, an entirely edible alternative to those gold or silver “BB’s” that we use on other stuff.  I wouldn’t have minded a nibble or two of that one.  Yummmmm

How ya like those snowflakes in my banner?  Yep, I made um.  These are the ones that survived the episode where my dog got the munchies when I was out of the kitchen for a moment.  I rarely bake or decorate cakes or cookies at home since I’m up to my ears in sweets at work, but I started into snowflakes for Christmas gifts this year.  Then I finished the ones that survived the snowflake snatcher.  Then I put a big board across my sink, arranged the flakes and adjusted the lighting and snapped um.  Then I packaged them up and we’ll be distributing them over the next couple days.  If I get time.  LOL! 

Chestnuts Roasting on an Icing Fire

3 comments

This cake was for a family who has the tradition of roasting chestnuts each year at the holidays.  The four stockings are for the four adult children in the family and the decorations are similar to the ones they use to decorate the gallery.  It has a light dusting of finely powdered gold to give it a slightly guilded look.  I wasn't sure how this one was going to turn out, but in the end I was pretty pleased with it. 

Father Christmas Cake

Yay, I made this cake a couple of weeks ago for a private party.  I can’t remember what was inside, either spice or white chocolate or something like that.  On top I made a Father Christmas out of fondant and butter cream along with a couple teddy bears and a whole bunch of packages that were also out of fondant.  I was really pleased by how it turned out. 

Christmas Gift Cake

1 comment

This one is the favorite of my year so far, aside from any of the wedding cakes I’ve done this year.  This is a rich moist full tilt chocolate cake with ganache filling and of course that divine chocolate butter cream frosting.  It’s not an overly sweet chocolate combination, more of a dark chocolate flavor.  Yummm!  The bow is fondant and edible – though for the life of me I’m not sure why anyone would eat it.  I also made the little packages of fondant and each one got a little bow and some little embellishment whether a tiny snowflake or a golden ball or holly.  This one certainly was fun to make and has got some nice attention in the gallery before we delivered it to a private party at a gallery owned by a man who used to be a Coke Exec in the old days.