3 posts tagged “car”

I said I’d never own one of these.  An old VW vanagon maybe, a station wagon maybe, an SUV maybe, even an old hearse or limo, even something that has been spray painted with huge flowers in neon colors and has something welded to the roof.  But NEVER EVER a mini-van.  Oh the aesthetic horror of driving something that resembles a shoe box.  Oh the amazement that we own something designed to trap and amplify squirmy loud baby humans and all their accoutrements.  Oh the nightmare of trying to find this one among all the others in the parking lot at the store!  I do not approve of this choice or this automobile.  Have we no originality whatsoever?  Have we completely sold out?

It is nice inside though.  And drives beautifully.  And its doors pop open when I push the button.  I hate to admit it.  Me likey.  Well… maybe that is a bit hasty.  I don’t actually Like it or anything.  But it’s growing on me.  Yes, I’m the owner of a Honda Momivan.  I might as well buy a cause ribbon, a soccer ball sticker and an honor roll student sticker.  Oh wait, maybe we should finish buying the kids first. 

I’m financially frustrated.  I am not exactly a “tight wad.”  I have no trouble spending money on my business.  But there are other things I hate spending money for.

 

I just bought a new laptop.  It’s something I have needed to do for a long time but just didn’t want to spend the money.  We saw a “deal” today and went for it.  I hope we made the right decision.  I hate spending money on this kind of thing because it’s harder to see how it will pay off.  But to achieve the desired goals it needed to be done.

 

Hubby is auto shopping.  I don’t like that.  Because shopping leads to buying.  There is no doubt that the truck he’s driven for years is really in bad shape.  Oh, there can be no mistaking the inevitability of her demise.  It would be good to have something already purchased for the day when she refuses to roll one more mile.  I have no idea when that day will come.  Could be tomorrow.  But still… no car payment is no car payment.  And when the adoption goes through, we will need an auto that can fit the whole crew of us.  We expect the count to come to four of us but if we adopt three instead of two then that changes what kind of auto we need.  But can we really wait to make this decision until we get all the paperwork finished and our assignment comes back from Colombia?  Hubby thinks not.  Hubby is shopping NOW.  And he has his eye on two but I don’t think he’s decided which.  Neither of which would be workable if we ended up with three kids instead of two.  I don’t like spending money on cars.  Especially when we are not entirely certain of the need. 

 

I drive a Civic which is a great little car.  It’s a bit small for hauling around a couple squirmy bundles that require paraphernalia.  We are about three months from having it paid off.  That will be marvelous.  But I’d really like to enjoy a few months with no car payment.  But I don’t want to go pick up Hubby when the truck dies it’s death of a thousand gasps.

 

We need to add on to the house to make room for the aforementioned squirmy bundles of childhood.  Our two bedroom house is bursting at the seams already.  The biggest thing is that we have only one bathroom.  I’ve drawn up plans for an extra two bed, two bath addition and removing a wall would yield a decent sized three bedroom, three bath house.  Probably a bit too much for the neighborhood really.  Well, there are plenty of comparable nice houses in our neighborhood, it’s just that the ones on either side of us are in need of “gentrification” or something.  Hubby suggested a one bedroom one bath addition and leaving the one wall where it is would still yield us a little bitty three bedroom two bath house.  Certainly a tighter fit and would require moving sooner rather than later.  I hate moving.  But whatever we are going to do we need to get on with it before hubby goes back to teach in August.  Because then his time to work on plumbing and electrical stuff would dwindle.  But we haven’t even gotten the dude out to give us a quote yet.  I don’t know how much more we’d need to save to pay off that project but I’d like to think we are close.  At least I hope so.  Additions get so expensive in such a big hurry!  At least it makes sense to me to spend money on this.  Every change we make will bring up the value of our home.  And that’s great.  Not in today’s market especially but things have got to get better eventually.  I hope we can manage to decide what we’re going to do and get it done before the children come.  Bringing home a couple kids in the middle of a construction zone would not be cool.  Bringing home a couple kids to the house we have now would be an exercise in frustration.  It could be done, but it would be tight.  But I’m not certain we can afford more than the roof.  LOL!  I think getting the little man out to give us some figures is the first step.  We’ve got to get this show on the road.

 

And then there is the adoption.  We have another fund raiser coming up this weekend and I’m struggling to get on the wavelength to get the planning finished.  I have not been able to get my head in the game.  There is so much that needs to be done.  People have been extremely generous.  Amazingly so.  The one this weekend is a silent auction.  I don’t know how that’s going to go.  I’ve got quite a bit of work to get done before it happens though.  It's Monday already, I've got to get my head in the game.  Too bad we can’t hold a fund raiser for the house addition. 

 

Anyway, I’m grateful for my cute little house and that I have a decent car that hasn’t given us any trouble.  I like order.  I like things I can plan out.  The adoption has quite a few details up in the air… like how many children?  For starters.  Then the timing of the possible auto purchase and addition to the house… I’d like some way of spreading all of that out more.  But maybe there is a reason it’s all coming at once.  Maybe my kids will be here sooner than we think.  Now there’s a happy thought.  Yep, I’ll go to bed with that one. 

 

Nite nite foxy voxers.

 

 

A client came in wanting a cake in the shape of a Porsche with some extra detailing in the sponsor decals.  So I set about building a Porsche.  From chocolate cake and butter cream icing.

 

 

 

Day One:

I spent some time with the small model the client provided.  I treated it like I was building an Architectural model and each quarter inch on the model became an inch on the cake.  It took about 4 hours to get the cake carved and iced with a crumb coat of butter cream icing in the shape of the car.  This was refrigerated overnight and in the morning I had a nice firm surface to work with.

 

 

 

I also created a few things from fondant that needed to dry overnight.  I made a small driver’s side mirror, a tail pipe, door handles, and headlights from grey fondant and left them out to dry.  I also made four tires out of black fondant.  These hardened overnight.

 

Day Two:

I started by carving out a portion of the underbody and removing the cake where the tires would go and creating wheel wells.  Then I iced all of the lower part of the car and wheel wells in black and added the front fenders.

 

 

 

 

The next step was to ice the rest of the cake in yellow so I matched the color in a photograph the client brought in.  I carefully piped on the yellow butter cream and smoothed it around the curves of the car with a palette knife.  It was a time consuming process but it worked out nicely.  Then I rolled out grey fondant for the windows.  This bakery does not use an airbrush so I had to leave the windows plain but I did glaze them to make them shine.  After the windows were on I finished off the roof icing and the body of the car, now it was all about the details.

 

 

 

The next step was to outline the doors and panels of glass and the front and rear hoods.  I put on the fondant headlights and fondant tires with butter cream rims.  The fenders went on next, followed by the lights in front and back and on the sides.  I added the fondant door handles, mirror, and tail pipe after I was sure they were dry enough to stick into the cake without breaking.  I made a fondant license plate for the back and a tiny little Porsche emblem for the front hood.  It was starting to look like a car.  And clients in the bakery were beginning to take notice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day Three:

The basic car was finished, and it was time to deal with the logo decals.  There was quite a list of logos and other details she wanted added to the cake so I had to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  The top got a grocery store logo, the front hood had a car dealer company logo, the back got a tire company logo.  There were two other logos on the rear fenders.  We don’t have a “copy cake machine” (which is like an overhead projector) so I created each of these logos freehand.  The client wanted a number 40 on each door for her son’s 40^th birthday and his name above each door.

 

 

  

 

The final touch was to mix a finely powered silver into an edible medium and paint the chrome on the car with a small artist’s brush.  It’s the kind of thing that is really fun to do because it is a small thing that makes a big difference in how the cake looks.  So the handles, mirror, bumpers, tail pipe and hub caps all got a nice coat of “chrome.”  Even the tiny little “911S” on the back got chrome.

 

 

 

 

I added windshield wipers a little later – after I had taken the last photographs.  At the client’s request I also added some additional detailing to the tiny little 3/8 inch Porsche emblem on the front hood. 

 

 

 

The client picked up the cake on Saturday and asked if there was any way to “petrify” a cake because they wanted to be able to keep it.  She was really pleased with how it turned out and paid the big price tag without even blinking.  Apparently they had no plan to cut it or eat it even though it is delicious chocolate cake inside.  I saw her again this morning and the cake has not been cut.  I assured her that it really was time to cut it and serve it.

 

 

 

 

It took me about 10 hours to create this cake.  The inside is chocolate with white butter cream.  The details are fondant.  The cake would serve about forty people – if they ever cut it.  And we charged her $256.00.  That was an interesting challenge and I enjoyed it.