Happy Birthday Laurel

You're ten! I won't say that it went by quickly. The first three years of your life were peppered with more ER visits and doctor's appointments than one kid should have to endure in a lifetime. But, you pulled through (more than once), thank God, and today you are a spunky, healthy, happy and very artistic young lady.
Happy Birthday, hot wheels!

Make a wish.


Blow out the candles!


Cardiovascular delight.

Building Laurel's Cake

She requested "yellow cake with chocolate ganache". My pleasure!

The birthday-girl wanted to help make her cake. Here she is mixing the batter. I always put the mixing bowl in the sink because it's easier to reach that way.

Into the oven.


Thirty-three minutes later and voila!


Since the man of the house had a birthday earlier in the month, I had a half-batch of ganache already whipped up and ready for Laurel's cake. Unfortunately the whipped portion, which is used as a crumb coat, was too dry to spread.

What to do? Heating it on the stovetop would turn it into a runny mess. After some thought, I channelled Duff Goldman and "busted out the power tools". A few blasts of the heatgun was all it took and the ganache was workable once more.


Crumb coat applied.


We let the cake chill for a few minutes in the fridge to harden the crumb-coat. Next, we drenched the cake in warm ganache and allowed it to cool again.

I normally decorate birthday cakes with whipped ganache, but I was out. Instead, we placed mini-marshmallows around the bottom of the cake, and used melted chocolate for the rest.

We started by standing a disposable piping bag inside a glass, then filling it with melted chocolate.


I piped out some butterfly wings onto waxed paper, then sent them to the fridge to cool.


I piped the words onto the top of the cake, and arranged the butterflies around the cake using melted chocolate "glue" where needed.

Ta daaaa.

Pinky

Laurel will be turning (gasp) ten soon. She wanted a "pink streak" in her hair to celebrate the occasion. How could I say no? It suits her style perfectly.

Step one. Take a "before" shot:


Step 2: Bleach the to-be-dyed strand


Then sit under the hair dryer for a few minutes.


Rinse out the bleach


Apply the pink dye, then wait and wait and wait...


Getting excited (she didn't want to look in the mirror until it was dry):


Beautiful!


Side view:


The whole process took about ninety minutes. She is loving it.

Very Busy

We lost power on Sunday, and now our (finished) basement is wet, wet, wet. Patrick is busy trying to get it all dried out before he has to return to work. So far the fans and space heater seem to be getting the job done, though slowly. I haven't been downstairs yet...I haven't mustered the courage yet.

Meanwhile Liam busies himself with his new nesting barrels. He spent a long time moving cheerios from one container to the next and back again. When he notices an audience, he'll say "Ta DAAA" and start the applause himself.

New Word

"Coo-KEEEEEEEEEE"




Eight tiny reindeer.

Elves at Work

I had lots of help with this year's Christmas cards (thank you, loving helpers!!!). Here they are, busily cutting and gluing pieces together. Somehow, we always end up working on cards up to the very last moment. Believe it or not, these cards were begun in January, yet here we were mere days away from the last mailing opportunity, assembling like mad-people.

We made "many".

Here's a closeup. The cookie stamps are from Too Much Fun except the snowmen, which were created from photos of actual cookies. The pop-out snowman was colored with PrismaColors, and the rest were done via PhotoShop. Pistachio cardstock came from The Paper Cut.

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S!!!

Snow Day

We had a snow day on Friday. Here's what some of us did that day:





Others of us didn't enjoy the snow quite as much.