raw cake dough… kinda hard to see, but we hit 6 out of 7 rainbow colors! damn you, violet, for being so hard to make with food coloring! and red food coloring – why is it so hard to turn yellow cake batter red? it stayed a weak pinkish red color, like faded raspberryish. but it is mesmerizing, non?

not so raw cake dough here…terrible photo quality as usual. I’ve got to get a picture lamp or something! Old hippie houses in the Cascade foothills are not known for their awesome amounts of natural light.

Someday I will learn to write with icing. Today was not that day…but my frosting skills are MUCH improved. I am not ready to go on Martha yet, but I’m workin on it!

Here is the cake interior, I think the tag I came up with how I felt about on my facebook photos was “wizard of oz meets yellow submarine” pretty. Psychedellic, sick-sweet and unabashedly cheerful! Plus, there are sprinkles. Rainbow ones. You can’t go wrong with that.

And as a bonus, here is a cake I made for my family on V-day! It’s like a GIGANTIC blackbottom cupcake. Believe it or not, the heart shape of cream-cheesey goodness was unintentional… OHHH! It must’ve been a Valentine’s MIRACLE (like a Christmas miracle, only with more saturated fat and dark chocolate).

It was pretty good, but using half a bag of Ghirardelli bittersweet chips was waaaaaay too much… fudgey… cakey… dense… rich… oh jeeze. My belly is aching remembering, but my mouth is watering at the same time! I would link to a recipe, but I used multiple recipes and kind of averaged the ingredients (more recipes say to use oil and cider vinegar than butter and white vinegar, so I go with the former, etc). We all enjoyed it, even though we had to take tiny little slivers of it so we didn’t OD. There was even enough to share with my parents at Sunday night dinner, so hooray! It’s a good cake for BIG parties – if you’re not shy about serving small cake slivers. If anyone complains, assure them a tiny bit is ALL they will *ever* need…

I am just over 24 weeks right now, it’s a girl, and aside from sausage fingers, toes, and new purple tiger stripes all over, I feel great! And hungry. I am working on my second egg salad sandwich as we speak!

This is my belly (and hippie ‘pits, please excuse them, I get horrific razor burn and it makes me cry :O ! )

I think this excuses me…right? From posting, at least. I haven’t been slacking on the crafting and artsy fun stuff, that’s actually kicked into high gear!

Oh, pictures? I FORGOT! I even have pictures to share. Bear with me, I am still getting used to how these wordpress picture posts work, they are kind of a pain…but so are Blogger’s, so I really should be used to it

First off, we have the new nursery mural. Our house has a loft and downstairs addition from the ’80s or so, all hippie’d out with rough cedar trim everywhere and great big windows. It’s really beautiful as is, but I wanted to make a special area for the new Bumblebee lady. My little guy, Sweetbean, has his own room, so I thought it was fair for the new lady to get a new space like big brother’s. We have three bedrooms, but I use one as a craft and breakables/sharps room because it locks with a hook and eye up high, so we turned one third of our loft / playroom into Bumble’s room. I am not too sure how concerned she will be with privacy at this age, anyhow, plus it’s big and light and is now home to a huge multimedia mural…

Yeah! So…Um. I painted this with just plain old $5 acrylics from Michael’s. I used the big jugs of Craft Smart stuff, in purple, orchid, lavender, pink and silver. I also used this AMAZING acrylic paint for the tree’s little hill called Ceramcoat Spa Blue  (made by Delta Creative and it dries to a kind of periwinkle color), it went on thick and luscious…truly, it is the butter cream frosting of craft acrylics. I barely needed a second coat of it, it was that thick and lovely, plus it dried well. It was a tiny bit slower than usual, but not enough to where it was an annoyance or a hinderance. I used plain old gesso to paint on the mushrooms – they were meant to be spotty and girly colored, but I kind of like them looking like button mushrooms (Yum!).  There are also a bunch of big purple and white butterflies, the kind made out of glitter and feathers that they sell for flower arrangements. I plucked the floral wire out and hot glued those suckers right to the wall. If you gob on the hot glue right, it chips off pretty easily when you’re ready for a change.

Another thing I have been working on is this quilt, I think I started last January when we decided to start the whole conception process lol. I was a wee bit excited, what can I say? I used some fat quarters from JoAnn’s, some flannel I found in the salvaged ends bin and an old skirt I had. I have to say, unless it’s really yummy fabric (like you can find on quilthome.com for cheeeeaaap), I like to salvage my fabrics. I guess it feels more like making a collage that way, and that is what I went to art school once upon a time for…all that happy multimedia jazz. Not that I finished! lol.

This is my first attempt at a quilt, and although it was just a little guy, I started to feel pretty overwhelmed doing the piecing and attaching the backing and batting and sewing on the binding. I am sewing the binding by hand because I am still more comfortable doing it that way than using my Swinger.

Maybe if I had a serger with a big fancy arm? But I figure folks have been making quilts long before machines were around, so a little hand sewing wouldn’t kill me. And I have an even stitch, so there ya go.

I’ve got more stuff to post, hopefully I will remember to do so before May (my due date) and will keep up posting. I have lots of pix to share and whatnot…

So if I can be a bit narcissistic, and I can (I’m Gen Y, after all, and according to the media we are all self obsessed and would not help little old ladies cross the street because we are too busy on facespaces or mybooks and whatnot), I’ll just post a bit about me that isn’t my canned “web page profile” response.

Let’s see. I’m in my mid 20′s, and a Virgo. I’ve been sewing since I was…6…? Give or take a year or two maybe? Young! I started out doing cross stitch and goofing off on the old antique sewing machine my mom had/has. I didn’t consistently sew, I mean, I had lots of playing to do. But once puberty struck, I had to pick up the needle again and alter a lot of my clothes, being large of hip and chest but small of height and waist (well, back then). It was either sew, or look like I was walking around in a circus tent or pajamas. Yikes. My current sewing projects include an almost-finished baby quilt, a set of crazy log cabin pillows, and some t-shirt rehabs.

I’ve been crocheting for about seven years, and spent two of those doing my double & treble  stitches completely wrong. Most of my projects from that era look like freaky fish nets, made in very pretty yarn. I stuck to single and half-a-double stitch for a long time after that embarassing fact was realized, though! Currently I am making a striped throw blanket in groovy sixties colors (poppy red, earth, bright blue, cream, and bright leaf green).

And lastly, knitting. I am pretty new to knitting, I’ve only been at it for a year. I’ve made lots of hats and scarves, and am currently working on a tiny baby sweater as well as a slightly larger one. I’m trying to reinforce the skills in the tiny sweater in the larger one, and it seems to be going pretty well. Except when I realize I have to tuck yarn ends in…then there’s a fair amount of cussing. I can never figure that one out well enough to make my projects look right.

Other than crafty stuff, there is not much to tell. I have a wonderful family – a pre-k son, a nerdy husband, a geeky beanpole brother, a bff sister in law, three wonderful nephews/niece, a biker papa and a revolutionary/hippie mama. I live in the wilds of western Washington state, where the large amounts of rain make for plenty of time to do creative stuff. I used to be a mechanical drafter/3-D modeler, but found out pretty quickly that I don’t do well in a cubicle environment, or play politics or butt-kissing games too well. There’s a wee bit of attitude there.

And that’s about it! Anything…well, almost anything…else, I am willing to answer questions or elaborate on anything at all here . Wow, that sounded like I was wrapping up a presentation…

heffelump!