Movin' On Up

I'm officially a college graduate!  Two weeks of freedom before I start my internship in the art department at Kohl's.  I'll be in the kid's department and I can't wait!  Here are some pictures from behind the scenes, including Marisa and mine's bright tights and my awesome cake featuring a taste of my thesis work (har har, see what I did there?).

 (Sorry, I couldn't find a source for the kitty cat picture, I've had it saved on my desktop for ages waiting for today!)

Food for Dorks

It isn't often you'll see me posting recipes on here; there are plenty of food blogs out there who know what they're doing, so I'll leave that to them.  I'm just here to gush about this recipe I found for Butterbeer cupcakes.  Since senior thesis will be up and ready in a few days and I just had my final internship interview today, I'm hoping I'll soon have time to whip these babies out!

A cream soda-esque cake filled with butterscotch ganache topped with butterscotch buttercream and drizzled with even more ganache?  It sounds like overkill in the best sort of way.  Go big or go home, my fellow Potter dorks.

A Happy Belated Birthday To Me

This is the second to last batch of pictures I'm posting before we get to the fun stuff: the wedding! Of course, I still have to upload and edit those pictures, but I'm hoping to get around to that tomorrow. These are some of the highlights from my birthday celebration with the fam, including my birthday loot (not pictured are me going to see Crowded House last Sunday at the House of Blues in Chicago :) ).

My mom always makes the best cakes- this one was frilly (get it? tu-tu, two-two?) and the inside was pink and strawberry flavored. I just finished the last piece last night.

The side read "HIP HIP HEERAY!"

Mom telling Dad that he is going to ruin the blender if he fills it full with ice and frozen strawberries and then expects it to blend.

Twenty-two candles... on a cake... on a Lazy Susan... we're lucky we didn't burn the house down.

A jewelry box from the 1920's from my parents. Look at the tiny deer!

All sorts of goodies from the aunts (and Chuck). An old letter A for my name wall, an Avon bottle in the shape of a cupcake, a few different editions of Alice in Wonderland, and the thing I'm most excited to complete and put up in my room: a Home Sweet Home embroidery kit from the '70s. (It's under the sewing magazine with the kitties.)

Please Sir, I'd Like S'More

I haven't had a chance to make real s'mores over a fire (so far) this summer, but at least Ashley and I had a chance to microwave some!

num num!

Playing Catch Up

Things have been so busy in the end of July that I have a bazillion pictures to post! I'll try to do things chronologically... but no promises. There are a lot of pictures. Here are some from Chelsey's 21st birthday party- back in JUNE.

piggin' out at Buffalo Wild Wings (for the sake of Chelsey's pride, those were ordered for both her and Kyle)

look, dino sprinkles!

the inside was full of Chelsey colors :)

Most People Probably Don't Make This Cake for Birthdays

But since we don't have any men around that are coming out, we thought we'd use our awesome penis cake pan for Liz's 21st birthday. The fact that it's a rainbow cake is just because rainbow cakes are so damn pretty.

The distribution between colors from balls to tip was a bit uneven, but we still filled 'er up.

Pretty bowls. :) We accidentally washed green through violet before we realized this was a pretty picture.
It looks a bit like a tye-dyed penis.
We decided to go with a nice, pinky peach tone of frosting. Special attention was given to the scrotum texture.
Oh, by the way, Liz appreciated our efforts.

Easter, 26 Days Later

Because they're supposedly awesome-sauce (and also really cute) I tried making some of these macaroons way back when for Easter. They were "raspberry" flavored, by way of some raspberry jam in the filling, though it really wasn't enough to bring the taste upfront. Mostly they were just fun to look at. The taste... eh. Pretty bland and not exactly sweet.
Also, here is an Easter bunny, made especially out of ham and mashed potatoes. Note the cross made out of forks. For the record, this photo is sideways, but no matter how many times I rotate it, it still uploads crooked. So tilt your head.

This Is MY Coffee

Even the best of us get bored at work.

Love Is Blind. And Hungry.

I know this is an event almost everyone comes across at one point or another in their life, right? How to mail a cake across the country 70 degree weather? Well, first, you make a cake. You make it marble (his favorite) and slave over fondant for... what? Three hours? Dude, fondant is hard. It seems hopeless at the beginning- you're basically trying to knead powdered sugar and water. It's phenomenal that it can turn into something so smooth and cool looking!

The design is a circuit board (he also got a trinket box made out of circuit boards and a subscription to Maximum PC- I like themes). The best part, in my opinion, is that he got the thing below and still thought it rocked. Which shows that he's either a sweetheart, visually impaired, or just a hungry hungry hip-er, boy.

I do think it's quite cool that the green fondant melted into the blue fondant. That deeper green you see around the edges was the buttercream layer between the fondant and the actual cake, it was colored from a different cake I'd frosted. It was wrapped in a plastic bag, and then bubble wrap, and then the box was stuffed with newspaper so things wouldn't jostle (like my mother's glass plate).