Happy Holidays

Heedless of the Wind and Weather

A kind (and hardy) soul took video of the Chicago Chamber Choir's caroling stint at Millennium Park last Friday (in 16-degree weather -- fun!). Check it out. I'm in the front row, third from the left.

Prop 8: The Musical

Seen everywhere:

Yes We Can

And yes we DID.

In preparation for tonight's election-watching marathon, I printed out a map of the United States that we could color in with blue or red as each state was decided. I got out red and blue colored pencils, and for a while the twins would happily color away at the states I pointed to, blue for Pennsylvania, red for South Carolina, and so on.

But soon they became bored with their color choices. While my back was turned, they grabbed a new color and filled in the rest of the map without my interference. Their chosen color? Purple.

Like President-Elect Obama, Evie and Sophie would like to remind us that we are one nation, one people, one United States of America.

Vote!

We took advantage of early voting last week, so we're done. Wondering who the girls decided to vote for?

Boo!

Happy Halloween!

The Endorsement

Pay particular attention to what General Powell has to say about Muslims in the United States. Finally, a powerful figure in American politics says what badly, badly needed to be said.

Choosing to Read

"[T]here's lots of ways to be entertained, and a good many of them are more gratifying and appealing, at least at first, than sitting down and reading a book. Therefore, if you choose to read a book today, it's not like a hundred years ago, when that was your only option. Today, when you read a book, you're making a conscious decision not to play a video game, not to surf the web, not to watch a movie, not to turn on the TV." -- Neal Stephenson

If you're in a reading mood, pick up Anathem.

The Latest Cake

Suddenly this a cake blog. All cakes, all the time!

Here's my latest attempt at cake decoration:

For Libby's second birthday, a cake to match her bedroom.

It's not perfect by any means, but I'm reasonably pleased with it. And the almond cake and raspberry buttercream frosting were pretty decent.

Cake Wreck

Oh, my. I took that fancy-dancy cake decorating class, and then I thought to myself, "Yes! I can decorate cakes! Fanciful cakes! Dramatic cakes! Cakes that defy reason and gravity!"

Well.

I have some practicing to do. You see, I've been commissioned to create Libby's second-birthday cake, and Miss Libby should be extremely glad that today's experimental cake was not for her. (It was instead for Jan, Airan's mom, who is in town for a few days and who is very kind when it comes to extremely ugly belated-birthday cakes.)

I learned a few important lessons from this little exercise. 1) There's a reason you don't see many tall, narrow birthday cakes. 2) Firm, smooth buttercream frosting makes an excellent base layer before applying your fondant. Squishy, marshmallowy frosting -- not so much.

I strategically placed cupcakes around it to draw the eye away from the cracking, lumpy, buckling fondant, but there's only so much a few cupcakes can do. (Also, I want to mention that the twins helped me place the flowers on the cupcakes, which explains why they look like they were thrown on by a couple of three-year-olds. I'm not above blaming at least some of the decoration flaws on my children.)


Fondant disaster.


Much to my amazment, the cake did not collapse when sliced. So I guess it's more structurally sound than it looks.

This is what they mean by trial and error. Stress the error. But at least it tastes good! (Whenever I watch Ace of Cakes or those wacky cake-decorating contests on the Food Network, I always wonder what the cakes taste like. Sure, they're gorgeous, but who cares what they look like if they taste like cardboard??)

Future cakes will benefit from today's setbacks. But I'm frightened to find out how many more cake wrecks I'll have to make before I get good at this.