A wedding cake!

It's been, like, forever.... *ashamed-toe-in-dirt-expression* I know. *cough*

Anyway!

Remember that wedding cake I made in May? Here's a photo

I made that. Magical, yes?

Here's another:

I made two ten inch cakes besides the actual wedding cake so that at the party, people could enjoy cake and look at it too. Plus there were a lot of peeps at that party. It was a lot of cake. So, clearly, it was a very successful party. :)

Here's me.

Tada! A cake.

It took me like, a week! And a few weeks of planning and prep before that. Here's a few photos of production, if you're interested. (I know you are.)

Mix the flour and baking powders, salt, etc. Mix butter and sugar and eggs. Mix them together and add some buttermilk. Repeat like 12 times. Phew.

For the 32 cups of buttercream, I did this step a lot:

Eggwhites to fluffy clouds. I then stabilized them with sugar-water boiled to the hard candy stage.
 But before I could whip egg whites, I had to separate them from their yolky side-kicks...

yigh....It took like 4 dozen eggs!


 And then- I added butter.

LOTS OF BUTTER

Like, a gajillion pounds of butter.

And homemade vanilla extract, measured in a heart tablespoon, for extra love:

The process made like, a gajillion cakes...

But it also made about the same number of dishes...

That's like, hardly a fraction of the dishes I ended up doing. Thankfully I baked the whole thing at my church's kitchen and had these ENORMOUS sinks to use. I could have bathed while I did the dishes, if I was so inclined....(I wasn't)

Then I crumb coated each and every layer.

Imagine this, times 10.

And then filling and stacking:

2 ten inch cakes 2 layers each, and then the wedding cake, each with two layers, a 12 inch tier, an 8 inch tier, a 6 inch tier....Do the math. That's a lot of cake.

And a lot of frosting and filling....

But it was made with love, and I had a helpful sister along!

She read to me and kept the tea coming. So I was able to pull through.

See that stove clock? It says 9:34. That's pm. We pulled some late nights on this project....

The final step was assemblation. That's a real word you know...

Dowels keep it from collapsing into itself. Very important, despite not being edible...

And then, I frosted it!

And decorated it!

Have another look at that beauty. Really, just look and be inspired by awe and majesty.

And have some cake, it's on me.

No really, I had a lot of cake on me by the end of the whole thing.

It was really good. I ate a lot of it. And received lots of compliments. And ate lots of cake.
The end

P.s I'm 40 weeks pregnant and 2 days, now, and the contractions this morning amounted to nothing special. Just thought you might like to know. I'd post a picture, but my new camera is still being figured out...

p.p.s Georgia also took quite a few of these photos, but I'm not sure which ones. Give her credit, though.

p.p.p.s I'm now realizing how many times I used the word "like" in this post. Forgive me, but I kind of think it sounds good, so I'm not editing it.

Steampunk vest coat refashion

All right, one more post before the big Trip to the Keys. I meant to post this weeks ago but didn't get a chance to because of how busy I've been getting everything ready for going to Florida. Now, however, everything is packed and I am dressed and ready to go and now we just wait until it's time to actually get in the car and go! What a  nice feeling.

So, the matter of the vest coat. At least, I think that's what you would call this garment. It's like a coat but without sleeves, OR it's like a vest but really ultra long...Call it what you will, I found it at the thrift store for $2 and loved it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't my style. I could never wear this anywhere and feel confident in it, even if it did look good on me. So I decided it was refashion time. I needed to give to flair to this business-woman style coat thing.

 Thankfully, a little ribbon can go a long way for giving an item some flair....

And so can a bustle.  Yes. A bustle!

*hearts are floating around my head right now*  Now it's steampunk and I love it. And you better bet your buns that I wore this thing in public and will continue to do so whenever I can get away with it.

The first time I wore it was to a bell choir concert our friend was in. I paired it up with the blue shirt above, an a-line black skirt and some purple, blue and grey striped knee-high stockings. I felt awesome and I received a generous compliment from a girl who turned out to be a fellow steampunker. It gratifying to say the least. I've been wanting to sew a bustle onto one or two of my garments for a year or so now and I'm insanely pleased that I've finally done it. And it looks quite good, though I do say so myself! Now all I need is a pair of goggles and a dirigible!

Well, and a few more steampunk style pieces...This is only the beginning, my friends...

What do you think? Yay or Nay on bustles? Is steampunk your thing?

Seaside Saturday

Dear me, I've been meaning to get this post up for a few days now! The past few days have been quite eventful and busy. But my weekend was wonderful; restful and relaxing as weekends frequently should be. John and I went to the seashore in Plum Island, Massachusetts. His parents own a house there and so it's one of our more frequented spots for beachtime. 

Saturday was a beautiful day. I would be lying if I said we haven't been getting a lot of rain lately. In about two weeks we've had 3 days of sunshine, two were today and yesterday. The other was Saturday-though it may not pass as a sunny day to some, it was warm and the cloud coverage was thin (though fairly evenly spread. It was not a blue-skies-day, just a sunny one). A light fog floated on the ocean and mist prickled our skin occasionally. Really lovely beach combing weather. 

The Olivia Jayne outfit

 

It was also good weather for a charming outfit. Inspiration for clothes (and the way they get assembled on me) comes from all sorts of places. But I think this one is particularly funny. I was inspired by a video game character. Olivia Jayne is a tiny dranei girl in World of Warcraft's newest expansion Cataclysm. I was fishing over in the area where she roams (yes, yes, I play WoW) and noticed her adorable outfit. Intrigued by the colours and general cuteness of the whole thing, I sought to put together my own "Olivia Jayne" outfit. It's reversed, colourwise, but all in all I think it's pretty good. :)

The skirt and shirt are thrift store finds, $2 each. The oyster necklace and flip-flops are beachcomb finds. The scarf is the most expensive thing about this outfit, and I'm ashamed to say  that I spent $10 dollars on it, a long, long time ago when I wasn't as thrifty and clever as I am now. 

Skipping

Searching for sea glass

 We took a stroll on the beach, combing it all the way for treasures and then sat and watched the waves for awhile.

iridescent oyster shell

The fallen seagrass fence

sea grass close up

crabshell

skull of some sort...

beach comb finds

foggy island

tumultuous waves

John took a nap on my lap and a close up of my flip-flop

After a short nap, John and I walked back to his parents' house where we ate dinner and cake. But on the way back, I saw and snapped this pretty picture:

The glowing Narcissus

A very lovely day, indeed.