Fences and Cakes

So, me and William (who keeps sneaking in and out of the house with out me reporting it; he got here right before my birthday, and will be leaving the 21st)finally got around to taking down the fence. You know, the one that got completely smashed by the tree branches during that mongo storm May 29th. So, we unscrewed, clipped, and chainsawed our way to victory. And firewood for the winter^^

I also was commissioned to bake this cake for one of Rosie's friends. Three boxes of cake mix, three frosting tubs, two things of fondant, and three hours of decorating...

Happy Birthday to Me....

Today was my birthday. Odd things happen on my birthday; odd smells from the kitchen, getting trapped in my room for a couple hours so the littles can 'decorate', bizarrely creative presents such as tissue paper dolls. I got a lemon layer/caramel frosting/fudge layer cake. Kind of an odd combo, but it's cake....so I ate it!


Maggie and I also made pie. A tiny, one person pie, out of a single apple.
Basically;
1) cut off top of apple, then hollow it out. I used a grapefruit spoon^^
2, cut up apple bits, leaving shell and top intact.Put apple shell in muffin liner.
3, mix bits in a cereal bowl with a teaspoon of honey and some apple pie spice
4, stuff the hollowed apple shell with the bits, put top back on, and rinse the bowl
5, add a quarter cup of flour and about a tablespoon of butter to the bowl, mixing until crumbly. Add a bit of water, until it becomes a ball. Flatten it out and plop it on top. Put the whole thing on a pan. bake at 350 F until brown. Cool and eat warm^^

The apple pie shell.feel free to trash any seeds and stems. Yuck!

The finished mini pie. Not the prettiest, but hey, it's just going to get eaten. And how did it taste, you ask? I have no idea; Maggie ate it all before I could get any. She claims it tasted like pie, so I'm going to go with that.

Mulberry Trees

Today I learned that the tree growing in front of my window (which I have been trying to kill for ages but just won't die) is a black mulberry. Black mulberries are a cultivated form of the mulberry tree, and are not wild fruit trees like other mulberries. They are rather rare in my state, so I had never seen a black mulberry before. Now that I know what it is it's no wonder I can't get rid of it; mulberry trees are almost impossible to kill. If it were anywhere else I would leave it alone, I don't like cutting down healthy trees, but it is so close to the house it's digging into the foundation. Since I now know it won't get any bigger root wise maybe I can figure out a way to live with the thing attacking my house. Now what I want to know is why the previous home owner thought it would be a good idea to plant the poor tree up against a wall. It certainly didn't put itself there.



See the poor thing? Why would you plant a tree like that? Yeah, you can pick the berries from the dining room, but still...

Mori-chan's garden

Today was a busy day. I am fixing the walls in Rosie and Maggie's bedroom. After I pulled the old wallpaper down it revealed a kakki and cream colored paneling. Yikes. Now I will plaster the snot out of the walls and paint them. After lunch I took this picture of violets growing in my back yard;

Then I finished this new tsumami kanzashi;



I guess they are ume (plum) blossoms, but I just wanted a red kanzashi to go with my yukata. The bell on flower fall is about the size of a green pea. The flowers on the main part of the kanzashi are about the size of a quarter. Just in case you were wondering...

New Floor

It's the day before Saint Lucy's day, and I have spent the day putting down new flooring in my room. I finished it though!