Oh for some predictability.

After all the party planning mess? 

The forecast for the sat after her birthday is now 65 and clear.

In spite of it being winter, and frigid last weekend.

Would have been so nice to be able to know that a month ago.

For the record…

For the record regarding the cookie/cupcake self induced dilemma…

 

I actually got the stuff to do the last idea of the petal cookies and the cake ball. 

I rolled out the dough… used my perfectly petal shaped cookie cutter… 

 

And they massively changed shape on me when baked. Like twice as wide as the cutter.

This did not work. Especially when I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be overly cramped anyways.

 

I needed to do one of the other sugar cookie recipes that was better suited to small sized cutouts… but never got around to it.

 

I thought about purchasing and frosting ladyfingers… but I didn’t end up with the time. 

 

I thought about going back to the cupcake idea and making them myself, but the two cake mixes I had on hand would not have mixed together well, meaning it would be two separate rounds of cupcakes.

 

Had I originally ordered from walmart, they would have had time to make specific ones that I ordered with sunflowers. But by the time all this was finished, I didn’t.

 

So she has walmart cupcakes. 6 dora, 6 cars, 6 hulk, and 6 rubber ducky.

Long live the creative domestic goddess.

And they said?

Matthew 17

 1 Six days later Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. 2 As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. 3 Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared and began talking with Jesus.

this is another section that drives me nuts. tease us with knowing the conversation happened…. but give us no details.

i know… they are supposed to be symbolic of the law and the prophets… but still… even as symbols, they clearly said something.

what does a person who actually got out of experiencing death, and one that god himself both killed and buried, say to one who is soon facing an awful and undeserved death at the hands of the human sinners being saved by the process?

not that anyone really could relate to what he was going through entirely… but still…. these guys got out of here probably the easiest of anyone.

Skitch happiness

 

i can’t say my hopes are up on the cake being right even with the pics… but, well, the top one is rather ugly… so i’m aiming for anything better than that. lol

 

 

i am loving skitch though! Which is what made the image from the two cake images on their website.

I’ve got several different image capture programs… including image capture that came with the computer, and even one that isn’t freeware/shareware… but for some reason I decided to download skitch last week anyway. ( http://skitch.com/ )

 

And I’m actually really really impressed! The most impressed i’ve been with a program in a while actually.

 

It runs really smooth… doesn’t add any delay to startup to leave it running in the background like my other primary program did… doesn’t take a second to process… its just there. and has an option to hang out entirely in the menu bar so it isn’t taking up dockspace.

But besides being there quickly and smoothly, it runs just as quickly and smoothly. to crop something, grab a corner and drag it where you want it, and suddenly its cropped. to resize it, grab the window corner and its instantly done.

 

it lets me put arrows and text, and circles and lines, whatever on it.. different sizes and colors with one click… and when you click, it briefly displays a transparent hints thing above the window telling you what keys do with that tool, like the common shift to make a square vs rectangle… cntrl to start circles from the center not an edge… etc.

and its freehand tool rocks…. it smoothes over all of the jaggedness created because i’m using a touchpad.. (see the ? on the image on here yesterday…)

everything you add is moveable and erasable on its own.. no need to switch layers, or flatten layers… 

even with a bunch of windows open, its still much less taxing than having one of my image programs open to do edits.

 

one click, and its uploaded to your account… at a speed i really have no idea how it manages on my connection… and a page opens with buttons to click to copy the links to the image itself, to the page with the image, etc. 

but you can still click on the history button in the program to pull it up easily… no save to forget… no close button even, you grab a new image and it just moves that one to history and you can flip back to it and between any of them. (and there is a save as button in the history if you do want to move it somewhere else under a different name.)

 

and you can add stuff to any other random image on your computer that isnt a screen cap. and take webcam shots.

and can send pics from your phone directly to your account, and pull them into the program from there.

 

oh… and it has a button to send the pics from the program to bluetooth… which my phone wasn’t a big fan of accepted, but did try to go through…  besides just the send by email and print and the like.

 

the one thing that took me a bit to figure out was how to change the font to not make everything look like a lolcat. (its in the drop down menu to show fonts)

 

and the one thing that it lacks, that my other programs have, is the ability to capture video instead of just a still snapshot. but… well.. i’ll keep the other program on the computer for that one, but skitch has already taken its place as my primary image capture.

 

ok… and as my primary playtoy right now too. anyone need a lolcat?

 

 

Half degrees

since when have we used .5 degrees in a weather report? is this supposed to make me feel warmer?

 

 

update: now we are 18.2. 

i wonder if these decimals are gonna stick around when its warmer. lol

Connecting the stories

its sort of interesting to me where the story of joseph usually ends.

i mean, the common story seems to always end with the happily ever after… in egypt after the brothers have moved there and now have food… and god has turned their evil into good.

and i suppose we like happy endings. 

but it leaves a gap.

 

Exodus 1

 

 6 In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation. 7 But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.

 8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. 10 We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”

 11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves.

 

we pick it up later with moses leading them back out… but sometimes it seems like the connection between the various sections of the story gets lost.

for moses, we forget how they got to egypt in the first place… for joseph, we forget that the happily ever after ended after his life did, and that his descendants had consequences for being in egypt instead of back home.

 

i guess it just seems like a connection of more importance than we give it in our chopping into shorter sections of story.

Cookie overwhelmed

And I’ve run upon another creative barrier… by complete accident.

I get myself massively overwhelmed by possibilities.

 

It started with kiddo’s birthday treats. 

 

Both her preschool and the school where she went to pk both had rules that all treats had to be store bought and still sealed. One of those rules I understand for safety, but hate anyway. How far have we gotten when cookies baked by random PTO mothers are banned for no other reason that the possibility of someone using them to harm a group of 30 or so kids? And it’s not like the recalls of things like even spinach and tomatoes haven’t proved that even store bought things can have health issues too.

So I was glad when her current school didn’t have that rule, only to run into her kindergarten teacher’s rule of no frosting, no cupcakes, no cookies. Sigh. Again, I suppose I understand having a class of 24 kids around the age of 5… but still. (I annoyed her I’m sure… I sent packages of otis spunkmeyer small chocolate muffins… which are about as close to a cupcake as you can get without frosting, but very technically still fit her rule)

 

But this year… no such rules. Open door.

So kiddo was still looking at store cupcakes… asked if we could do buffalos. Ummm… buffalos??? 

Yes. Buffalos. Because as it happens, her birthday is on Kansas day, the day kansas became a state…. aka one of those holidays you entirely forget about outside of grade school. And the state animal is a buffalo. 

I bargained. State flower is a sunflower. Even the walmart bakery can surely pipe some sunflowers. And when I’m not expecting to be in the state next year at this time, why not let her go for the state theme.

 

But then I got to thinking… it’s a sunflower. Even I can make a sunflower. 5 petal-ish shapes in yellow and a brown dot. 

And since we have no silly rules this year, and I’m home to have time to mess with them, sure, why don’t I just make some sunflowers on some cupcakes. Simple enough.

 

Until I ended up on a blog mentioning something about cookie pops for valentines day.

And that reminded me of a project using flooded icing for smooth cookies, something I’d wanted to try. Which was on the same site as a marshmellow fondant I’d also wanted to try that is supposed to actually taste good.

So now we’re on to making fondant covered cupcakes, with fondant sunflowers. Except… um.. I’ve never actually made non-flat shapes with fondant before. 

So I suppose I can make flat petals and a flat circle and make them as a flat sunflower.

 

This was fine for a few hours, until I was by the sink for something while making dinner, and I spotted a bowl full of cookie cutters. I’d been clearing things out the other day, these ones had been in the wrong place, and I decided they probably needed washed before being put in with the other ones. 

As it happened, on the top, was one of the metal easter egg cookie cutters that I hate because they easily smoosh into non-egg shapes. Today it was flattened a bit, making an oval about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide. 

A perfect shape for a petal! Yay! 

 

But then, it would be too long and droop about an inch over the side of the cupcake. Which might look kind of odd for cupcakes in wrappers. 

So then it hits me… I can make petal shaped cookies, put the fondant on top of them, then put those on the top of the cupcake and then the petals will stay firm.

But wait! If I’m using cookies, then why don’t I make some of those little cake balls like I tried to use for snowmen, and roll them into brown sprinkles.. and use those for the centers. Perfect!

 

For about an hour. Until I realized this means I’m making cupcakes, making fondant, baking cookies, and baking a cake to crumble up and make the balls. 

And… I’m putting what is essentially a 6 inch cookie on top of a cupcake. This teacher is gonna hate me!

 

Ok.. we can lose the fondant and make the flooded icing for the cookies petals. But then I’d have to make another frosting for the cupcake still.

So then, I wonder about losing the cupcake. But I’m not real confident in the cookies staying together without the help when they are made out of 6 different pieces.

But then it comes to me.

 

I can take the cupcake wrapper, put the cake ball into it, and put the petals around it.

But will it stay? And will it be big enough, or so scrunched that it will just make the petals go vertical and look stupid?

 

 

Why in the world am I making this so difficult on myself? 

Hello? It’s a birthday treat. 

Just because I can do things, and want to try various things, doesn’t mean that I need to, or should… or even that 10 hours of effort is going to be better than plain cupcakes with basic frosting.

Maybe letting walmart make the simple piped sunflowers wasn’t such a bad idea.

Party(planning) pooper

I’m seriously not feeling the birthday party spirit this year.

 

Normally, I have things planned before Christmas, everything ordered and ready to go. Because that’s when I’m thinking about gifts, so that’s when it’s easiest to do it.

But this year? with all of the family drama? 

I’m at a loss.

 

I seriously have my daughter’s easter basket gift purchased already… and I’m still trying to figure out what in the world we are doing for this birthday in less than a week.

 

Winter birthdays are so much harder than summer ones. It’s cold. Park is out. Outdoor activity places are out. Even the backyard is out. 

Inside? We have a small house… and only own 4 chairs. Hosting it here is out.

 

So that leaves somewhere else.

But, most other places cost quite a bit.

And the school does have a rule… that if you do invites, you have to invite the entire class, or at least the entire gender of the class.

 

Almost all of the party invites we have gotten for kiddo have all been to a place called pump it up… which is basically an indoor collection of moonwalks and other inflatables… and that runs like 250 bucks for 2 hours. 

Um… no. No way. At all.

 

Webkinz bead party at a local boutique is 20 each, minimum of 6 kids. Um, no.

 

Fast food play area is cheap… but, well, kinda boring for 6 and 7 year olds after a bit. And we did that one last year.

 

I had a brilliant idea at one point.

High School Musical 3 was playing at the cheap theater in town for 2.50. Kid’s package at the concession stand is 3 and includes popcorn, drink, and a small candy. 

5 bucks per kid, times 12 (24 kids in class, so I assume about 12 girls), is 60… still on the expensive side, but since you don’t need a cake or food or decorations… maybe reasonable. 

Except… they refused to tell me in advance if it would still be there.

Even when I asked again only 2 weeks in advance. They couldn’t tell me until Tuesday if it was going to be there that weekend. Nowhere near enough advance notice.

And, as it turned out, it ended on Thursday… just 2 days before I’d been looking at doing the party. 

So that was out.

 

So, really, the idea of including school friends got tossed out. Its hard to do anything for 12 kids or more, on a small budget, without having access to somewhere large enough for that many kids, for free or really cheap, to put it.

 

So that put it back down to just family. 

 

Except… my mother called the state on my cousin a few months back. Which resulted in a major fight with my grandmother. So no hosting it there, and I can pretty much assume the kids of that cousin won’t be attending no matter where it is.

And my other grandma is in a nursing home, and not very able to get out and about when its cold.

And then there is my older half brother. Who is never very reliable.. and no call no showed with his 4 kids last year… and has only invited us to one of the kids birthday parties in the last 3 years.

An my older half brother on the other side… who has a kid who will be 1 soon… and 2 stepkids around my daughter’s age that I’ve never even met.

 

So. 

We have 3 adults I know will come, including myself. Realistically, entirely possible to have a party with a whopping total of 4 people.

Another two that may come but may have to work. 

A group of 2 adults and 4 kids that may or may not come if invited, but I’ll never know for sure until they actually arrive.

And another group of 5 that probably would if asked… but that the birthday girl only knows one adult of the group. 

 

This may end up real pathetic, no matter what way I go with this one.

 

I’m sadly tempted to bribe the kid.. buy her a ticket to a concert I’ll have to drive 4 or more hours to get to in exchange for skipping the party this year.

And if she was a bit older, I probably would. 

But… she’s 7. 

All the other kids that age still have parties.

 

I suppose at least if I go the lame family route, she won’t get teased at school for its lame-ness.

The wet and bleeding angry rainbow

I don’t know why this came strongly to mind, but it did. It’s not anything the book is mentioning right now, but I’m sure that has something to do with it somehow. So I’m writing it.

 

Random winter evening in college, I decided to paint.

Just randomly painting. I think it was actually one of those dready day things.. somehow dready lends itself to artsy stuff well. Something to do, and something enjoyable to be doing while cooped up inside while it was later snowing outside.

 

So I dig out the set of cheap kids paints from the school supply area of walmart and roll of paper from the same department, nothing fancy at all. and I painted a few random things, just for amusement sake, not expecting any sort of high quality or anything… just painting. 

 

So I made a small stack of really random cute-sy paintings. As this was during my first of several rounds of having a journal style blog on open diary, so I took some pics the next day with my webcam

 

  

  

(for some reason it won’t let me rotate the last one… turn your monitor upside down.)

 

So my expectations weren’t real high or anything. Just amusement.

 

But after these few… I started on something that involved a diagonal stripe of red below a diagonal stripe of blue. I don’t even remember what actually. So I made the red stripe. And then the dark blue above it. 

And the red bled into my blue. Not the blue into the red as expected if it was going to bleed, but the red into the blue.

 

And for some reason.. “out of the blue”, instead of taking it in stride and working with it, or just getting a new paper, this really upset me. I mean, majorly upset me. PMS maybe? Dunno. But it did. 

I dumped the water cup on it… and grabbed a washrag and tried to wash it off. 

And when that didn’t work, I went to my shelves, got my box of toys, filled my supersoaker, and blasted the thing.

Indoors. On the wood floor of my studio apartment.

And I refilled it, and pumped it to a higher pressure, and did it again. 

 

The paper actually survived this, having been draft-dotted to my drafting board from theater tech and lighting. The blue faded, but kinda bled over the whole paper… the red came off a little bit, but had been on a lot longer, and mostly remained.

So in a fit of annoyance, I used my fingers instead of my brushes to make some streaks of other colors under the red to make a blurry rainbow on the drenched paper…

 

 

 

And left it there for dead, not even cleaning up, while I flopped on my bed and bawled for some entirely unknown reason. Just absolutely lost it.

From being in a pretty decent mood to total breakdown in less than 5 minutes over nothing.

Eventually I fell asleep. The spell was over in the morning.

 

And to this day I haven’t the foggiest idea what that was all about or where it came from.

My new shiny

I got a sparkly new card in the mail today from Hallmark.

 

I’ve technically been a platinum member of their “frequent flyer” program since last summer… due to having a webkinz addict in the house.

But since it goes for the remainder of the year you earn it plus the next calendar year, I guess being a new calendar year I now get a shiny new card.

 

which looks identical to my old one, but this one has glitter. 

i feel like i should be impressed or something. maybe my grandma might be.

 

i actually did put it on my keychain for a while.. mostly teasing my mom… until i went to the store and promptly remembered why my old ones doesn’t go on my keys… 

oh yeah, when it accidentally picks up on the grocery scan thing instead of hitting my grocery card, it makes a royal mess because the computer thinks its an item.

my card from the other grocery chain that used to be closest to my old apartment just scans into some else’s account when it gets hit accidentally. lol!

 

so my poor glittery shiny card will have to go back into the rarely used section of my wallet where the identical non-glittery version sat. 

i wonder if this thing actually makes a different in customer service from the cashiers. that’s the only logical reason i could think they would bother sending a different one… to let their staff identify the bigger spenders more easily to be more careful not to make them mad.

 

thus far, the only really cool perk has been that the store listed as my primary store has occasionally called and left me a voicemail when they get a new group of newly released webkinz in. the ornament preview info and open houses and stuff i could care less about.