Scenic wall art for Sas

More Saskia stuff. I saw a similar idea on Debbie Travis' Facelift so decided to make this for Saskia's birthday. She: 1) loves nature and sunsets, 2) was jotting down quotes she found in a magazine on our plane trip to Vermont, and 3) is always commenting (i.e. complaining) that her walls are so bare. So I thought this would be a fun gift for her.

I didn't actually make it today, but I did finally "make" a picture of it! : ) Had to do it while they were all up on the wall again -- we're having issues getting them to stick! For the record, a while after adding adhesive pads to the corners instead of the centers of each square, we heard the first one fall off again. -sigh-

Oh, I guess I should mention, the squares are CD covers - the thick ones. I pulled the black CD holder part out, put the picture in the back of the cover, then snapped the CD holder thing back in place. Maybe I should've tried the slim cases.

The quotes (and ideas for layouts) I found at allposters.com under Inspirational Magnets.

Saskia's birthday cake

It's Saskia's 16th birthday today and here's her cake.

Back when we were making the cake for the Exchange Student Picnic, she had seen a birthday cake in my little cake book and commented that she liked it, so that's the one I chose as my inspiration. I know she likes sunsets and I think this cake kind of invokes that feeling...
I used 2 9" rounds - cut the dome off the lower one but left it on the top one, why cut off good cake, right? (Though I wish I could figure out how to bake cakes without them getting such a high dome in the middle... I wonder if those wilton "wrap" things would help...) Then did a crumb coat and covered it with a big bowl. When I went to put the good thick coat of frosting on the top, it pulled the crumb coat off. Aaargh! I wonder if that was because I had covered the cake and so it didn't "dry" right, or if the frosting I was using was too stiff. I ended up adding more milk and then it worked.