Mini-Me Movies

Thank you, Kristi, for getting this up into Youtube! And thank you for being such wonderful hands! Here's the little movie we submitted for our youth group "Film Festival" in April...



It was a sequel of sorts to this one from last year's "American Idol" (Talent Show) where I was the hands and my friend Kate was in front.



Do you think if we actually choreographed anything before starting the filming, or did more than two takes, we could look like these guys for next year? (Mini-Me part starts around 2:45. Very funny and well-done!)

New (temporary?) layout

Surprise! (to all three of my readers - ha ha) Looks a little different around here, huh? I just couldn't look at that grey and maroon layout anymore. Yech! So rather than update the "family" blog OR this one, I surfed the Internet looking for a new blogger template. I learned something. Free templates are free for a reason.

No, that's mean. There really are some nice ones out there, but hard to find one that really clicks with me and what I'm posting about here. e.g. no coffee cups in my header, thank you very much. I don't drink coffee. And as pretty as mountains and sunsets are, they have nothing to do with my content. Eventually, I found a "notebook paper" one that I liked a lot, til I applied it to my blog and saw how big the text was. I've always liked "college-ruled" notebooks -- this was that other type, but on steroids. My posts were each about 3 feet long. So with a bit of sadness, I kept looking...

In the end, I settled on this one, "color pencils." At least, it conveys the idea of creativity or art. Compared to the pic posted here, you can see I did customize it a little. Wanted to actually be able to read the date text. And there were a few other things I didn't like. So that was a fun foray into CSS. This color chart came in very handy -- must make a note of it for future reference. (I love love love red, but not when all the other accents on the page are blue!)

So what do you think? Is it better? It'll probably (hopefully) change again, but in the meantime, is it readable? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?

Happy Birthday, Lucy!

I thought I was done with cakes for a while, truly I did. Was going to post something else for a change, truly I was. And yet, here I am again with another cake. But for a change, this one was made 2 days ago, not 2 months, or 2 years!

One of Lucy's nicknames is "the little goose" so I figured I'd use that as my inspiration. Needed some help in the goose-drawing department so I used some clipart from Microsoft that I love as a guide (technically it's called a "duck" there, but looks like a goose to me!). Heidi was so funny as I was frosting it: What's all the green for?... Why are you covering the white?... (the initial "crumb coat" which is meant to be covered!) Why don't you add the orange? That's too much green, Mama... Well, maybe the goose will look like it's on a field of grass. Then why are you making it so smooth? You should make it bumpy like grass... (Not a bad idea, so I started doing that... and managed to pull up a bit of my crumb coat, making a little hole all the way down to the cake underneath.) No, Mama, you should NOT make it bumpy. We don't want holes everywhere... You need more green, Mama... and on it went!


To add a bit of German to the mix, on the one side I added the phrase Lucy ist ein "GANS"es Jahr alt! which is a play on words since "gans" is "goose" but "ganz" (pronounced the same way) is "whole." So while it sounds like Lucy is one WHOLE year old, literally it is Lucy is one GOOSE year old. Ha ha!

Happy Birthday, Kristi!

In keeping with a last two posts, here's another about cakes. Ha, just kidding. No, another about birthdays! I was over at Kristi's this weekend to work on our Mini-Me movie. We needed some safety pins to hold the costume in place. Well, who can ever find safety pins when you need them?!? She did manage to find some. Well, two. Later, when I was home again, I thought it would be funny to give her a little package of safety pins on her birthday, whenever that was. But would she even remember her lack of pins, when the time came to give the gift? Then I glanced at my calendar for something else and noticed her birthday was just two days away. What great timing!

On my way to JoAnn's for the pins, I thought it would be fun to make a little zippered pouch (as seen in a tutorial recently; be warned, the tute's in French...) to put them in, instead of wrapping them. So figured I'd get a zipper too. And while I tried to talk myself into using something from the stash, in the end I opted to buy fabrics, ones that seemed more "Kristi" to me. A heavier-duty stripe for the outside and a lighter dotted (as seen in the background in the photo) for the inside. I used some ribbon for the zipper pull and had wanted to somehow also incorporate it onto the outside, but in the end, just used it to tie a bow around the package (pouch folded in half and stuffed into a clear cellophane bag I happened to have left over from some other gift-giving).

Oh, and I should have taken a picture of the minimalist card. I followed Heidi's example; recently, she's been in the mood to make birthday cards, primarily for Lucy. So there are scraps of paper everywhere with "HBL" on them. (She figures the first letter often suffices for the entire word.) Oh, how her creativity inspires me! Here she is half-done with her portrait. Of me. : )

Last one, I promise...

While I'm on a cake roll, here's one more. (Promise, this is the last one for at least a week. Til I make Lucy's. And then it will take at least another week for me to actually post it.) I'm not sure what inspired this one. Wait, I remember now. (Gimme a break, it was more than a year ago!) I asked Sophie what she wanted on her cake. "Flowers." Anything else? "Big ones." At which point, Heidi chimed in too: "Yellow ones... with purple." (H's favorite color.) By the way, the flowers are actually frosted mini-cupcakes. The two hanging over the side have a toothpick skewering them and the cake, holding them in place.

The other thing I remember is explaining to Sophie that she was going to be a year older and would have a new answer now when people asked how old she is. We'd say things like "Sophie, soon you'll be two." But as soon as she heard the word two, she'd launch into counting, continuing with "free, fo', fife, six..." and finally stopping at "firteen." (Hence, the numbers encircling the side.) Oh, look at how little she looks. My middle-est has grown so much this year!

Another cake...

Since I'll be making a cake for Lucy in just a week or so, and then a cake for Heidi a week and a half later, I figured I'd post Sophie's cake from this year. (Only 2 months after the fact!)

We had just come back from our one-month Project: Learn German so Sophie was running around saying "Ich bin dwei! Ich bin dwei!" Not sure why she looks so forlorn in the picture!

Kevin's Cake

Sheesh, I haven't posted anything here in a month! I have made some stuff but either haven't taken pictures or don't want certain people (who maybe don't even know this blog exists, much less read it, but still...) to see, so I'll just post some earlier stuff for a while til I get motivated enough to take pictures of new stuff...

So in honor of the one person who actually maybe reads this blog o' mine (other than me), here's the cake I made for her husband on the occasion of his being named "Nurse of the Year"... Or was it for the rest of us on the committee that was meeting that night who will use anything as an excuse to eat cake while sit around the conference table? Regardless, it was nice to be able to celebrate him and the recognition of his achievement. And eat chocolate cake.

The phrase on the back is his second most favorite phrase to use when discussing his profession. His first most favorite phrase includes the word "pus" which I refused to pipe onto a cake.