I'm tired--here's a link

I told Sara I'd blog daily while she was traipsing around Luxor with her family this week. Uh...good thing Sara knows me. Her expectations are generally very low. 

If you haven't looked at this site, you should:

Cake Wrecks

Start with the earliest posts and work your way to the present if you have the time. Be sure to read the descriptions. They're the best part. 

Here's one of the cakes I made before I got into cake decorating and became the world's foremost expert. This cake is, uh, interesting. I had a lot to learn back then:

The year was 1999, and for my mom's birthday I wanted to make her a cake decorated with these marshmallow daisies I saw on the cover of Woman's Day. You know what I can't make out of marshmallows? Daisies. You know what I can make out of marshmallows? Bunnies. I showed the cake to Joel before we left for the party, and seeing his confused expression I said, "Bunnies just happened!" Well, they did. 

If I knew you were coming...

Those in my inner circle are aware that when I'm not clubbing, playing high stakes poker or committing random acts of macrame, I dabble in cake decorating. ("Ah ha!" you say. "That must be why she has 45 pounds to lose!" No, not quite, but this hobby may have contributed to the need for others to drop a few pounds.) 

I enjoy cake decorating like I enjoy giving birth: it's a big, messy pain, but the results are pretty great. (Don't go too deep with this analogy--I have yet to consume one of my children.)

I decorate maybe 10-12 cakes per year. That's about all I can handle at this point in my life. Keep in mind that some of these are wedding cakes and take 40-50 hours from start to finish. Also, keep in mind that spending 40-50 hours on anything, ever, goes against my very nature. 

Today is a cake day. In fact, I'm taking a break from making my 3-year-old nephew's birthday cake to write this post. It's close to midnight, but I still have at least 2 hours of work before I can go to bed, and that's being optimistic. However, I'm grateful that this cake doesn't appear to be an all-night project. 

It helps that I'm making a cake shaped like a rock. (The picture above is of a previous cake I made for the same nephew, which was much more elaborate and large than the planned rock.) One of my nephew's favorite pasttimes is lifting up rocks in his yard in order to unearth the bugs beneath, then smooshing said bugs. So, his cake is going to be a bug-covered rock. It won't be one of my prettier babies, that's for sure. But I hope this cake will teach Ethan that bugs are for eating as well as smooshing.

This post doesn't have much at all to do with dieting. That's OK--we've warned you already that cake will play a part in this blog. At least I'm trying to create an association in your mind between cake and bug smooshing. You're welcome!