Heidi’s Birthday Book Cake

This was the second year in a row that Heidi wasn’t home on her birthday. But that didn’t mean she didn’t get a cake. She ended up making her own cake with the same person who taught me, her Omi.

Since Heidi’s LOVES to read, and in fact her first word was “book,” they decided to make it look like a book. Heidi wanted it closed, not open. So to decorate it, after the initial crumb coat, they smeared white frosting onto three of the sides, let it harden just a little, then scratched lines for “pages” into the sides using a fork.

Next they frosted the top and fourth side with pink, and used a pastry bag with a big round hole to pipe pink along the bottom edge of the three sides of pages.

Last, they added the title and cover page illustrations. And since they drove back up to our place the very next day, we all got to find out for ourselves what a good book Heidi’s Seventh Birthday is!

The Wall Behind Me

I love the idea of using fabric-filled embroidery hoops as wall art, especially in a studio/craft room/atelier. (Desire to Inspire has a great collection of hoop art photos here.) And today I finally got started on my own.

Well, actually I started last weekend at the huge neighborhood-wide garage sale, when I found this in a “FREE” box.

Poor Mr. Bear is now in the garbage, but the 10” hoop that was holding him is up on my wall, full of blue fabric from the scrap box and adorned with a princess one of my kids drew. (I think it would be a cute design to embroider on something someday…)

And a few houses later I found an even bigger hoop; had to pay for this one. A quarter. I was going to leave it just fabric, but then while tidying up found this card that makes me smile.

It’s just pinned at the corners from behind. But it got me thinking, I could add some cardboard circles behind the fabric, so I could pin or tack stuff to the now-sturdy-backed fabric if I so desired…

I hope to find some more hoops (for cheap/free) to fill things out a little more. Hey, if you run across any, can you send them my way? I’m sure I could find a little sump’n-or-other for you to show my appreciation.

: )

Oh, and I added one more tack in the wall for my project list so it’s always close at hand. (It’s being used a LOT! Yippee!) I had to laugh when I read Quilary’s comment last month; like her, I almost let my brain derail me. In my case, it said “A clipboard, I can’t start using this list until I have a clipboard.” But then remembered my pile o’ cardboard and box o’ binder clips – derailment avoided. Take that, Brain!

P.S. I’d actually gone downstairs to work on the squares, but then started tidying up, which led to ripping Mr. Bear apart, which led to…. Then suddenly realized I’d “started” a project but had no recent “done” ones! Scanned my list and quickly found some to finish up and cross off. I think I’ve finally found the balance of structure and spontaneity I needed in my creating.