Of Cakes and Cats

I have posted many times on my annual cake marathon. Me, who cooks as infrequently as possible and breaks into a cold sweat when 'Master Chef' or 'My Kitchen Rules' air their pressure challenges. For some reason, way back in the dawn of Baby Angel's life I decided that the one thing I would do each year was make her a birthday cake.

I have posted my cake gallery before and I think I updated it with the 18th birthday cake
but here is last year's birthday when she turned 19, 12,00miles away in the UK. Fortunately she was with her Grandma and Grandad and her lovely Auntie Middle Sis.

 The following day she came down with chickenpox!

This year I determined to get back into the cake making zone as The Baby Angel approached a decade changer. She proudly announced to me recently, "Hey Mum, I dodged teen pregnancy!" Delightful.
Yes, The possibly inappropriately named 'Baby' Angel has turned 20. She is no longer a teenager. I survived the teen years!!

In keeping with the adult nature of this birthday she chose to organise a wine tour for her friends. Since she is majoring in Tourism at university this year, I guess it was a good exercise. She booked a bus, planned the route and rang around the wineries booking the group in. Of course there was the usual palaver with people dropping out at the last moment but my present to her was covering the 4 people who let her down so she wouldn't lose her deposit. She actually did a great job getting everything planned, which shows she's come a long way.

Meanwhile, I had an idea for the cake I was going to make, but upon showing the photo I was met with less than enthusiasm. "I'm not sure those are my colours mum...."

A quick glance through my cake calendar and she landed upon this one....

  Really??? THIS one???? Oh yes, she was most insistent.
"Well, I'm not doing multi-tiered," I protested, "after all, you're not getting married!"

A cake decorating friend has since said to me that I was very adventurous to take this one on. No kidding!!!! When I visited the cake shop and showed the lady the picture she looked up at me and said "Well, how are you going to do that??"

I ended up doing a one tier version, with gerberas instead of poppies (I prefer them anyway) and quickly discovered what my cake making friend had meant. Piping black icing onto the side of a cake at 3o'clock in the morning is HARD!!!!!! I ended up making up a bag of white icing to pipe in between where I had wobbled off course. I thought it was a disaster.

Fortunately, with the addition of 'wine goggles' from their wine tour, all friends and the BA declared the cake 'professional' and decimated it relatively quickly. Which was good cos then you saw less of the mistakes!

Meanwhile, I have moved from set painting to make-up work at a local production of 'Cats'. I was meant to be a dresser (helping with quick changes and sewing up holes in leotards) but after the two make-up artists didn't get the cast ready until 8.45pm on dress rehearsal night, the Director insisted they needed another pair of hands and co-opted me. There are 28 cats to make-up and each one takes approximately 15 minutes. We work our butts off!

To start with the make up lady was a little aloof and obviously considered my 'face painting' background rather second rate. I was incredibly nervous and managed only 5 faces on the first night. I have averaged around 8 since then and I'm gaining confidence. These photos are a few of the faces I've done. I didn't design the makeup, I only apply it from 'photos'!!

Ugh. I can see lots of things I could have done better here. Still, I'm getting better and having a ball (apart from work which I still have to attend in the daytime)

The show finishes on Saturday night but we have a friend of Cleo's arriving in Australia on Friday so it should be a busy weekend.

I'll post again when I get back from the Heaviside Layer.......

SOOC Monday: Because Time Is Relative

Time is relative. Sometimes it's even illusory. So even though Melody hosts Straight Out Of Camera Saturday on a Saturday, I'm joining in today. Heck, I only managed Team Up Thursday on Saturday.

I'm coming to you from the bottom of a black hole today. Don't ask me why. If I had any hormones left I'd say it was hormonal but maybe I'm just caught in the seasonal slump that seems to be affecting so many of my blogmates nowadays. The temperature is dropping, we're sourcing firewood, it's freezing cold in the mornings as we get up and, unlike you northern hemisphere types, South Australians do not generally have central heating. I have a tickly cough, sore ears and a sour outlook on life.

But look, there is my baby up there. Last weekend we attended a fundraiser for Ugandan orphans, organised by a girl at our church for her personal school project. I had offered to face paint (after a long absence) and the Baby Angel had a little stall selling off some of her stuffed toys and other extraneous items. My face paints kind of got taken over by teenagers but that's ok; and these are the only two butterflies I managed. The BA chose to wear hers into her netball match later that afternoon. It was a bit like a Maori tattoo. Intimidating. Well, it must have been, cause they won :-)

I really enjoyed the face painting. I'd like to have more opportunities to practice. It's so different to what I do everyday. So relaxing and rewarding.

But I digress. My black hole. Same old same old. I'm so sick of teaching kids who don't want to learn. They almost feel as if they come in determined NOT to learn. It is pretty soul destroying and I wonder why I turned down that full time job in primary that was offered to me at the end of last year.

On top of that, we had been getting very excited about the possibility of a French exchange student. For reasons I can't fathom, the BA loves learning French. She had two years of appalling French instruction at her last school, I knew something was amiss when she counted for me
'un, dux, troys....' Unfortunately there were insufficient students interested in the language in her class and, I suspect, her poor teacher was feeling rather like me and clawing her way through each teaching day. Nevertheless, the BA maintained her desire to learn the language and has entered into it with gusto in her new school. I am filled with admiration for her attempts because she is miles behind her cohort but she gets onto Babelfish and talks to Grandad (a fluent French speaker) on the phone and generally wants to learn.

One of things she had her heart set upon was the French exchange. When we heard the cost at the outset, we knew it was a long bow; but we thought that with support from various family members, maybe she could do it. Well as life sometimes plays out, the $5500 trip to France was out of the question and so the BA's lessons in life's disappointments began. To her credit, after her initial devastation, she rallied and said she would still like to host a student here. Given the weird nature of our adopted family, I was somewhat taken aback; but after some thought we decided it was possible and we sent our forms in.

We had all been getting quite excited about the prospect of a foreign student and were only minorly shaken by a suggestion yesterday morning by email, that the student might not be a girl but a boy!! Apparently they had more girls than boys offer to host students and they were looking for a suitable family (with boys) that might be able to cope with a male student. The BA was game (disconcerting perhaps?) and we replied immediately in the affirmative.

Himself and I discussed the issues of hosting a male student and even came up with some activities we could undertake with him to introduce him to Australian life and culture (hem hem). Everyone was quite excited.

So imagine the crush as we read the email this afternoon, explaining that it would probably be unwise for us to have the male student as he wouldn't spend much time with us since he'd be at another school and thank you for your interest etc etc etc........

Rats.

I'm not sure who was more disappointed, the BA or I.

It's my 'black hole' I know but I feel like we have been rejected and I feel bitterly disappointed for the BA. Priority was given to girls who were able to make the exchange trip to France and so we were way down the list. It's even more irritating when I know there were other girls who could afford the trip but who 'chickened out'.

At the end of the day I've got to admire the BA's response. "God really didn't want me to get involved in this exchange, did He?" she said tonight.

She made me think. Maybe we would have been the wrong family. After all, the Lord is looking after those exchange students as well as us. Maybe we're the family in reserve? Sometimes families don't get on with students and a change is called for. Maybe we're the back up plan? The one thing I know is, it's ok. Its all playing out exactly the way it should.

The BA and I salved our disappointment by practising flicking teatowels at each other's legs in the kitchen tonight. The BA mastered her first ever whip like crack. Wooooow it stung!

May we all count our blessings and trust that the universe is unfolding...as it should.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure, click over to Slurping Life and see the magnificent Wil as he prepares for his swim in the Special Olympics Summer Games. From there you can check out many other quality blogs on Straight Out Of Camera Saturday.

Image credit tattoo

Image credit Joan