happy birthday big poppy

happy birthday big poppy
Originally uploaded by pizza on earth.

Wishing you a very happy birthday, Big Poppy. I wanted to put a milky way tart on top as a sort of tier, but the color was wrong.

Fishing you a happy birthday

I made a cute fishy cake for Jordan's birthday, and the ten teenagers at his party seemed impressed (as impressed as they can be). I thought of making a dark castle cake with skulls and scary creatures, but it is much more fun to make something happy. The cake is a yellow buttercake with chocolate buttercream, and tasted yummy. We saved the top tier for our family celebration today. The flower on the top is a black lotus, which has some significance in the Magic trading card game they play, and sits nicely in the center.

Springtime in Vermont

It was a beautiful weekend, and the sap was flowing. We rode down to our friends place in Orwell http://www.vtmaple.net/ for some sugar shack treats, and to pick up some syrup for my marcia mallows. It was truly a family affair at their sugar house, from baby to great grandma, and we were so glad to have been invited. The weather still looks good for sugaring this week with cold nights and sunny warmer days. It's an exciting time in Vermont, and feels kind of like the beginning of tomato season for us old vegetable people.

A week of art and inspiration

We had a lovely vacation and spent a few days in Boston to get a museum fix. The new ICA is amazing, both the building itself and the installations inside. We saw the Fashion Show at the MFA, and admired garments that had up to 900 hours of hand work in them. I was awed by the sight of the designers' work, having drooled over photographs of the couture collections for years. To actually be within touching distance ( of course I didn't touch, but you know I wanted to) of the garments was inspiring.
The most unusual sight was the Peabody Museum at Harvard. It has quite a varied collection, but my favorite was the glass flowers- hundreds of botanically correct flowers and parts formed of hand colored glass. My head spins just thinking of the work involved.
Now at home, we will try to bring the inspiration to our daily life. So far this week, I've had a root canal ( I can picture what my tooth would look like as a glass sculpture) and disposed of frozen dairy products ( the crystals were beautiful). What next?