Let them eat cake! Or cookies and pie.

A very sweet little boy, one of my great nephews, turned four this past week and the family celebration was Sunday. When asked what kind of cake he wanted (decoration, not flavor), he wanted a baseball cake. On a recent trip to Michael's with a 40% coupon, I found a Wilton cake pan that make a ball shaped cake. The layer cake pans sit on a ring to hold them level while they bake.

The cake rises over the rim of the pans and has to be leveled with a serrated knife to give you two flat surfaces for the middle of the cake.

Here are the trimmed layers cooling.

A slice is taken off on layer to provide a flat bottom to the cake. I put frosting on the cut side and inverted it onto a cake cardboard. The icing holds the cake in place. If I were serving this at home, I would have used a pretty plate, but this cake was hitting the road and going to the birthday boy's house.

I didn't get the icing perfectly smooth and I took the lazy way out and used purchased gel for the stitching. The cake was a hit despite these shortcomings. This shape can also be made into a basketball, golf ball, billiard ball, bowling ball, soccer ball, tennis ball, and so on.

There are enough relatives to require two cakes if I'm not using a larger pan. I don't mind making two and usually switch out the flavors. In this case, one cake was yellow batter, the other chocolate. The space to the right of the greeting was where I intended the candles to be placed.

At the cake supply store on my trip to buy cake boards and boxes, I saw these sugar mold baseballs and knew the birthday boy and his cousins would love them. I bought them and baseball mitt candles.

Alex's cousin turned 4 two months ago. He was the recipient of the skateboard cakes. In this picture the boys are picking out which specific sugar mold baseballs they want before Alex blows out the candles.

My brother-in-law, Alex's grandpa, isn't fond of cake and since Sunday was also Easter, I made one of my frequent holiday pies, a lemon meringue. My husband returned from a week long business trip Sunday morning and his welcome home gift was chocolate chip cookies with pecan pieces in them.

It has really smelled good in my house lately, but I am about to drop into a sugar coma.

Carrot or celery stick, anyone?

Blue Monday: Unfriendly scales

It's time for Blue Monday again. Click on the blue jay to visit Smiling Sally, our host for this event and see who else is participating this week.

Is anyone else feeling blue because their clothes don't fit as well as you'd like? Even though I told the Easter Bunny to bypass our house and not leave chocolates here, we still had plenty of sweets because I've been in a baking mood. Tomorrow's post will be about baking. Today's post is about Boyd's figurines and how they view dessert and weight issues. Each of the angels and bears have some blue in their clothing.

First we have "Indulgenia Q. Bluit...Angel of Denial" (Boyd's name for this figure). She is surrounded by cake, cookies and a sundae while she eats from a carton of rocky road ice cream. A book titled Dieting Made Easy is in the garbage pail behind her.


"Mz Griz...Saturday Night" has a book called E.Z. Diet in one bathrobe pocket and a candy bar in the other as she steps on a scale that reads Oh No!


"Auntie Cocoa M. Maximus...Chocolate Angel" is someone I can relate to. Her halo looks very much like an Oreo. Her apron reads 'I never met a chocolate I didn't like' and the list in her pocket is '1001 Things To Do With Chocolate'. Auntie is holding a mug of cocoa and a triple layer chocolate cake. She has a chocoloate moose in her other apron pocket and is standing on a pedestal that proclaims 'Life is Short. Eat Dessert First".


And lastly, here is "Uneeda Biggersize...These Musta Shrunk" asking 'Do These Make My Butt Look Big?'


To all the Indulgenias, Mz Grizzes, Auntie Cocoas and Uneedas out there in blog land: Put down those chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and peanut butter cups! Unless you really need one. Or two. Or feel really bad about what the bad economy is doing to the chocolate and ice cream industries.

Whatever you do, be sure to have a Happy Blue Monday!

Creative test answers

Never leave a test question unanswered. Be creative if you must, but answer the question!

Click on the individual test questions to enlarge.

Happy Dance

A good friend emailed me this smile worthy video clip this morning. Not finding an English translation, all that I knew is that this took place in an Antwerp train station.



I had no idea what this could have been about, but suspected it was advertising. Seeing related videos in the sidebar in YouTube, I think it may have been for T-Mobile. Here is a similar clip done in Liverpool followed by a clip called the Making of T-Mobile Dance.





I would have been smiling for hours if I had witnessed this, and I could not have stood still during it. How about you?

The Big Dance and new socks

The Big Dance is over, and North Carolina's Tar Heels are the NCAA champs. Congratulations to them, and thank you MSU Spartans. The Spartans gave Michigan something to be excited about when most news coming out of our state has been bleak.

While watching the game I worked on my second pair of socks but decided I didn't like them and rewound the ball of yarn as the Spartans congratulated the Tar Heels. I'll start knitting socks again in a few days but have a few other things needing my attention first.

Today I am wearing my first pair of socks for the first time. I like them. A lot. Do you think it would be vain to look for a pair of clear shoes to wear with them? What about a sweatshirt that says "Check out my socks... I made them!" Too much?
Hopefully reverse psychology will work and Mother Nature will notice I am making warm socks and decide to bring on spring like weather. If not, at least my feet will be prepared.

What makes a movie Academy Award worthy?

I can read a novel that has violence in it, and if it is important to the story, I am ok with it. Take the same story, adapt it for a movie and I have trouble watching the violence. Is it a female thing? Is it because I grew up with movies that only hinted at violence? Or is it because the older I get, the more I wish people would be kinder to each other?

One of my sons is a huge movie fan and I try to watch some movies that interest him even though I am pretty sure they aren't movies I would choose. Sometimes I am surprised. The movie Milk was a surprise to me. I remember when Harvey Milk was killed and the ugliness of gay bashing that surrounded his story and still exists in some circles today. While I can't say that Milk would ever be a favorite movie of mine, I was impressed with Sean Penn's performance.

Yesterday I watched Slumdog Millionaire. This movie had 10 Academy Award nominations and won eight of them. Not being a student of film, I can't begin to guess what earns a nomination in the technical catergories. How does one film win for best editing? Do the voters see the rough cut of the movie and then the final cut and compare the editing job?I didn't hate Slumdog Millionaire, but I sure don't understand all the rave reviews and awards. I am looking forward to discussing it with my son. Our brief phone conversation only went as far as him telling me he loved it, that it was a happy movie. Happy? Happy??? I think both the world around us and the entertainment world, including video games, has made many of the 35 and under age group see things much differently than those of us gently over 50. Or over 55. Or digging in our heels in to prevent the slide towards whatever birthday is next approaching. Seriously though, "happy" is just not a word I would use to describe that movie. I won't say more in case someone hasn't seen it yet and plans to watch it.

This morning I watched Marley and Me. I had read the book and laughed and cried. The movie does a good job of adhering to the book's storyline. I laughed hard and cried harder. I cried until I got blotchy and needed to blow my nose. I had to wait to go to the store because my face looked like I had been the recipient of horrible news. But you know what? I really liked the movie. My family has loved and been loved by Labrador Retrievers. I would watch this movie again and enjoy both the movie and the memories of our own dogs.
Both movies are about love, but only one made me cry and yet Marley and Me is a happier movie for me.

What makes a movie good for you?

For your viewing enjoyment...

No captions necessary. Thank you to my sister-in-law for sending me these photos in an email.