my masterpiece, Cookie, Elsie, a visito

Michael left before 8 AM on Wednesday (10/19) for golf here at SCCL, while I headed to the kitchen.  

My only goal for Wednesday (10/19) was to create a masterpiece….I think I succeeded:   

I’ll let you look again….I’m very proud of this:  

I saw this cake at least 6 months ago and thought I would have to wait until February to make it for Michael's next birthday.....but instead I decided today was the day!

Let me show you how (relatively) easy it was…    

the first layer on my cake carrier

warmed raspberry jam, ready to go

raspberry jam applied to bottom layer

frosting added 

frosting smoothed out

second layer added

crumb coat started

crumb coat done, ready for the fridge

rest of frosting added

embellishments started

outer embellishment finished

last embellishment

I worked on this throughout the day…..made the cake, but had to let it cool before frosting…had to soften the butter/etc for frosting, but before dinner it was done…and Michael and I had a hard time not having any for dessert after our dinner of butternut squash/pasta :~).

Other things that happened during the day….I got a few more blocks done on the baby quilt…and now that I am not comparing it to a hidden wells quilt…I think it is bright and cheerful and I like it.  

PLUS…it has given me an idea for the next quilt I want to do (after I get this one all sewn together, which will probably take a bit of time as starting tomorrow I have lots of food to get done over the next 5 days).  While I was sewing in the afternoon, for a brief moment in time we had this:   

how can anyone resist that face :-)

But all too soon we were back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Michael came home from golf very excited about his 81…and as we were standing in the kitchen talking….we saw we had a tiny visitor. First he was on our window screen:

Then he jumped to the umbrella:

And finally Michael took the umbrella over near the hydrangeas:

As I mentioned, I made the butternut squash for dinner, then headed downstairs to SKYPE with Janice.  SKYPE wasn’t working, so we just talked instead and once we were done, I headed upstairs to watch TV with my honey and knit until bedtime.