Baking

Last night I got to sit on the couch and read a book while E baked muffins in the kitchen. She is really getting into baking and I know she wants to do it by herself but I have a really hard time not going in to help her. It is hard to change perspective I still feel like I should warn her to be careful the stove is hot.  I get nervous, I can’t help it. 

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she enjoys baking as she has always liked to help me in the kitchen and she often enjoys doing the same things I do, and I certainly do enjoy baking and cooking.

I've always enjoyed baking the wonderful scent of fresh cookies or pastries is the best smell. Many holidays it isn't until I bake that I get into a holiday mood.  It dosen't seem right until the smell of the corresponding baking is wafting around the kitchen. I grew up helping my mother bake in the kitchen and try to encourage my girls to do the same with me. 

My biggest problem with letting E bake by herself is that she has a hard time finding things or even the recipe to begin with.  I'm organized like crazy for most things but I've never been able to keep my baking implements tidy.  The best I have ever managed is to contain all the baking supplies to the same basic area.  I have a bunch of cookbooks and loose recipes floating around and would love to actually contain them all in one spot.  

I need one of the old fashioned index card recipe boxes but every time I try to buy one I can't find any. I wonder if any of my husbands cigar boxes floating around the garage would work. Hmm now that I think about it I must go find out. 

My Final Pieces for April's Pixar Master Class Competition

Wow, the last couple of weeks were super intensive, I worked really hard on the stuff above so I hope you guys like it. So Andrew Gordon and Matthew Len are coming over to my school this month and they're gonna teach us a few things about Animation at the PIXAR MasterClass 2011. With all that they're having this cool competition that I'll be telling you about in a sec, Anyways, this month is going to be cool.

About the Pixar Master Class Competition, we were asked to choose a few characters from fairy tales and stories and create a twist for them in some sort of way, for example: The Horror Version of Alice in Wonderland, The Anime Version of The Little Mermaid etc, so I basically created the following stuff:

TweedleDee\TweedleDum - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Version

The Animated TV-Series Version of Jack and the Beanstalk

The Horror Version of The Story of Three Bears

The Black Version of Jack and the Beanstalk

Grocery Mishaps

What a comedy of errors last night grocery shopping was, Murphy’s Law was in full effect.  It wasn’t any big things just a lot of little mess ups that converged into one giant cluster of idiocy.

Started out with the carts, first thing I did was drop my cart coin in a puddle, then it took 3 different rows of carts to find one that would actually work and sure enough it had a wonky wheel.  How fun left turns only.

Checking out the clothing section for jeans for E I found the older age set has the choice of flowery patterned jeans or ones with tears. I don’t care what the fashion is if I wanted her to wear pants with holes I’d just let her keep her current jeans, as for the flowers those ones would end up in the bottom of a drawer avoided at all costs.

I then headed to produce where a lot of items were out of stock or had to be picked through. No baby carrots, sacrilege now I have to cut carrot sticks. I also managed to knock over a half dozen apples, why do they need to stack them so high.  Pick up one apple from the top, the side collapses and it’s an avalanche of easily bruised fruit.

 I also knocked over an olive oil while going through the aisles which of course cracked. I looked both ways saw no witnesses and got the heck out of there.  I did tell a clerk that “someone” had spilt oil however.  Oops.

Seeing as I could only take left turns and rather than consulting my shopping list before leaving each section and waiting till the end I did a lot of backtracking, got to love going back for just one more item. Five minutes after getting home I remembered a couple of things that should have been on the list as well but that is pretty much standard fare, I always forget something.

After standing in checkout for a good twenty minutes, loading the car which I’d also managed to park right above a nice big puddle and returning my cart I discovered my keys were nowhere to be found.  I’d had them to unlock the car so that means……yep sure enough buried under the groceries.  It was a big shop last night so digging to the bottom in search of my keys without knocking anything into said puddle was a nice challenge.

I just wasn’t paying attention to anything I was doing last night and I readily admit complicity in the events that occurred while shopping.  Once I found my keys and got into the car I had to shake my head at my own idiocy and have a bit of a laugh.  I attribute last night’s shopping experiences to a series of unfortunate blonde moments.

Meow

What is with the cat, she will not leave me alone for anything today.  Everything I do today I’m being tripped up or annoyed. I swear she is trying to kill me. 

Only on a day that I have a loadful of laundry in my arms does she decide the first step to the basement is the perfect spot to sleep in.  Of course I get an evil look when she trips me up and I disturb her sleep. Never mind the fact that the laundry I was carrying in a nice neat basket is now spread out from the top of the stairs to the foot from being tossed away in an attempt to keep myself right side up.

Now trying to sit for a few minutes and write my blog I’m finding it quite useful that I’m a decent typist and can type without looking at my fingers. The cat is desperately trying to get my attention by being between me and the keyboard.  Thank goodness for spell check although thanks to all the kitty additions even it may get stumped a few times.  Lots of added bottom row letters, never mind all the extra spacing.  Little paw prints if you will.

Scooter

Lucy is E's cat and she is exactly what I wanted in a cat for E so I can’t really complain too much. I wanted her to have a cat like the one I had when I was growing up, she was a great cat with an attitude you would more often associate with a dog. Loving and loyal, I was the most important thing in her world much as E is now to lucy. The picture to the right is one of the last ones of her taken shortly before her death at 22 years old. My hope is that lucy will have as long a life as scooter did. 

E picked out Lucy from a farm litter as a 9^th birthday present.  She was the runt of the litter and was the teeniest little thing you could imagine at only 6 weeks old. She was so small we worried about her getting stuck in some small space and wanted to make certain the dog who was very excited to have a play mate didn't accidentally smush her.  So the first few weeks she was sequestered away in E’s room or carried around in her arms which is very similar to when I got scooter and may be why they are/were both such good pets. 

However I still hope she finds something else to do soon or goes take a nap, so I can get some work done. oh and preferably anywhere other than on the stairs.

Lucy 7 weeks old