Monkey Cake Explained

OK, I just had to put a different picture at the top of the blog. Every time I looked at my monkey cake I saw more flaws. Check out the cat exploring a paper bag in the background.

The cake is a monkey because I seem to really like the monkey theme. Also, there are a lot of monkey's within children's books or stories that have the same name as my son. And the monkey theme has become popular for boys clothes and decorations lately. If they'd been available last year, I might have decorated his nursery with monkeys. Also, Hubby's favorite books growing up had a monkey as the main character.

And seeing how Quint could care less what the theme of his first birthday party, I'm just going to please myself. Quint's birthday party is September 11th, at 3pm at my house and everyone is invited! There will be monkey cake! And a small child who will probably need to be hosed down after he has his own piece.

Taa Daaa!!

I've finished my first cake decorating endeavor! And it's really not that bad! And I learned a whole lot that will make the second one easier and better.

Here's some basics of things I learned that were not written down anywhere I could find. The icing tips you need for icing you make yourself are sold at Hobby Lobby, not the regular grocery stores. If using your own bags for the icing, use small freezer bags and refill them when they get low. If you use a thinner bag, the squeezing pressure will make the bag spring a leak that you can't fix. When outlining, use a small, non-star type tip. Make sure your outlining is at least a slightly different color than the stars you are going to fill with. To clean out the tips, put them in a dishwasher basket and shoot extremely hot water at them with the sprayer from the sink. Keep rattling them around and shooting them until you can't see any icing.

At work today, while showing off my cake, a friend told me that Wilton has a whole website of cake decorating ideas, products and even offers classes! She's had two of the classes in the past. It's hard to advertise that you need crafting information when you don't know who knows what. I'm so thankful I had a friend in Texas who could help me over the phone! Thanks Tina!

An update on firsts for little Quint. Here are his first words in order of occurrance: Mama, Papa, Dada, cracker, outside, cat. Also, Quint seems to be cutting a 7th tooth - an upper molar. He also is weening himself. He seems to only be interested in me for nursing late at night or in the middle of the night. I don't know if I've written it here yet or not, but this weekend, Quint made it all the way up our second story stairs! The first time with his Papa making sure he didn't fall back down and the second time with me spotting him. He's only been able to climb a step for a week or so. Quite the dubious accomplishment. Now we have to keep the bruise inducing baby gate at the bottom of the stairs AT ALL TIMES!!

Weekend in Review

Very odd weekend. It's late and I need to go to bed and hopefully I'll be too busy at work tomorrow to have time to write here. So you only get meaty bullet points tonight.

Friday, I was sick, yet found the energy to get Quint to daycare on time. Not so hard to believe if the alternative is being home sick while taking care of a speed-crawling baby with radar for gross or electric things.

In the afternoon, when I felt better I swept, mopped, and put two layers of wax on my hardwood floors. Yeah me!

Also Friday afternoon or evening, I washed 4 loads of clothes! The third of which had a cheap ballpoint pen stuck in the collar of a shirt. I checked all the pockets! Did not think to check the collars. Ruined 6 pieces of clothes that were previously public worthy, if not casual Friday worthy. Several large, dime size spots with dozens (DOZENS!) of tiny "oh, you've got something on your shirt" marks per garment. PLUS! The dryer has lots of stains in the drum. All laundry must wait until I clean that up.

Saturday, baked a cake in the shape of a monkey! I had one of those preformed cake pans for help, but it came out of the pan well!

Saturday, bought 3 weeks worth of groceries (last week, this week, next week) including some weird ingredients for a special celebration dinner.

Quint made it all the way up the stairs of our two story house all by himself! (Papa was behind him for safety.) Truly a mixed accomplishment. Now we MUST keep the bruise inflicting baby gate at the bottom of the stairs at all times. But yeah Quint! Sortof.

Managed to make the exceptionally weird sounding, yummy peanut sauce for my own little Chinese/Thai dinner at home. Hubby won the election (hah! Now you're wondering what the schmo that's about!) and this was his celebration dinner. It turns out pretty good! Hubby insisted he liked it and (the clencher) went back for more the next day. TWICE!

I managed to remember a high school teacher friend saying that hand sanitizer gets ink off of your hands like instantly and you can't even tell where the ink goes. I bought a large thingy of hand sanitizer, and applied my mother-in-law's advice using that instead of lysol (to which I am allergic). Put a large dollup of hand sanitizer on the stain. Fold up a paper towel into eight layers and put it UNDER the cloth, put another OVER the cloth, and weigh it down with a bottle of laundry detergent. Oh, and make sure you're treating one layer of cloth and not spreading the ink to the back of the shirt in the process. (Not that I would DO that or anything....) Leave it for 20 minutes while you ruin your baby's day by telling him that he CANNOT dismantle the night light. Change the paper towels, top and bottom, possibly apply more hand sanitizer. Keep in mind that the faintly purple hand sanitizer will stain other cloth and possibly metal! Do something about the toddler at your knee jerking on your pant leg. Change the paper towels again. On the dime size spots, repeat 20 times or until you run out of hand sanitizer. Give up on that garment and buy more good slacks for your husband on LL Bean with their never ending guarantee. If I'd gotten ink on LL Bean pants, I'd send them back for a refund! They're good like that. If you ever have one ink stain where you dropped your pen on your shirt. Use the hand sanitizer method and it will totally work. If you're faced with fifty tiny spots and 8 big damn spots, buy new clothes.

Sunday, Quint refused to go back to sleep when it would have been nice (7am?) and I managed to get 10 cans worth of baby food made, packaged (somehow) and at least in the fridge before dashing off to church.

At church, I told the choir that I will very soon be hacking off 10 inches of my hair. The choir director has a sometimes creepy fetish with my waist-length braid. I managed not to say to him, "I'll sell it to you for $500 if you promise not to sit around at night and sniff it." Only 3 people said, "Oh, are you going to donate it?! " I managed not to smack them. But my progress on the subject was, "I might if I can get over being greedy about the $300-500." Their faces fell and they said, "seriously?! That much?!" Ha! Stuff that in your chirpy "donate it" face....

Sunday afternoon, I tried to decorate a cake in a fancy way for the first time ever! Failed miserably. Thankfully realized I was in over my head before I ruined the cake. A call to a friend solved several icing mysteries.

Here's all the fun things that happened within 60 minutes on Sunday afternoon.
I hit the brick wall of my cake decorating ability. I'm angrily frustrated.
Quint woke up as an either shrieking (for fun!) or whimpery, tear and snot fest and just HAD TO HAVE THE MAMA'S TITTIES to make it bettter! Have you ever seen a 10 month old sit and mournfully wring his hands?! I have.
I realized that he's got a new tooth coming in. Apply Advil, ambesol, and a cold teething ring. (And earplugs?)
I realize that the partially decorated cake and the huge bowl of icing must go in the fridge soon - the fridge is stuffed with 3 weeks worth of groceries. What the schmo do I do about that?!
I haven't had protein in a while and have had WAY too much icing to eat. I get a bit sugar rush headachy and/or hypoglycemic and suddenly can't handle ANYTHING.
My mother calls all bubbly asking, "How's your weekend?" as my son literally pulls down the drapes by the delicate parts.

Deep breath.

Later, after dinner, I managed to move some fridge stuff to the freezer and refridgerate the cake and icing. I got some laundry done. Quint got in enough Mom time to be calm and content. I got my lunches packed. I got the dryer cleaned of enough ink with hand sanitizer to not worry about future clothing stains. I dried a whole load of light colored rags to check. I even got a soaky, sweat inducing bath before I sat down here to write. A fine ending to the day!

I'm supposed to have been in bed at least an hour ago. But this only took 30 minutes to write! It would have taken me 2 hours at work tomorrow. But then, I would probably have re-read it at least once before I posted it.....

G'night!