Easy Weekend

Happy Sunday, how was your weekend? I didn’t really have a lot to do except the usual grocery shopping and laundry. I had planned to take my mother in law out for a ride but she called a couple of days ago and said they were on lock down at the assisted living facility. This is to last for two weeks, apparently someone in one of the nearby buildings has COVID and they are restricting visitation for awhile. Mark had to work so I felt so strange with nothing really planned. It was wonderful!!!

For several weeks I have been wanting to just get out and drive and see the countryside and take pictures. You know how much I love taking pictures of church steeples and I also love the little country church signs that pop up near every stop sign. So that is what I did I took pictures of these signs I think they are just precious. I will be doing a post on them soon probably on Wordless Wednesday. They do speak for themselves.

***The beautiful countryside near my house takes my breath awa***y.

I was also on the hunt for blackberries. We have a huge patch of bushes down on our road. I watched day by day as the red berries started turning. Of course it’s not really our road it is a county road so I guess the blackberries were public property. But I watched them every day waiting for them to ripen. My plan was that I would go down with a container and get just enough for a blackberry cobbler. Mark loves blackberry cobbler, I do not. But I do try to make one for him every year.

But a strange thing happened, no sooner than I would see the big plump blackberries ready for picking than they would disappear. What??? I had an idea of who was getting to them first. I assumed it was a woman who lived a little closer to the blackberries than I did. She is at home every day so I was sure she had plenty of time to get them. I thought about calling her and asking for just a few for a cobbler. But it was not her. As I was driving home one day I saw a teenage girl out walking her dog. I had noticed her before. She has beautiful long read hair and she is always taking such good care to watch her dog on our crazy roads. As I got near the blackberry bushes I saw her with a plastic container in one hand and the dog leash in the other. I knew she had those berries in the container but you know what? It made me feel really good that this young girl was picking blackberries to make a pie or perhaps to give to her mom to make a pie. You don’t see that every day.

So there I was in search of blackberries as well as taking pictures. I decided to visit the Mennonite market near my house. No blackberries there but they did have some amazing looking okra which I had also been wanting. I bought the okra and continued on my way.

I got a lot of pictures and bought groceries and went home to take care of the babies. We have added another baby to the family I will have more on that in a future post.

***A beautiful steeple on this very old church in nearby Tellico Plains.***

On Sunday I watched a couple of movies on Netflix and started knitting another sock. I did laundry and went to feed and check on my nephew’s cat while he is gone for a few days. I ordered a pizza on the way home and went home to finish laundry. A relaxing and fun weekend.

***I am loving this blue and white striped yarn.***

So how was your weekend? I hope you did something fun and relaxing!!!

Always remember,

Lover your day your way!!!

Wordless Wednesday 8-4-2021

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of stones. I am a caver and I love rocks. These are a collection we have in the shop where I work. They are mostly polished stones but still beautiful I think.

Always remember,

Love your day your way!!!!

How To Make A Wedding Cake, The Easy Way

A few weeks back we celebrated my sister and her husbands’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. So that is a super big freaking deal. We had to celebrate big. I wanted to make a special cake. I decided to do a wedding cake.

I hadn’t made a wedding cake in many years. I didn’t even know if I could remember how to put everything together but strangely enough it all came back to me.

I ordered a cake topper from the glassblower at our attraction where I work. He does really amazing work. I ordered it weeks before the anniversary so I would have it in plenty of time. I told him what I wanted it to look like and he had it ready a few days before the celebration. I wanted 50 in gold with birds and bells. I think it turned out amazing.

My sister has always loved the basket weave design on cakes. Anytime that I make a cake for her I use this design. Although it is a little time consuming, especially for a three tier cake, it can actually hide a lot of flaws. HA!!

Several years ago I bought this floating cake stand. It is called that because you place each layer of a cake on a different level and because the stand is in the back it almost looks like it is floating. This way you don’t have to fool with the dowel rods and stacking the cake etc etc. Also this stand can be used for many different things. I have used it several times for desserts, cupcakes, finger foods. Lots of things.

I have had my stand for many many years. I can’t remember what I paid for it way back then but it wasn’t too bad. I just looked this one up on Amazon and it is $161.00. But as I said you can use it to serve so many other things.

I bought new Wilton pastry bags for the icing, mine were pretty much worn out. I already had several cake tips and I had the round pans. You do not have to use round pans you could use heart pans. Or even cupcakes.

So I made the cake a day before the Anniversary party. The first layer is quite large.

***As you can see this is the largest pan that fits on the bottom of the stand. With all the cake batter it was so heavy.***

I am going to give you a few tips about the cake. I use cake mix. It is the easiest thing in the world. For cakes like this I use the white cake mix, usually Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines. I am not ashamed of it because it makes the best cakes. I think I used about five or six boxes of cake mix for the three different sizes of cake pans. Never fill the pans more than half way full of batter. Another thing I do, when I take the cake out of the oven I put a paper towel over the top and use a small saucer or flat plate to press down the top of the cake. This makes it flat and smooth and easy to put the icing on.

I do however always make my frosting myself. You will never catch me using canned frosting. With the cake mixes you can always add an extra egg or oil if you feel like the cake needs to be a little more moist. But with the frosting in a can you pretty much have to use it just like it is. I will share my frosting recipe for you below.

Remember when I told you the cake pan with the batter was really heavy? Well I am also upper body challenged when it comes to muscles. As I started to flip the cake over onto the pan, that part turned out great, and I was just starting to think I was danged near perfect at this, I dropped the cake pan on top of the warm fresh cake and it knocked a piece out of the side. After much cursing, ranting, and pacing several times across the kitchen, the voice of reason which belongs to my husband called out from the living room and said I am sure you can repair it with some icing. Well it was either that or make another layer. About another hour of baking would have to be done. I decided I could fix it and I did. Sort of like a jig-saw puzzle lol.

This is my frosting recipe it can be used for cakes with a stiff consistency or made softer by adding more milk.

1 teaspoon Wilton Clear Vanilla Extract (Be sure to use the clear so your icing will be perfectly white)
2 tablespoons milk or water (you will need to add more depending on the consistency, I also use Half & Half)
1 cup of solid vegetable shortening (yep the kind in the can)
1 tablespoon of Meringue Powder, (I have been known to skip this if I don’t have it)
2 pounds of sifted confectioners’ sugar
Butter extract, this is optional but it adds such wonderful flavor to the icing. Sold right next to the vanilla extract.

Sift confectioners’ sugar and the meringue powder into a large mixing bowl, set aside. Cream shortening, flavorings and mild or water, I never use water, or the Half & Half. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. This is where you want to decide how stiff or creamy you want the icing. A good consistency is when you stick a spoon in and it is soft but the spoon will not topple over. You can always add extra Half & Half or whatever you are using or extra powdered sugar to get it to just the right consistency.

***I always start out with a thin coat of icing to help set the icing on the cake. Remember you are going to cover this up with the weave design so it doesn’t have to be too neat at this point.***

***This is where I had to do my repair work. I put the piece back in and used the icing like a glue and put that side to the back and I don’t think anyone even noticed.***

***I loaded my pastry bag with icing and used the basket weave tip #1D.***

I know these lines look a little messy but that is o.k. because you will be going back over them doing the weave design. You just take the bag and go across the top of the lines using a staggering or ladder type of design. You are weaving one row over the next. Once you get the hang of it it is really quite fun. The icing should not be too stiff when you use this design because it will cause your hand to cramp from holding it in one position for too long.

***You can see the detail on the top cake. I pulled off for a minute to work on the middle layer because my hand needed a break from the pastry bag.***

***The finished cake. I decided to use chocolate covered strawberries to dress the cake up a little but you could use flowers or just leave it plain.***

So if you are in need of a wedding cake or anniversary cake and you want to impress your friends and family, you too can make a wedding cake. Let me know how it goes.

And always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

The Dog Days of Summer

Hello friends and happy Friday? Wow, end of the week and end of July. I got up at 5:00 AM to do some work I brought home with me last night and to try and put together this post.

I missed my Wordless Wednesday post because I have just been too busy to put pictures or anything together. Do you ever feel that way? I hate to think I am just passing from work to home to work again but that is the way it is for me in July. July is almost over and I will be relieved because our work load slows somewhat. Although, I am curious to see if that will happen this year. It’s a strange year again and hard to know what will happen with travel, the economy, and so on and so on.

A lot of things have been going on the last couple of weeks other than work. We had the Anniversary party for my sister and her husband, I had a dermatology appointment. I had a suspicious mole on my back. My regular doctor wanted me to have it checked out so I did. It was nothing. Just a spot that can be caused by heredity, age, it seems like I am hearing that one more and more HA!!, and a couple of other things that are nothing really.

We had a four month check up for Mark at Vanderbilt on Tuesday he got a great report. The trip to Nashville and back in one day is exhausting. We had to deal with fog in the early morning and traffic and interstate road work on the way back. About nine hours on the road, roundtrip, with all the delays and traffic.

I think I mentioned a couple of posts back that our Molly girl is really starting to show her age. A week or so ago she would not eat, she would not go on our walks with us, she seemed to be out of it. We took her to the vet and the vet suspects a tumor on her liver because her liver enzymes were crazy weird. This is causing her some issues with not wanting to eat. She has lost about ten pounds in two or three months. We were sent home with a bag of meds. The vet also mentioned that we could do ex-rays to determine if there was a tumor and then refer us to a doctor who could do surgery. Our girl is 13 plus years old, that is what we know for sure, because she came to us as a stray we are really not sure of her exact age. I don’t think that we will bother with ex-rays because if she did have a tumor putting her to sleep to do the surgery would be very risky.

We started her on the meds a little over a week ago and she is doing much better. Her appetite has increased although we still have to do a lot of coaxing, babying and pleading to get her to eat. She can only eat soft foods because of her lack of teeth. The vet told us to feed her high protein food, mainly cooked by me, because she is anemic. I didn’t want to tell her that I barely cook for us so this would definitely be a change. I told Mark the babies’ food has started to cost more than ours. Not to mention the prep time. Oh what we do for our babies. We also have a schedule for the meds and for her feedings so this has to be done at regular times to keep her tummy happy.

She has definitely shown improvement she is walking more and seems to be stronger. She has arthritis in her back legs so she has an awkward gait and a hard time squatting.