Inadequate Materials

Here at 2kids, 2dogs, we like to celebrate the little things. And this last week, I got quite a lot done. Granted, those sewing projects I swore were my top priority still exist only in my head, and I have yet to set foot in Michaels , but I did accomplish a couple of things I'm happy about. For the last 12 Decembers, the Captain has been nagging me to create an angel topper for our tree. He had one growing up that he thought I could replicate pretty easily, and I promised I'd get on it...12 years in a row. Well, I finally got around to it. I'm ashamed to admit it only took about 2 hours in total to complete. It was a piece of cake, and now it sits atop our tree as if it had always been there. So, to reward myself (because when it takes you 12 years to complete one simple task, don't you deserve a reward?!), I made myself a pair of pretty beaded earrings with some tiny grey swarovski crystals I got on sale this past fall, using some tree ornaments I made as my templ...

I have this memory of myself as a teenager making a chocolate cake out of an ancient cookbook I still use to this day for my mum's birthday. It might be good to mention here that, until I met the Captain, cooking of any kind was limited to heating up something in the microwave. My mum wasn't big on it. Having been forced at a horrifically early age to cook for her family, then going on to have a husband and seven children of her own to feed, cooking never felt like much fun. So the first time I went over to the Captain's place and watched him make me french onion soup, my jaw dropped. He never even picked up a can opener! You can imagine what this cake ended up looking (and tasting) like. The icing was too runny, so when I tried to spell out "Happy Birthday" in red, on a sheet of green icing, what I ended up with was a drippy brownish blur. Between that and the fact that the cake had the consistency of a brick, by today's standards, I'd have considered it...