So listen, I’m decent at a lot of things…I am super creative and if nothing else passionate about things I try.  Reality is I guess at most everything I do……….especially baking.  This week proved that.

On Wednesday night I had a few girlfriends over for dinner and, goodness gracious, it was just one fiasco after another.  I overcooked the asparagus that I put in the risotto, did something odd to the spicy mango martinis, and the worst one of all miserably failed with the blackberry merengue tart that I had such high hopes for.

The night before, while making the curd, I dropped half of it on the floor….staining the hardwood AND my feet…you saw that picture in my last post…

I had recuperated from that by the next morning, and got moving on prepping the tart.  The meringue was just about perfect, my kitchen aid mixer doing its thing…when I bumped the mixer and CRASH the entire thing fell to the floor.  I had to start that process all over.  Once I had finally finished the tart – all I had left to do was brown it in the oven.

I popped it into the oven that I had preheated according to the recipe and popped it in for the two minutes it called for.  About 30 seconds later, the smell of charred meringue wafted through the house.  I screamed when I opened the oven door and holy crap, it was just black char and smoke. I scraped off the burnt parts to reveal clean, white beautiful soft meringue.  It went back in, but once again it burned, and quite frankly it sucked.

 

Other than the disastrous dessert, I guess it wasn’t horrendous, but cant’ say anything really turned out as I had hoped.  Nevertheless, it was really wonderful to have friends over – it reminded me so much of dinners with my friends in LA. I loved it! 🙂

Decor is always my favorite, anyway…and arranging flowers is always my go-to procrastination tool!

 

 

Ellie woke up at 1:30 am last night with a fever of 104.8 F. Yeah, not fun. After a dose of ibupofren and some good old fashioned rocking in the rocking chair, both she and I were crashing.  Needless to say, she didn’t go to gymnastics today…which led to her watching “Puss in Boots” which led to her asking for a cape. Yes, a cape. And not just any cape. The darn thing needed to be pink and purple with shiny things on it. Goodness Gracious, child….really?  Reality is that she has been requesting this particular cape since we got the Blu-Ray of aforementioned Puss in Boots, and I’ve been putting it off, so today “put it off, no longer” was my motto.  I’m not the greatest when it comes to sewing, but  I can get by (Mom made me hem enough costumes when I was a child that I at least know how to do that, even if I hate it). In an effort to avoid as many stitches as possible, I decided to check my closet for something that I could adapt. I found the perfect piece: a sun dress that I had bought at Target last year for $3.88 – and I now knew I wouldn’t wear.

I headed downstairs and was soon cutting and snipping and pinning and sewing.  First, I cut along the seam that had the “care” tag, opening up the dress so I could lay it flat. I then cut the “bodice” off, leaving the gathers that were awful cute.

I laid it flat and after trimming what had previously been the straps, I pinned the bodice that had become the new “collar with ties” to the actual cape. I put in some pleats to match up the width of the “bodice” to the “body”.

Then using contrasting purple thread, I sewed the previously pinned pleats to the bodice. To finish it off I added some purple sequined trim (I had found a huge bag of trim and ribbon at the Goodwill last year for $5.99).  Ellie loved it, so I was happy – even if it wasn’t something that I could sell or give away as a gift! I’ll have to try to get a better photo at some point…she literally wore the darn thing all day, with numerous outfits! Definitely makes me happy to make HER so happy!

 

I’m hoping to pull myself together enough tomorrow to write about the “real” stuff that happened today (interpret “real” as “fiasco”) – I’ve got photo evidence, so I’ll just let it speak for itself….