It's Spring!

Or at least as far as I'm concerned, it is.  In my world here in northern NJ, spring started over the weekend.  Not because of the rising temperatures, though that certainly makes me happy, but because Saturday night the clocks changed!  It wears me out, more than you'd think a one-hour time change should, but it also makes me happy to be leaving the office in daylight.

And the other reason it started to feel like spring this weekend is because on Saturday was the first annual FLOW Green Fair (FLOW = Franklin Lakes, Oakland, Wyckoff), and I had a hand in it!  It was organized and hosted by the three environmental commissions, with my own commission chair and town's green team really spearheading it.  If you ask me, although of course as a first year event it had a couple logistical issues, it was a raving success.

I did two things for the fair, specifically.  The first was getting the president of the Northeast NJ Beekeepers Association (my local club) to take a booth and teach everyone about bees.  He had a lot of interest, of course.

And the second?  I spent the day face panting, of course!  I figured they had enough help with the environmental displays and organization, and it was something I could offer that others couldn't.  I was a hit.

Then again, so were the displays and the hip hopping fruit.

Halloween at Our House

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and Eric is good about humoring me.  I mean, he likes it too, but I'm pretty crazy about it.  Normally, we do a huge party on the closest Saturday, and to decorate, I take down all of the regular stuff and put up all Halloween.  I have a ton of Halloween decorations; I do Halloween the way some people do Christmas.  The movers when we got married and moved in together were making fun of how many boxes of Halloween stuff I have.  To give you an idea.

This year, we didn't do the party.  I was a little sad about it, but I was sick for a week, then Eric was sick for a week, then we were sort of OK, then Eric was sick for another week, and by the time we were both mostly feeling better it was way too close to the intended party to have time to properly decorate and shop and all.  So no party.

We did do the front yard, though.  Can't not do the front yard.

We had a ton of fun doing it up.  I'm hoping it'll encourage trick-or-treaters, since we had so few last year.

I know we had one thing we didn't have last year.  Or for many years before that now.  The  past several years, Halloween's temps have been in the 60s.  I love it, getting dressed up and sitting outside to hand out candy.

This year?  Snow.

You can't even see the spider in that one anymore!

Snow does not go with our haunted graveyard motif!  Sigh.  We had fingers crossed that it'd be melted by Halloween night.

Though we didn't host ours, we did go to a Halloween party on Saturday night.  I wore my Renaissance Faire garb.  Eric?  Eric has this terrific Venetian mask from New Orleans, and wanted a velvet cloak to go with it.  We went with velveteen, but I got to work.  I checked out these instructions and these, and used primarily the second ones.  I also took some dimensions from my Harry Potter cloak.

I changed 'em a bit, and cut 3 pieces for the body, each 55" long.  The top of the back panel, I made 10".  For the top of the front panels, I measured 30".  I made the bottom of the back panel the full 44" of the width of the fabric, and did the same for the front panels.  Then I cut the front one in half lengthwise, for 15" at the top of each and 22" at the bottom.

I cut two pieces for the hood, basically measuring by eye.  I sewed them together and hemmed around the face opening.

Then, I sewed each front panel to the back, and sewed on the hood, then hemmed around the body too.

I added a hook and eye closure.

And then a couple of buttons for looks.

I somehow misjudged the size and didn't make it as big around as I'd have liked.  I have no idea how that happened, and as it is I didn't have enough fabric purchased to make it any bigger.  So it's more of a cape that a cloak, but it worked.

He wore it for Halloween night too, to greet unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.

I was Hermione.

The girl working the register at Walgreens when I raced there for more candy said I had the perfect hair for it.

And Meg was a witch.

Oh, and on Sunday night one of the other attorneys in my office had a party to go to, so she borrowed my clown costume and came over for me to do up her face.  I'll have full photos from her later, but this is what I got.

How adorable is she?!

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The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

(... often go astray.)

This turned out to be not bad, despite my frustration levels and snappishness.  And Eric was great about it.

See, we again held our annual Mardi Gras in June party, which I posted about last year.  It's always a big hit, and the guest list keeps getting bigger and better.  This year, in addition to my traditional southern pecan pies, I decided to try my first ever topsy turvy cake, since I'd taken that class.

I knew I'd need practice.  Thing is, covering a styrofoam practice round with fondant is a lot easier than actual cake.  And with a topsy turvy cake, the tiers are cut with the sides angled inward.  Not easy.  But I want to be able to do cool cakes for my nephew's birthday and other events.  So this was my first, and we'll sort of consider it practice.

It started off well.  I chose red velvet, since it's Eric's favorite.

I piled up the layers into the two tiers, and cut 'em to shape.

So far so good.  Then I filled and crumbcoated them with a cream cheese frosting recipe I got from this blog.

And therein lies the problem.  Not the frosting or the recipe, because holy crow was it good!  The problem is that it's a very wet type of frosting.  And fondant just loves to absorb moisture.  So... yeah.  There I am trying to cover the cake with fondant I colored and rolled out nice and thin, and it's getting all wet and sticky while I'm trying to get it to lie smooth and flat.

Frustration makes me snippy.

And Eric was really so awesome.  He kept getting things for me, and taking trash away, and asking what he could do to help.  And I was kinda snarly.

See, this was my plan.

Nice sharp edges, which if you look at the cut, shaped, but uncovered cake, were successful at the time.  Feathers, beads, a mask.  And those squiggles were to be fleur de lis.

Yeah.

In the end, I fought through, and came up with this...

Not as smooth as I wanted, obviously, and I got too tired to do beads for the top tier too.  The fleur de lis were a little misjudged.  And it got kind of ... bulbous rather than sharp.  Well, I tried.  And it's not bad, I suppose, for a first attempt.  I am, I have to say, really happy with my gum paste mask and feathers.  This was the first time I ever made or used gum paste.  And I'm happy with the Mardi Gras beads around the bottom.

Just... I need practice.  I know that.  And never again will I do cream cheese frosting with fondant.

It was a hit anyway, friends wouldn't let me cut it until they took a sufficient number of photos.  And of course they devoured it.  We were left with this.

Don't worry, we ate it.  But what of the leftover cake, the parts I had to cut off to shape it?  No worries, those became red velvet cake pops!

Yum!

Leave it to me to start with dessert first.  We did have crawfish too, I promise.  What's Mardi Gras without crawfish?

And etouffee, still my favorite food in the world.  It was such a hit last year that we ordered five pounds of tail meat this year instead of one.

Also devoured.

And drinks and platters, corn and potatoes.

In addition to the bubbles, balls, and sidewalk chalk we had for the kiddos...

... my friend Emilie pulled out her face painting kit.  There was one request for a tiger, though, so Emilie suggested I take that one.

He is my friend's son, and was hysterical.  He proceeded to run around the party roaring at everyone!

And to finish up, the photo I call "Aftermath of a Party."

Another success, in the end!