Monday, August 31, 2009

WHAT A WEEKEND!

First, let me repeat the four confessions of love:

1) God is perfect love.

1 John 4:18
2) Nothing can separate me from God's perfect love.
Romans 8:38-29

3) God pours His perfect love into my imperfect heart.
Romans 5:5
4) Accessed, I can love anyone through anything.
Philippians 4:13


What a good way to start off a glorious morning! I need to keep this in the forefront of my mind today, tomorrow, and the rest of the week! If God can be for me, who can be against me??? HA! Take that.

So . . . this weekend. I did finish the bulk of BBS quilt. Yay-rah! There's still the sashing that needs to go on, which will add about nine inches on all four sides. I'll get there! I promised a picture, so here it is. Phew!


I also said I was going to make that chocolate cake on Sunday. I had to laugh. I consider myself a fairly decent hand in the kitchen. I've been at it for a long, LONG time. I've baked cakes from scratch many times. I love making new desserts and trying new recipes. *Never* have I had such a tough time as I have with the two cakes I've tried from the Mitford cookbook. Egads! The first cake looked simple beautiful, but tasted just mediocre. This second cake absolutely FELL APART! I do not know what happened. I did everything the way the recipe said to do it; I used the best and freshest of ingredients; I waited until the cake had thoroughly cooled before trying to position and frost it. Nevertheless, it simply fell apart. It looked like a huge earthquake fault line had run through the stinking thing! No, really. It looks like California sliding off the rest of the continent. Just look at it!

But oh. my. goodness. It tasted HEAVENLY!! I am not kidding, it was goooooood! The cake was feather-light, and the frosting was . . . well . . . ganache. My favorite! It really doesn't get any better than that. Even Todd agreed that it was simply terrific. I had to take pictures to show; it was only fair. Besides it's great for a laugh!!


It really was rather timely, too. The lastest issue of Eating Well came out this week. The first page I turn to when I get a new issue is the back page, which always has a funny story-like editorial on it. This month's story is about a girl who is a great cake baker and attempts to bake a cake for her boyfriend, who cannot do glucose and sugar and all kinds of things. Anyway, she uses all these special ingredients, bakes the cake and begins to frost it. As she spreads frosting, the cakes begins to crumble underneath her efforts. She piles the frosting on to hopefully 'glue' the cake together
, but to no avail. I laughed when I first read it, but I'll admit, I really couldn't envision the scene. I must have read it with a tad of superiority, for God truly gave me empathy in my own mess. I was laughing as hard as my cake was cracking! Julia Child I'm not.

But let me repeat . . . it was GOOD!


This is a shot of last night's sunset, which was simply gorgeous:

In case you're wondering about my plethora of photos today, I got a new camera yesterday, and it's so much fun! It's a little Canon, with a big BITE! It's got lots of pre-set options, one of which is "SUNSET". I just happened to have found this option as the sun was setting in the backyard.

Opportunity taken!

I also took pictures of myself, Todd, us together (using the timer and a cool little flexi-pod that came with it), and Merlin!

Then I went back and took pictures of my first paper-pieced project. I actually took a class at Patches & Stitches and this was our classroom project. I took my completed pieced center and made it into a pillow. Cute, non? It was a great class -- the teacher was Barbara Black, who I really enjoy -- and I've paper-pieced several times since then.

This morning I checked on one of my favorite blogs, Mel's Own Place, and found out I had WON one of her giveaways from over the weekend! I am so excited!! Her button is further down on my blog on the left side. Check it out quilt lovers! She's lots of fun and a *fount* of information!
I think I may have ended my "cook your way through Mitford" phase. Yesterday rather did me in. Perhaps I'll focus on quilting and outfitting the RV for now. Goodness.

Carpe diem!

:)