Baby shower

I co-hosted a baby shower last weekend for one of my good friends here in town. The baby is actually due in January, but because of vacation and travel schedules, holding it last weekend made the most sense. The baby is known to be a boy, and the room will be decorated with an owl theme.

Here's the mother-to-be. Have you ever seen a more lovely pregnant woman?Natalie helped me clean and decorate the house.Here are some more decoration shots:We also had flowers and, obviously, balloons.And there was food.And cake.I made the cake. I really wanted to make a shaped owl cake, but I didn't want to use fondant. So that was sort of hard. I'm going to try and note what I did here, just in case I ever want to do a project like this again. So, I baked the cake (the "chocolate is better than ?" cake, ironically) on Thursday, lining the pan with parchment so I'd be sure it came out in one piece. I let it cool completely on a rack, brushed it with vanilla water to keep it moist and then turned it back into the pan and wrapped that tightly with several layers of saran-wrap. I overnighted it in the microwave.

Friday night, after Natalie had gone to bed and I'd decorated the house, I turned to decorating the cake. I put it right on the serving board, and edged that with wax paper. I brushed it again with vanilla water. I'd deliberated long and hard about frosting, assembly timing, etc. - even going so far as to consult some more serious and skillful bakers than I (however, just like in writing a book, all errors and omissions are mine, and mine alone). I was torn between a caramel-ish buttercream, and quick-set true cooked caramel frosting. I went for the quick-set because I knew the color would be a rich, lovely brown and because with the pouring and quick-set-ness, I wouldn't have to worry about chocolate crumbs getting in my frosting. True 'dat. Alas, the rather unsurprising part about quick-set frosting is that it, uh, sets quick. And I'm a pokey decorator. So this was not the best combo. I had to enlist Mike to help me apply the slivered almond feathers before the frosting set. Once I figured out, though, that I could stick the almonds in at an angle, rather than just rest them on top, things got a little better.

So, I used slivered almonds for the feathers, coconut for the bust, a snickerdoodle, half an oreo, and a chocolate chip for the eyes. The "nest" was made from pretzel sticks. In retrospect, I could have made the nest look a little neater by using some peanut butter or making a little more frosting from scratch. But it was midnight, and I was tired, so I just sort of jammed the pretzel sticks in willy-nilly. I had also reserved cake triangles to be proper ears, but I totally forgot about them until the frosting was much too hard. So the owl got a strange pretzel / almond ear. Oh well.

Next time, I might think about using a buttercream frosting, although I dislike crumbs in the frosting (I have heard about freezing the cakes or doing a crumb coat to prevent this, but I've never tried either of these strategies).

The cake overnighted again in the microwave, uncovered this time. And at the party, everyone commented how moist it was, which was a big relief since I had been pretty worried about it drying out. And the decorations weren't soggy, either.

We also had presents.And guests and games.What's a party without favors?And, yes, there was knitting.

Ponies

Well, autumn continues its gradual arrival here - we've had a few cold days and a few mornings where there's frost on the grass, but it's also still warm enough to walk wearing a t-shirt and to need to run the air conditioning occasionally (take that, rest of the country!) My volunteer peach tree is still going strong, so I'm going to try and get it in the ground before the cold comes; I hear our first real cold snap is coming over Thanksgiving weekend.

So how have we been making hay while the sun shone? With the horses, of course! Last weekend, we actually went to a polo match. I know, seriously. Mike had a few students who are on the polo team. It's actually more like the polo club since I don't think that polo is an NCAA sport, but whatever. His students were playing in a weekend tournament just south of us. So, Saturday afternoon, we drove down to see them. Natalie loved the big kih-kahs!Sorry for the photo quality - not being a horse person and not knowing much about horses, I was afraid to use the flash around them. At least you really get the sense of Natalie excitedly kicking her feet here, right?

Alas, neither Mike nor I knew anything about the rules of polo, so watching the matches was a bit like trying to divine the grammar rules of a foreign language. I do know, though, that hats are de rigueur when one takes in the ponies.What else? We clearly have a toddler on our hands now! She'll still crawl a little, but we're definitely seeing more walking than crawling, and her walking is becoming steadier and stronger.Natalie also got her second haircut. Mike took her this time - apparently, there wasn't too much crying, mostly because the live-action cat-dog film Milo and Otis was on the DVD player at the kiddie haircut place. As an aside, we're definitely purchasing that movie and plan to pull it out on our upcoming airplane trips.Natalie remains adorable.Natalie doesn't have that many words, but sometimes we get real glimpses of how much is going on in her little brain. She can now point to her hair and her belly button. Oddly, those aren't things we taught her, but the one body part I have been trying to teach her (nose), she is far less consistent about doing. She'll also go get items that Mike and I mention in conversation with each other (phone, book, etc.) and bring them to us. The other day, Mike mentioned something about the baby gate, and this sent running to it! Last, today we were playing on the floor and she brought me one of my mittens from the basket by the door where we keep our hats, gloves, and scarves. I put the mitten on and started tickling her with it. She then toddled back to the basket, pulled out all the other items looking for the second mitten, found it, and brought it to me. How darling is that?

However, her cuteness is clearly a survival mechanism since she's been waking up earlier and earlier since the time change. Usually, one of us will go and get her and play with her for an hour or so, and then bring down to our bed for a family cuddle. At 6:15am or so. She'll flip and flop in our bed and even lie down and suck her thumb, but there's no going back to sleep, alas.As the polo story above suggested, Natalie still calls all animals "kih-kahs" (kitty cats). She will occasionally say "da" (dog) for a dog, but mostly they get called "kih-kah", too. The other day, though, we found ourselves at Petsmart (no, we don't have a pet; no, we're not getting one) and I got to show her some real kih-kahs. Petsmart was seriously better than the zoo! We could get closer to the animals, they were more active, Natalie could see the animals, and it was way less overwhelming for me!(We also saw the fish, but that made for less compelling pictures)

I've got another post coming soon about the baby shower I hosted this weekend, and then I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures and videos of Natalie and our Thanksgiving guests, the Michigan grandparents and Aunt Jenny.

Goats and Birthdays

Mike's birthday was this week. His actual birthday fell mid-week, sandwiched in between working and teaching days. We still celebrated with a little bakery cake and some take-out Thai food, though.

We had a proper celebration this weekend. How else to wish the greatest husband and father I know a very happy birthday?Ooops. Wait. No. Let me try again.The cake is Best Yellow Layer Cake with chocolate sour cream frosting. I really liked the cake, but I didn't actually like the frosting. I found it simultaneously too tangy and too light. I'd totally make the cake again, but I'd use something that yielded a richer, fudgier, darker frosting.

On the topic of sweet, here are some Natalie pictures:Her walking is also improving greatly, although she still will drop to a crawl if she wants to get somewhere quickly.The other big thing we did this weekend - other than celebrate daddy - was to visit the goat farm (ha, ha, I know, right?). Anyway, our local artisanal goat cheese dairy was having an open house / farm. So we drove the hour up there, for the chance to pet the goats and wander around. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time!

Halloween & Grandma Pat's visit

I'm overdue for a post about Halloween. I'll cut to the chase: Natalie was a Detroit Tiger. She was adorable.Here's a (blurry) shot of Natalie's Halloween socks.The hat (to the extent that she'll keep it on) is also the gift that keeps on giving.Mike was actually out of town for Halloween, but my mom was in town. So at least I wasn't the only one appreciating my pumpkin.While Daddy was gone, we did some fun things with Grandma Pat. We went to the Japanese Garden.And we took Grandma Pat for barbecue.My mom and I also made some applesauce cake. The cake was fine, but the cinnamon cream cheese frosting was amazing. Also, the cake took forever to cool - so long that I actually went to bed and frosted it and ate it the next day. Guess what I dreamed about that night?And here's Natalie with her belated birthday present from Grandma Pat. Is this not the cutest little ride-along / push-along toy?In closing, someone asked me if Natalie was always so good-natured. Mostly. However, I present to you two pictures, taken two minutes apart.I know! So sad, right? Rest assured, she quickly recovered. I won't leave you on such a cranky note, though. Here are a few more pics.(I especially like how this one shows off both the sweater knit by my grandmother and the hat knit by me [years ago, in Japan, when I was teaching myself to knit - who'd have thought I'd ever have such a little doll to wear it!])