Trees and Dogs

I have two random things to share with you today so I thought I would lump them together into one post. 

First, in art class we carved lino blocks and printed the designs onto blue-striped IKEA tea towels. You can see them in the photos above - the green trees are mine and the red trees are my mom's. Have you ever done any printing? It is a very satisfying project.

I printed evergreen trees down the sides of the tea towel and then dipped a pencil eraser into silver paint and dotted the sky with stars (I'm sure you knew those were stars, right?)  It is a fun project and I like that you end up with a useful item.  I'm using mine as a table runner rather than a tea towel. 

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It was the husband's birthday last Friday and we celebrated on Friday with dinner out and on Saturday with lunch out with the family.

It was a significant birthday so the kids and I went all out and did some extra special things for him. One of the things we did was list all his accomplishments on a long paper. It was so long I hung it across the lights in the dining room. We had fun reading them together and adding more things we had forgotten to the list.

And the really big news is that the husband is getting a dog for his birthday. And no I didn't wrap a dog up in that big box on the table - it if filled with dog paraphernalia. The husband has wanted a dog since Juno passed away in February, but I have been reluctant to get another one because of the difficulties when you want to go away. There is always give-and-take in a marriage and since this was the husband's heart's desire it seemed the perfect time to give it to him (well the permission to get his heart's desire anyway, as getting a dog is turning out to be quite the process). 

A funny thing happened - on Wednesday I bought a dog collar to give him as a placeholder for the actual dog and tucked it carefully away. The next day I realized I had no idea where I had put the present (honestly, I can be so absent-minded sometimes) and the husband's birthday was the next day. So at lunch on Friday I had to run out and buy another placeholder. Since I was in the pet store anyway, I decided to buy a bunch of things like a dog bed and a leash and some food which is why the box was so big. 

Now we just need to find the right little dog - one that will fit the adorable coat and sweater I bought for it!

Beatles Birthday Cake

I like to make our birthday cakes rather than buying them - it is easier on the pocketbook, we prefer the taste of homemade icing, and I like that we can personalize the decorations.  When the kiddos were young I had a lot of fun making theme cakes, which I'll show you someday when I find the photos.  However, eventually the younguns reached an age when they didn't want cakes decorated like a lion or worse still with Barnie on it.   So then what is a Mom to do???  

The Beatles' Abbey Road Album cover in silhouette used as cake decoration

Kate recently had her birthday and I thought I would show you how I decorated her cake as it is an idea you can easily adapt to any interest.  Kate loves the Beatles so I thought I would use a silhouette of the Abbey Road album on the cake.  I Googled an image that I could print and cut out to make a stencil.   When I was icing the cake, I smoothed the icing down as much as possible so the stencil would lay flat on it and then I dusted icing sugar on top.  It wasn't a perfect job, but she loved it.

You can see the image I used to decorate the cake in the photo below (I printed an extra one for Kate as I knew she would want one to keep).

Kate knows her Beatles so well that she could name John, Ringo, Paul, and George in order from memory of the album cover alone.  Now that's a fan!


What's your favourite way to decorate a cake for adults (or young adults)?

Linked to Good Life Wednesday at A Beach Cottage

I'm Feeling the Love in a Little Blue Box

Yesterday was my birthday.  Which meant hubby and Kate made me some of this and...

I opened my other Tiffany box.

 

My husband and daughter went to New York City just before Christmas and brought back three Tiffany boxes.  One for Kate and two boxes for me - one wrapped with a red ribbon and one with a white one.  I opened the red ribbon box at Christmas as it was obviously decorated with a seasonal ribbon, but I saved the white ribbon box.  I realize that it seems strange not to open both of the Tiffany boxes that were under the Christmas tree for me, but they looked so pretty that I decided to wait until my birthday to open one of them (it did help that my birthday was only a month and a bit away).   Several of you have emailed to ask me what I got in the Tiffany box, so I thought I would let you all know.

Inside the last Tiffany box was the sweetest little crystal bowl decorated with stars.

 

It is just perfect in all respects - shape, size, design, and origin.  I have yet to decide what I'm going to use it for, but this is what is in it now.  Pretty perfect too, eh!

 

 

My daughter bought herself a souvenir from Tiffany's.  She chose a little ceramic Tiffany box that is modelled on the iconic blue box.  It looks adorable in her room on top of a stack of blue boxes - one Tiffany's and one Birk's (the Canadian equivalent to Tiffany's) and will always remind her of the wonderful trip they had to celebrate her graduation from high school.

 

At Christmas I opened my first Tiffany box and in it was a pretty little ceramic box with sketches of Manhattan around the Tiffany Store.  I love the details on it. 

On the side were more little sketches of New York scenes.

Seeing the Brooklyn Bridge always reminds me of my little corner of Manhattan which I'll tell you about it in a post tomorrow.