Back To The Drawing Board

It's time for Lord of the Dance! And by dance, I mean the Cakewalk! I never liked that silly dance show anyways. My oldest daughter is having an Irish Dance Birthday Party and wanted a cake to match. Well, there are no dancers, and no shoes on this cake, because I haven't gotten myself up to the task of learning fondant work. I chose to learn about royal icing instead. First, let's talk about plans. I'm not even going to show Lina's, partly because I don't know what she did with it. It was four tiers, with fondant irish dancers on the top and a second cake sculpted in the shape of a hard shoe on the bottom. Time, skills, and small children notwithstanding, it was a little much for a party of 10 girls to eat. Later, when I realized what size the cake actually would be, I scrapped any notion of irish dancers on top. I put Irish lace on the bottom tier, along with the words, Happy Birthday in uncial script (it's the same kind of calligraphy used in the Book o...

I was instructed on rather short notice to get myself a costume for my husbands' work costume party. I am as unwilling as my children to wear cheap plastic that parades as "cloth" as isn't even washable, so I turned to my closet for an answer. Spying my favorite old locket, which was missing a piece, I decided to find said piece, fix it, and be a flapper for Halloween. I used an old asymmetrical jersey skirt from Forever 21 and turned it sideways so that it was shorter in the front and longer in the back. I wore a lace tunic over it as well as a nude-colored tank that I bought forever ago and never wear because it's too tight around my ribcage and too loose around my waist. For the 1920s boyish figure look, I assumed it would work. Lace overlay was pretty popular. The lace tunic is really A-line, which made me look really bottom heavy when worn over the long skirt. So I tied a length of gold silk charmeuse from my fabric stash around my waist in a looped bow.  Th...