Complaint Box

Since we got the news about little Kimchi, we've kinda been on cloud nine but now that the dust is settling, I've found it necessary to open the old complaint box. As always, if you leave you own, which I hope you do, make sure no one gets their feelings hurt. Today's complaint is for a special someone I've got my eye on.

Dear ex-con neighbor,

Stop begging to cut our lawn for $5 because you need to go to the 7-11 to get your 40oz. My lawn is the size of a stamp and I can cut it in about 10 minutes, which if you do the math, works out to $30/hr. Also, stop harassing the other normal neighbors with the same query. We saw you accost and then DEMAND that the new guy across the street let you cut his even though he was literally in the middle of cutting it himself. You ran all the way over, leaving the constant redneck front yard party you always seem to be hosting up to their own devices, and took the mower out of his hand. I do not care for this. Also, stop going into other people's backyard to "borrow" stuff when they aren't home. We all talk and we know what you do when we're at work. Yeah, work. It's this new thing that people do instead of sitting in their front yard all day. I know you've tried it once or twice but just think, if you stick with it, maybe one day you can move out of your mom's house since you're almost 40.

Stay classy,
Me

P.S. -Please put a shirt on.

My hand hurts from the filling out of boxes

Well, the paperwork is done. We are heading to the notary today and then to FedEx tomorrow and off they will go. Yikes! They've been telling us that we have about a 3-6 month wait from this point before we get the call to travel, but I spoke to a family that just got their baby 2 weeks ago and they said they only waited 3 months. Holy lord that is fast. You know, this whole thing is so freaking surreal and now we're panicking because we have no nursery and no gear and no idea about how to take care of a wee baby because they don't come with an instruction booklet. I checked. I don't know if I mentioned this or not but we've decided to go to Korea and get him instead of having him brought here. Or as we say in my house, we're going to do carry-out instead of delivery. OH SNAP! Why do I keep associating this baby with food? Because I have a problem, that's why. Anyway, that's where we stand right now. Supposedly if we're going to get another picture, we'll get it in about 3-4 weeks from now so let's keep our fingers crossed. I'm sure this kid looks nothing like the picture we have anymore and I want to make sure I pick up the right one. I KEED, I KEED.

Technical Difficulties/UserError

Well, I had high hopes of getting my cake blog up and running last week but that just didn't seem to happen. It's about 90% ready to go so keep yer pants on a little longer. I WILL have it up an running by the end of the week. Maybe.

Adoption Roundup

Awww...you guys made me cry with all your sweet comments. Thank you. So, a couple new things to report. First, we got our packet of paperwork. It's big and scary and I don't understand half of what it all says but we got it anyway and plan on spending our Saturday night knee deep in government forms. Oh yeah baby, government forms. It's bizness time. Second, we have decided that instead of having hm brought here, we are going to travel to get him. I'm totally scared but I think it's better for him as far as adjusting later and it's good for us to meet his foster mother and see where he lives and how he's cared for first hand. It's REALLY far away. I'm pretty sure there won't be anything there I can eat so I'm going to turn vegetarian just so I don't accidentally eat an eyeball or something. No offense to the fine people of Korea. I won't even eat a chicken McNugget so it's not you. I am looking forward to the shopping because we read that there is a HUGE shopping district that has everything you could imagine. We're only there for 72 hrs. so I have a lot to cram in. Then there's the flight home. 20 hrs. on a plane with a baby I just met and who probably thinks I'm the worst person in the world for taking it from it's foster mother. Yeah, that's going to be really fun.

Lastly, and mostly, we have chosen a name. We've decided on Max Genaro for his first and middle. No last name in case you're a psychopath. It's the first name we chose years ago and every time we would think we liked another one, we always came back to Max and Genaro is a family name from my dad's side. So there it is.

I would also like to point out the gigantic outfit he is wearing in that picture. That and that hair. That shit is precious.

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! HOLD ON TO YOUR BRAINS!

This is the day this blog was made for. This is the day that we've been waiting on for over 3 years. This is the day.


People, we got a baby.



Yes, you heard that right, WE GOT A BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Here is little Kimchi.


He is 4 1/2 mos. old and obviously he is totally effing adorable and OF COURSE his name is not Kimchi. That would be silly but you'll just have to wait a while until we decide what to call him. I can't even begin to explain the whirlwind we have been through in the last few days. When we got the call I didn't believe that it was true and of course I had rehearsed how it would go down in my head like a million times and it went nothing like that, my version being quite a bit more dramatic of course but it was still very surreal. At this point, we are waiting on a ginormous packet of paperwork to arrive so we can get it filled out and back to the office so they can start his visa processing. We are on a 3-5 month timeline at this point. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! Holy crapola. There is still a possibility that he will be home for Christmas, which would totally rule and we'd have to write a song about it because it would rule that much. We'll keep you posted on how things proceed and we'll relay info as we get it.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us through this. It has been a loooooong and arduous process and we couldn't have done it without all the support we've gotten from our friends and family. You guys rock.

New Blog

Attention readers.......all 9 of you. Hold on to your hats because I'm in the process of launching yet another blog site! WHOOPEE. It's going to be cake-centric, so no funny business or long boring stories about what I ate for breakfast or adoption news, so BE WARNED. Instead of posting cakes on both sites, which is WAY too time consuming and I'm a high powered designer now and I have no time for these types of shenanigans, I'm going to give you a heads up here to let you know to go there to see the latest cakey wonders.
It's called http://www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com/, which as you can probably figure out, is the name of my cake company which technically does not yet really exist. I'm sure you're all JUST THRILLED to have yet another place to waste your time so you're welcome. It should be up and running and full of fun by the end of the week. Maybe.

Head Movies

Sorry for the lack of posts lately but we've had a lot going on. I'm on my second full week at work and it's going pretty well. I can't really explain it but I feel like I've been here way longer than I really have.That's how nice the people are. Well, most of them. There's this ONE GUY...but we won't get into that. Anywhays, I have Autocad training this week, which is nice because I need to refresh my brain on it and I get a change of scenery for two days BUT, the training place is a 40 min. drive from my house (longer w/traffic) , and that's when the sucking starts. Oh well. Duty calls. I'm in my actual office now, which was nice and unexpected and I have three giant windows and they even made me a little seating area so I pretend I'm a dentist and that's my waiting area. I'm going to get some Highlights, Redbook and a Reader's Digest to put out there because that's the crap my dentist has.They keep bugging me to bring in pictures and stuff to really make it MY office but I can barely remember my lunch every morning let alone a bunch of decorations. I frequently wonder how the hell I got this gig in the first place. What's not cool is that this building is 7000 years old and there is no A/C vent in my office so it's HOT. Like ass sweat hot. I would have to deduce that it will also be just as cold in the winter but that's fine. I love to dress in layers and I just bought a sweater wrap type thing at H&M this weekend that I'm dying to wear and that will be perfect and the fact that I bought a sweater when it's 85 out is not weird at all.

I didn't just waste my weekend buying up sweaters, either. Nope, we went to the movies again! Hurrah. Two movies in two weekends. That might be a record for us. This time it was "Tropic Thunder," which despite my hatred for all things Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller, was HIGH-larious. It's basically a movie about the making of a movie about a fake Vietnam POW rescue. It was laugh out loud funny. Seriously. I laughed out loud. I know there was a bunch of hoopla about it being offensive to those who are mentally challenged, and it was offensive but in a Family Guy kind of way and goddammit it was SO FUNNY and so appropriate for the character that you should just go see it.

IT MAKES MY EYES RAIN.

Wino Forever

Jeff's boss' birthday was the other day so he asked me to make a cake for him. His boss is a pretty cool guy and he's into things like art and wine and fancy stuff so I took some inspiration from one of my cake books and made him a wine bottle cake. It was double the fun for me because I got to also design the fake wine label. As much as I enjoy my new job, I do kinda miss designing stuff like that and I'm pretty much too lazy to do it on my off time so there's that. Anyway, here's the finished product.

We had a near catastrophe at 6am when Jeff realized that one of the sides has literally fallen off during the night. We had to do emergency surgery with some royal icing but it thankfully the patient made it through. This cake has turned out to be one of my favorites because while it's a crazy weird cake, it isn't bursting with squiggles or bright colors or pot roast or anything (NOT THAT THOSE THINGS ARE BAD) so it seems more elegant than some of the others. And it was delicious.

I am de batman

So I went to see the Dark Knight last weekend. Jeff and I are not really movie people. We watch the occasional movie here and there but we don't exactly rush to the theater to see anything. The last movie I saw was Sex and the City and I spent most of the time trying to refrain from getting up and smacking the women around me who thought it was perfectly acceptable to gab throughout the ENTIRE movie. One woman even began to sing during the part where Carrie watches "Meet Me In St. Louis." Seriously. They also came all dolled up as though they were in the movie, which made me want to run screaming for the hills. IT'S DARK IN THERE, LADIES. No one could see your boobs falling out of your tube dress and quite frankly, I don't think that any of us, including the requisite 9 gay guys really gave a crap about what you looked like.

Oh wait, back to the Dark Knight. According to the internets, this is supposed to be the GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, so I had some pretty high expectations. We went with my sister and Brother and my little sister Jessica. Jess is leaving for college next weekend so it was our little farewell gathering with her. Jeff and I met them all at the theater and soon we found out that we were the only ones out of our group that hadn't seen the movie yet. You mean to tell me that we were going to a movie, on an 80 degree day in August, that everyone except for the two people that care the least about movies had already seen? Excellent. Anyway, the best part of the whole thing was that there were only 8 other people in the entire theater. I think I would like for this to happen every time I venture to the movies. After 17 previews and a Coke commercial, we finally saw The Dark Knight. I was worried that I would be lost since the last Batman I saw was Michael Keaton ( I am OLD) but thankfully the plot wasn't exactly complicated. Overall I didn't really think it was THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. It was worth my $6.75 matinee price because it was pretty entertaining but would I see it again, um, no. Maybe on cable or TBS or something. Was Heath Ledger the second coming of Jokers? Um, no. He was good, yeah, but he wasn't AWESOME. He effectively played a weirdo, which may or may not have been a stretch. I certainly don't think his performance would be heralded as so great if he hadn't recently left us. Harsh, yes. True, yes. Christian Bale is super hot and I would not kick him out of bed but he was a bit wooden as Bruce Wayne and I can't understand why they made him speak like he had laryngitis as Batman but whatever, cool suit and batpod thing and so on. The rest of the cast was actually quite good but I love Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in most things so that was kind of a given for me. Anyways, I give it two thumbs sideways. It was entertaining, but would have been better if they had shaved about an hour off the run time and made Batman speak like a human.

TGIF

Ahoy mateys! So this was week one of many (I hope) at my new job. So far I am really happy with the people and the place. I was pretty much thrown head first into the fray within 20 minutes of getting there on my first day so it's been pretty crazy. I've mostly been doing drawings and I'm going to try to re-teach myself Autocad this weekend (pray for me). I don't have much more to say because I know people get fired for saying shit about their jobs and while I COULD tell some interesting stories, I'll reserve them for another time. Maybe.

I have a cake to start on this weekend so I'll post pics next week. I have several more orders in the hopper so prepare your eyes for their magical feast.

Can I have just one more day?

Well, today is my last day as a free-wheeling, unemployed ar-TEEST because at 7:30am tomorrow, I begin my new job. I'm filled with a mixture of blinding fear, excitement and a little bit of gas, the latter of which probably has more to do with the giant bowl of edemame I just ate for breakfast than my new job. Anyway, I've spent my last morning of freedom sleeping in, eating soybeans, watching the E! True Hollywood Story on Lionel and Nicole Richie and downloading dancehall reggae from iTunes. (WAIT. If Jeff is reading this, then honey, I spent the morning cleaning the house.) I'm actually quite nervous as to what lies ahead for me. I've spent the last 4 years either working for myself, temping or working somewhere part-time while I've been in school, so it's been hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that this is a long-term full time gig. This is some grown-up shit right here. Hold me.

He should mow that grass for me

Well, the epic cake weekend is over. Cake #3 was for my mom Jan and my stepdad John's joint birthday/anniversary, which Jan calls their "birthiversary." I went a more traditional route with just a rectangle, but I decided to make 2D decorations along with 3D versions of both of them. I thought it was pretty dang cute.



My mom has a corvette convertible and John restores tractors or something so I decided to make them out of fondant. My favorite part is the little cop 'stash that John has. SO cute. Here are a few closeups of a few of the elements.



This was a big weekend chock full of gumpaste and modeling things out of fondant, neither of which I had really ever done so I'm very pleased with how all the cakes came out. It was a lot of good practice, which is great because I have a few showers and a couple more birthdays coming up in the next few months to prepare for.

Horton Heard A Who

Cake #2 of this epic cake weekend was delivered yesterday. First off, how this thing did not fall down I'll never know. It was my first wonky cake and as per usual, I didn't follow instructions and left out a few supports. Lesson learned. This cake was for my best friend Liz's birthday. She was having a gathering at her house and there was going to be a lot of kids there so I thought that both she and they would get a kick out of something wacky so here you go.

I borrowed a few techniques from a few books and mushed them together and it came out pretty cool. I also popped my gumpaste cherry and now I love working with it. Why was I so scared of gumpaste? Because I'm ridiculous. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't like it because it's more cakey and doesn't look like a wine bottle or a pot roast or something (although both of those things would be really cool cakes. NOTE TO SELF) but everyone liked it and the kids thought it was super rad and kid's don't lie. Mostly. Anyway, I have one more cake to go for tomorrow and then I have to spend the next week designing and making greeting cards. I'm going for pretty and bizarre, which is not a traditional combo but I'm going to try to make it work. I'm entering them in the Rock N Roll Craft Show here in November and they are only taking artist submissions until Sept 8, (who knows if they'll take them) so I gotta get crackin'.

doggy cake

I'm in the midst of an epic cake weekend but I have 13 minutes to spare. First and foremost, I want to thank commenter Allie, from www.alliesanswers.com for nominating us for The Awesome Site Award. Allie, you are so sweet and I love when you comment and your site is awesome. Aside from the cool graphics, it's eco-friendly and that's good for us all. Thanks again and I'll make you a cake if you ever come to St. Louis.



Secondly, cake one of three of this epic cake weekend was delivered last night. I am currently working #2, which needs to be done in about 2.5 hours so I can take it to my friend Liz's birthday party. As usual, hell has officially broken loose and I'm behind. I can't say anything about the cake because it's a surprise but I'll post pics tomorrow. Here's the dog cake from last night that my friend Gwen got for her friend Britt's birthday.


She likes dogs so I threw her a bone. ZING!


Here are some construction shots because you people seem to like them. I know it looks gross but it's just chocolate and I'm messy so get off my back.



I hope she didn't take any bull on her birthday. TIP YOUR WAITER! Seriously, I'm about to go cake-insane so I gotta go.