The Colors of Freedom

Happy Birthday to the USA!!!

We celebrated with a trip to a nearby town to watch the fireworks, and I made a cake for the occasion (although I must admit I ran out of time on the official Independence Day, and made this a day later).  The kids still thought it was fun. 

I used 2 white cake mixes, and into the batter of one mix I poured a small 4 oz. box of cherry Jello powder.  The blue was just food coloring mixed into about 1/3 of the other white cake mix batter.  After all the layers were baked, I cut a circle out of the center of each red and white layer.  I tinted some of the stabilized whipping cream (the frosting) and mixed it with crumbled blue cake and gently packed the blue mixture into the center of the assembled cake (with the hole in the center), then frosted everything with the whipped cream frosting. 

It would have looked better with skinnier layers of the red and white cake (4 skinny layers of each color) but I had thoughtlessly frozen the layers prior to cutting them, so it was too tricky to try and cut skinny layers when they were frozen solid on the inside and rapidly thawing on the outside.  I should have sliced them before freezing the layers.  Ah, well - you get the Flag Cake idea anyway, right?  Hyrum was excited about the concept of a flag cake, although he informed me that the number of stripes was inaccurate.  Sorry, buddy, maybe next year I'll be closer to reality.  :-)

My dishes were very much into the spirit of July 4th, even though the rest of my house is still in utter chaos.

The dining room is the only place that is somewhat organized...although right now my table is a hospital bed for artwork that got smashed/broken during the move (thanks a lot, careless packers).  Sigh.  I thought about doing a post dedicated to all the furniture that got destroyed by the movers, but it would just make me angry all over again.  Suffice it to say that there is hardly a dresser or chair that didn't get damaged, either structurally (they SHOVED everything in the truck so hard that many joints, drawer glides, and casings were busted loose) and/or cosmetically (chipped paint, big dents and gouges).  To those of you who either HAVE to or CHOOSE to have movers move your things, may I offer 2 bits of advice:

1) Do NOT let them bring in a large crew to pack/prep/load everything in one day (there's no way to supervise a crew of 8-10 men to make sure they're treating stuff well)

2) When they load your things in the truck, have someone stand there the whole time and make sure they're not killing everything they cram in there.

If we had done those 2 things, our bedroom dresser would not have a crack the entire length of the dresser top (they split it in half, and dented the living daylights out of it, don't ask me how), nor would all of my carefully refinished vintage furniture have suffered so horribly.  And my picture frames would still be intact, and the glass wouldn't have broken, and my artwork wouldn't have been damaged. 

ANYWAY, that was the post I was NOT going to write.  Oops.  Back to Independence Day...

I found these awesome plates at WorldMarket.com, aren't they great?  There isn't wall space for a Wall O'Plates in our new dining room, but I was able to squeeze these in beside the china hutch.   They make me smile every time I see them, bless their little ceramic souls.

I'll post some current pics of our new house soon, we're in the middle of a bunch of projects right now.  I know, I know, as if I didn't get my fill of fixing up/changing things in the house we just moved from.......

I'm determined to get this house fixed up/changed at the BEGINNING of our 4 year stay, rather than at the end.  I've had it with doing things at the end just in time for us to move out - and I'm REALLY hoping that this will be our last move for a LONG time.  This past transition has nearly killed me...at least emotionally.  Okay, I'm pretty wiped out physically too.  After 7 moves in 12 years, I'm done.  Should I knock on some wood now?

Comments

[Wendi Lane]

I LOVE the cake and it looks so fun!! Aidan also said the same thing about the cake that Grandma Lane made for the 4th...smart kids :)

The new plates are AWESOME and just so fun...LOVE Them, Love Them!!!

As the packing thing....I have my own not so lovely memories of using movers a few times and that is why we now do it....hang in there!!

I know what you are saying about moves and I told Jim after are 13th or 14th last year I am done for a while...I will not say forever because that will mean another move is on it's way :)

[Kathryn Moster]

I like how the cake turned out! So cool! The fireworks were fun even if we couldn't hear the next day! :0