Cake Pops

Cake pops.
The new rage in the baking world (and I sense bridal industry will follow very quickly). Cake pops, bite-size pieces of cake covered in chocolate, can be shaped into different forms (cupcakes, hearts, etc) and decorated to fit a variety of themes (football, holidays). Extraordinarily cute, they are irresistible. But...

I have a love/hate relationship with cake pops. And right now, the hate is winning.

I've made cupcakes and cakes out the wazoo, but cake pops are a totally different monster. I love cupcakes, as long as they aren't overtly sweet and sugary. I go light on frosting, but cake pops require that frosting is mixed in BEFORE it's dipped in chocolate. You can practically feel the sugar rush right now! So, minus one to the cake pops because I won't eat them. Though my waistline thinks this is a good thing.

The next downside is the fact that they're covered in chocolate. I hate melting chocolate. Loathe it, really. And all because I suck at it. I can make buttercream frosting from scratch, cover a cake in an awesome homemade fondant, pipe a grass field in frosting, but when it comes to melted chocolate, I run for the hills. I can never get the consistency quite right and it's just so hard to work with. Any advice would be greatly welcomed!

I gave in again and took another shot at making cake pops. This time they turned out better (the cake balls came out much cuter, like little truffles), but I think I'll stick with cakes and cupcakes.

Artsy Fartsy

Dearest and I have been apartment hopping for about 4 years now and each place has always had the same boring white walls. And as always, I get the urge to paint them a different color (and every time I have to squash the urge). We've been in our current place for almost 2 years (longest run so far) and I've managed to bring some life to the walls. I made curtains for most of the windows- the black and white damask in the living room is my favorite.

This week I got the urge to paint again, so I decided to let out my crafty side and decorate. I took down a couple movie posters (we'll save those for the home theater room later) and used the space to create some fun, light (literally) art. This is what I came up with:

A collage of tissue paper flowers! I used different shades of pink and hung it above my little desk area.

I also poked around some used furniture places for a night stand. I found a small triangle shaped one, gave it a new coat of white paint, decorated it with black swirl designs and voila! Pretty cute, huh? It'll go nicely in our bedroom. :)