Things I Like Today

1. The article in the Philly Inquirer about the splendid Lord Whimsy, whose bog and blog both fascinate me, and whose book has attracted the attentions of none other than Mr. Depp himself:
The article can be found at http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20080627_Lord_Whimsy_s_dandy_bog.html

His livejournal (livejournal!) can be found at
http://lord-whimsy.livejournal.com/

And if you are feeling particularly generous and wish to send me a copy of his book, you can purchase said tome at:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596911417/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_3/103-4339222-7307063?n=283155


2. The spectacular art of James Jean (whose web site, I must admit, I discovered while perusing the Lord's journal). Especially notice his fairy-themed works, which are decidedly more Froudian than Brownian, just the way I like my fairy art to be (though I have no end of love for Amy Brown, considering that, were I ever to meet a fairy, I would decidedly prefer to meet the kind that inspired her). The paintings strike a perfect balance of wicked, weird, sweet, and saucy.

His work can be found at:
http://www.jamesjean.com/

3. Ghiradelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix. We are in the midst of baking, arranging, decorating, landscaping, preparing, and general house over-turning for my sister's graduation party tomorrow. My mother recently presented me with several dozen brownies made from this mix to arrange attractively on a platter. Having sampled widely from the more unfortunate looking specimens (too ugly to serve to the guests, of course!), I can say with confidence that this is the most delicious, most succulent, most un-mixlike mix I have ever had the pleasure to taste.

A short list, indeed. But I have only been out of bed since 12:30 pm. Don't look at me like that! I've been up-and-at-'em at seven AM several days this week already. I need my beauty sleep if I am ever going to make up for the horrid picture in my last post. I promise I will soon provide a more acceptable portrait for those of you (if there are any) that have stumbled upon this blog without prior knowledge of its authoress.

EDIT: James Jean is also the artist who created the fairies on the gorgeous Prada Fairy bags, as well as other art for the ad campaign. The ninjavspenguin blog has a nice post with pictures of the ads:
http://www.ninjavspenguin.com/blog/2008/04/01/james-jean-pradas-spring-collection/

I don't want to sound greedy, but my birthday is coming up, and if anyone has 2,000 dollars lying around, I think you now know how to put it to good use.

Baking!

Lately, I've been really into cake baking and decorating. I'm still far from creating anything particularly stunning, but I continue to hope that one day I will wake up and realize that I am an accomplished pastry chef and cake decorator. I'll be sure to let you know when that day comes. In the meantime, I've been making a few earnest attempts.

Don gave me a fantastic and adorable book about cupcake decorating that I highly recommend. The designs range from quite easy to super difficult, and I've managed to find a few I can pull off:
http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Cupcake-Irresistibly-Playful-Creations/dp/0618829253

My first foray into the cupcake-decorating world began a few weeks ago, while I was still up at school. Don and I were attending a Mozart-themed party (cue the "music dork" comments), and so we wanted to make something festive to bring along. Here was the result. Please excuse both my tired appearance and my low skill level:


(Thanks to S. Goldfeather for the photo.)
The most exciting part was probably dying the icing. We used white icing only, but it is amazing the results that you can get from only four tubes of food coloring. The noteheads are junior mints. If you can't tell, the two little guys in the bottom of Don's pan are Mozart and Salieri. You can tell by their very distinctive hair styles.

My second attempt was more successful. More on that soon.