kaaaaate's Profile

So someone in the Wilton website's comments section lists the following ingredients for "edible dough": "corn starch,corn syrup, water,veg oil, canola oil,citric acid,glycerin,food starch,alginate blend,cellulose gum, fd&c yellow#6,fd&c red#40,fd&c blue#1,potassium sorbate,natural and artificial flavor,acesulfame potassium, citric acid, sucralose."

Given that that sounds fairly inedible, I suspect it would be possible to make more-or-less any starchy or fondant-like paste and use this technique. (It also shouldn't be too hard to make a single very-elongated version of each letter instead of cutting and spacing individual ones and running the risk of not getting the words clear, but I suspect it would need trial and error.)

Anyway, this is an absolutely adorable cake idea!

What kind of electrical hardware is involved in turning something into a lamp? This is the kind of project I'd love to do, but I'm completely terrified of messing with wires. Silly, I know. Has anyone else done projects like this?

Ditto! My method has been to tape them together and then hide them behind the back of something with... more tape! Which, while functional (and invisible, for the most part), does make me feel kind of silly. Cord turtles look like a huge improvement.

I was really happy over November, though, when I finally got around to mounting a nice-looking three-outlet-and-USB-plugs extender to the underside edge of my desk via 3M and a short black outlet extender. The outlet extender? Taped to the bottom of my desk. Sigh. (But it works! No more crawling around to plug in the laptop etc. And the cords /are/ invisible. Unlike the mess on my Expedit desk.)

I'm now three or four days behind! Graaaad schoool...

I did some preliminary culling of books over the holidays, so I have a bit of a headstart (three boxes!), but I suspect I still ought to go through again and remove more. I recently got a new set of bookshelves, hoping they'd both hold the books stacked against the wall and offer me some open shelf space -- but they only did the former.

At least I don't have any media. Thanks, internet!

Also: I love the office photo at the top. Not only is it clean and modern and beautiful, you can tell someone actually works there: shoes on the floor and trash in the wastebasket. It made me happy.

My grandmother was a painter, and when I visited my parents for the holidays, my dad (also a painter) sent me home with a stack of nude figure drawings ("quick action sketches," so all done in a minute or 30 seconds at figure drawing sessions) she'd done over the years. They're quite large -- the paper is 18x24, and most of the drawings are sized to the paper -- and I want to frame several of them.

So... my dad suggested americanframe.com, and I'm a little terrified by the cost. I'd go with a cheaper option (especially since 18x24 is a standard poster size), except I need to use archival matting on these -- and I just now learned from reading some of the framing links here that I should be worried about static affecting the charcoal/graphite drawings. AGH, what do I do?

(Are all my posts this month going to be unnecessarily long stories flailing for help? That would be kind of depressing.)

Part of the problem with my own list is that a lot of the tasks -- especially organizational ones (papers! clothes! miscellaneous keepsakes! shoes! books, oh god the books! pantry stuff!) -- require furniture or organization containers that I don't have. While my budget-taste mismatch is an issue (I'd rather dither for ages and carefully stack books against the wall than get bookshelves I don't like, apparently), a much bigger problem is that I don't know how to drive, so I can't even pick up craigslisted items, make an IKEA run, or easily get a large plastic bin home from a store outside my neighborhood. While I've begged assistance from friends before, there's a limit to what's possible. Is anyone in a similar situation? Is there any hope (barring finally learning how to drive)?

If not, I guess I'll be continuing to use a carefully-concealed-and-covered cardboard box for an entry table. Argh.