Flower Arrangement

So last night I went to Michael's for the cake decorating class. Just before the class started, I met Jen to pick out some flowers to decorate her cake with. She wanted some calla lilies, and some light butter colored roses, and some other small filler flowers. So we picked them out, and now I am not entirely sure what I am going to do to with them. I know that I need to arrange them in a gentle curve/slope so they will go down the side of her three tier cake. I just am looking at the flowers and not really seeing it in my head, and so I don't know where to start. I think I will need to think about this for a couple of days then start working on it. I want to have the flowers arranged long before I start baking the cakes.

Since the reception is on the 20th, I thought I would bake the cakes on the 15th. This means that I should probably get this thing together this weekend and see where I am from there. I will have to post a picture when I finally finish the arrangement, as well as when I finish the cake.

Cake Decorating II

So I have started a cake decorating class. I am a bit more excited to start the next class. This is because the accountant in me really likes the price of the second class. It will be only $7.50. So this will be great. I got into this class when it was 1/2 off. So I only paid $21.00 for this one, and apparently they are running a better special for the July classes. On top of that, I get a $10 coupon if I take the next class back-to-back with the current one I am in. Plus, I get to get a copy of the current weeks coupons to the Michael's store. This next week, I can take 50% off one item. Now I just have to find the ONE item I want to take the 50% off of.

One thing about this class that I wasn't expecting was that I would have to make a cake every week. I am not sure why I didn't think that would be expected. I think I thought that since it was a 4 week class, we would just be making flowers the whole time, and possibly make one cake on the last day. However, nope. I am expected to make a cake every week and two batches of icing. Here I am trying to lose weight, and then I go and sign up for a class that will have sugar in front of me. Gurrrr!

So the instructor wants us to bring in our cakes while they are frozen. I live over a 1/2 hour away. How in the world, in 100 degree heat, will I be able to do that. I already have a cooler in my car so I can put my cold stuff in their when I go shopping. However, it isn't cold enough to keep a cake frozen. Anyway, the crazier question is when am I going to bake these cakes. I have a saying that I don't turn my oven on between June and September. It is way too hot here to be baking. I guess I will just have to suck it up and bake. Perhaps I should bake three whole layered cakes at once and put them in the freezer. This way I will only have to heat up my house the one day.

So what I was thinking was that I am going to have to find a boy or boyz that will take a cake a week off my hands. :-) Perhaps I can figure out where the missionaries live and drop a cake off to them once in a while. The class ends at 8:30, and it is basically right across the highway from where they live (or where they used to live a couple of years ago). This would be an easy thing to do.

Well enough griping and complaining. It is past my bedtime. :-)

Talents

It is a bit amusing that whenever there is a talk at church about talents, no one can think of any talents they have. I have a hard time saying that I have many talents. I know that I can do things, but since I do them, I can see all the flaws in them and compare it to what I perceive others can do and do better. For instance I can play the piano. However, I don't think that I play very well. I have about 10-15 hymns I can play, and the rest I stumble through. So when asked if I play the piano, I am a bit nervous to say yes in case they ask me to play something I don't know how.

Then, I can sure bake a mean batch of chocolate chip or sugar cookies. I am not afraid of saying this. I know they are good. Quite frankly, I have an ego about my chocolate chip cookies. They are really good. Thank you Sharlie for the main recipe that I then tweaked a little. My sugar cookies also are good, and they are just like the Lofthouse cookies. So close in fact, someone thought they had actually been purchased.

Then the cake decorating. I know I am able to do this, but I feel that it is only good enough for family birthdays (not that I get a lot of practice where I am at). So when I was asked to do a cake for someones wedding, I was a bit scared. I told her that I wasn't that great and the cake would be far from perfect. She doesn't seem to mind. Someone actually called me in February this year for their birthday. They wanted lime green, pink, and other colors and some stripes. Here is a picture. I look at this, and can see a couple of problems with this, but when I gave it too them, they said that it was exactly what they were hoping for and thought it was beautiful.

Then a couple of years ago, I made a wedding cake for a co-worker. She had already had a "religious" wedding, and was now getting married legally. So since she had, had the big wedding already, I did her cake. With this cake, I see the problems of it being a little lopsided in the middle layer. Also, it is a good thing you can't see the back because the fondant is not as smooth as it should be. Then again, I am told no one sees the flaws but me, and that is only because I made it.

So now, I have taken up stained glass windows. I know there are flaws in the things I create. I know they don't fit as close as they should. Also, I end up creating a few "extra" pieces because the cut was too difficult and I decided that instead of one piece of glass two will work.

So with all this said, it is hard to feel that I have a lot of talent. I can see the flaws in all my work and feel that someone else would do a better job. Then I remember, that it is amazing that I am able to do these things anyway. I am so blessed to have the nerve to do these things and try my hand at the different projects. How many years did I think about trying stained glass? I finally am doing it. It may not be perfect, however, the projects end up pretty anyway, and when I give them away as gifts, people love them. So with that said, I am blessed with many talents. It is hard to think of them as talents since I have to work hard at them, but then again, how hard did the servant have to work to get his talents to double? If I didn't work hard on them, would I be burying them and then be in a bit of trouble when finally asked what I had to show for the talents I had been given?

We all have talents and they are so different from each others talents. That is what makes this world work out so well. Where would we be if everyone had the same talents? The Lord knows what will work out for us and what talents will enrich our lives.

Hmm! I think it will be a Sunflower.

So, here is a picture of one of the "other" plates I purchased on eBay. I have an idea about what to do with this one. I can see this one being a sunflower. It is yellow with a hint of gray. The plate is kind of wavy and textured. Now, I know that sunflower centers are brown, but I think that I want to put a border around this plate of whimsical sunflower-like green petals. Anyway, it's in my head, and quite frankly I don't think of myself as artistic and so I hope I am able to put what I want down on paper, and then again into glass. I have another blue relish plate I picked up. I fell in love with its design, and felt like the glass prisms I pulled from my chandelier and the blue plate and some ruby red glass would make a fantastic window. We will see. I guess I need to finish my current project first before moving on.

Quite honestly, I have picked up a lot of glass over the past year. I had been thinking of stained glass for about five years. I can't really say what made me start thinking of it. It may have been a TV show I was watching and it had colored panes of glass in the windows. I really can't say. Anyway, I started buying glass last year, and at the beginning of this year I bought a few too many glass plates with the hopes of making them focal points in windows. So far, it has only happened for one plate. I don't want to say how many more I have to go.

New Window

So here is a picture of my latest creation. I created this design in February/March. When it was finally done, I had to make an exact copy so I could cut out the pattern. Once I cut it out, I wondered if I was a bit stupid. There were 136 pieces in this window, and some of the pieces are itsy-bitsy. It seems like a pretty easy design, but as I cut out some of the flower stems, I had trouble. I eventually had to make it a 138 piece design because some of the angles I put into the design weren't actually do-able. I still have about 25 pieces to cut out. Seven of them are going to be a bit tricky as I try to match up the pattern of the glass the pieces go between. The remaining 16 pieces will be easy since they are just the border pieces and are all straight cuts. I found the plate on eBay (I really do have a bad eBay habit). When I saw the plate, I decided I wanted to create a window around it. Once I saw it, I realized that it had butterflies and flowers around it. I then created this window to kind of match the design on the plate. If you can't tell, there are two butterflies and about seven flowers. I can't wait to get this window done and be able to take a picture of it with the light streaming through it. The butterflies have a black body and dark purple and light yellow wings. The leaves and the stems are a forest green. Since there isn't light streaming through it, the green and the purple all look similar.

For the background, I used this glass called Baroque. I really love the look of it. It seems to be clear glass with a white (not clear) marbleized into the clear.

Hopefully I will be able to finish this one in the next two weeks. I still have to grind and smooth the pieces so they fit together nicely. Then I have to wrap the edges in copper foil and then solder it all together. I hope I will have the time to do this over the next couple of weeks. This week is going to be a busy week.

Ahg!!

So I had a very irritating phone call this week. I was sitting at someones desk fixing their computer, when the main phone rang at work. The receptionist was away from her desk so I decided to answer the phone. There was a man on the other end of the phone that asked about a particular sale of almonds we had done. He wanted to know if the almonds had been pasteurized. I remembered the sale, and told him that they had been pasteurized. Then all of a sudden this lady starts telling me off. She was really upset that the almonds they purchased had been pasteurized. She told me that it was ridiculous to pasteurize them because almonds don't have salmonella, they only get it through the mishandling of almonds. She said that salmonella came from livestock, not almond trees. She inferred the almonds would only be contaminated when they are processed and if we didn't have clean processing procedures.

I almost wanted to tell her that she didn't really know what she was talking about. Where does salmonella come from? It can come from birds, snakes, lizards, and other creatures. What do we have out in the almond orchards? Snakes, lizards, birds, coyotes, jack rabbits, gophers, squirrels, mice, rats, ect. True I haven't heard of cattle or sheep in our orchards, but I can't imagine that mice and rats are any better than cattle.

Then she had the nerve to tell me that she had looked up the "law" and knew that we could sell her under 100 lbs and it didn't have to be pasteurized. First, there is no "law" for almonds to be pasteurized. The almond industry has voluntarily implemented pasteurization requirements on all domestic loads. Second, only sales at farmer's markets and at roadside stands will be able to sell almonds that are unpasteurized and only up to 100 lbs to one consumer. Third, the sale that she was part of, he had purchased 2000 pounds. So he wouldn't have qualified for that exemption. Even if he did, we do not have a roadside stand, nor do we sell at a farmer's market and so we would not have sold him unpasteurized almonds.

Anyway, she was mad because she wanted sprout-able food and now she had 100 lbs that had been treated for salmonella. She didn't want that because she was trying to eat healthy and now our almonds have been chemically treated for salmonella. I wanted to tell her that our almonds aren't organic, and have been produced with the help of chemicals.

I did tell her that we don't sell retail, and this sale was done as a favor because he was one of our bee keepers, and we only do these sales for our contract laborers and other vendors.

When she hung up the phone, she was still frustrated with the situation, but she had calmed down a bit. Ahg!! What a way to start off a day.

So today at work I heard some disturbing news. First if you actually like almonds, you may not want to read this. :-)

Every year we have to sell/dispose of inedible almonds. These can sell for about $.20/lb. They are not fit for human consumption, however, they can be used for animal feed, primarily cattle. We will usually sell the inedible almonds to the oil stock people who will press the almonds to get the oil out of them. So, yes, this is where almond oil comes from...it comes from almonds that aren't fit for human consumption. So why is the oil okay? I have no idea.

What makes an almond inedible? First I have to explain a little about almond harvesting. When the almonds are ready, we will shake the trees to drop the nuts on the ground. Then the almonds are swept into nice neat rows. This is so we can continue to water the trees during the 1 1/2-2 weeks the almonds are drying on the ground. When the almond falls on the ground, more than likely it is still in the hull (the green fleshy part that is similar to a peach), as well as in the shell. So for a time the almonds are on the dirt. Finally they are swept up and brought to stockpiles to sit for a while longer, or they are immediately processed. While the almonds were on the tree, they were susceptible to disease or insect damage. When the almonds were on the ground, they are once again susceptible to insect damage. When the almonds are brought in, if there is a high moisture content, then the almonds are susceptible to mold.

Mold does make an almond inedible. Insect damage is actually another story. There is such a thing as good insect damage and bad insect damage. I have never bothered to figure out the difference, and bad insect damage is considered inedible. There are other things that make an almond inedible, but for this story, I don't need to go into them.

Sometime after we finished the season in February, mold was discovered in some of the bins. This is something we deal with every year. The normal course is to open up the bin to air it out and to stop the growth. Then the almonds are sold as inedible. However, when we dispose of inedibles, there are certain guidelines we have follow in order to not have to pay an assessment on those pounds. So, allegedly one of the foreman discovered the mold and decided to close the bag on the bin a bit tighter instead of airing it out. His theory was to make the % of inedibles higher so we surpass the guidelines by a lot when we disposed of it. However, too much mold makes the almonds a total loss. He apparently didn't know this, and so when he finally let us know about the 50,000 lbs, it was too late. So today we had to bury 50,000 lbs of almonds.

I was a bit disturbed to know that someone made this type of decision without running it by management. I don't think we would have closed up the bins if we had known. The second is to know that we had 50,000 of moldy product in the same vicinity as good product. I understand that it is in closed plastic bags, but I can't see that this would be a good thing.

Anyway, it is done. There isn't much I can do at this point. The ABC employee was at work today to witness the destruction of the almonds, and now they are gone.