Friday Five

Suggestions to Break My Reading Slump Weekend Roundup

Friday Five

TGIF!! I’m trying to remember what I wanted to share this week :-)

Monday was my birthday. I had a really good day. I had coffee with Biker Witch (my sister), got gorgeous flowers from oldest son, and went to dinner with Wizard where I had chocolate cake I didn’t have to make :-)

And then talked so long to middle on the phone, my arm and shoulder locked up, LOL. It really was a good day. Lowkey but perfect for this year, if that makes sense.As I mentioned, the flowers are stunning. But…and this had never happened before…they aggravated my sinuses. I was NOT giving up these flowers. We finally realized it’s because the house has been literally closed up for at least 6 to 8 weeks with the heat, and the A/C is recycling everything. I put the flowers outside early one morning for a few hours, aired out the house, then brought the flowers in and found a great spot for them in the living room–away from the main living area. That solved it and I still get to enjoy the flowers.Wizard saw the spine surgeon yesterday–the same one that did my surgery. I’m hugely relieved by this. I know he’s methodical and good. He’s ordering more tests that will get him more specific information, then we’ll develop a treatment plan. Wizard is handling all this remarkably well.Here’s my practice cake for this week. It’s just a rather bland boxed cake, as I had 3 goals for this attempt (1) making a version of Swiss Meringue Buttercream for hotter climate, which means swapping out about 1/3 of the butter for vegetable shorting and putting in a little sifted powdered sugar. This version held up better. The original one tastes better, but even in A/C gets melty in my kitchen (2) practicing icing–I did better partly because of the amazing turntable Wizard got me. (3) doing a stripe technique. The small holes in the icing are from not rewhipping after the crumb coating and chilling. I didn’t care about that, I was working on technique :-)