Survival Skills
After spending nearly all of vacation week socializing wildly, Miss B celebrated her 10th birthday on Saturday with due ceremony, if having four 10-year-old girls sleep over can be considered in any sense ceremonious. Each time I pointed the camera at them Miss B admonished me sternly, "Don't you dare post that on your blog!" So while the event has been preserved for posterity, I can't show you any of it. Survival Skill 1: hiding the evidence.
Since one of the guests doesn't like chocolate, I made what the cookbook described as "golden cake layers," which came out pretty well, on the whole. I decided to try a buttercream frosting, despite lacking both a food processor and a mixer paddle attachment. All we have is an old mixer (a wedding gift: have I mentioned that Grant and I have been married since the Taft administration? OK, maybe it just seems like that long, but trust me, it's been quite a while) with the standard beater thingies. I decided they would be fine. Perhaps my brain had been addled by an entire week of juggling work, school vacation, and stopgap sitters.
Exhibit A: a spottily frosted cake, looking like something the cat dragged in. Fluffy and creamy this frosting was not. Luckily I had bought more than enough heavy cream, which I proceeded to use with great abandon. Survival Skill 2: camouflage, in process here...
...and here we have the finished product. Whipped cream and berries, can't beat 'em. The cake as a whole was not up to my usual standard, I fear, but no one complained. Maybe next year Miss B will want a store-bought sugar-encrusted gaudily decorated insulin-shock-inducing cake like a normal kid, but I'm not betting on it.
Except for some minor dominance games (you think dominance games are a guy thing? ha! you have never seen more than one preadolescent girl at a time), the party went quite well. The girls stayed up until nearly 2, outlasting me by a considerable margin. Survival Skill 3: hibernation.
They were all gone, except for Miss B of course, by 11 yesterday morning, so Miss B had just about a whole day to recover and prepare for school reentry this morning.
Meanwhile, back at the socks...
Closing in on the home stretch. Wahoo! And did I mention that vacation week is over?
Since one of the guests doesn't like chocolate, I made what the cookbook described as "golden cake layers," which came out pretty well, on the whole. I decided to try a buttercream frosting, despite lacking both a food processor and a mixer paddle attachment. All we have is an old mixer (a wedding gift: have I mentioned that Grant and I have been married since the Taft administration? OK, maybe it just seems like that long, but trust me, it's been quite a while) with the standard beater thingies. I decided they would be fine. Perhaps my brain had been addled by an entire week of juggling work, school vacation, and stopgap sitters.
Exhibit A: a spottily frosted cake, looking like something the cat dragged in. Fluffy and creamy this frosting was not. Luckily I had bought more than enough heavy cream, which I proceeded to use with great abandon. Survival Skill 2: camouflage, in process here...
...and here we have the finished product. Whipped cream and berries, can't beat 'em. The cake as a whole was not up to my usual standard, I fear, but no one complained. Maybe next year Miss B will want a store-bought sugar-encrusted gaudily decorated insulin-shock-inducing cake like a normal kid, but I'm not betting on it.Except for some minor dominance games (you think dominance games are a guy thing? ha! you have never seen more than one preadolescent girl at a time), the party went quite well. The girls stayed up until nearly 2, outlasting me by a considerable margin. Survival Skill 3: hibernation.
They were all gone, except for Miss B of course, by 11 yesterday morning, so Miss B had just about a whole day to recover and prepare for school reentry this morning.
Meanwhile, back at the socks...
Closing in on the home stretch. Wahoo! And did I mention that vacation week is over?
posted by Lucia at
9:41 PM
9 Comments:
Congrats on surviving yet another vacation. And those socks! Gorgeous cables on top of the contrasting toes and heels. Amazing!
By
Anonymous, at 10:26 PM
The social lives of 10 year old girls can be scary things.
You forgot Survival Skill 4: Send them out to a movie for several hours.
By
Ruth, at 11:39 PM
That's a beautiful cake! Sounds like we had about the same week only I did a 13 yr old birthday instead of a 10. Congrats on the survival!
By
Annie, at 5:52 AM
A girls sleepover requires a great deal of stamina. Kudos to you for getting through it.
The cake is lovely.
By
Carole Knits, at 9:07 AM
Vacation week... that explains all the amped-up, tiny people on the train recently. ;-)
I'd be proud to have that cake at my party. Mmmmmmmmmm. Strawberries!
By
Beth S., at 1:46 PM
Lucia,
Thank you for your comment on my blog today, it's always nice to have new visitors!
I logged in here to check you out and found CAKE!!! As a mother of two daughters I can remember the slumber party days. That's the stuff that memories are made of, we don't realize it at the time, but as they get older there is the "Remember that slumber party? You know mom the one where you made the very special strawberry cake for me?"
:o)
Ann
By
Ann, at 5:04 PM
The cake looks so good I think I drooled on my keyboard a little! And those socks... gotgeous... I am in awe and envy of you and your mad sock-making skillz ;)
By
Anonymous, at 1:22 PM
OMG, those socks are friggin' gorgeous! And can you mail me a slice of cake?
By
Jay, at 8:00 PM
Beautiful socks! What's the pattern?
The difference between boys and girls is that we understand what the girls are doing.
By
Anonymous, at 8:23 AM
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