Monkey Bread!

I wanted to make my homemade cinnamon rolls tonight, but that's about a three hour project.  This works to solve the cinnamon roll craving and is pretty easy, made with refrigerator biscuit dough.  Yumm. . .  I made this pretty one to take to work for a potluck tomorrow and a smaller one for my family.  The cream cheese icing is sooooo good!

Loft Redux

I love redux. It's a cool word.  "Brought back" as in literature, film music, etc.  Well, I have once again redone my loft, or Studio as I like to think of it.  This is the room where I work on the computer, read, watch TV, work on minis, paint, and so on.  It's my special part of the house.  Umm, don't mind the dusty plant in the foreground.  I"ll get to it.  :)  Here's what it looks like heading up the stairs to my little world.

After the flood forced us to redo the downstairs, I decided to fix this room up.

I took out my old cutting table and brought in two six foot tables (donated to me by a friend).  I mod podged the one, and I'll get to the other soon.  The neatest part about this redo was that I took fabric and skirted the edges all around the tables, so my stash is totally hidden and everything looks neat.  I also found a smaller futon at a fire sale at a place around the corner and it's perfect for the space!

Here's what it used to look like:

And here is what it looks like now!  I know it's a bit busy, and it looks better in person, but it's got all my goodies in it and I totally love this space.  You can see my covered toy box in the middle of the room.  I have a tray on it so it's hard to see the fabric, but it matches the colors.

Not bad.  Now everyone is complaining that I spend all of my time in here.  Well, sorry!  When you get it just how you want it, what do you expect?  :)

Mischief in the "RL" House

Yep, real life gets in the way again!  Most of us who work on miniatures love to work in our own houses as well.

I found this Tiffany style light in Lowe's a few weeks ago and fell in love with it.  I have several Tiffany style lights in my house.  No surprise there, is there?  My kitchen has recessed lights, and I thought it should be pretty easy to convert the recessed light to the pendant one I bought.  Let's say it began an adventure. 

I bought a kit (recommended by the guy at Home Depot) and installed it all myself. I was so proud!  It lit up and everything all in under an hour.  I figured, Hey, I can do this in miniature, how hard can it be?  Well, it was pretty easy, especially with a kit I purchased.  The plan was for my husband to come home from playing softball and me to proudly announce, "Look what I did!"

Unfortunately, the kit wasn't quite the right thing for the type of recessed light in my ceiling, and it directed me to screw the hardware into non existant brackets, and basically I was trying to attach it to air.

Days later and several trips to Home Depot and Lowe's, I was told that if I ever started a project like this again, my husband would kill me.  Yeah, yeah, famous last words!  :)  It's up, and it is gorgeous!

Adventures in Gardening

Note:  I posted the same story on my Mini Aussie Blog so no one would miss my misadventures.  :)


As I mentioned in an earlier post, after art class on Sunday where Paige and I made those really cool garden globes we felt inspired to work in the garden. We stopped at Home Depot and got some plants, and then set about weeding, planting, edging, and so on.


As my daughter was watering the strawberries on the topsy turvey, a big spider suddenly appeared. To say she hates spiders is a huge understatement. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed. I could see the goose bumps on her arms from 100 feet away. I got her in the house and killed the spider. OK, I couldn’t really find the spider, so I told her I killed it so she’d come back out. A little mommy magic goes a long way.


I got to work on the shed. It’s one of those plastic ones that never seems to stay together right. After a few minutes of pushing and prodding, I decided I’d have to take everything out of it and put all the pieces back together. As I pulled a box out from the back, a huge tree rat came bounding out. This may sound familiar, because something similar happened a couple of years ago so you’d think I would be prepared for the wildlife in the yard. But no. I screamed like a cartoon character, loud enough to wake the dead, or at least run off the rat. Or so I hoped.


This set my daughter off who screamed and ran in the house. And my faithful canine companions? They ran and hid under the dining room table. Thanks, guys. (Actually I think they were pretty smart- I wanted to hide under the table too at that point!)


This shed is right up against the fence of my neighbor’s house. About 20 seconds after I screamed, their bedroom window opened and my friend shouted, “Are you OK?” Now I was feeling a bit sheepish. I told her I was fine and a rat had startled me. She told me she was glad I was OK, because she’d just got out of the shower and if I needed help she’d be running down with nothing but a towel on!


She told me later, “The funniest thing about yesterday was that I had just gotten out of the shower and my husband had just jumped in. We heard the screaming over the rat and both just froze and stared at each other for 5 seconds. I was thinking either a rabid coyote had gotten into the yard (Coyotes Gone Wild!) or a mad man had entered your house and trying to kill everyone since your husband wasn’t home. So then I figured I should at least grab a towel if I was going to rescue you guys. My husband was scrambling to get out of the shower while I ran to the window to see if you would answer me. It was like a Bugs Bunny Cartoon in the bedroom! We laughed about that last night because we looked so ridiculous.” Thank God for good neighbors! And mine are awesome.


About the time my adrenaline had calmed down, my husband and son got home. I rushed to tell them the story, but they seemed a little nonplussed about the whole thing. My husband went out and helped me fix the shed, and then sat down on a fake rock we have next to the shed covering our sprinkler valves. That stupid rat must have been hiding behind that rock because the rat shot out from behind the rock, with me jumping up and down and screaming, “There it is! There it is! Get it! Get it!” The rat took off under our fountain rocks and my husband never even saw it. And now he keeps reminding me about an “alleged” rat. Alleged rats do not make me scream. Only real ones.


The neighbors (now dressed) came to look over their fence and the crazy woman being stalked by rats (I guess that’s me). We chatted for a while. . . and then my daughter encountered a worm in the soil where she was planting lantana and went into more screaming.


That was it. Enough screaming, spiders, rats, and worms. It was time to go in, get cleaned up, and have dinner. I am reminded of the scene in the second Indiana Jones movie where Willy screams at every horrible dinner dish she encounters. Who knew gardening was not for the feint of heart?


The dogs came back out after all the commotion. I can only assume the rat was no danger to me or they would have been there to protect me. Right?

Comment Moderation

I am not happy.  See the blue guy?  Add steam to his ears and that's me right now.  Once again I've had to turn on comment moderation because my earlier post today got slammed with "comments" from a Chinese porn site.  And you know what, it makes me really mad!  I love your comments!  In fact I practically live for comments from those who read my mischief!  I pull out my phone on my way to work every day and get all happy to see when you've commented on my writing.  So this really annoys me that some scum bag makes me take steps to make it harder for you to talk to me. 

Thank you to Trina for the nice comment and great advice in my earlier post.  I may play with the image later tonight, but now I have tacos waiting to be put together.

A word of advice- when you have something cooking on the stove it is not really the best time pull the stove knobs off and clean them, no matter how much they need them.. I had this moment of, "Oh %@#!  I need to turn off the meat and the knob is soaking!"  An easy fix, but a duh moment, you know?  :)

Blogger Template Frustration

So. . .  I have this notice on my little blog that Cutest Blog on the Block has had to move to a new server and I must download new code.  Fine, no problem, except that I cannot get on the server to download the code to update it.  Apparently everyone else is doing the same thing.  So I figure I'll get a new template for a while from somewhere else and then when "Cutest" is back to normal, then I'll go back.  Sounds like a plan to me.

Except that the background from my old template won't go away, and every new template I put on still shows the old background around the edges. . . and I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT!!!!  Argh.  So my blog is a mess for now until I can get it fixed.  I'm usually so good at this!  I've spent years working in IT departments and I'm getting a headache over this one.  Probably in a few minutes I'll look at it again and go, Oh, duh.  But for now please bear with me.  I'm going to get a cold drink and let my mind wander over it for a few minutes.

Wish me luck!

Update: As the clocks strikes and as I suspected, it was something simple.  An iced tea with a splash of blackberry syrup did me wonders! I think I got it.  Now the question is do I really, really like this template? . . . I mean, it's quite cute, but it says "Be Trendy" and I'm about the last person in the world to be trendy.  My dream in life is to be Donna Reed, which is maybe a sad dream to some of you, but I never wanted to be a career woman.  I wanted to be a stay at home mom and I guess I made the wrong decisions along the way for that.  But anyway (shakes her head to snap out of it) at least the template is fixed and I'll give it a few days to see if I learn to love it or not.

I would love to see what you think!  :)

Art Class Sunday - Garden Globe Galore!

The title says it all! Today in art class my daughter and I painted ceramic garden globes. These are simply round balls in various sizes that we painted. When they are glazed and fired they will be waterproof, shiny, and adorable, peaking out of the corners of our garden. It's a perfect project for a hot July day. (And has it ever been hot!!!!)

In fact, my daughter and I were so inspired to fix up our tiny patch of garden that we stopped at a nursery on the way home from class and picked up some plants, then in a burst of insanity we braved the 95+ degree weather in our yard to plant, weed, and generally tidy up. The afternoon had some. . .interesting turns (involving worms, spiders, and a rat!), but that's for another entry.

The pictures aren't the best because I forgot the camera and had to make do with my phone camera, but at least you can see something!

The little globes are the brilliant creation of my daughter- all except the little snail on the right. Our teacher, Randi, was giving us tons of ideas of what to make, and most of them were on different flowers and bugs on the globe. My daughter decided that she would take the globe and make the whole thing into a bug. The first one on the left is her ladybug, the next is a bumblebee, and the next is every one's favorite, a little piggy. This idea was so popular that our teacher even made a few lady bugs of her own.

This project was such fun because it was supposed to be whatever you wanted, a lot "cartoony" looking, and a ton of fun. For my projects I chose a large ball and a dragonfly pattern, the medium ball and a goldfish pattern, and the small one and a goofy looking snail pattern.

I loved this because I just drew out the little "doodles" I've drawn since childhood. The goldfish and plant pattern I've literally drawn for years, so I can truly say that the goldfish globe is absolutely, 100% my own creation.

Watch for another entry in a week or so when I pick up the globes fired and glazed, and placed in my garden!

All Star Adventures

This week the 81st All Star Game was held at my beloved Angels Stadium and my family and I made the most of it!

Friday we spent the entire day at Fan Fest at the Anaheim Convention Center. It was huge! They had running, hitting, pitching, and base stealing games. There were vendors, food, autographs, celebrities. . . It was really awesome!

Sunday was the minor league all stars game and then the celebrity softball game with Tim Salmon. I think there were some other baseball stars and celebrities there, but I only had eyes for Tim Salmon. We watched him hit 5 home runs after the end of the game just for fun. I guess that makes up for the 299 he hit in his career, not quite making that 300. He's always been my favorite Angel, and I was thrilled to see him. Apparently he was at Fan Fest and walked right behind me while I was in line for face painting. It's just as well- if I'd seen him up close I probably would have frozen! :)

Monday was the Home Run Derby, which was probably my least favorite event, but it was still pretty cool. I think it was probably better on TV, because there was very little announcing. They needed the guys from the show WipeOut back- they did the announcing for the softball game on Sunday and they were funny!

And last night was the actual All Star Game. We got to the stadium at 2pm for the 5pm game and still didn't get into the seats until about 4pm. It was hot-hot-hot! We've suddenly got a heat wave here in Southern California and I was glad to be in the A/C tonight at home.

I have a reason to be tired after all that adventure! But it only comes here every 20 years or so, and I'm glad I can say I went this year. Today was back to work. It's hard to come back to reality after having so much baseball fun!

Happy 4th of July!

Hope your day is safe and happy!

I made homemade ice cream. Yummmmmm.