Spring Has (almost) Sprung

Happy (belated) Easter!

And if you are not Christian, happy Passover!

And if you are neither Christian nor Jewish, happy Ridvān, Theravada New Year, Hanuman Jayanti, Mahavir Jayanti, Akshaya Tritiya (I'm early on this one), Vaisakhi, and Spring Equinox! And if you're still not happy, then Happy Monday, motherf@#ker.

Spring winked its coquettish eye at us over the weekend before sneaking back behind the folds of gray clouds and gusty wind. But while she was hanging out this weekend, we did some spring like things out here at Camp Crystal Lake.

It started with Roo waking up and leaving her comfortable bed to lay in the sun.

Go away; I'm sun bathing.

T. and I decided to take full advantage of the gorgeous Saturday weather to take a trip to Ikea. Yes, this was dumb, but it was Saturday and we'd only had two cups of coffee each, so we were obviously not thinking clearly.

Ikea art. It's deep. Super, duper deep.

We got a new lantern-stool for the back porch, a shade for the office deck door, an arm chair (that has not yet been assembled), and an ice cream cone. Just one cone; Trevor declined to participate, citing the fact that we were on our way to eat lunch, but is there a rule against eating an ice cream cone before you eat lunch? The answer is no: there is no rule against that.

We got home and did some homey things, which included cleaning the windows and putting in the screens, sweeping up, and hanging our new flag.

U.S.A.!

Now to be fair, Trevor did 89.76% of this work. I helped wash the windows, and I did a little sweeping. But he pretty much did the rest.

I did, though, bake a cake for Easter at the Bosco's place, and that took up a bit of time. It was a two-layer cake decorated like a lamb face. I'd gotten the idea from a post by blogger & baker Lyndsay Sung on the Handmade Charlotte blog and figured I'd give it a whirl since the tutorial made it look so easy. And adorable.

My first cake turned out beautifully, but my second, not so much. Check it out:

Guess who's got two thumbs and forgot to grease the cake pan?

But since the top I'd cut off my second cake was still in tact, I just plopped it on top of my first cake and had a rounded lamb face instead of a flat one. Because lambs are three dimensional, suckers.

Boom.

I dyed my frosting a pink that was more bubble-gum than baby-girl, but the rosettes I made turned out pretty good.

I finished the rosettes,

which actually looked like the tutorial!

and then made my little lamb face out of fondant:

Just the ghost of a smile

And it was done!

Thank you, Coco Cake Land, for an adorable cake that was actually pretty easy to make! 

Little does this lamb know that she's about to get a knife to the face.

It was a lambgasm at the Bosco's Easter Brunch

And what, you might ask, did I do with that sad, sad cake that fell apart on me when I tried to get it out of the pan? Did I heartlessly toss it in the trash? Did I feed it to the neighborhood flying squirrels? No. I put the pieces on a pretty dessert plate and spackled them with leftover frosting.

They sure as hell aren't pretty, but they're tasty!

And what are we doing now? Well, Trevor should be getting into the Jeep and heading home from the Metra station right about now. I am sitting on the back porch, listening to the neighborhood come alive in pops between the short, weak showers of rain. I am also humming along to The Best of the Animals.

I am anxious to see more of the flowers that are shooting up,

Roo is also very anxious. She is hoping that they sprout peanut butter flowers. She might be disappointed.

And I am enjoying Roo as she flies around the backyard like a furry, three-legged Flash.

See that blur under the trellis? That's her. I clocked her at about 62 MPH.

Hopefully we'll get more nice weather this week so Roo and I can hang out some more on the porch. And I might do some grading. And I will likely eat some cake scraps. And finish my audiobook.

Maybe I'll see you around.