Well it’s about as done as I’m going to get it. All I’m doing now is adding more paint if I want to fix my mistakes.
What I learned so far:
Don’t paint your first fore edge painting on thin pages.
You can’t easily fix mistakes so plot it out better.
I can’t copy my own works worth a darn. Lol
Use the dryest brush possible with water colors or it wrinkles the paper if too wet. And let it completely dry between each addition of paint.
It is fun to do!
I enjoyed painting again.
And I’ll try it again.
The hardest part is separating All the pages when dry, both after gilding the edges and after painting.
Don’t over paint. If you use too much paint it builds up and cakes off when pulling the pages apart.
This last one really hurt my painting. I used too much paint. I tried to go back and touch up the gilding and it adhered to the water colors and blurred the painting at the end.
After touch up
For a first try I am still pleased. Need to work on perspective more as well.
The cold set in quick here in N.C. leaves are falling all over the place.
I woke up and turned the heater on at 5:00 am and jumped back in bed. Brrr.
My thoughts turned to pumpkins and pumpkin pie and pumpkin shakes and pumpkins soup and landed on pumpkin cake.
Pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting
Thought I would share the tools of my trade, haha. Anyway what I use to cook with.
When no one else is around to see what you usually cook with, you, or I can get away with anything.
Microwave bowl and wisk
My handy dandy mixing bowl doubles as a microwavable bowl but started out as a whipped topping container. I use it for just about everything. And the wisk is from my granddaughter’s play kitchen.
Shocking, I know.
And most of my foods are prepared in the microwave. Not all. But why power up the stove and oven when there is just one of me.
Pumpkin Cake
2 Tablespoons butter
1/3 cup of canned pumpkin (freeze the rest to use later)
2 Tablespoons greek yogurt
2 Tablespoons honey
2/3 cup almond flour
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 Teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoon vanilla
2 Eggs
Melt the butter, in the microwave. Mix in the pumpkin, yogurt and honey.
Add the almond flour, spices, and vanilla. Mix well. Add the eggs and beat well. Should be a thick batter. If too thin, add more almond flour.
Zap in the microwave for 4 minutes or until center top looks dry.
Turn cake over onto plate and let cool.
Cream cheese frosting
1/4 cup cream cheese
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons honey
Melt all together in the microwave for 1 minute. Take out and stir until creamy. Frost cake and top with a dusting of cinnamon.
Sunday, for Relief Society, the lesson is from a conference talk by Elder Soares called, In Awe of Jesus and His Gospel.
One thing I am in awe of is the universe, our sun, and our earth and how it all works to become a place where we exist.
There is an object lesson I love and I will be giving it in Relief society. Therefore, I get to try it out on you as my captive audience.
Ingredients for cookies are spread around the room. A package of flour on the piano, a package of sugar on the floor, vanilla on the table, and butter in a chair. (Yup, that’s all it takes to make out of this world cookies.)
Then the questions begin… is there a force on this earth, that you know of and Not man, that can combine these ingredients together into an edible delicious cookie?
How about in the solar system. Is there a force, again not man, that could combine and cook these ingredients and make them into a delicious edible cookie and cook it just right to a golden brown?
How about in the universe. Is there a force that can mix all these ingredients, getting rid of the packaging, and measuring it just right, then cook it to the right temperature, then frost it and add marvelous garnishes that make it a joy to eat and delicious to the taste?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
My answer: there has to be a being with a loving hand that can take materials, mix them together, form the majestic mountains, calm the raging seas and give us land that can enhance our experience here on earth. As well as create the creatures, and Man to eat these delicious cookies.
I’ll probably have to reword it a little, but you get the idea.
I am in awe of God’s creations.
Then all the sisters get to partake of an Out of this World Cookie as my treat for listening to me go on and on about how in awe I am of Jesus Christ our Redeemer and Savior. (You too can make an out of this world cookie and partake of it with the following recipe.)
Sugar cookies
1/3 Cup Sugar
1 Stick unsalted Butter
1 Cup Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Cream sugar and Butter together. Mix in the vanilla. Add the flour and mix well.
Place parchment paper on top of a cookie sheet. Dust your hands with flour and roll the dough into balls. Place on parchment paper.
Dust the bottom of a glass and press the balls flat to about 1/4 inch thick.
Test cook one cookie first by baking one for 15 min in the oven at 325.
If it spreads out too thin while baking then add small amounts of flour to the dough.
Cook the rest of the cookies for aprox 15 min or until golden brown on edges.
Frost with black frosting and sprinkle with candies: stars, candy balls and candy sprinkles.
If you are ambitious, color some sugar with a drop of food coloring, making red, yellow and blue sugar. Then sprinkle minute amounts to color parts of the black frosting then add the candies.
I woke up to a chill autumn morning. The leaves are already starting to turn up here in the mountains of North Carolina.
I can’t believe the time has snuck by so fast.
Halloween is right around the corner.
I know it’s only September, but I have to get ready for Halloween ahead of time.
Bat Cat
Bat Cat, as my daughter dubbed him, is finished. The kind of cat I don’t have to worry about getting cat scratch fever from. Lol
And just in time for Halloween.
With it being so cool this morning, I put on some hamburger to brown and I can smell the Autum soup steeping through the air.
Can’t wait to slurp up a hot bowl. And just think, I don’t have to share it with Bat Cat. Ha!
No recipe today. Everything is just stuff on hand with tomato paste and water base.
Lots of salt and pepper, onions and vegetables galore from the garden, and some sweet basil growing in my aqua garden. (And sometimes cans of vegetables. I cheat a lot in cooking.) It will be cooking all day.
Maybe you could join me for dinner with your favorite soup. I’ll be thinking about you as I spoon it up.
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