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Generation A, 59/104; I Don’t Care About Your Band, 60/104; The Donut Book, 61/104

Today I was finally able to test out my mini doughnut maker! I needed a pastry bag to pipe the batter but I picked one up earlier today. The doughnut maker came with a recipe for cinnamon sugar doughnuts but I didn’t feel like mixing up flour and eggs and what have you so I decided to use cake mix instead.

I had half a box of chocolate fudge mix left over from last time I made mini cupcakes so I took about half of that (so a quarter of the whole box) and mixed it with some Dr Pepper. I didn’t bother measuring- I know what cake batter should look like so I just added a little at a time until it was the right consistency.

Once I had it right, with Sym’s help I poured it into the pastry bag and I was ready to doughnut! I unfortunately wasn’t really able to take pictures of this part of the process because I only have two hands and you need to move pretty quickly since it only takes 4 minutes for each batch to cook. It’s a fairly simple process- just remember to spray with Pam (or other non-stick cooking spray) between each batch and don’t overfill the doughnut reservoirs! With my quarter-batch of batter I was able to make 20 itty-bitty chocolate doughnuts.

Now, they probably would have been fine plain, but I’m a dummy and decided to try glazing them. This didn’t really turn out for two reasons:
1. baked cake doughnuts like these don’t have the fried skin of proper doughnuts and are therefore too absorbent
2. unlike cake batter, I DON’T know what glaze should look like and it ended up far to liquid-y and exacerbated the absorbing problem

Doughnut glaze is simple- milk, icing sugar and a smidge of vanilla. I had the ingredients right, it’s just the proportions I messed up.

They kind of look spooged over, haha. Gross. So yeah, obviously my glaze was way too watery (or milky, I guess) but I learned some valuable lessons about glazed chocolate doughnut making. Next time I’ll use much less milk to get a thicker glaze, and I’ll use a denser batter, like brownie batter or something.

I let them sit for a while on parchment paper to dry out a little and then it was testing time!

My official kitchen tester.

“Moist…” (lol maybe because they were soaked in sugar milk)

“Yummy…”

“You can’t really see the glaze and…”

“They need more monkeys!”

More monkeys indeed. I tried one too and they were in fact moist & yummy. All in all I’m pretty stoked with my mini doughnut maker purchase and have lots of ideas for new and exciting mini doughnuts to come!

Hooray for almost the weekend! I can’t believe how painlessly I’ve made it (almost) through this first week back at work after vacation. There have been some hiccups- B wasn’t happy about coming back and had a total breakdown on Wednesday, CF and her acting out/lashing out at the other kids, and I have a little girl (CL) here just for two weeks while here regular child care provider is on vacation and she’s cried and cried every day. These kids, I tell you. I’m keeping it together though.

There have been some enrollment changes around here, some kids leaving, some going down to part-time and I have some new ones starting.
–V, my most long-term client, left in the spring because of a financial situation
–CF is here today and Monday and then she’s done
–B is now down to part-time because her mom had a baby
–CP, who was already part-time, is now like, PART part-time for the same reason

Only CT, K and M are still on the same schedule.

For new kids, I booked a new baby girl, E, to start in October, and yesterday I just booked an adorable 3-year-old French girl, MM, to start in September. She doesn’t speak any English and my French is limited to what I learned from grades 5-10 so this will be a challenge! I’ve had non-English speaking kids before- Japanese, Bulgarian, Arabic and one kid who spoke a kind of pidgin mix of Russian, Hebrew and English so that most of his family couldn’t even understand him! At least I know a TINY bit of French!

In other news, I fell asleep with wet hair last night and I was expecting to find a HAIR DISASTER when I woke up, but it actually looks okay.

How is this bedhead??? It’s barely messy at all, I’m totally baffled. Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Friday and an AWESOME weekend 😀

ps rainbow text is the new black.

Last night was supposed to be my triumphant return to the gym, since I didn’t go at all last week (due to the neck problem). I was really gung-ho about it at 9am but by the time 7pm rolled around I was almost asleep on the living room floor, so Taylor absolved me of the gym and instead we just played with dogs and had ice cream. That’s kind of the same as working out, right?

I think Georgie looks silly with clothes on, I put this old t-shirt of Kichou’s on as a joke. Kichou loves wearing clothes though, whenever he’s feeling blue we put an outfit on him and he’s instantly cheered up.

Taylor was sleepy too, but not as sleepy as me- I fell asleep at 10:30 with all my clothes on and Taylor was able to wreak his horrible revenge for all the pictures I take of him sleeping.

Before all the sleepiness took over we went to the post office to pick up my MINI DOUGHNUT MAKER.

Get excited, because as soon as I can go to the store for flour (since I used all mine up making cookies yesterday) it will be MINI DOUGHNUT DAY. Like, every day.

Today in the mail I got this AWESOME necklace from my friend Natalya:

It’s a little pine cone dipped in silver, how cute! She traded it to me for the 30 feet of bunting I made the other week so I feel like I really earned it.

Other than having naps, puppy parties and getting lots of stuff in the mail (I also got my J Crew business sweats, which are great but need a teeny alteration, and my Kristiana Parn print, which I need to have framed) I have been hard at work on my latest project. Here’s another sneak peek:

The little can at the corner of the island is plastic wood, which STINKS SO BAD OMG. I remember my dad using it to fill holes in things he’d made when I was a kid, but I don’t remember it smelling so terrible! Anyway I fully expect to finish this in the next week, and then it’s on to my next project: The Curio Shelf.

Yesterday afternoon Symphony, Ana Lucia and I baked cookies. My favorite recipe right now is this one from Crepes of Wrath, although as per usual I made some changes- we used half chocolate chips and half butterscotch, which turned out really delicious. Also, after taking great pains to make sure I had the right number of eggs for this recipe, I neglected to see how much flour I had. WHOOPS. I had just enough to do a half batch, which called for some interesting mathmetizing, since I didn’t know off the top of my head what half of 3/4 of a cup is.

The cookies turned kind of flat, but still delicious. They were also a scootch undercooked since I had to take Georgie out and it was either leave them in to get burned or take them out a minute early. OH WELL.

Of course taking a picture of Sym with the cookies was an exercise in drama. This creepy, googly-eyed Sadie stare is actually the best one, if you can believe it. I just don’t know why this kid has to be so weird.

“CooooOOOOOOooooookiessssssssssssssssssssssssssss…”

Nap time is my favorite time of the work day. It’s when I get my “break.” I can read and relax, eat lunch without sharing, get the laundry and dishes done and work on whatever project I have going currently*. With all the daycare kids napping the house is quiet and calm and we all get a chance to recharge before they all wake up and the craziness starts again.

*Here’s a sneak peek at what I’m working on:

Intriguing, I know. What could it be? How mysterious! You’ll all have to wait a few more days until it’s done to find out!

A Vintage Affair, 56/104; Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, 57/104; Boneshaker 58/104

The last thing I would ever want would for this blog to turn into one of those blogs where every six months there’s a post that says “Wow! It’s been so long since my last post! I’ve just been really busy with my life and I’ll definitely start posting again soon!” and then nothing for another six months. So. Back to real posting for me! I have a What I’ve Been Reading that needs to get up but first let’s recap the last week.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who gave their condolences for Tina Fey (the hamster, no the comedienne)’s passing. He will be missed. Yesterday morning we buried him in the box from a DIY nesting doll kit from Urban Outfitters, and Symphony made a gravestone by writing “RIP” on a piece of slate I found.

Now, you may recall me saying the reason I wasn’t posting was because I threw my neck out and it hurt too much to sit here typing, and that I possibly did it while moving furniture. That’s because last Sunday Taylor and I finally bought the new couch I’ve been pining over! I asked them how long it would take to be delivered and first they said 4-6 weeks. I was like, Hmm, that’s kind of long, but at least I’ll have time to get rid of the old couch!, but then they were like “Oh we mean one week.” I figured that since this week was a short one (holiday Monday and all) That it would arrive early next week, which would still give me enough time to get rid of the old one.

Welp. It came on Wednesday.

Wednesday was actually the WORST possible day for furniture delivery. Normally I get trucks to go down the alley since it’s closer to my apartment, but the west end of the alley was blocked because they were filming a tv show, and the east end was blocked because like, a tree fell or something. So the delivery truck had to park out front, blocking the whole street and causing lots of screaming and wrath from impatient drivers.

Now, BEFORE the couch was delivered I had to get the old one out of the way, so Tuesday was spent heaving tons of furniture around by myself while Taylor was sleeping (hence the sore neck). Sym and I made a cozy of pillows, blankets and beanbags in the newly-empty living room, where we snuggled up with some dogs to watch Mulan.

Georgie had several baths this week. The first was after she spent and hour wrestling with a Yorkie in the park and came home covered in slobber. The second was after I took her to the dog-specific off-leash area. There were big puppies there and she got so scared when they chased her that she peed herself and then rolled in the pee-mud. And on my feet. Lovely.

She also had her last distemper shot on Wednesday, and weighed in at an impressive 4lbs12oz. My little girl is growing up!

One thing I felt bad about was that I’d promised Sym we’d do fun stuff, but between the furniture chaos and the crippling neck pain I couldn’t really do anything. I made it up to her yesterday by inviting her best friend Ali over and taking them and a girl who just moved in upstairs, Ana Lucia, to the new playground at Emery Barnes Park in Yaletown. The playground is really awesome, but it was quite hot and they are CRAZY, so they ended up spending most of the afternoon playing in the fountain. By the time we came home they were all soaked.

Emery Barnes Park is only a few blocks east of where we live in the West End, but Yaletown people really are different from Davie Village people. At one point the girls were crossing back and forth over some stepping stones across the fountain (it’s actually a series of fountains, waterfalls and pools along a stream). I was on one side and on the other side were some street youths. Now, I’ve had issues with street youths. I don’t like when they scream at me or leave gross messes in the park, and one time Dougal and I were attacked, unprovoked, by a vicious street dog the unapologetic owner had allowed to roam around off leash. However. The street youths in Emery Barnes Park weren’t doing anything. They were just hanging out in the shade, talking amongst themselves and petting their well-behaved dogs. If there had been loud swearing or drinking or drug use I would’ve taken the girls to play in a different area, but there wasn’t, so to me, that’s fine. Then some snooty woman comes over to me and haughtily says “If those were MY kids, I would NEVER let them play near THOSE PEOPLE.” I just gave her one of these:

… and walked away. Later, when the girls were wading in the (chlorinated, comes from the same source as our tap water) fountain stream, some yuppie dad walked by, gave me a look and said loudly to his kids, “No you can’t go in the water, that’s dirty and disgusting.” Whatever, dude, my kids are having ACTUAL fun while yours are just sweltering and miserable.

Anyway, that’s basically it, I didn’t really do anything crazy-exciting with my week off. In addition to the WIBR post I have a pending post about a long-overdue project I’m working on, so that’ll hopefully be up soon as well. Now I’m just waiting around for some dude who’s supposed to be coming to look at the two chaises from my old couch (I sold the ottoman already this morning). Anyway, have a great weekend!

My hamster died :/ Last night I noticed he was lying in a weird spot and breathing really heavily, but when I opened his house he hopped up and started hamming like normal, but I just checked him and he was all stiff and dead with his eyes and mouth open in the creepiest fashion possible. He was pretty old for a hamster, about 2 1/2, and I think he had a good life. He escaped from his house a bunch of times and survived falling off the shelf and a houseful of cats and dogs who were keen on eating him. One time he escaped and hid behind the cat’s litterbox, ie the only place in the house the cat WOULDN’T look for juicy ham morsels. So smart. He was never one of those cuddly hamsters who likes pets and can be carried in pockets, but he never bit anyone either.

REST IN PEACE TINA FEY THE HAMSTER. YOU WILL BE MISSED.

Five days without a post? It’s like I don’t even know myself anymore. I’d planned on making a proper one today but I either threw my neck out moving furniture yesterday or maybe I slept on it funny or some combination of the two. Whatever the reason I’m in, like, INTENSE CRIPPLING PAIN and I can’t sit here for very long so a real post will have to wait. Instead here is a story from last week.

On Wednesday before the fireworks I wanted to make something fast and easy for dinner, so I decided to go with grilled salmon and a couscous salad with peas and bumatoes.

The couscous turned out well but I didn’t really like the salmon- it was somehow flabby and less delicious than when I’ve baked it. Everyone else finished theirs though, so maybe it was just me. Anyway, Symphony was having issues with eating her couscous and somehow managed to scatter it all across the table, which led to the following conversation:

Sym: Couscous is messy!
Me: (joking) You’re messy!
Sym: (looks disappointed; shakes her head) That’s cold. Even for you.