Martha Stewart 101

Until Christmas, I have an uninteruppted, 3 hour period ENTIRELY TO MYSELF on a Thursday. Never, in 6 years, has this happened with any sort of regularity. And, readers, be warned - next year is a WHOLE DAY!!!

For Connor for Christmas, I had absolutely no idea what to get him for Christmas. Given my firstborn son has everything he wants, and there is a galaxy of stuff here, and he won't be home a heck of a lot - nothing exciting came to mind as a present for Connor for Christmas.

Until, that is, the train table top.

We have a train table. Very whacky-doo; the kids have disintergrated the top of it and the dog has chewed a great number of the wooden tracks. So? Big idea - 'I'll paint him another one'. Under no circumstances did I consider doing this because it's near impossible to build the train track without going over the road, or some water at some point and it drives me nuts....

Anyway. Here is the 3/4 finished result. Forgive the photo, but A. it's on my mobile, and B. I'm a crap photographer.

This side is the racing track side. I am yet to put the white lines in. And then, I'll polyeurathane the top to try and make it a little more durable. I've also made a 'pit lane' which I am also making a 'pit shed' for. Well, Grant is making the shed and I shall paint it.

Lightening McQueen and all his friends can race forever.

On the other side, will be nice green pastures for Thomas and his friends to drive, unrestricted by roads and water, wherever I damn well feel like pointing the track.

People have asked me 'oooh free time!! What do you do with it?? Answer? Have stupid ideas and turn them into a reality.

It's not great; even I can see that, as a painter, I make an excellent accountant. But, he's going to love it. And I've had a really nice few Thursday afternoons alone painting it.

In other news; the cake.

For Connors birthday, we had a little 'invite some friends over (i.e. my girlfriend with her 3 kids) and we'll have a party'. Because the oldest is Riley, I thought 'you know, I should make a cake for them. I've already got one sorted for the family thing; maybe I should just whip together a dinosaur mudcake. They'll lurrvveee that'.

So, I did. Big mistake was made pretty early on. The receipe (because, I made it from scratch) said 'put one 450g block of chocolate and a ton of butter in a saucepan and melt'. Cool. So, I did that.

Before reading Step #2 - I put all the fatty chocolatey mixture into the dry ingredients. Then I read; 'Put HALF of this heart attack inducing stuff into the cake - the rest is for the icing you dumbass'

Ooops. I should've ditched the cake at that point. Precisely that point. But, nooo.

Think 'meh. It's a cake. It's chocolate. They are chocolate sucking vampire-children. I'll cook it and deal with the fallout'.

Except chocolate, when there is too much of it, won't go HARD in the oven will it?? Nope, FYI, it BOILS.

Get cake out. Stick cake in fridge for a day. Still not hard. Ok, you stupid cake, in the freezer you go.

Got it at least half frozen, so I can at least cut it into a semblance of a dinosaur. Ice cake with butter icing (hence the reason for me not even considering the chocolate for the icing) and bung it back in the freezer.

Get it out;

I can't get it off the plate.

It is so damn fudge like, it's STUCK to the plate.

Apparently, it tasted wonderfully. Me? If I ever eat chocolate again, please kill me. The amount of mess even touching this sludgy excuse for a cake was astounding. I am suprised that there was enough to turn into a dinosaur.

The real cake? The original cake that I had planned to make and executed perfectly??

Perfect. And he whacked it good.