Even more plates

I went with my husband to paint some more plates at Hands On Ceramics last weekend. I decided to paint the plates of my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. Andy decided that since I was painting plates with the families’ faces on them that he should paint the plate with my face on it. I thought that sounded like a good idea. The plate is very different from the other ones, which makes it really interesting. I love how Andy’s art is so cool and very stylized. As I mentioned in my earlier post about painting these family plate portraits, getting a likeness is not easy. I had to keep asking the opinions of Andy and my sister-in-law, Lia, to tell me if the portraits even remotely resembled my mother and father-in-law and I had to keep changing things. Here is how our plates turned out…

Above: Andy’s first try at drawing me. He thinks it looks like our friend, Joel Shettlesworth, had a baby with Rosa Parks. Apparently I have lips the size of Kentucky. 

Below: Joel Shettlesworth and Rosa parks

Below: Andy’s finished plate portrait of me. He wanted to make sure everyone who eats at our house knows I am Jewish. Andy, I love you.

Above: My mother-in-law

Below: My father-in-law

Number 11: Do something crazy (or just different) with my hair

Hair. How can I write about changing my hair and not make it boring? I can’t. Unless there are photos. Lots of photos.

Lets take a look back on all of my hair styles. From the age of 1 all the way until now, I only have four different styles. 1. Short, 2.short with bangs, 3. long, 4. long with bangs. BOOOOORING.

1986. Ok, what child didn’t have this hairstyle in 1986? I’m about two here. In the 80’s little boys and girls pretty much looked the same. We all had this stupid bowl haircut or a mullet. There was a shortage of pink and frilly baby clothes. I guess it was just the thing. This is how I remember the 80’s. Being ages 0-5 during the 80’s doesn’t really serve my memory too well. I’m probably right. I usually am.


1991. I’m pretty cute here. Though my bangs could use a trim.

1992. Between the 2^nd and third grades I grew out my bangs. Then in a drastic style change, I got bangs again! WOW!

Between these two photos I got bangs again. I can't find a photo. Though I didn't really look either...

1997. GAHHH! What the…!? Yes, this is when I was a tweenage ogre. My nose had a growth spurt and my face still had to catch up. But the point here is I was growing out my “little kid” bangs. Again. And so began my long, stringy, style-less hair. Ew and here in the 7^th grade it was also greasy. Yuck.

From ages 12 to 26 I had this boring hair style.

(with my friend, Jodi) I'm the one with the boring hair.

For years and years I kept my long, stringy, straight, boring hair. I was really pretty attached. Literally, attached to my hair. Hahaha…ha? Ok, sorry. That was not funny. Why is that we become so attached (mentally) to our hair? It grows. In a matter of months it will be right back to the way it was.

Getting my bangs cut was not just a matter of changing styles, but I see now it is just part of my natural hair progression. I keep going back and forth. It has been 14 years since I last had bangs and now, once again, it was time.

I was nervous when I went to get my bangs cut. Physically nervous. I also got highlights, which I was equally nervous about. But of course it all turned out just fine and I am happy with the way I look. I did however increase my prep time in the morning from 2 minutes to 6 minutes. But I can live with that. Barely.

Below: My new hair. It's difficult to see the highlights.

My next hair venture will be to dye it black. I decided to rock this style for a little while (that’s right, I’m rockin the bangs) and then in about 6 months or so, I’ll dye it black. Maybe layer it a bit, cut it short… whatever it is, it will be something different. These bangs and highlights have opened the door to my being adventurous, hair wise.

Ok. Sorry to bore you. This has to be, without a doubt, the most boring item on my list. I promise it only gets more interesting from here.

Number 4: “Learn To Use/Make Fondant/Modeling Chocolate”

To start: What is Modeling Chocolate? and What is Fondant?


I am a product of America and generation Y or X or Q (or whatever, I have no idea actually, which generation I am a “product of” I just liked the way that sounded). being American and of this generation (whichever one it was) we were always told (and I believed) "you can do anything!" And for some reason one of those things I believed was that I was a dessert decorating wizard. This of course was never true. My little sister is way better at it than me, at both baking and decorating. I am pretty mediocre. I don’t know just when it was that I became so delusional. In my mind baking was MY thing that she so rudely ripped out from under me by being so suddenly awesome at it. In reality, aside from her natural talents (she is naturally quite talented at this sort of thing), she took months and months of Wilton cake decorating classes, majored in food sciences in college, and even studied cooking in Florence, Italy for a few months. I was really just jealous when my little sister surpassed my mediocre cake decorating abilities and became more awesome than me at something (She is actually more awesome than me at a lot of things). But looking back on our childhood and teenage years, she was always cooking and baking (hence her choice to study it in college). I can count on one hand the number of cakes I baked and decorated. I think I made 3. THREE. Yup that’s it. I really admire my sister’s abilities and am so impressed by all the cakes she makes. If I could learn to be half as awesome as her, my cakes and cupcakes would seriously ROCK. So I have a lot of baking related goals on my list. Some are things that sounded cool to me. Some things I just like to eat or want to taste. This particular goal is just the beginning of my baking and decorating adventures!

So the modeling chocolate thing was not going well already. Well the cupcake part was not going as planned anyway. I had baked the cupcakes on Tuesday night so they would be ready when my friend, KC, came over to teach me how to make and use the modeling chocolate on Wednesday. Why is it no one sells regular cake mix anymore? Only extra moist or moist? Those are NOT good for decorating cupcakes or cakes. Before I baked the cupcakes, KC had suggested I also make a pound cake mix and add a little bit of that in there because that would solve the moist gooey problem that occurs when using the moist or extra moist cake mixes. I looked everywhere for pound cake mix and I couldn’t find any. So I just baked the cupcakes without it. I went home to have some lunch on Wednesday. While I was there I decided to check on the cupcakes. I had put them in a container before they even had a chance to cool so that I could go to bed. Well, they were all moist and gooey on top which is the WORST THING EVER for icing cupcakes. The icing just sticks and pulls the top layer of cupcake off and it is stupid. Just plain stupid. I decided to leave the cupcakes out of the box and hopefully the moistness would dry or go away or something.


The moistness did not completely go away by the time I got home form work so I took the baby (I guess she would be a toddler now) and we went out in search of pound cake mix. I ended up finding the most expensive cake mix I had ever seen, a box of Duff Goldman's white cake mix for $7.99. Yup, $7.99. I thought, This stuff had better be good! Well, I got home and baked it and turns out if was perfect for what I needed it for. I still haven't tasted it yet though... 

KC was running a little late, but when she arrived I was totally ready to go. It turns out modeling chocolate is not as difficult as I had originally anticipated and it’s totally fun! It tastes like tootsie rolls and is as fun as playdough! It’s made from corn syrup and chocolate. We colored it lime green, neon yellow, neon, blue, and neon pink because those were the colors we had. I decided I wanted to make little flower shapes because I wanted to keep it simple on my first attempt and I found these cute little flower shaped cookie type cutters that are used for fondant and modeling chocolate.

We also made icing. Which, again, was even easier than I thought. I don’t know if I’ll be buying store bought icing anymore. Unless I am in a hurry I guess.  

The cupcakes turned out pretty and cute! Thanks KC for all your help!!! I hope they taste good. I am a little nervous about the taste since I have never used that cake mix before, never made icing before, and obviously never made modeling chocolate before either. I guess we shall see tonight…

Here is a pic of the cupcakes and a little of the "process":

So, Ilyssa, How are my cupcakes? Did I do a good job?