Cake Pan Cover

Hola!
I will get right to the point because my mom called earlier and is very eager to see the cake pan cover. There it is.


So, now you have seen it. If you want to know how I did it, you can read on and there are also more photos of the finished product at the end of the post.

If you find this all rather boring and not your kind of thing, just log out and (to use a phrase our son Ian came up with) don't blame about it, which basically means, no worries, get on with stuff.......


Should you be sticking around for the details........HI MOM!!!!.......I will give you some history.
It was either a half of a fish that would hang on the wall or a cake pan cover. I decided the fish would be very complicated after looking at a website where a guy makes dragons out of papier mache'. So I went for the cake pan cover.

It took two tries.

The first try I used light weight screen for the form, and covered it with masking tape to give it some strength. I made a mixture of glue, flour and water, dunked the torn newspaper strips in the mixture and slapped them on the form.

this did not work.....................the torn pieces of paper were too big and they caused the screen to warp and then it got too heavy after it dried and then, it smelled terrible....................

So, I switched to Plan B...................... a new screen that I made into a circle and only masked off at the seam.

I omitted the flour and went with straight water and glue, used very small strips of paper and covered first the main body and then, the top, which I simply cut out of a piece of cardboard and slathered the glue and newspaper on.

I used masking tape to connect the top to the main body and added more newspaper to firm it all up and then painted it white.

After cutting two slits in the top, I inserted a wadded and rolled up piece that I shaped into a handle and covered that in newspaper and tape. I taped this handle where it met the top and added more newspaper and then painted that white as well.

I wanted to paint it in a talavera style, so I followed the design of a dish I have. I made a grid out of cardboard and penciled in all the little squares and other designs I wanted.

Below you can see the squares have been painted with blue acrylic and the other designs which were also penciled in using the cardboard grid, are painted in browns, yellows and orange acrylics. Later I went over that all again and put in alot of black details.

After I completed all this background work, I drew in the flowers and leaves and started painting them. I used blues, and greens, and yellow and orange and red and magenta (all acrylics I found here at the mercado, along with about six other paints I am saving for some other unknown project).

After it dried I put three coats of brilliant high gloss varnish on it and Voila! A cake pan cover!

Now, all I need is a cake!!

adios, linda lou

Should I ask or Should I not ask?

Hola!
Hey, on Saturday night we were minding our own business, typical night, planning to grill, watch a movie on the laptop.
A cool exception to this typical evening was Senor finally has replaced his old rotisserie with a new heavy duty fandangled thing that actually holds weight and works.

If you recall, we put two turkeys on the old skinny rotiserrie last Thanksgiving and the turkeys first bent and then broke it.

So, Saturday night, Senor put a nice size chicken on the new spit that he and his iron worker friend created and it turned perfectly.
So, as the chicken spun around over the coals, we walked around the yard, looked at the new fence posts, removed a few brown leaves from plants, watched the grass grow.
We commented how still and hot it was and how we wished it would rain.

About halfway into the grill, without any warning, a very heavy rain began to fall. We had a few brownouts, but by using the flashlight and an umbrella, Senor was able to finish dinner.
By then, the whole town was out of power and the thunder and lightning arrived and we had to skip the movie, but ate a tasty chicken out in the garden room, in the dark. There was so much lightning we did not even need any candles.

That Saturday morning, some very lovely ladies asked me to go on a road trip with them. We went to Navajoa.

I know, that is not really very far, but we went in a cadillac!

And we had lunch and went to Sorianna Market, which is where I bought the movie we planned to watch that evening before the power went out.

I bought Arizona Dream for twenty-six pesos. We did finally watch the movie, Arizona Dream, with Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway and Jerry Lewis, on Sunday night. Senor said it was a ridiculous waste of time and a very ridiculous movie and it was ridiculous that he even bothered to sit through the whole ridiculous thing.

I didn't think it was toooooo bad...............I might even watch it again. If you have seen it, the very youthful Johnny Depp already has developed a playfulness that makes the 'Pirates' movies, in my opinion, such a hit.

Also, in Arizona Dream, he is just beginning to make a hair statement, as his hair sticks up through out the entire movie, as if he just got out of bed. Does this qualify me as a movie blogger?

There was a huge selection of movies at Sorianna. They are all in English with spanish subtitles. I saw holiday movies, kid movies, an old PT boat movie, some black and white movies. The best thing is they are all cheap.

So, I also bought Year of the Gun, with Sharon Stone, for twenty-two pesos. Stone, on the cover, looks like she is about twenty years old. So, the movies are old and if you were to ask Senor, he would say..................probably all ridiculous.

At Sorianna I also bought some very familiar looking fruit. You can see it in the photo below. Here in Alamos, we have mexican apples, but the big town of Navajoa imports their galas, pink ladies and goldens from Washington.

Outside our door this morning I was greeted by another old familiar Washington sight, the slug. This was not the big juicy three incher from the northwest, but definitely, a slug.

While I was in town this morning getting some black paint for the cake pan cover, Umberto came by to tell us he needed to get his tooth pulled and could not work. So Senor went by himself to pick up another truckload of barro blanco wood.

Then he got the photo below, looking through the portal of the little casa behind us. You can see the little old senor has put his sonoran cot out under the portal.

It is late in the day now. I called the moving company. They say the truck is leaving Seattle tomorrow and our stuff is in the very front of the truck and will be the first stop. Notice I did not say they called me. I wonder how this will all turn out.

The sky is turning dark purple to the east. But there is absolutely no wind.

I have pablano peppers, potatoes, carrots, meat and epazote in the crock pot.

Should I ask Senor if he wants to watch Year of the Gun?

And there has been a recount......

Hola, hola, hola.


I went to town yesterday, paid the water bill, checked the mail, and had a nice conversation with the mail lady about how hot it was. At the mercado a small bottle of glue was $48 pesos (around $3.50 US) and I balked, but bought it anyway. I have to get on with the cake cover project and need glue. I could get a huge bottle of glue for about .89 cents, if it was on sale at Target, if I were north of the border..............


Back at the plaza I stopped at the raspado truck and got my favorite limonada (lime) raspado, with the center filled with salt and two fresh lime halves. I need to stop getting the salt.

I sat on a bench at the plaza and it was very quiet and then, all of a sudden, trucks and cars were going around the plaza, and kids were running in and around the benches and two old senors came and sat right beside me.

The senors asked me how I was and I asked them how they were and then, two little boys came by selling pan, and the senors bought some to eat with their habaneros and I could just feel the heat and noise getting to me.

So, I decided it was time to leave.

Right alongside the Palacio is a nice shaded stairway that leads up to the Casa de la Cultura. From the top of the stairs I took the photos of the emerald green hills and the restoration of the church. In the middle of the big rocks in the third photo there is a small dot, it almost looks like it has a dark center. It is a goat. I could see it through my camera lense, but it just will look like a circle to you. We have friends who live at the base of those rocky hills and from their portal we can watch both brown and white goats up on the cliffs.

At the cultural center I talked to my friend who oversees the events there. She said she has a project for me, but could not tell me more until next week. So she will come by next week and we will eat and talk. I told her to call first. If the furniture comes, we may be north of the border.........

I have about 6 projects going on right now; my cake cover (which I will tell you more about later, so far it has been a ridiculous mess, but I am working on changing that), I am sewing a skirt (it took me three days to remember how to thread the machine), I am linseed oiling all the tables and chairs (I have a funny smell about me), I am scotchguarding all the fabric cushions I have (I have two funny smells about me), I did an inventory of my acrylic and watercolor paints and found paper and canvass (I plan to do the same flower in both paints and I am absolutely not an artist at all, I just like to mess with paint).

The man with the barro blancos is still not back from California and Senor says he needs the ladder, so I cannot work on making the fence or stand on a crooked ladder painting the cement vigas. Instead I have been filling my days with other projects.

Another project from the culture center will certainly not get in the way.

Today I had a fun little project to add to my list. A friend gave me one hundred and twenty-six little naranjitas from her tree. Naranjitas means little orange. These are actually kumquats and as you may know, there is nothing sweet about them. There is a tree down the street. On the way back from the track, I frequently pick the naranjitas and eat them because I am usually dying of thirst by then.

I have an electric juicer, but it is not the kind that will seperate the juice from the peel, so using the hand squeezer, I squished one hundred and twenty-six (kept count as I squished) little naranjitas and got one cup of juice.

I added three scant tablespoons of sugar, one cup of water and poured it into an ice cube tray. Does this qualify me as a food blogger?

Now senor can add cute little ice cubes to his water during the day.

Speaking of projects, I do not want to leave senor and his projects out of the picture. He is working way too long in the heat, but getting so much done.

Today he did stop at noon and is lounging now with his book. The ground that will be below the concrete floor of the portal is being leveled and a few more support beams have been poured.

I think this is looking great. This portal will be beautiful. It has been our intention all along to do alot of our daily living on the portal. Remember, everything to the right will be enclosed. The new kitchen will eventually be about where the higher stacks of wood are located.

AND, before I go, I want to inform you, there has been a recount. I am happy to announce that we have only been north of the border seven times in the last year............adios! linda lou