Blogging and baking

There are professionals who do this blogging thing and then there is me. Grammatically incorrect, less than perfect pictures, unoriginal recipes... the list goes on and on. I love following the professional blogs. They give me a lot of great ideas and the motivation to do things like whip up a cake on a Thursday evening.

Example #1 - The Pioneer Woman

She may be the "Godmother" of blogging. More than anything I love her sense of humor and how incredibly witty she is. Not to mention the woman can cook. I've tried a number of her recipes and everything has been good so far. The best thing about her recipes is how detailed she is and how she shows you step-by-step how to make things. I attempted her Perfect Pound Cake.

Behold...

I mean, really? Who makes cakes that pretty?

She also does this great up close and personal "cast of characters" pictures of the ingredients.

Here's my try...

I think I need to work on my staging.

The cake however was exceptionally easy. My handy, dandy mixer was a must for this recipe. She suggested mixing after every ingredient... after each egg, each cup of flower, etc. That's a lot of mixing!

And more mixing...

In the end I think it was a success... The cake tasted great! Her cake ended up more aesthetically pleasing than mine did. Although it looked pretty darn great in the cake pan, but that whole turn-me-upside-down-and-let-gravity-do-its-thing took a wrong turn and half of my cake dropped out and the other half needed some help. Here's proof I did grease the heck out of my pan!

I'll give myself an 9.5 on taste and a 3.5 on plating. It wasn't nearly as pretty or picture worthy as hers. So, I'll just leave you with what I aspire to...

(courtesy of The Pioneer Woman - her cake, not mine)

Swings and summer time

Everyone has a swing, except me. This makes me want one even more.

Darby has done it again and posted pictures of her most recent vacation that make me want to move to the Midwest, have a twin sister and start calling my father "Daddy Boy". I am perfectly happy in my own life but sometimes she can take a picture good enough to make you want to change things up a bit.

She also reminded me about how bad I want a big porch... and a SWING! How great does this look?

(Fly Through Our Window)

Then, I stumbled upon Rachel's blog and her rendition of a swing. This has to look like the most comfortable swing on the planet. 

I haven't been following her blog long enough to have seen her first post about how she created this for a customer, but I'm so glad she mentioned it again. I think I see a project for my dad in his very near future. I just have to figure out how you get those knots tied in that rope!