Weekend Scenes

TAKES THE CAKE: Busy weekend! Saturday, we were busy with a Teen Feed feed. That meant prepping for we're never sure how many diners in a one-hour span. It seems to range from about 40 to 80 meals. Saturday is was way closer to 80 - so busy! We had a "Hot Diggity Dog" bar (BIG hot dogs with multiple toppings/condiments), plus homemade baked beans (I made eight batches of beans in my Instant Pot pressure cooker), plus banana splits for dessert. Fortunately, we had lots of people helping provide food and serve the meal, and it went fast and well!

Sunday, we had a cake to make. We've started volunteering with Birthday Dreams, a non profit that provides birthday parties, cake and all, for homeless youth. 

Late last week, we searched the requests that homeless kids had for cakes/parties, and I saw that a teen had requested  Tupac Shakur cake for this Monday. We're Tupac fans and I thought it would be fun to give it a go. The teen requested a white cake with white buttercream, and mentioned her favorite color are red and blue. 

We baked a three-layer vanilla cake, put red between two of the layers and blue between the other two, and iced it all in white. 

We decided to go with a Tupac portrait cut out of a sugar sheet. Annabelle did made it, and it was really, really hard/dicey, not just cutting it out (via a Cricut machine), but transferring it atop the cake was super stressful. 

Fortunately, it worked, and then it was "just" a matter of surrounding it with a marshmallow fondant 'bandanna,' which we had to hand paint in a paisley pattern. I kind of grossly underestimated how long that would take. 

The photos don't show that we did the birthday girl's name in fondant on the cake board, or the blue and red filling stripes. Would love to have had a photo of that.

EYES ON THE SKIES: This weekend, our eyes were on the skies from time to time.

We're lucky to have three airports near, so there's often something interesting overhead. 

Sunday, this helicopter was so near overhead, I could see its pilot and passenger. 

I kept my camera out on the deck on Sunday, knowing the Collings Foundation was selling flights out of Boeing Field. I was hoping to photo one of their beauties. 

Finally, late Sunday afternoon, I heard the rumble, and here it came!

The shadow in the lower left corner is our house eaves. It was that close!!

Behold, the B-17 Flying Fortress!

 Developed in the 1930 for the US Army Air Corps, this four-engine heavy bomber is a sight to behold. 

We also saw this B-24 Liberator overhead several times this weekend.  

Its split-tail design is very distinctive (below is not my photo, obviously!).