Story of a Hooligan Cake

A while back, I had all my grandkids spending the night.  Of course they wanted a story.  Usually Cally and Sheldon are the only ones getting a story and they always request "Bramble & Brownie", their alter egos.  With the 3 older kids in the room I quickly made up a couple of stories starring the "Hooligans".  In brief~ the Hooligan's like to trick people into doing things that are for their own good.  So they each have their own horse (I'll spare you the names and descriptions here), they each have their own name and talent.

This story was about going to a town where the only food anyone ever ate were hamburgers and soda pop.  So the Hooligans opened their own 'burger joint' but they made healthier food and shaped them into the shape of hamburgers with fruit and vegetable juice for the soda. 

They loved the story and have requested it many times.  Hence this is one of the made up off the top of my head stories I remember a little bit better than some others.

So now it is Sheldon's 4th birthday.  In my blog hopping, I saw a cake made into the shape of a big hamburger!  It was so cool!  So.... guess what I did? It had to be a Hooligan Hamburger cake!

I used these two combined for the bun.  Didn't know exactly how I was going to make it but here's where I started.

I divided the batter between a rounded pyrex bowl for the top and a springform layer for the bottom.

I used this one for the 'meat' in the middle layer.

So far so good...

Then I used these to try to make 'bun' colored frosting.

It didn't please my eye until I added this:)

Looks good with the crumb coating!  Yes!!

I've never made fondant.  So I mixed a package of cream cheese with enough powdered sugar and cornstarch and food coloring to make an American cheese colored fondant.  It was tricky and sticky but I finally got it to work:

Oh yeah.  On the middle layer, I used chocolate frosting and put chocolate sprinkles on it to make it look like 'meat'.  (I'm such a Hooligan!)

Along the way I made a big fat Dodo mess:

For ketchup I made a powdered sugar, butter, milk frosting and added lots of red and yellow food coloring as well as a big spoonful of strawberry freezer jam.  It was yummish.
I ran some of the yellow fondant thru a screen and it made the sprinkles on top which represent sesame seeds.  I didn't know what to do for lettuce...so finally I took some of the leftover 'cheese' fondant and added blue and green food coloring till it looked 'lettucey' enough.  It looks like playdough to me but you will see the grand effect right HERE:

Best of all was this response:

 

It was a splendid party, truly fit for Hooligans of all ages.

 

Story of the rug

So I was window shopping one day after blog  hopping for several weeks (my husband calls it 'brain-washing).  I had it  in my newly washed mind the colors I wanted for my Master bedroom/bathroom-to-be (I've got the claw foot tub! Now I need to add a bathroom but that's a whole 'nother story).  I had seen one country farmhouse style bathroom that had a cool looking rug near the tub. Here, let me see if I saved a copy of it...

YAY!  I found it!  See?  This is what was stuck in my head. 

So I stopped in at a cool little Junk/Antique/Collectables shop in Coos Bay called Leif's Treehouse.

It is oh so much fun to shop and think there or shop and forget there.

That's when I saw 'the rug'.  It was the cocoa brown of the border of the rug that grabbed my attention!

I love that shade! (I also love Cocoa but again, that's a whole 'nother story)

Anyway, you can see where I was coming from.  HOWEVER...

One small obstacle...it had only been at the shop for about a week AND it was way over my meager budget.

I unfolded it.

I touched it's lovely cocoa border and admired it's hooked rugginess.

Best of all it didn't smell like smoke/old house/cats.

But there was no getting around the fact that this was one rug I was not getting.

Now we just let 2 weeks pass...

Mr. Bill decides to sell his diesal truck because it's too expensive to drive it.

AND he sell's it!  Yay for Mr. Bill cuz he always lets me do the banking/spending/bill paying, ETC.

So I figured I would go back with my ETC and see if that rug was still available.

It was!!

I wandered around and talked to some friends I ran into.  Building up my bargaining nerve.

I then went to the cashier and asked if the price on that rug over 'there' was negotiable.

She called the owner.

What was my offer?

I offered a price that was 1/3 off the tag.

With a slight pause....

My answer came.   YES!

And that is the story of the rug.

PS.  Those are my  happy feet!

This picture is what inspired me to buy my new rose picture at the GoodWill.

See that picture above the headboard?

Umm humm. Sorta like this, but I put the picture into a rustic wood frame.

Total cost on this project $13.00 (GoodWill prices have certainly gone up!)

Rugs and rugrats

By popular demand here is my new rug....

Ooops!  That's just chopper, napping!

HERE is my new rug...

(I just noticed how odd my feet look!  I was leaning against the dresser so I could hold the camera still.)  I'm not really 3 feet wide!

I love the pretty colors!

I hung the picture up...

Cleaned off my dresser top.  It's such a pretty world today...

Because we are getting so much more sunshine than usual this time of year, I draped a white cloth over our east window.  It's weird to have a window covering in our room after living here like fish in a fishbowl for the last 17 years!

And finally for the romantic in me, (as if you couldn't tell!) here is the bouquet I sent to Mr. Bill.  Thanks to How Does She for the inspiration!

He loved it.

Now what am I to do with the rest of my day??  Maybe I will finally wash my office windows which I'm looking out of right now and am disgusted at the sight!  Yes.  That's what I'll do next...unless I come across another really inspirational blog...

2 Blogs/Same Bird

I'm known as 'Dodo' on this blog.  But I also have another blog on which I'm known as 'Dorie'.  The Dodo one is more personal.  The Dorie one is about my freeze dried food business.  You can find it here.

Something Sweet for a Wee Lass

I recently picked up a crochet hook after years of moving the hooks out of my way in my disaster craft closet.  These headbands are fun to do and I'm getting better with practice.  The yarn all came from the Hospice Thrift store.  Loved the bright colors! 

These are going to be sent to Australia to a  member of my family with a tragic situation. Her baby girl is due any time now.  That's going to be the sweet part of the story.  The tragic part is that when barely pregnant, the baby's daddy was killed in a car accident.  That's pretty harsh for a young girl to face. So these are for Cassie and her wee lass.

The flowers 'unbutton' and can be switched around.

Can you see what's changed from picture to picture?

New Things at Dodo's House

First of all, I made this blog site originally for my grandkids.  I spent so much, I mean SO much time telling them stories of 'Bramble and Brownie' that I thought I could post them here and then they could just read them when they want a story. 

Now I realize that these stories have magic because they aren't 'crafted' beforehand.  They are purely off the top of my head.   And once off the top of my head, they are gone like fairy dust.  To prove it, when Sheldon asks me to tell him about Brownie when the marshmallow storm came, I haven't a clue!  That happens every time they (Cally and Sheldon) come to visit Dodo's House.

So I'm changing this blog up a bit.

I'm going to include things that go into Dodo's House as well as things that come out of Dodo's brain.
I will start with some ideas I have about decorating  my bedroom.

It's been beige, pink and green for a long time and I was thinking I would change the color scheme (more for my husband, who looks good sleeping in flowers and lace but I felt deserved a little more masculine decor).

So I thought I might go with red or brown and green. I changed the bedspread a lot.
But after blog hopping (I didn't even know that's what I was doing) and looking at sites like Aiken Home & Gardens, My Romantic Home, Craftberry Bush, Hammer & Thread, Positively Splendid, and I'm so vintage, to name just a scratch on the blog world surface, I have returned to Pink and Beige and Green.

I dreamed about this look after living for at least 5 years with painted walls with at least 6 layers of wallpaper underneath.  I could see every seam.  Yes.  I actually saw this in my head before I did it.   I sponge painted the walls with some reject paint I got at Fred Meyer's in some sort of tannish beige and white,  I went down to the bay in front of our house and chose some nice long pieces of driftwood for curtain rods and a picture hanger, and I painted 5 wooden birdhouses I got at a craft store on sale.  My husband, Mr. Bill,  drilled large holes through the sides of the birdhouses, ran the driftwood ends through them and then attached them to the walls above the windows for curtain rods.   Back then I wrapped a long length of plain white gauzey cheesecloth around the driftwood and attached some thrift store silk flowers.  It's been like this ever since (Except I took the cheesecloth down when it became so encrusted with dust that every movement sent a cloud showering down upon us *cough*)

Now that my farmhouse is 100 years old (built in 1912) , I decided that the best I could do to update the old beast is by going with a shabby chic look.  Coupled with the fact that Mr. Bill gave me an antique clawfoot bathtub for Christmas (I know.  He's romantic like that. Not), and it looks like the pastel pallette will be with us for a bit longer.

So as I bloghopped, I saw lots of inspirational ideas.  Painting and distressed furniture how-to's.  Quilts, linens, paper roses, lacey stuff.  It's been simmering around inside until this week it boiled over!  So here now are my inspiration pieces for the next phase of my room transformation:

This stamp cost .75.  The acrylic paints were .50 each. I'm not ready to redo the walls so I just enhanced them a little bit...

I like the new look. It blends in well, don't you think?

And then I got some other stuff.  I'm going to post pictures of lots of things in my room.  The one thing about them all is that they all came from the thrift store.  It only makes sense. Old things for an old house.

There's a whole story (with pictures) about this.  The original print was in a pink plastic frame with a maroon (!) stripe around it!  This  wooden frame was on another shelf looking old, worn and lonely.  With a little trimming of the print I think the two were made for each other!

I love the pewter look to this lamp.  I have a neat idea for a ruffled lampshade. When I find the right lampshade. Oh, and I'm looking for another lamp similar to this one.

And I found a selection of linens and material that I'm thinking on for a quilt, some throw pillows and what have you:

These were very soft pillowcases.  I like.

An old section of a Chenille bedspread.

                                          A nice mix of texture and color.

Yes, everything here needs to be incorporated into my new 'old' bedroom.  I'd like to find an old iron headboard and to paint my dark oak dressers/nightstands/bookcase in a distressed milk or chalk paint in cream or white.  Then I'll add this little thrift store feller:

And then this room will be ready for the grandkids to come plop down and hear some new stories about Bramble and Brownie.