Starting Point

I like to have things well organized before I start them.  However, I'm not a particularly organized person, which consequently results in me not starting a lot of things I decide to do.  In order to avoid that, I'm just going to make my first post--no back story or explanations.  In church this week there was a quote that I really enjoyed:
“If we refuse to rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die!
Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates
us from the need to be finished.”    ~ Wayne Mueller
So...I'm being liberated from the need to finish before I start.

Recently my roommate and I have been trying to get healthy, which includes exercise (blech!) and experimenting with food (which may or may not actually make us healthier).  Somehow this has evolved into a general sort of craftiness and homemade Christmas presents. I blame pinterest.com, and yes presents already. Don't judge.  If it can snow in October, I can decorate for Christmas.



Roomie-who-loves-roses (this is how name-challenged people identify others haha) just had a birthday, which means presents.  So Roomie #1 and I spent our hour gained by the time change making chocolate roses! I even made the box from a plastic utensil box covered in our new love, mod podge, and pages from a thrift store dictionary.  I got the recipe/instructions for the roses here.

Since J-Roomie had a ton of unused marshmallows leftover from the marshmallow bowl, we decided to try our hand at making marshmallow fondant.  We've also decided that it would be insanely cool to make Cake Boss-College Edition a reality.  We need to practice more first, but considering I've never actually decorated an entire cake, it wasn't bad.  The cookie, random leaves, chocolate chips, and name were J-Roomie's contribution.  Also, she made the cake.  Since this blog is mine, I crossed out her work.

Ok, no, I lied.  I just haven't asked Roomie-who-loves-roses if she wants her name on the internet and I don't want to get sued.  (I'm lying again, she wouldn't sue me.  Unless I made her too angry.)  Anyway.  I used the same general principle as the chocolate roses to make the fondant ones.  It was a little harder to work with since it was softer, but seemed to work reasonably well.  To make the colors we just kneaded in food coloring.

The marshmallow fondant recipe (here) was a lot of fun to make although my fingers were completely encased in marshmallow for a while and there was powdered sugar everywhere.  It still felt super sticky when i finally decided to get my hands out (quite a process!) but after i washed them off and went back to it, the fondant was actually pretty smooth and not so sticky.