Happy Birthday, Mt. St. Trenton

This weekend was my youngest son's 4th birthday party. His absolute favorite things in the entire world are volcanoes, exploding volcanoes. I have a tradition at my house of making wonderful, personal birthday cakes. So I ended up making this for him. I did three round cakes, two chocolate and the top layer was red velvet cake. I then frosted the entire thing with light brown frosting. I crushed Oreo cookies and gramh crackers and tossed them on the outside. I also added chocolate covered pop rocks (yes, there is such a thing) and brown sugar crystals to the outside. To do the lava, I added red frosting to the top and then drizzled melted orange-colored candy wafers on the top. I then added strawberry pop rocks and cut out pieces of red fruit roll up to the side. I added candles and sparklers as a finishing touch. It went over very very very well. Only problem: what am I going to do with all this cake?

Oooooh! Pretty!

The finished inside of the cake. Yes, I do have a pink knife. Thank you!

Oh, the things I must do...

Last night I went to a party at Maria's. It was amazingly fun. It felt good to chill out with new people. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have my husband by my side. He had to work. :o( Today was a relaxing day. I worked on my art most of the day, a little cleaning, a little cooking (not so much cooking!). I've been working on my ATCs. I have lots of ATCs that I've currently working on. My first set is for one of my bestest friends, Chris. Chris has a crush on Sarah Palin. If you know Chris, you would understand this completely. My second set of ATCs is a mixed bag; these ATCs I will be bringing to my NYSATA conference on Friday. I will be handing them out like business cards. Pretty clever, huh? The last set of ATCs I wanted to do was based on the book From the Mixed -up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It is one of my favorite books in the entire world. It is about a pair of kids that run away from home to go live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same person, E.L. Konigsburgh, wrote and illustrated the book. The illustrations are prints, and they are so beautiful. I had two copies of the book, so yesterday I started to cover this old canvas with pages from the book. It was a painting I did for a friend who I no longer have any contact with. I covered it with pages from the book yesterday before the party, and today I painted it purple and a really pretty shade of blue. When it is finished, it will be a painting of the main character, Claudia, a character I could really relate to during different parts of my life. I tore out all the illustrations from the book and I am going to use those to make a series of ATCs. It's on the to-do list. So I leave you people here with some ATCs I made for conference.

"Never Too Much"

"Lucky"

"Spring"

"Sugar and Spice"