Ok, guys. Before I dive into photos and posts about our spring break road trip, I need to share about this birthday cake. I know, it’s another cake. But it’s Hannah’s first ever birthday cake, and despite the storm of insanity that plopped down on our house the week of her birthday I was still determined to make it as awesome as I could.

It’s a 4 layer white cake that I dyed to match her Hawaiian-themed party. It’s covered in (from scratch) vanilla buttercream. I had all kinds of elaborate ideas for how to frost and decorate this cake, but in the end it was really delicious and a fun surprise to cut into in front of the guests.

The cake recipe was from my trusty America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. I specifically wanted white cake, not yellow cake, because I wanted to make sure the dyes would be bright and vibrant and not altered too much by the color of the cake batter. Now my white cake recipe was for a 2-layer cake, so I actually made 2 batches because I wanted this to be nice and high. Here’s the original recipe, with my food coloring modifications and no almond extract (in the original recipe, but why sully a perfectly good cake with almond extract?):

Ingredients for a 2-Layer White Cake
1 cup whole milk, room temperature
6 large egg whites, room temperature (save the egg yolks for the buttercream!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
12 Tbsp (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces and softened
4 cups frosting or buttercream (we’ll get to that in a minute)

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease your cake pans. I like to butter and flour mine, then put a piece of parchment on the bottom. I actually have four 9″ cake pans, so I didn’t have to reuse the pans for the second batch of batter. I didn’t just double the batter because I thought it might overflow my stand mixer. I actually made the cake twice.

Whisk the milk, egg whites, and vanilla extract together in a small bowl.

In the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large bowl if you’re mixing by hand), whisk all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) together. Then on medium-low speed add the butter to the flour mixture one piece at a time. Mix until it looks like moist crumbs, 1-3 minutes.

Beat in all but 1/2 cup of the milk mixture, then raise the mixer speed to medium and beat until “smooth, light, and fluffy,” 1-3 minutes. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the last bit of the milk mixture. Mix until the batter looks slightly curdled, about 15 seconds. Give it a good stir with a rubber spatula.

Okay, let’s get coloring.

I figured out that each layer of this particular cake recipe was about 3 cups of batter (very messy trial and error). I can’t speak to other recipes, but if you use this one you should be good to go with 3 cups of batter to a layer. So with each batch I made, I portioned out 3 cups of batter into separate bowls for coloring. I used my good Ateco food coloring gels, which get more saturation with less dye than supermarket food coloring. And I have the entire range of colors, so I don’t have to mix. I never use any other food coloring, these are wicked good to keep on hand (sorry, we just got back from New England).

You have to really mix the gel in, and only add 2 or 3 drops max at a time before you stir and check for color.

A little goes a long way.

They give such beautiful color.

So after I colored my layers I spread them into pans…

…and followed the recipes baking directions. Bake the cakes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few crumbs attached (but not wet), 20-25 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through baking.

Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then flip out onto wire racks, peel off the parchment paper, and cool right side up completely before frosting. Bake your other layers (in my case, pink and green–which I did not photograph).

I made the cake layers the night before and wrapped each layer in plastic wrap once it was cool enough not to fall apart. This was to make completely sure that they were ready to be frosted on party day.

I used my favorite Vanilla Buttercream recipe for the frosting, and since it yields 4 cups, or enough for a 2-layer cake, I did go ahead and double the amount of frosting I made. That worked out fine in the stand mixer. Then I frosted the cake really simply, using this equally handy gadget to make sure the layers were exactly the same height. I stuck on her 1 candle and some of the silk flowers I had for decorating, and that’s all she wrote. I worried that a simple vanilla frosted cake wouldn’t look cool enough on the goodies table, but I got such a cool reaction from everyone when we sliced into the cake and they saw all the colored layers for the first time. So that was actually pretty awesome, and of course the birthday girl kinda dug it.

Today was Hannah’s luau birthday party. It was kind of a trip.

She was not into the leis.

But she was dressed in her finest resort casual…

…despite the fact that it snowed today!

(more…)

My first New Year’s Resolution this year was to get organized. I needed to try and find some routine, some system, that would help me juggle the everyday tasks that take up so much of my time in my working life and home life. I feel like I’m horribly inefficient when it comes to the day-to-day stuff, devoting far too little or too much time to them and throwing the rest of my life out of balance a little as a result. I’m also a terrible delegator and kind of a control freak; I can never point Adam at the tasks that would be the most helpful, and some of my systems are so obtuse that it’s impossible for him to figure them out. I’m getting better about that, though. I’m learning to care less about how things are done and just be excited that someone else is doing them.

But, everyone has chores. And let’s face it, when you get home 3 or sometimes 4 hours before your significant other you’re just going to have more of the chores to do. And there are certain tasks I dislike but do a better job of (like ironing and sorting mail, I hate dealing with the mail), so I let them snowball until they become so giant they cannot be avoided for one more minute. And then I dedicate hours or even days to getting them back on track, which puts me behind with everything else I need to do that week, and it just keeps repeating the cycle.  Once I’ve gotten to the bottom of The Dreaded Task, I cannot bear to look at it again for a while. Which, of course, leads to another marathon session of Dealing With It.

So anyway, I started looking around on Pinterest in January for ideas and strategies to help get me focused and juggle the small stuff so I could free up time to focus on the things I actually get excited about: more playtime with the baby, my hobbies, fun work projects. I stumbled across this whole subculture of (largely) Christian, homeschooling, stay-at-homes who run their households with military precision. A system for everything, a clean and tidy home, and an arsenal of creative activities with their kids. I even found a Salon article about this after I started my research. It’s a thing. Now, I happen to be the exact opposite of a Christian, homeschooling, stay-at-home mom, so obviously not everything was going to work for me. But I just needed some direction, and that’s how I found Clean Mama.

I can’t say I’ve become a regular reader; the level of devotion to cleaning and organizing is more than I can handle every day. But, her post “How To Make a Homekeeping Binder” spoke to the list lover in me. She has some great printables and kits on Etsy to use, and I did buy a couple for organizing holidays and my blog. For the rest, I took some inspiration and created my own templates personalized to suit my family’s needs. There is nothing more motivating and focusing for me than being able to cross an item off a list, so she kind of had me at “hello.” I also made one for work and another one for my blogging and crafty life, but the latter hasn’t had much action yet. One thing at a time. It’s been a full month of using this new system, and while I’m still getting used to the routine and still have setbacks and things I avoid, I have to say it’s making the day-to-day of life much more manageable.

I made a monthly calendar of To Dos for my home and work binders, just like in Clean Mama’s binder. But I didn’t use her template because a lot of it was irrelevant to me. I designed a similar looking calendar with my own household needs.

For each day of the week I’ve designated One Main Task in red. The blue tasks repeat more frequently, some every day or every other day. This helps me just have a set schedule for doing laundry, sorting the mail, and etc. I’ve also noted the once-a-month visit from our cleaning service and the prep day for that.

My work binder has the exact same principal, but a little more detailed. Big weekly tasks are in orange, everyday tasks in dark blue. But for work I’ve added light blue tasks that include meetings, self-imposed deadlines for things like changing bulletin boards and submitting orders. All of this is to try and give me a routine for running the library so I can easily keep up with the daily management of it all in addition to my class load. This work calendar has been kind of a lifesaver. I also included sections for work projects and a running list of book requests so I can easily log books I need to order.

For my home system, I didn’t want to assign days to complete certain monthly tasks, so I also made this checklist. Most of these repeat every other month or so, but this is to try and help me stay on top of the less frequent chores that I can forget about indefinitely. I still haven’t cleaned the oven, though. I’m still growing into this.

This is where I got extra nerdy. I made customized shopping lists for regular groceries and for Costco. The latter is so Adam and I can stop looking at each other on weekends and asking, “Do we need anything from Costco?” The former is just to have a list of things we actually buy. I’ve been using these great shopping list pads for years, but they’re missing some of the everyday things we buy and are full of stuff we never use. So I thought customized would be better. I even made customized menu pages so I can keep it all in one place.

So far I like this system, and I am using it. And it’s nice to be able to point Adam to a list of things to be done that day so he can help. I am not yet at the magical point where I’ve gotten time back for the rest of my life, but it’s been a tiring winter. I wasn’t expecting to achieve this goal in a month, but I am moving along with it.

So these are a day late, but I wanted to spend my last day of winter break actually working on some of these goals. But here are my official 2013 New Year’s Resolutions. I’m feeling really good about this list.

• Organize, organize, organize! This is The Year of Getting Myself Together. I want to develop a home managementand a work management plan to help juggle this insane roller coaster of a role that is Working Mom. I’m tired of ironing piling up, my desk piling up, my To Do list piling up, forgetting about dinner until the last minute. Adam is an amazing help, but only if I can tell him what I need help with. Mommy Brain prevents this. And last fall I was so exhausted after work that I squandered the precious time I had to get things done because I couldn’t focus enough to decide what needed doing. So my first goal is a fool-proof plan for keeping all our family ducks in a row. Just a little life management overhaul, nothing TOO ambitious.
• Time management. This is really an extension of my first goal, but in addition to actually keeping life organized I need to plan my time better to keep it that way. I’m working on a plan that will help me with both of these: getting me organized andhelping me manage my time better.
• Redesign this blog! My fifth blogging anniversary is coming up in April, and in honor of that I want to really take a look at what I’ve loved about blogging for the past 5 years. I also want to look at what needs improvement.
• Work my side hustle. I finished my first commissioned quilt just before Christmas, and I loved the whole process. This year I want to explore how to build my Orange Room Empire *insert evil laugh here* while balancing my librarian career. This may take a backseat until summer, but if my Big Life Plan helps get me on track I may tackle this one sooner. And I’m going to need to call on my friends (I’m looking at YOU, Kathy!).
• Be a more present friend and relative. Remember birthdays, send cards, spend more time. Hannah is getting old enough now that I don’t feel guilty being away from her for a few hours, so I need to try and get some of my own identity back. I think I’ve actually been pretty good about not falling into the Void of Motherhood, where my own self completely disappears. But I could be better.
• Ask for help!! I really want to see if I can find a mother’s helper in my neighborhood, for starters. And the next time I want to head into the city with friends for the afternoon (or even just to get a haircut), I think I’ll be giving Nana a call for some grandbaby time. Obviously Adam is fine hanging out with the baby, but he kind of needs his solo Dad time, too.

Happy Holidays! I hope everyone’s Christmas was as merry as ours!