Greetings of the season

Wishing you all the best for a wonderful 2018. Cheers.

Driving through Algonquin Park

 This year's trip up to Huntsville, Ontario for Thanksgiving saw fabulously warm weather.

 Ya never know. Sometimes it rains. Once it even snowed.

 It rained in the morning and then was sunny all day with a high of about 20C

 Our return home lets us drive through magnificent Algonquin Park, in all its fall splendour.

These photos were all taken through a car window as we drove through the park. Dont' worry, I wasn't driving! What beautiful vistas. Love the park. Happy fall!

Peach galette

Sometimes you have over ripe peaches and you don't have time for a fancy pie! This time I made a galette, pretty fast and easy and I love the look! Yummy too.

Save yer fork...

...there's pie!
Yep, it's that time of year, when apricots, peaches and blueberries, all grown in Ontario, are ripe at the same time. What's a gal to do? Make pie, I say! And so, I did.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me...

 ...a Mercedes Benz? Always been one of my favourite tunes.

Peter, who is general manager of a Mercedes Benz dealership, was celebrating a milestone birthday, so a road scene with a wee vehicle seemed to be the thing to do. (The car is a vintage model with a hood and trunk that actually open. It's not edible.)

Happy birthday to Peter. Hope he loved his birthday cake!

Happy 13th Harry!

 Harry loves motocross so I made him a cake that I thought would make him happy.

Here's Harry with the cake and he did love it!

Gone fishing

Lucky Marcel lives near the St. Lawrence River and goes fishing as often as he likes. For his birthday, his wife Lori asked me to make him a fish cake. And so, here it is. I hope Marcel got to go fishing on his special day.

Happy 150th Canada!

To celebrate Canada's 150th birthday, I made a strawberry rhubarb (both locally sourced, natch) pie, and am celebrating with my sis who's joining me from the U.S.A. It will be a Happy Canada Day indeed!

Ready for my close up

 My friend Deb is an amazing photographer!

 Wasn't I lucky to discover that she was the official photog at Joyce's 90th birthday.

 I asked her to send me a few pix of the kitty cat and butterfly cake I made for the occasion.

Since it was one of my all-time faves, I was so happy that she took quite a few snaps...and sent them my way.

Many happy returns of the day to Joyce. Lookin' great at 90 years young!

Cat and butterfly cake

 My friend Mandy's grandma was celebrating her 90th birthday and I was asked to do her cake. Mandy told me that Joyce loves cats and flowers and I could do whatever I liked designing the cake. I had so much fun!
The cake was half chocolate, half vanilla, the kitten was made with Rice Krispy treats, covered with fondant, the butterfly was made of gumpaste and the daisies were fondant.

Apparently Joyce was delighted with the cake and it fed 50 or so guests celebrating her big day. Happy birthday Joyce!

Buttercream tulip cake

My friend Peter gave me a set of "Russian tips." I had seen them on various websites and figured it was time to give them a try. What fun. I love working in buttercream and if you stripe the bag with different colours, the tulips are striped too.
I thought this cake covered with beautiful tulips was a perfect statement now that spring is finally here.

Deer hunter cake

Marthe called the other day to say that hubby Robert was celebrating a big birthday. He's a deer hunter and she wanted a cake in the shape of a deer. I sent her some other ideas that might be fun and we both decided this was the way to go. A hunter and a deer, sitting side-by-side roasting marshmallows. How fun is that?

Baby shower

A friend of mine is having a granddaughter and was hosting a baby shower for her daughter. Since it's going to be a girl, we concentrated on using pink. And since her daughter calls her husband "Bear," the baby is called "Baby Bear." Here's the cake for the shower.

As a takeaway, sugar cookies decorated as sleeping baby girls were given as thank you gifts.

 The cookies were individually wrapped and were waiting at the door as you left.

And here's the adorable mom-to-be Jennifer with the cake I made for her shower. Best of luck to Jen and her new arrival.

Goodbye sweet Nutmeg: Oct. 1999 - Feb. 2017

 In the fall of 1999 I was feeding a stray calico cat. She was pregnant and had her five kittens on a shelf at our back door. Dad found them in October. Mama cat carried all the babies away a few days later but continued to show up for supper. A month later, she brought me all five kittens.

 I kept them all in the barn for a while and played with them and eventually got them all adopted. But Dad wanted to keep the little calico who I named Nutmeg. Oh her first night in the house, without her brothers and sisters, she took solace in my teddy bear basket. I couldn't find her at first...and then suddenly I noticed that face.

 She took an immediate liking to Cinnamon. They snuggled together most days.

She loved sharing Dad's ice cream! She charmed us all, that sweet cat.

Her markings and that sweet face made her so photogenic that I followed her around with a camera a lot.

And I drew her countless times. Her markings were so interesting and she'd hold her pose for hours so I was able go capture all the amazing shapes and colours of her fur.

 She kept that sweet baby face until she was nearly 18 years old. But I called her my old lady cat because she never climbed on the table or counter, never broke anything (like all the rest of my clan have done) and was generally an angel from the day she came into the house.

 She especially loved chasing the sun. She was an indoor cat who loved the indoors. She was the first cat who I let sleep in bed and she usually lay beside me, under the covers purring.

Richard snapped this of us together just before Nut's decline. In her healthier days, she never would have let me hold long enough to take such a calm photo.

Nutmeg was the sweetest cat, with a shy nature. But she loved me. Sadly, on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017, at the age of 17 and a half, Nutmeg crossed the rainbow bridge. I hope Dad is sharing his ice cream with her. I miss that little kitty so.

Valentine fun

 Okay, I love to play with my food! I figured Valentine's Day would be a fun time to do this. 
I invited Richard for a mid-week Valentine's dinner. We started with a cold borscht beet soup, topped with sour cream and a heart-shaped pickled beet.

 Next I made a salad of blood orange supremes, served atop romaine lettuce and sprinkled with roasted walnuts, feta cheese and a few more heart beets...

 Since there was kind of a red thing going on, I made a reddish chicken...pineapple chicken in a red sauce with pineapples and red, yellow and orange peppers.

 For dessert, I made individual mini-cakes shaped like conversation hearts. Since Richard and I share the same initials, I made a teeny cake heart that said, RM x2.

Perfect way to say "I love you!" Hope your valentine's day was delicious too!

Cake and more cake!

Okay, so I love making cakes. I really do! A while ago I figured some folks really don't want to see my garden, my cats, my life and maybe all they want to see is cakes. So, I made a cake blog. All cake. All the time. If you'd like to see it, click here: ronnascakeblog.wordpress.com/.
And if you REALLY like it, please subscribe to it and then you'll never miss a cake! The button is there on the right hand side. Thanks!

Tea for two

 With soft snow falling and warmish temps, we headed into the woods again...

 We had spent most of the morning bringing in wood and breaktime was upon us.

 So we took my dad's Thermos, filled it with milky tea, grabbed a couple of cups and headed back into the woods to our picnic table.

Chairs are stored under the table, so they were nice and dry. We sat back and enjoyed the silence.

A bridge...not so far

 Okay, so the stream my parents' sarcastically called "The Mighty Mogelon" is not very wide but balancing over two 2x4s was starting to drive me crazy. And I have terrible balance. I asked Richard to build me a bridge. He came up with the simple solution of throwing a piece of plywood over the 2x4s. Yay for ingenuity!

Meanwhile, the frozen and slushy stream is a busy highway for a few raccoons, awoken from their slumber because it's been a warmish week.

The only thing caught on the webcam for the past few weeks was this snap of a very large raccoon.

A day in the woods

 Since I burn wood to heat the house, Richard and I spend much of the winter cutting and gathering. Here's Richard crossing the frozen Mighty Mogelon pulling his chainsaw and gas with his toboggan.

 When the creek freezes I'm in mind of the lyrics to a Joni Mitchell song that goes, "I wish I had a river, that I could skate away on..."

 This is another creek that rarely, almost never freezes. I always threaten to do a polar bear dip in it, but never actually have taken the challenge.

This was an odd sight. Walking by a tree, my eye caught a glimpse of something reddish. At first I thought it was a dead pine clump. But upon further examination, it is some sort of bird's feather. Wonder what the back story is there...?