Happy 2nd Birthday, Cheeseblarg!

Here we are again. This little blarg that I started two years ago on this date is celebrating its birthday. It's done so much in that time, and I hope it does much more in the future.

Remember the time when we won Blog of Note from Blogger? And that time that we went to NYC to hang out with our Coco Llama in Conan O'Brien's gallery with the help of you readers? And we won Voice of the Year from BlogHer? And I was published not once, but twice, with Cheeseblarg art?

Yup, we've done a lot so far, and someday, we'll get our mention from a celebrity and we'll finally buy that Unicorn Jumbo Jet we have always wished for!


Happy Birthday, Cheeseblarg, and thanks for reading again, and always! And of course, I made cake!

If you want to give Cheeseblarg a present, share your favorite post with friends and celebrities, or cash donations work to. ;)

...see more about the creation of this cake below...

You look like a monkey and you smell like one too!

And to celebrate, here are some of my favorite things currently:

(video above)

And as much as I am amused by Gangnam Style, I love this video below even more, especially when you read the translation:

And a birthday wish from my best Harry Potter nerd friend. I once made her a chocolate cheesecake for her birthday, with the Hogwart's Coat of Arms on it, created with royal icing, and snitches made of Lindt truffles dusted in edible gold powder. This was nearly as enjoyable, though I had no idea she had an animagus.

Also, I received a new drawing tablet as a present, which I love the heck out of... mostly because it makes me draw better, and it is awesome and fancy.  

Here is a drawing of my friend's adorable pug, Ollie, that I did with it:

So yeah, happy birthday to me (as of 4:04 in the morning, October 2nd). Thank you for reading the silly things I post, and for commenting, and clicking reaction buttons for another year. <3

Stuffed

The PEEPS are a lie!

If you guessed that this is the video game that I was going to dioramacize for the CHEESEBLARG PEEPS CHALLENGE, it is probably because you are SUPER SMART and also because you have been paying attention. Congratulations!

Remember, you still have until SUNDAY to turn in your dioramas, and mine are not eligible for prizes*, because even that is a bit too narcissistic for me. Imagine how hilarious that would be though, if I made contests for you guys and declared myself the winner every time.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you:

PEEPS PORTAL

Hanukkah 2011- 7th Night- There was a sale!

This is usually the sweet spot.  The day after Christmas sometimes can bring some AWESOME gifts that are now half-price and cheap enough to buy for people you care about. And sometimes, it can just bring a lot of cheap crap that you still don't want but OMG, there is more of it. YAY!

Guess which one you got tonight!

(see another post if you can't figure out how to open the present)

Cake continues to be a lie.

Yes, I'm alive. Thank you for checking on me.  I went for a three-hour cruise on the S.S. F.U.NABLAPOMO and after several days of getting stranded on the isle of Mai Intestines Haight Me with the professor and Mary Ann, I am back.


And now that I can tentatively keep food down again, my body delivered the following message via twitter:

"I think I'd like Pepperidge Farm vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for breakfast. I don't have any but that's what my body wants."

Well, I mean, I wrote that, I don't have some internal twitterater, but it was a direct message from my body.

So I set out to find my precious Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake, directly.

And then, 4 hours later:

THERE IS NO CAKE!

Seriously, this town is like a black hole of things that JRose wants to eat.



And yes, I am aware that I can ask my store to order things, but that doesn't put the cake in my mouth when I want it... which is now.

Happy Birthday, Cheeseblarg AKA How NOT to Make Cake Pops.

Today is da Cheeseblarg's FIRST birthday.  A year ago today, I started this here blarg to talk about my computer being a dick, which it still kinda is.  But to celebrate, I made us some cake pops! And I made us cake pops, mostly because making cake pops is one of my least favorite things to do in the ENTIRE world.

It was also to prove a point, because my mom thought that making cake balls might be a great idea for holiday gifts and having made them before (or well, cookie balls, which might actually suck more than cake balls) I wanted to show her that while we are good at A LOT of things, dipping shit just isn't in our skill set.

So here is a (partially) illustrated guide for how NOT to make cake pops:



1. Gather your ingredients. Take a picture. Forget ingredients.

2. Begin to make a cake which cues everyone else in your house to come into your very small kitchen to also cook. Get angry.

3. Mistake directions on cake box, read: mix on HIGH for 2 minutes, instead of MEDIUM and splatter entire kitchen with cake batter.

4. Fight the people in your kitchen to get to the oven to put the cake in to bake.

5. Remember to check how long you should bake the cake that is now in the oven. Take box out of garbage, consult, set timer (minus approximate amount of time it took you to remember that you should probably set a timer).

6. Wait a long damned time for cake to bake and cool. Begin writing and illustrating your hilarious blarg post on the subject in the meantime (optional).

7. Go to Bakerella.com and read the recipe because you realize you don't really know how much of what you are really supposed to use.

8. Crumble cake and mix in half a can of frosting. Roll into balls. Ask someone else to come in and set up a pan for you because your hands are now coated in cake and frosting.

9. Clean out fridge to make space for the balls to chill.

10. Take some prescription pain pills because this is going to suck, and also because you have been standing for hours and all of your joints hurt.

11. Read the directions on the candy melts, follow directions, spend 17 minutes melting stupid candy melts. Think using a blow dryer might be faster.

12. Begin dipping cakepops. Have an argument about dipping methods. Result in cakepop that looks like this:

13. Add Crisco to candy melts because Montana weather makes them harden up in approximately 1.75 minutes.

14. Give up on cakepops, turn to cakeballs.

15. Give up on cakeballs, dipping is too hard.  Roll rest of the batch in powdered sugar and call it a day.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how not to make cake balls. You should probably not follow it. But, while I knew it was going to be bad when I started, I did manage to make one cute one.

Happy Anniversary- My Wedding Cake Wreck

Twelve years ago today, I was getting married in a hurricane. And I had a really ugly cake.

Being the artistic type that I am, I, of course, had an artistic vision for my cake.  I was very into Martha Stewart at the time (I still love her, but I am a bit less obsessed.  For example, I no longer tape her shows, all of them, to watch later because I am doing other things. I think I have just seen them all now, though) and so my cake was a simple clean design.  I drew it from different angles, attached swatches of color for them to match it to my dress (which I also designed and which came out almost as bad as my cake) and took it to Pubic's Supermarket to have it made. Now, yes, I know, when you have a wedding cake made at a grocery store, it is not made by the top bakers in the country. I'm poor and my design was simple enough that I thought it would work, AND they have the most delicious frosting of all the stores in the entire United States.

So this was my design :

I went over it with the baker. Yes all green and ivory. No other colors. Just stacked. etc.

This was the cake of my dreams. So simple, yet different.  So Martha.



This, on the other hand,

was NOT the cake of my dreams.

The cake was not set up before the wedding started, which I am kind of glad of. I'd already had enough disappointment with my dress. Before I entered the reception, my mom sidled up to me and whispered, "You're gonna be mad."

Thankfully, someone managed to snap a picture of me reacting to my first view of it, while my husband laughed at me, most likely because I was saying dirty words and questioning the IQ of the decorator.

That is my "WTF is this shit!?" look.

No really, let's break this down.

Totally NOT Martha!

But it really was delicious, especially since I got my money back for it. Plus, it gave us something to eat while we sat in my grandma's house with no power during aforementioned hurricane.

I'd also like to mention that both of my parents, while walking me down the aisle, stepped on the train of my dress, almost knocking me over.  I am going to guess, for my sanity, that it was not planned.


p.s. My comment section no longer has captchas in an attempt to get you people to comment more. YES, YOU PEOPLE! =P

Happy Birthday To Me!

It's my birthday.

*deposit gifts and adoration below*

*go*

*now*

*<3*

I've decided that what I want most for my birthday is to make my math lessons into actual live action video shorts to be used in schools, or at least featured on some sort of visible media for consumption by algebra students. Anybody who has any leads on how to make this happen, sock it to me! Especially talent agents or people with access to money that they can transferred to me once my ideas are used!

August Sticker Sale- Cake Squirrel is not a lie.

This month's limited edition sticker is dedicated to my husband, who turns 44 on August 22nd.  Triangular nosed squeakers (aka squirrels) are one of his favorites, so I made a ginger squirrel sticker with cake in his honor.   There are 44 stickers available and they will go off sale, per usual, the last day of the month.

This sticker is no longer available for sale... sorry!

For those viewing via RSS, there is a button to buy on the actual blarg page!



As always, this is a homemade, hand cut, matte finish sticker.  It measures 4" by about 3".  There is no additional shipping.  All sent in a standard envelope with a cute drawing on it by me. And as always, if you wanna give me extra money, the option is available (and super mega appreciated).




Check out the new sticker page for other fancy stickers you can buy!

More Than Meets the Eye

My nephew is currently obsessed with Transformers so while planning the invitations for his 5th birthday party, I became inspired. Enjoy my random Optimus Prime art.

Now You're Traumatizing with Portals!

Can't write.  Highly traumatized by the heartless slaughter of a poor defenseless companion cube.  Or, I might just be watching my friend play Portal (while anticipating Portal 2 getting here- 40% off at Amazon today, with free shipping!) and I can't be arsed to write something more substantial because video games are much more entertaining.  But let's go with highly traumatized and distraught so you don't think I'm just a lazy asshole.

There's got to be a better way!

We all know this, but I need to say it for the record:

Printers are ASSHOLES!

Today, I say this because I just spent WAY TOO LONG doing the double crosstic crossword puzzle posted today on Cakewrecks.com on account of my printer.  It would not have taken me nearly as long if my printer hadn't decided to trick me by printing out two pages while cutting off two entire clues and multiple letters from six of the numbered answer spaces. I caught the two missing clues about an hour sooner than I caught the missing letters. And of course, there was the migraine in there that slowed me down too, but my brain is less of an asshole than printers, which generally have a shitty attitude and poor work ethic.

This video from College Humor is an exceptional example of what I am talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQGtucrJ8hM

These are a few of my favorite things... A.K.A. It's better than nothing!

I've managed to contract half of a flu, which is to say, I'm not going to a doctor to pay to be told I have "virus syndrome" but I feel like I've been hit by a moving vehicle, for no discernible reason, because I feel fine otherwise, just... beaten and bruised, though I am actually neither of those things.

TL;DR- I feel like crap.

So instead of drawing anything, I am sharing things that have brought me grand amounts of joy lately:

Amanda Palmer:

Actually, the whole album makes me all kinds of happy, and only costs a minimum of 69¢ (That is, you can pay more if you like, which I did). You can listen to it all here before buying it! Or just listen to it there and not buy it... some of the lyrics are NSFW, btw.


This post from JerBear Shares:

I'm a Car Genius, FYI!

Seriously, I'm fairly certain she is gonna start being afraid of me soon, because my love for her is so strong that I am now writing about it in my blarg and it's beginning to seem creepy even to me, but she's freakin' funny!

Unicornomics on Twitter:

The funniest part about them is reading their replies to other people.  They also did a great post about Sparkles' babies.

Tiffany and her cakes, which she loves:

Tiffany Loves Cake!

She is a teaching herself the art of cake and I love what she does.  The insides are so cool, too, in fact, a picture of her 7 layer rainbow cake was what endeared me to her, and her tattoos. Don't miss her exclusive  post on the Santa Claw either!

And lastly, stickers, puffy weird stickers. I found some with narwhals and other lesser celebrated sea creatures, and some with lovey Australian animals recently.  Not much that is cuter than kissing duck-billed platypi (which would actually be correctly pluralized as platypodes, but damn it... PLATYPI!).


So yeah, sorry for no art, but feel free to draw me some strange animal hybrids or make me "Get Well" bouquets of bacon to speed my recovery!

Cake is a lie.

It is shameful to say that it wasn't until I was in college that I knew what the phrase "You can't have your cake and eat it too," meant.  Mostly, because it was never taught in any class I was in, and the phrasing makes no sense.  I mean, the only way you CAN eat cake is if you have some, right?

I would like to petition that the phrase be changed to "You can't eat your cake and have it too," because then, it would actually say what it means and make sense.