Making Money

So we had a run over a year ago at teaching thing 1 about money. How to save it, having pocket money, how to spend it. It didn’t go that well. For one, we as adults don’t keep cash around. So giving her a cash money allowance was reliant on us having cash. We gave her some and she immediately wanted to go out and spend it. She also didn’t quite make the connection on how much she had vs how much items cost. But lately she’s been making noise about wanting to buy some specific things. So I thought we’d take another run at this whole pocket money thing. Except the ‘we don’t really keep cash around’ thing came up again. Actually I have a small stash I use for paying for school things since they haven’t implemented online payments and for a while I got out extra money when grocery shopping (which I’d often forget and it was a pain) to pay Karate, but basically we don’t do cash.

Anyhow. My brilliant, if I do say so myself, idea was to give her fake money. I considered play dollar store coins or some kind of Monopoly or other play money, but I ended up printing out some clip art coins, letting them colour the coins in, cutting them out and laminating them. Mainly as it didn’t involve leaving the house and if one of the other kids eats them or something I can make more.

 

Right now I have some variable value coupon coins and some set value coupon coins. Thing 1 will earn a variable value coin every day regardless. At the end of the week she can redeem them for an agreed upon amount. Right now it’s probably $5. I reserve the right to bump it up to $6 (her age) if things go well. Or she can continue to save for a higher value item. Then we have some $0.10, $0.20 and $0.50 coins that she can earn by doing chores above and beyond her usual chores. She’s quite excited about the idea and has already earned $0.50 for picking up the lounge. I played with the idea of being able to fine her coupon coins as punishment, but not yet, not until money is firmly entrenched and if we can’t find other things that get through.

 

Here’s the setup:

 

And the finished product all coloured in, laminated and cut out:

 

Excuse me while I sprain my arm patting myself on the back.

The importance of the 6th Birthday party.

This is way overdue, having happened about 3 months ago, but hey. I wrote it down. Here it is.

 

Here at least children start school shortly after their 5^th birthday. There’s no set cutoff or anything, they just enter year round more or less. So the 6^th birthday party is the first birthday party with classmates. And classmates parents. Most likely these are the kids your child will travel through primary school with. Believe it or not social striations are already being formed and lines drawn. I know I wasn’t really prepared for the Machiavellian bullshit that is six-year-old girl social politics, but there it is.

Things to consider for the party:

Venue: This is the first party for a lot of people where you meet the parents. They are gonna judge you and your house. You can have it at your house, but I recommend a venue for a neutral location. Less awkward small talk too, but the get to know you opportunity is still there. Save the home party for when they turn seven. The nice things about venues is they provide activities, often have a set party length, and may provide food.

Expense: If considering a venue consider the amount of children the cost provides for, if there is food provided and so on. It’s really easy to go overboard. We got a venue that allowed for up to 20 children, but then had to provide our own food (which I think came in at about half the cost of the venue- and that’s with me making the fruit, meat/cheese and cracker platters and cakes). Another venue I attended a party at was similarly priced to the one I chose, but provided for 6-8 children and provided food.

 

The date: This is a difficult one because you don’t really know when other birthday parties are going to be. For instance the weekend I was having my child’s party there were FOUR birthday parties scheduled in her class. She was invited to attend two of them (not including hers) and had to make a choice. Or rather I had to make a choice. In addition you have to consider how churchy your area is and if a Sunday morning party will lack for attendees. School holidays, the weekends before and after school breaks will be busier for parties, while you aren’t as likely to get as many attendees during the holidays. If you can coordinate with other parents do so. Otherwise it’s first in best dressed. Six weeks is too early to hand out an invitation and under two weeks is cutting it close. Three-four weeks is reasonable timing to get the priority spot

Specifying rules and expectations: I put on my invitations that siblings were welcome. I wanted an inclusive party without people having to leave babies and such at home. My kids’ siblings were attending, so why not the siblings of her classmates? If you do this you may also want to specify that parents should stay. Anyone who doesn’t stay make sure you have contact information.

 

The invitation exchange: Kids will use friendship as a weapon and birthday party invites as barter material. If you get an invite to someone’s party (and attend), it’s kind of courteous to extend an invite to your party.

 

The RSVP: Expect people to not do this. Seems to be the current trend. I managed to get yes or no RSVPs for all but five out of 14 invitees. Many of them gave the yes/no to me during the school run, but, ulterior motives, I have texts from some of them as well. So now I have some of my kids’ friends’ parent’s numbers. I’m not that creepy I swear. Prepare extra food. Expect extra food. Expect some no-shows and some unexpected attendees. Mostly expect to have extra food though. Plan to have extra food. Better too much than not enough. I made up some unnamed goody bags for the people that decided to show without RSVPing and I was glad I did.

 

Budgeting: Venue costs will vary by location and that’s one expense, but food, goody bags and favours, plates and accoutrements, cake and so on are all other things to consider. Preparing for other birthday parties can also be quite expensive. Right now I’m maintaining a stockpile of girl and boy toys in the closet. I buy things on sale and when I make an online purchase from a place with flat rate shipping I also buy some kid toys. Then when a party comes along I just have my kid pick one out of the closet. Getting out to pick toys for a myriad of parties is a huge time expense for me.

 

The gift: I’m a terrible over thinker on toys. The truth is I’m not sure if kids care that much. I’m in a position where I don’t know these kids. I’m making judgements on what they like from what they have on their backpack.

 

Here’s what it looked like:

Rainbow themed fruit kebabs

Rainbow cone cakes with whipped cream cheese frosting. And sprinkles.

The setup and venue (a gym with trampoline and foam pit) Chips, meat, cheese, crackers and other snack platters. Also sushi.

The inside of the cake.

Parenting Peer Pressure

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Haven’t had too much time to sit down and hash out coherent talking points but I feel like the ability to recognize it has changed my views of people to some extent. Maybe it’s more that it’s peer approval rather than peer pressure so much.

It’s no secret that many people find parenting quite isolating and feel like desperate socially anxious lunatics at the prospect of making a friend. I see it on parenting discussion boards and forums all the time. I used to feel more or less the same way when I had less children (now I am too busy- side note, youngest is 18 months old and it’s been 18 months since I made a post. Coincidence?).

Being a more reserved person I wasn’t quite frothing at the mouth when someone talked to me, but I was still rebuffed frequently enough that I started feeling pressure to fit in more than I ever had in the past as a teenager. I was fairly non-conformist as a child and teen though (I notice when observing my kid with other kids is that one will do something and suddenly they are all copying. I was, I guess, the more original one as a kid and hated it with a burning fiery passion when people copied me. I remember pitching a fit in kindergarten because the girl across from me was copying my artwork –some kind of paper bag owl. Having a 5yo now, they really aren’t very creative in general) so maybe withstanding this is all new to me.

 

I can clearly see though how someone starved for some kind of adult interaction meets someone who talks to them multiple times in a row and they start emulating them. At the very least it gives another thing to discuss. Hey, we both have the same coat, how about that. And then you’re re-enacting Single White Female…

The multiple accounts of people who sees the same person at the park (Maybe it’s that there are 50billion parks here so having them be crowded or having regulars isn’t usual so I find this sort of thing baffling) a few times in a row and want to (non-creepily at all!) exchange numbers always sets my teeth on edge for some reason. Maybe because it is creepy and desperate, and as desperate as I’ve been for friends if someone did that to me I would be so weirded out. I mean, not that I’ve had success making friends organically and wish for mom-speed dating and similar things just so I’d know the other person was in the market for friends, and not desperately trying to watch their kid or answer an email or doing some other multitasking thing that happens at the park.

 

It certainly happens online too. Enigmatic people who are better with the written word, whether they are witty or just have engaging writing patterns, and they want that person to like them and you get the whole cult of personality thing going and then suddenly Amber necklaces and stuff. Then you get mum groups who all dress their kids in the same brands and have the same sort of accessories and online groups that engage in the same group-think following their leaders (and people who don’t like the attention the perceived leaders get for no distinct reason they can name). I’ve been plenty of places that have that going on to the point they develop an archetype to emulate. But that’s all kind of online interactions 101 I think. Or maybe it’s an epiphany.

 

Where am I going with this? It’s mostly made me more sympathetic and less judgemental about most of the things I see people doing in parenting that I wouldn’t necessarily do.

Fabric wall mural

So being renters I’ve never set up a nursery per se for my kids. They end up in our room until 2ish anyhow, and it would be for me not for them. I still kind of wanted to, but wasn’t really in a place where we could. I always felt like I’d do it when they were old enough to know what they liked and help me pick it out. That day came for kid 1 while I was pregnant with kid 3. We made an effort to buy a house, but our local property market is unfortunately too insane. So after being disappointed that we couldn’t paint the kids room or paint a mural like I had always intended I had an idea. I saw the tutorial from Spoonflower to make your own shower curtain and I thought….’hey I could make a wall mural out of fabric’.

So I did.

What you will need:

Paint.net or some other paint/photo manipulation software. I like paint.net, but there’s also GIMP and others that are free. Bully to you if you have Photoshop.

A Spoonflower account.

As recommended in the shower curtain tutorial  I used the fabric ‘Silky Faille’ for my mural. It has a 52 inch width, so I made a canvas in Paint.net that was about 52 inches wide by 36 inches high. Mine ended up being 50 by 33 or something.

Put your image in there. I put something together out of some other images and image filters and basic digital painting. I also found that big images like desktop wall papers work well to being scaled up that large. Once it was kid approved I uploaded it to Spoonflower (make sure it’s at least 150DPI) and chose the center orientation. (see screenshot)

Here is the finished product out of the wash (because it was all creasy from being shipped to me). Still a bit creasy

For best result I would recommend hemming the edges, and making a large hem on the top that you can thread a dowel through. Then you can attach a string to the dowel and hang the whole thing from that (only one hole in the wall, again, renting, yay).

Here is the finished product.

 

Also it was pretty cheap. The fabric, printed, alone was less than $25.

The Pinterest thing that wasn’t

I make stuff often. I cook meals, I make cakes and cupcakes and cookies with the kids (under duress sometimes), I sew, I knit, I crochet. What I don’t do often is take pictures of the stuff. Sometimes I get it together and take pictures. Sometimes I get it even more together and put the pictures on a blog or Facebook or something.

I did not intend my latest cookery experiment to be one of those times.

So thing 1 and 2 have a nice daycare. It’s attached to my work, it’s lovely. They have barbecues and parties with reasonable frequency. At the end of this week they will have a Christmas party. Parent are requested to bring a plate. Salad or a dessert. I had thought a while back I would maybe do deviled eggs, but then wasn’t sure about transport and stuff, so opted for dessert instead.

I took thing 1 and 2 to the store as I was buying candy for a gift exchange thing I was involved in. Thing 1 was kind of freaking out about all the candy I was putting in the cart so I let her pick out something for her, which ended up being marshmallows.

Now an idea percolated in my head a bit. I could make cake or cupcakes and somehow incorporate the marshmallows so they wouldn’t be in the house. I thought, maybe rocky road cupcakes. But then I couldn’t really put nuts in them because public food and preschoolers. So I thought, hot cocoa cupcakes. I’ll just top the cupcakes with marshmallows and that’ll be easy. So I did.

But marshmallows kind of melt and burn and toast up in the oven. So they did. And the cupcakes are pretty ugly. Which I don’t really care about. I tasted the cake (because I had enough cake batter left over to make a cake too) and it was good.

But here was my mistake. I posted about making hot chocolate cupcakes on Facebook. Which is apparently exciting. And people were curious and asked for a picture. So I showed off my ugly cupcakes, stating that they were ugly and that there was probably some trick to not having burnt melted marshmallows, but whatever, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Only to get oh so (not) helpful suggestions and recipes and images about what they should have looked like and what I was trying for.

I wasn’t trying for anything. Except making something people could eat at a daycare Christmas party. Not everything is based on Pinterest, or some recipe I’m trying to perfect, or some picture I saw. Actually for me very little is. I mean, I accept that my idea was not totally original, but I wasn’t trying to make some picture perfect copy that I’d seen somewhere.

Is it so rare that people sometimes just make stuff up? Or is that only acceptable if you take pro-photo images and get your meticulous documentation pinned or retweeted or shared etc?

If I did like marshmallow, or even my idea, I would probably make them again, but prettier next time (and they still wouldn’t be that great because meh), but ooooomg I was experimenting and making something up. People can still do that. Right?

I ran into this in a big way a few years ago. I wanted to make some chicken and dumplings. So I went looking for dumpling recipes. Pretty sure I even specified ‘from scratch’. I had a hell of a time finding one that was not something along the lines of ‘drop Pillsbury biscuit dough into pot’, or ‘drop Bisquick into pot’. Come on. People made dumplings before brand names. Even better there was a lot of self congratulatory back patting about home made, from scratch food. Sorry, no. Dumplings are flour, fat, salt and rising agent. They are not hard to make and do not need to come out of a box. I’m all for buying store bought ketchup or other things where the time cost to make it warrants an industrial response, but I have an objection to thinking you are cooking from scratch when you’re dumping cans together. While cream of mushroom soup is a useful time saver compared to making my own I don’t consider a recipe using it exactly ‘from scratch’.

 

For me Pinterest and other similar things, even recipes, are simply a source of inspiration. Just a starting point. I see a skirt or dress tutorial. I think, I could do that, but what if I did it this way…? So I do. I see a recipe, I think that sounds good, but what if I used this instead…? So I do. I don’t think it makes me particularly innovative. But I sure feel that way sometimes. Like I’m just crazy for having even semi-original ideas or not painting-by-numbers. When people ask me where I saw something I made, or how I got the idea to do it that way I just kind of want to gape at them.

 

Cottage cheese cheesecake, now in any flavour you like!

Several years ago I discovered the lower calorie goodness that is cottage cheese cheesecake (the regular recipe is 2 cups cottage cheese, 1 packet flavoured gelatin, sugar free or not, 1/2 cup boiling water, pie crust if you like). But since relocating to New Zealand, the variety of jello (or rather jelly) flavours is lacking. Even more so if you want sugar free. So I thought to myself, I bet you could just make your own.

So I did.

Ingredients:

Cottage cheese (full fat, low fat, non fat, whatever. I like full fat)

Flavouring of choice. Check the cake aisle for a selection if you don’t like the jello/jelly flavours near you.

Sugar or sugar substitute

Powdered plain gelatin

Boiling water

Pie crust if you feel like one. I didn’t this time.

I made, with my limited selection of sugar free jellies available, a lime version a bit ago (seriously, not even lemon?) for a pregnant friend with gestational diabetes, but when I was sampling it, I was really wishing for vanilla.

So Cottage cheese (I used 250g, or about 1 cup. I would do 2 cups if I was doing a springform or pie pan of it), sugar  or substitute (I used about 2 tbsp), vanilla extract (fake, but I used maybe 2 tsp). Mix it up a little and adjust to preference.

Put 1 tbsp (per 1-2 cups cottage cheese) gelatin in a separate cup and add 1/2 cup boiling water. Stir and allow to sit a little bit. Maybe a minute or two. Make sure the gelatin looks dissolved.

Pour the boiling water/gelatin into the cottage cheese mix

You can use a food processor, regular blender, or stick blender. Mix it up well.

Now, your pie crust, if using one, should be cool. Otherwise pour into molds of choice. This pops right out of silicone muffin cups withot oiling. Otherwise you might need a bit of oil.

My 1 cup cottage cheese 1/2 cup boiling water recipe made about 9-10 of these.

Allow to set in the fridge for a few hours. Probably 2 is enough.

Pop out, serve!

Tastes like cheesecake. And it’s a decent higher protein snack.

 

 

Easy maternity clothing hack

Why this sort of thing isn’t standard in maternity wear I don’t know. But it’s pretty easy to DIY, even if you don’t sew.

Because when I get to a certain point in pregnancy my shirts ride up. Or generally get too short. Perhaps I’m disproportionate, but I’m also short with a short torso, so you wouldn’t think that maternity shirts would be too short.

Anyhow. Here’s what you do:

Take any shirt with a bottom hem. Cut a hole. If the shirt has side seams I cut one small hole near each side seam.

Measure yourself a piece of elastic. I like this thinner type, but really whatever fits in your seam. I pull a piece from hip to hip making sure it has enough tension. Basically not loose.

Insert elastic into hole and thread through the seam. A good way to do this is to use a safety pin. I’ve also used crochet hooks and seam rippers. Safety pin is probably easiest though.

Sew the holes and elastic up on each side.

You should now have a elasticated hem in the front of your shirt.

Look, it stays put! (on my not even 30 week belly that has outgrown some shirts already)

I have made several undershirts like this as well as altered some other maternity shirts. No riding up here!

What they don’t get about motherhood.

 

I feel like the fundamental thing my husband doesn’t get about me having children is how I have to deal with my body being a big pile of fail. I mean, yes I gestate them adequately, no major issues there, but birthing and feeding just make me feel kind of worthless since things don’t work right there. I’m not sure men commonly go through anything similar unless they have a medical problem that Drs will diagnose. I mean, the only thing that comes to mind that’s even slightly comparable is sperm count or something. But even with that there’s not the sneering sanctimommy business to contend with. Or some equivalent. I mean, yeah ok with fertility issues in general there’s the people who say to just relax and it will happen, but are there actually a sizable contingent of people saying, in regards to sperm count, that you could try harder or that you did something wrong like there are with mother issues?

I mean I’ve recently been frustrated because I can’t go to just any breastfeeding group because my problems are not solvable, just manageable, and management means judgement. So there’s no group I can go to anywhere near me, and on top of that I have to just be really careful about talking to people about it, like at all. Internet, in person, medical people (who rightly should help, but often can’t /don’t). I have to really watch what I say and I hate being so guarded. So no in person support, which means I get to stew at home. Gosh, good thing I taught myself what to do the first time around when no one would help me!! /s  I mean, it’s more acceptable to talk to random people about vaginal discharge than it is my breastfeeding issues. Or at least no one is going to berate me and tell me it’s my fault my vagina isn’t discharging in the commonly accepted way.

I’m having some dad jealousy I guess. I feel like they don’t have to watch what they say, watch who they talk to about parenting stuff. Or at least not nearly as much. Yeah, ok, there’s a bad media presence about what dads can manage, so it comes off that anything they do is amazing, which sucks. So, yeah, there can be other social issues, but I guess (not being a dad) I don’t feel they are as pervasive. I don’t want to start a not all men sort of thing. I know there are issues for men too, but I just don’t see them as being as significant or pervasive in the majority of situations.

If a mother has an issue with feeding, carrying, birthing, or anything to do with raising  a child there will be someone to be shitty about it to her. Do people lecture/guilt dads about how their kids are fed or anything?

I mean maybe my husband is getting judged for not having a stay at home wife (by his peers with stay at home wives), but he doesn’t see it that way because he’s proud of me/my job, so it’s not an issue. But he didn’t really start off parenthood with this big bag of insecurity and total shock at not working right and having people be all up in his business about it so, bleh.

 

Unpopular opinions.

 

I really dislike it when people say it doesn’t matter how you birth, healthy baby, healthy mother. OK. Yes, that’s most important, but it should be HAPPY mother, HAPPY baby. If you are happy enough with how your birth turned out then that’s ok. If you feel traumatized then that’s valid and it’s more than OK to not want to be traumatized again. Shaming people for not wanting to be traumatized again (which I see a lot in the form of sneering at birth plans) isn’t cool. I went into my first birth with an intent to try natural, but with an open mind and basically ended up with a somewhat traumatic series of events where people were holding me down, lots of people were sticking needles in me, freaking out in general and saying stupid shit to me. I didn’t really feel a sense of failure at first because it all happened so fast. I mean, showed up to my tub birthing room and had the emergency button pressed within an hour of hospital arrival. But then people started talking about my failure, and how I could try again for a vaginal birth and it really got to me. And I wish it hadn’t. I tried to avoid the scary stuff with my second and mostly did, but still feel disappointed in myself. I’m saddened, but have pretty much tried to spin my last aspirations for birth into the lowest expectations possible, but I’m not happy about it. Sure, I’m glad we’re all alive, but I’m still sad and regretful. Not because I didn’t have some magical experience, but because I subscribed to a body image self view that put function over media dictated conventional attractiveness. And my body was not functional in a way that mattered to me.

Similarly with breastfeeding. Saying as long as you feed your baby completely invalidates how the mother is feeling. Sure, if she is happy or relieved to not breastfeed, or finds combination feeding to relieve her stress than yay. All good. If she finds it devastating to supplement or to have to formula feed then don’t trivialize her circumstances or lack of help. Or whatever led to that situation. Women are massively massively misinformed about how breastfeeding goes. Being fed fake facts like nearly all women can breastfeed, where the ‘facts’ don’t define what can means. In reality at least 15% of women/baby dyads will have major physical or physiological issues with maintaining an infant on exclusive breastfeeding (Niefert 1994 I think). That’s not even taking into account issues that arise from insufficient social or medical support.
People need to remember that some of the responsibility for breastfeeding success is on the baby too. If you think it’s ridiculous to hold a baby responsible, then consider that it’s at least equally ridiculous to hold a person responsible for a biological process. This sort of thing is not done by force of will alone. It helps, but it’s not all there is to it.

So instead commiserate. Be sympathetic. Take cues from the mother. If she says she’s devastated, don’t say, well at least you are feeding your baby. Something like, that sucks, and that’s hard, and it’s ok to be sad is more appropriate. Suggestions may be appropriate–if she asks for them, or she may have tried everything she thought was available, and just find your suggestion annoying. If she says she was relieved to use formula, then something like go you for feeding your baby is more appropriate, where suggestions intended to help manage the issue are possibly not.

And people who have these issues– our bodies don’t necessarily know what they are doing. If you think bodies are designed for this just wait until your baby starts teething. That’s a major design flaw if I’ve ever seen one. Ugh. Bodies have biological processes that go awry all the time. They aren’t necessarily designed for anything, and that sort of talk can contribute to feeling incredibly inadequate and flawed. Don’t think it’s your fault. There are ways to manage many issues. They can be far more work than you are or thought you’d be up for, and they can be manageable if you have support. It’s ok to be sad. Don’t let anyone guilt you into feeling like you have no right to be sad about how things turned out, or that you are ungrateful because worse things happen to other people.
I would also like to say fucking yay science. Did you know that in the 1940’s the infant mortality rate for under one’s was about 50% for *white* babies? It was closer to 85% for black babies. The primary reasons for that are milk safety, water safety and immunization. In about that order. On that topic, let’s talk about formula safety. Please don’t use water from your hot tap for making formula. http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm Also please DO heat your water before mixing it with powdered formula. Because formula protocol isn’t widely shared by medical professionals, people are left to following the can or getting tips from friends or relatives. Formula is not sterile, and babies under 3 months should have hot water added to their formula for optimum safety. Now, a few tips I learned– You can heat your water in the microwave IF you shake it before serving to eliminate hotspots. You still need to cool it down. However, a much better method is to make up formula in advance. Formula is fine in the fridge for 24 hours. Then you can pop it in a mug of microwaved water to heat it. Or some kids don’t mind it cold. But you know, just FYI. For all those that unexpectedly end up using formula and know nothing about it.

The dragon birthday cake.

Apparently I made this look really good. I say it’s more about the angles of my photos than anything. Also the cake (a basic sponge, raspberry flavoured) went largely uneaten. So far Thing 1 is interested in fancy looking cakes and Thing 2 is interested in good tasting cakes (she got ice cream and cake crammed into novelty molds for her 2nd birthday. They turned out like lumps of cake and ice cream, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but they did get eaten).

So the cake process.

I looked around and there seemed to be a fair amount of dragon and dinosaur tutorials. They mostly involved cutting shapes out of round cakes and sticking them together. I could work with that. Just to be on the safe side I bought a dinosaur puzzle cake mold

(like this )

in case my experimentation was a complete failure.

So here’s the process more or less:

I thought I had pictures of this bit, but apparently not. So I’ll describe it.

You need:

2 circular cakes

A knife

Fondant or some kind of decorative frosting

Butter cream or some kind of sticky frosting

Garnish type things.

A pan or plate to assemble the cake on.

What to do:

Cut one circular cake into two semi-circles.

Use butter cream to stick them together into one thicker semi-circle. Turning this flat side down (so the semi-circle forms a hump) stick it to the cake plate.

With the other circular cake you want to cut out these type of shapes:

 

More or less. That’s not my picture. I cut out the tail and the rest was various rectangles. Then I stuck the tail to the semi-circle, stuck the legs on the side (all with butter cream), cut a smaller chunk for the head to rest on as the neck (I may have held pieces in place with a toothpick where necessary), and put the head on top of the neck stub to give it a real 3D appearance, as opposed to laying the head and neck out straight on the cake plate.

All stuck together, added some extra butter cream and started adding my fondant.

Now I started with white, but Thing 1 wanted a purple dragon so I used regular old food colouring and icing sugar until the fondant wasn’t sticky (think you are supposed to use gel colour, but uh, yeah. I didn’t), kneaded it until I got tired (so it was still kind of swirly because my hands hurt), rolled it out and placed it on. Now I didn’t roll out big sheets because I didn’t have very much counter space, and I’m surprised it turned out looking as nice as it did. All camera angles I promise, it was all stuck together looking up close, though I did get it smoothed out some by using water and the back of a spoon.

I used white chocolate buttons (cut up) for fangs and teeth and decorations, and marshmallows for dragon treasure.

So here’s the finished product:

 

 

 

 

So yeah, that’s my fancy cake. No one really ate it. Even after we peeled off the fondant and tossed it.