The Little Mermaid Cake

Ah, there she be:

The Little Mermaid cake. I will forever have fond memories of making this cake.

Sleep deprived, delirious, but fond memories of this cake.

My friend Tracy wanted me to teach her how to make fondant by making a special cake for her daughters birthday (I L-O-V-E Tracies family. They are awesome. They have three little girls, and I just love going over to their apartment. They were our neighbors in PVIL and it was such good times to hang out. I was sad that we had to move, one of the big reasons being that I didn't get to hang out with Tracy as often. Sometimes it would go like this: "Hi Tracy. I'm making hairbows. Wanna play? Great! I will see you in 5 minutes!" You just can't do that kind of thing when you live further away)

Anyway, picture this: it's go time. The birthday is tomorrow. We have a cake to make. It is 11:30 pm (I had a late study session for midterms). Tracy brings over the lovely strawberry cakes she had made. We start getting to work.

Suddenly, I rummage through shopping bags and realize that I don't have unflavored gelatin. Waaaaaaaaaait a second!! Didn't I go to the store this afternoon specifically to purchase it?!? Where can it be?! Surely it must be here somewhere........ *rummage rummage rummage*

Reality sets in: we are not finding the gelatin. We head back to the walmart. Lo and behold! There is my bag of gelatin, and food coloring, at customer servic! I had paid for it...i just forgot to take it with me.

It's been a long day :-)

NE WAY! we grab the bag, laugh all the way home, and then begin the buisness of making fondant.

...

Now, do not worry, I won't take you through the step-by-step anymore. And yes, with more time, and more sleep, this would have been much better. But! I still think it is pretty good for what it was, given our time constraints. I am proud of us! And, this stands out in my mind as one of the shining girl bonding nights in my memory, and I am so glad to have shared it with Tracy. She is a hoot! I wish we could always be neighbors, that would be awesome. Probably not good for my sleeping habits...but awesome none the less.

Thanks for the memories!

p.s. yes, this photo is yet another example of my impeccable photography skills. I hope you enjoyed it.

Nuclear Science and Engineering Outreach Efforts

One thing that I don't share very often is how awesome I think Nuclear Engineering is. Its just not something that comes up in everyday conversation. And frankly, a lot of people are not interested. If you are not interested, you probably don't want to read this post.

This post is mostly dedicated to outreach activities that I have been involved in to help educate people about different facets of nuclear engineering.

A few years ago we has a really awesome outreach chair in ANS, and we did some really fun things. For example, we participated in a lot of the high school days on campus, and we went to AP physics classes in the Lafayette/WL area and gave presentations to the high schoolers, and we even put on a seminar for teachers that taught them how to teach about Nuclear science and physics. For the seminar, it was an all day thing, we did breakfast and lunch and we presented slides on all the information they need for the AP physics section, and then did fun games and presentations with them, and sent them home with a lot of cool goodies and a disk with the presentations we gave them. It was a super awesome success!

There is Lenka! Starting the presentation with all of the wonder ful teacher participants! You can see the GM counter and some of our goodie box on the front row on (lower left hand side in the picture)

Nuclear Engineering ANS Outreach

View more presentations from tlpfeil

So, in keeping with the spirit of the teacher presentation we gave, I uploaded a power point presentation that we use to give presentation to physics classes. The presentation is AWESOME (ever so much better if you download it, since it has animation). It covers topics that are in the curriculum for Indiana physics classes, so it is a little long, but it is pretty comprehensive. Usually when we do the presentation, we go through the slides, go through the "goodie box" and set up cloud chambers and let them check out the cloud chambers and ask questions for the rest of the time.

If you want to check out the presentation, it is EVER SO MUCH BETTER if you down load it--it has super awesome animation!! When you just flip through the slides on the slide show, you don't see the animation, so it is not nearly as cool. FYI.

Anyway, a little more information: For the "Goodie box" that is basically just a collection of commercially avaliable radioactive stuff that we got on Amazon such as fiesta ware, old dentures, vaseline glass, watches, smoke detectors, black beach sand, and some small sealed sources, etc. and a GM counter to test the different things and explain their background.

Before starting to talk about the goodie box items though, I like to talk about detecting radiation in general, and explain what the GM (or Geiger-Mueller) counter is. You see, people need to be creative to detect radiation. And clever. You see, one of the big reasons people are afraid of radiation is that you cant see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or touch it--so how do you build a detector to detect something like that?!

Magic, people. You need magic.

Or, you know, electrical engineering skills, whatever.

The way that people detect radiation is not to look for the particles themselves, but to look for the particles effects, particularly with ionizing radiation. If you think of a way to collect ions, then you will be able to collect the ions created when ionizing particles enter your chamber, and that is basically all that is happening with a GM counter. You have a chamber, it is filled with gas that will ionize with a single collision event, and you have a wire at the center of the chamber that you apply a field across. The ions drift toward the wire or the wall (depending on their charge) and vioal! You have a magic box that can detect radiation! The GM counter, I would say, is one of the most basic ways to detect certain types of radiation, and while it clearly has its limitations, it has a lot of uses too.

Anyway! After you explain about the GM counter, then you can talk about the different things in the box. For example:

• Vintage Red Fiestaware : has uranium in the dye that gives it the characteristic burnt-red color. Its pretty fun to have candy on the plate that people take the candy off, then put the GM counter over the plate and watch as people think "GASP! I ATE CANDY OFF THAT!" and then you explain that putting food on the plate does not make the food radioactive. That is something people get confused: radiation vs. contamination. You are not contaminated if radiation touches you--you don't become contaminated from getting an x-ray. You are contaminated if special nuclear material is transferred to you --and in some medical procedures you need to worry about this. Anyway, back to the Fiestaware: You are only going to have problems with the plate if you ingest the paint--and the be honest,ingesting paint in general is not a good idea. The paint would do more damage than the radiation ever would. Another real concern with eating off the plate isn't that it is radioactive, its that uramium is a heavy metal - like lead. If you have anything acidic on the plate, like tomatoes, then the heavy metal could leach out and get into your food.
• Dentures: In the 1940s pepole began adding uranium powders to porcelain that was used to make dentures to make them look more realistic in natural and artificial lighting.
• Vaseline glass: aka uranium glass. The cool thing about this glass (other than it is radioactive) is that is it florescent under a black light. (click on the link to check out a cool picture) People used to make a lot of kitchen ware out of it, platters, plates, juicers, cups, etc.

I'll stop there with the details :-)

Anyway, The goodie box is a great way to teach people about common sources of radiation, and hot to limit exposure through shielding or distance . You can clearly see if you put a piece of paper, that the alpha source is stopped. Or if you move the detector away from the source, you dont get as many counts, since you have less exposure as you increase distance. Lots of fun stuff to do with the goodie box.

And it is a great way to teach about background radiation--that there is a lot of radiation in our environment, (like if you walk up to a cement wall and hold up the counter, you will get counts. Same thing with granite counter tops as granite is a low grade uranium ore), there is a lot of radiation in us (we all have K-40 so we give of a radioactive signal), in the air around us (if you just leave the counter sitting there, you will occasionally hear clicks from cosmic radiation). Pretty neat.

Another fun activity that we do is the cloud chamber. Here is a cool video on making your own cloud chamber. Basically, a cloud chamber is a little glass container that you make a "cloud" in, and then you watch the trails that ionizing radiation leaves behind it as interacts in the cloud.

The cool thing about cloud chambers is that you don't even really need a pin source. You can use them to see cosmic radiation also, you just have to make your jar bigger than a petri dish. We used gas meter covers, and that seemed to work really well.

I also got the reactor at purdue, PUR-1, to let the boyscouts (14-16yrs) come and do the nuclear science merit badge there. It was super sweet! We learned for a few weeks the different things they needed to learn, and then we got to take a tour of the reactor and use some GM counters to go around campus and take counts of different places to measure the background radiation on campus. It was really neat!

Anyway! This concludes this small plug for nuclear engineering.

:-D

I love love love checking my mail box. Every time you go to the mailbox, it's a surprise! Will there be mail?! Will it be fun mail?! Will it be junk mail?!? Will there be a package!? :-D

goose told me she was sending me a package

when you KNOW there is going to be fun mail coming, it like quadruples the excitement factor!

OH LOOK!! :-D

A PACKAGE!!!!! :-D :-D :-D :-D

but oh no...the package is stuck!

how did Mr. Postman get the package in there anyway? I pulled on it, then I pulled harder...then I decided I needed reinforcements....

YAY for SCIZORS! :-D

it took a little work, but by golly, I freed that package I did :-)

and there was a present inside! a beautifully wrapped present with curly ribbons!and CHOCOLATE! :-D and touching cards from my parents and the doothie.

:-D the box still presented a problem...it was still lodged in the little mailbox cubby hole. It took some additional cutting and pulling and shredding, but I finally got it out!

Gracias a mi familia! Les amo a todos! *MUAH!*

Cinnamon Roll...COOKIES! :-D

Yum. Totally Yum. These are cinnamon roll sugar cookies and they turned out as good as they sound. We put cream cheese frosting on them after they cooled down (they lost the pretty swirl, but it was sure yummy!)

I think if I were ever to make these again though, I would use a different sugar cookie recipe that I love, it stands up better to rolling. But! these are still worth a try sometime!

here is the link if you are interested!

For the Beauty of the Earth

Sometimes I am struck with wonder at how beautiful the earth can be.

I grew up in a painted desert. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for that landscape. I love the way the earth can be formed by flash floods and carved by centuries of harsh winds. I love driving through the dessert and feeling awestruck by the majesty of it all. The clouds. The sky. The clarity of the air. The mountains. The mesas. The flowers. I love sitting there and drinking it in. Stopping and sitting and listening and watching until the last bits of light drain from the sky. Getting to know the desert in a way that allows you to appreciate its nuances, like the subtle way the land rejoices after a hard rain and springs to life. I feel rare and lucky and blessed to have spent so much of my life there. And I know, I am not really that acquainted with the desert, if I was left alone in it, I would die, I can't appreciate it as much as people who have literally lived on it their whole lives, but nonetheless, I will carry my memories of the desert with my always.

However, this post is not about how much I love the desert.

It is about how I am coming to love the many facets of Indiana.

There was no question the first fall when I carried my camera around in my backpack like a tourist that I was hooked. I love the leaves. I loved the bushes. I love the flowers and the fields. I love that the dust from the harvest that clouds the air and gives the most glorious sunsets. I love taking long drives with Mark in the cool fall air and listening to him tell stories and point out locations of his favorite childhood memories.

And there was no question in the spring, after the long, hard winter when the Earth burst into life that I was hooked. What was with all the blossoms?! Where was this coming from?! How could this be?! :-D Again with the camera and acting like a tourist. I took hundreds of pictures of flowers.

But...in the winter...oh yes. There was question as to weather I loved Indiana. This, this is where people choose to live? This frozen, terrible, cold place where you can't breathe the air? Where you can't expose an inch of flesh? This is nice?! This is voluntary!?

But then. Slowly. I adjusted to the cold. And I was able to appreciate what beauty there is in winter.

Now, I love what freezing fog can do to the trees. It frosts them with the most amazing pixy-crystals that glitter in the sunlight.

I love the way the sunrise glows on a freshly frosted countryside. Pristine. Immaculate. Full of promise.

I love the way the top layer of snow can freeze and look like glitter.

Yes, there are things that I don't like about Indiana, but the more that I live here, the more that I love it in its own right, for what it is, and not just for the people who live here.

It really is a beautiful world. It makes me think of what my mom used to say about spring time, that she planted flowers so she would have a reason to get out of bed.

In any season, in any landscape, God can give us reasons to love where we're at. We just have to be willing to look for them.

Surprise Ticket's!

Speaking about surprises! When Mark does a thing, he does it right. And this is true about surprises as well and most anything else.

Mark knew I had a hard week in school. I come home after finishing it up on Friday, totally wiped out, and I walk into the bedroom to see this:

Mark had cleaned up the bedroom and made the bed!

And what are those, nestled on the pillow next to charlie and our other friends?...

CONCERT TICKETS! :-D

yes, indeed, Mark had planned a romantic evening for the two of us. We got dressed, went to dinner, went to a concert, and had a completely lovely evening.

Thanks for making life so wonderful best-est friend! I sure love and appreciate all you do for our little family!

Mark's Surprise

I may have mentioned before that I am not good about keeping secrets. Especially surprise secrets. They just pop out when I get asked a question that is remotely related to the topic of the surprise.

The problems is, Mark COMPLETELY loves being surprised. Totally loves it. So I keep trying at making surprises for him and keeping secrets.

For example: for his birthday, I was extra super sneaky. I wanted to plan something really fun and special for him since it was an important birthday. I wanted it to be a surprise party, but I knew he had to work, and he had to work really late, so it wouldn't work to do it after work, it needed to be something different. And, I wanted to involve his friends from work too, since he spends so much time with them. So! I came up with a devious plan....one he would never suspect. muahahahaha!

Extensive preparations were involved to make this happen and maintain secrecy: the crux of which involved emailing Mark's adviser, who agreed to plan a group meeting on the morning of his birthday, and getting permission to bring birthday breakfast for Mark and his compadres. Once that was done, all I had to do was plan a way to get all out of the house to set up the breakfast without Mark being any the wiser. Luckily! Mark loves playing basketball in the morning, and is out of the house! WHO-RAY! PERFECT PLAN! :-D

I had planned the morning to look like this:

• Mark would leave to play basket ball (like he always does on Friday morning) at around 530.
• I would leave to go to the store and purchase fruit, juice, and cream cheese and pick up the doughnuts and bagels on the way back to the house. Earlier in the week I called Mary Lou's doughnuts and ordered doughnuts ahead of time so they would be ready to pick (which Mark loves and has fond memories of eating with his parents when they went camping), and I also called Eisenstein's bagels and ordered bagels to pick up that morning as well.
• I would come back home, make the fruit salad, hide the evidence, then go out to Mark's lab and set up for the surprise breakfast.
• I would come back home, jump in bed, look sleepy when Mark came in, (he usually waked me up when he gets back from Basketball) and tell him "oh, sorry, I slept in and wasn't able to make you breakfast, how about I drop you off at your group meeting, and then you come home after your meeting and we have a big, nice breakfast together?"

hehehe! oh the deviousness!!! :-D The planning!! the utter surprise-ness that is was going to be!

*sigh*

but then :-(

Friday morning rolled around, and Mark decided NOT to go play basket ball.

*GASP!* The plan! The surprise! It was all in jeopardy!! WHAT TO DO?!

I encouraged him, prodded him, HIGHLY suggested to him that he should go and play. Wouldn't he feel so much better if he got some exercise this morning?

He did not leave.

...

I sat, and I thought and I stewed.

I owed it to Mark and his love of surprises to give it one last try.

I rolled out of bed and started to pack up everything I would need, dishes, knives, etc. When he asked what I was doing, I gave him some lame excuse.

"uh...what am I doing? well....that is a good question. You see, the thing is...i just remembered, my friend really needs these dishes, like, right now. Its an emergency, and so, I need to go take them to her..."

Yes. I tried to convince him that someone needing to borrow our dishes, at 6 in the morning, and it was an emergency and I would not be able to come and make him breakfast until after his meeting. He needed to ride his bike to the group meeting, and then come home after for breakfast. I was very specific that he was not to eat breakfast before he went, despite how hungry he was, since I was going to make him a really nice breakfast when he came home.

Then I left.

Man, I am really good at coming up with plausible excuses on the spot. It is a huge talent of mine.

So, I went and picked up all the goodies, and prepared the fruit salad NOT at home, and set up the breakfast surprise at the lab.

Meanwhile. Mark sat at home, and thought, and stewed...

And when he arrived at the meeting and I was eagerly anticipating the look of utter surprise on his face, he just smiled at me and laughed! HE HAD TOTALLY FIGURED OUT THE SURPRISE!

He said that he knew from when I tried so hard to get him to go to basketball, and then I left, with dishes, super early in the morning, (which I never do) to go help someone, and forbade him to eat breakfast until after his group meeting.

*sigh*

If only he had went to play basketball :-)

He did admit that had he left to play basketball, he never would have suspected, and the plan would have worked out great.

Anyway! Despite the surprise not being a surprise, we did have a lovely group breakfast, they sang happy birthday to him, and it was a nice way for him to start his birthday even though he had to work.

Happy Birthday Mark! Here's to a million more!

Bowl games!

Natalie and Trevor are awesome. I am not sure if we have talked about them before, but I came across these pictures and wanted to share one of our adventures with them that involved football, snacks, and T.V. shuffling.

This picture makes me laugh. Here we are in our tiny apartment, with the couch right in-front of the coffee table, which is right in front of the non-usable T.V. upon which was sets Natalie and Trevor's really nice flat screen that they brought over from their house so that we could watch a bowl game together.

You see, PVIL comes with cable or something like that with channels that allow us to watch the bowl games. The only problem was, Mark and I do not have a T.V. that will work with the cables. So, we brainstormed with Natalie and Trevor and came up with a solution: we have the channel but no T.V...they have a T.V., but no channel. With our powers combined, we can have a game day celebration!

side note*** (see that T.V. in the entertainment center? We have had it for 4 years, and the only time we have used it was when Kiora came to visit and brought her Wii for the kids to play with. This, my friends, was a momentous period in Mark's life, one that lives on in his memory and prevents us from parting with the T.V. in anticipation that when Kiora comes to visit again, she will return with the Wii and with the nieces and nephews and Mark can play with alex and Chio again. We don't want to get rid of it too soon--heaven forbid--what if Kiora decides to come on a surprise visit and we are caught T.V.-less?!? Hehe. Mark makes me laugh! So, we are only going to get rid of it when we have a replacement for Wii playing purposes. But, judging by how we never use the T.V. in general...we are not sure when that day will come. )

Anyway, back to the story. So! Natalie and Trevor brought their super nice T.V. over, we hooked it up, I made snacks, and we enjoyed the bowl game together!

Here are pictures of the snacks. We had fajitas, beans, rice, veggie tray, pico de gallo, guacamole, chips, and 7 layer dip. num num!

Thanks for coming over and watching the game with us! We love it when Trevor and Natalie come over, they are so much fun :-) And so willing to go along with crazy schemes.

New Years Snacks!

One of Mark's favorite parts of the holidays is being able to watch college football. One of my favorite parts of the holidays is being able to make lots and lots of snacks to eat while watching football.

I think it works out pretty well for both of us.

We were able to spend the holidays with Mark's family in Indy and they invited someone from the ward who has just moved in (his family hadn't come out yet) to join us so he wouldn't be all by himself. It was a really nice evening.

Adventures in cake making

I could not wait to post these pictures!

I made this for Leydy's quincenera on saturday 10/8/11. She looked like a princess, and I was really glad to help make her day special.

Top

Middle
Bottom

I had so much fun making this cake.

It was a lot of firsts.

My first gum paste flowers. My first gum paste leaves. My first spun sugar. My first sugar gems.

Here is a run down on the details:

Lillies: We colored the petals after they were dried, using luster dust. After coloring, we used edible pen to draw the dots. They were a lot of fun to make.

Spun sugar: Not difficult at all, but it makes a HUGE mess. Mark can verify. You basically boil sugar and water until it gets to 310 degrees, and then let it cool, then dip a whisk (or fork) into the hot syrup and quickly flick the whisk back and forth over pot handles. You do that over and over and the drips form a cotton candy like web. We left our syrup gold (since that was one of her colors) and used it on the top and around the bottom, and to support the lillies. Anyway, in the flicking process, it gets everywhere. Including on marks pajamas. And then when he went to bed...it got all over the bedroom too. I tracked it all over the carpet. Not good. I will have to shampoo the carpet, but now we know. Its difficult because the threads are so fine and basically clear, you don't know its there until its too late.

Mark is a saint to let me do stuff like this.

Sugar gems: Basically the same as the spun sugar, you just don't cook it so hot. Just to 275. Then quickly pour it into greased molds, wait 5 minutes, then they pop right out! The gems were put on top of the sticks on the upper tier, and for the butter-cream daisy centers in the middle and lower tiers.

I am really glad that the tops of the middle and bottom layer turned out so well. I was supposed to frost them totally different, (like a ruffle cake) but it kept looking terrible when I was practicing on a plate. It was getting late, I was getting tired, so I just left them totally white and went to bed. And I dreamed about cake, and this is what I thought up! swirlies with white flowers on a pink back ground. Not all that original, I know, but it worked. I had been totally drawing a blank the night before, its amazing what a little rest can do.

Anyway! I love making big cakes like this. It is incredibly fulfilling. I have been asked "why go to so much effort when someone is just going to eat it?" in my opinion, that is one of the best parts of edible art. It is going to make people happy, get eaten, end of story. I like that. Very simple.

Anyway! Happy 15 Leydy! Glad we could be a part of it!