A quilting cake~

A couple of days ago, I had an order for a chocolate-flavored birthday cake. The lady who placed the order quilts with the lady whose birthday it is, so she wanted a cake that had something to do with quilting.

So, after about 4 hours of time spent in baking; looking for ideas; planning and decorating, this is what I came up with:

Here's the quilt-block close up... Oh dear, now you can see that my points don't match up perfectly! :)

When I was finished with the cake, I went out to the barn (armed with Mom's camera,) as the boys were working on cleaning out the barns with the skid-steer we're renting from a friend and I wanted to see how it was going. Andrew was just about done with the middle section of the East barn when I showed up... They did 2 sections this afternoon and have 3 left, so they should be able to finish the smelly job tomorrow.

My dad took the boys' big steer into the butcher shop today and then did a little mowing around Fern's (the lady we rent some of our land from) old farm-yard. When he was through with that, he came home and went out to bale up a neighbors' flax straw... The bales are going to be used at our Appleseed Shoot--as backstops for the bullets to go into. As flax straw isn't good for feed or bedding, we'll use the bales later as a windbreak for the cattle this Winter.

Speaking of our Appleseed... My mom registered our whole family today. It was kind of funny because one of the questions on the form is something like this: "Why are you interested in attending this shoot?" Really and truly, I think our whole family wants to attend because of the great convenience of having a shoot in our very own pasture! :) Joking aside--We saw that the "Steele Appleseed" advertising posters are up on the website now, so Mom printed up several and is planning on hanging some up in Napoleon tomorrow when she goes to put money in the bank. It seems hard to believe that the shoot is only a little more than 2 weeks away!!!

Oh, one more exciting thing happened today.... My dad learned that we have new neighbors (well, they live about 7 miles from us, but we still call them neighbors!) He met the dad of the family and they talked for a little while. We had actually met these people at a home school graduation about 11 years ago, so we kind of know them. I'm pretty sure they home-educate their children, so it will be really nice to visit with them!

As you can tell, it was once again a busy and exciting day on the farm!