China cabinet before and after

I really love branch coral and branch coral decorated household items. I feel guilty buying the real stuff, so environmentally correct fake-o branch coral stuff is great. I saw these branch coral drawer pulls on a bookcase on a design blog this spring, and then I was delighted and surprised to see them in Anthropologie the next week. I couldn't resist buying a set for my china cabinet, which was sadly in need of a makeover.

Sad, boring china cabinet with missing & shattered old glass drawer pulls (they're in the top drawer so that I can replace them if move, ha ha):



Here's the after:



And here's a close-up, because it's difficult to see much from the photo above:

I really don't love these photos - they're not very visually informative and they don't do my makeover justice. However, the drawer pulls I love. They're coated metal, so they're very sturdy and I don't feel like they're going to break when I yank open my drawers which probably need a good sanding or at least a soap rubdown.

I'm back!!!

I did something really crazy this winter . . . I made a 14 layer cake. Or at least I planned to make a 14 layer cake, but as things worked out it was only an 11 layer cake. That's still a heck of a lot of cake, even if they were only about as thick as hefty pancakes. I don't think anyone missed the "missing" 3 layers. Because I'm not totally insane and because I wasn't about to buy 9 more cake pans, I used foil pans. Here are the pans with the batter:



Here are the layers glued together with an annoyingly drippy chocolate glaze:



Here's the cake before it's trip to the party:



And here it is cut open!