I haven’t been doing much baking at home since the new year, and that’s because I’ve been spending all my free time painting a giant Kirby mural on our living room wall. I finally finished last night! It was a real learning experience, because I’ve never done wall art like this before or even painted on such a large scale.

I call it the Christmas Explosion cake.

We've had Everything Bagel for about six months now, and the one thing I haven't mentioned much is that he is an absolute little hellspawn. A big asshole gremlin. I've had kittens before, but he is something else.

Please note that he's *my* gremlin hellspawn and I'll never stop loving him as long as I live.

Anyway. Some crimes he's done:

- We paid a lotta money for new windows and within a week he'd figured out how to rip strips of insulation out from between them. We still don't know exactly how he does it.

- A couple of days ago he got into my fountain pens as I was cleaning them, which is already impressive because I did it in the bathroom explicitly so I could lock him out. He snuck in, hid, and subsequently got locked in. Then he had a party. He wound up leaving little black footprints all over my sink and toilet. He also dragged a bunch of my other stuff into the sink because reasons.

- He kept stealing the rubber nibs on the ends of our doorstoppers, and we kept putting them back on. Eventually he got annoyed and now he's taken to just ripping the entire doorstopper out of the wall and leaving it in my bed. This requires carrying it up a flight of stairs, by the way.

- It took less than three minutes for him to get these air plants down and in retrospect I'm not sure why I bothered.

- The worst crime of all, and the one he's known for among my friends: poop fetch. EB learned to play fetch pretty early, and he took to waking me by dropping a fetch toy on my legs while I was still in bed. It was cute. One morning the fetch toy was poop. A small, round, hard turd. It was the first of 3 he would bring me that morning alone.

This was the beginning of weeks of living in fear. He absolutely loves to bring us poopies, and he never understands why this action does not initiate a game of fetch. We have replaced all our litterboxes with high walled, top entrance boxes (which doesn't stop him but does inconvenience him) and we have stopped playing fetch for the most part. We still catch him with a nice round poop sometimes. At this point we just don't even know anymore.

- He annoys the other two so much that French Toast has recognized the only safe place is perched on top of an open door.

This has been but a small sampling of his crimes. In case you're wondering if he feels any remorse for any of it, a moment ago I asked him if he was planning more crimes and he farted on me.

Thank you for your time. Here's a mugshot.

I’m easing into fall/spooky recipes with a simple one: pecan and rum pound cake with blackberries! Inspired by We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The sugar on the blackberries (probably) contains no arsenic. 

The cats look very silly using their new litter box.

I got to do a cake with a nuclear theme and it was a very good time. The bride designed a rad topper and really let me have fun with the details (and the silver leaf).

Flavors included:

🥭 Passionfruit and fresh golden mango

🍌 Hummingbird (pineapple/banana/pecan/spice) and cream cheese