Monday, June 25, 2012

Welcome to the Tribe!

It is an amazing feeling to help people celebrate their good times.  Engagements, weddings, sheva brachot, bar and bat mitzvahs, anniversaries, birthdays, achievements - what a privilege to help make someone's day a little sweeter.  One of the more recent additions to the repertoire of life cycle cakes we've been doing is the brit milah cake.  Don't get any ideas!  It's nothing graphic or icky; just cakes welcoming a new arrival into the family and into the tribe.

This was a particular favorite, as it incorporates one of the traditional blessings for the newborn - "As he entered the covenant, so may he enter into Torah, Chuppah (marriage), and good deeds." Each part of the blessing is represented with a symbol:
A pillow to rest the baby on - with the blessing "May this little one become great" or more plaintively, "May this little one grow up."
Torah
The Chuppah, or marriage canopy

Good deeds - charity
 

The priestly breastplate, for the family's Cohen status
In the meantime, my apologies for pictures that refuse to line up properly - new formatting is giving me headaches...

The next was for the same family, several months later. This cake was for the brit of a grandson born to a "Steps and Stairs" family - boy, girl, boy, girl, and now another boy.

 And the final brit cake is a fun twist on the car window stickers that keep popping up everywhere.
This cake featured the whole family - the dad, who loves to play piano; the mom, who is a loving wife and mother; big brother, who loves playing soccer; big sister, who loves playing on a slide; and the new baby, whose interests we look forward to learning as he grows!

May all the new arrivals continue to bring joy to their families!

Dvora

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

That Devil Technology

Technology seems to be much the topic of the day - or at least it was of late, what with the giant Internet Asifa and all.  Far be it for me to say whether technology and the Internet (should it be capitalized? - I kind of feel it should) represent the ultimate good or evil in our lives, but I can point out just a couple of points.
1.  For probably the first time in my life, I counted the Omer from beginning to end this year, thanks to the handy-dandy email  I received nightly, (not to mention the seven sms's in one evening I received when I signed on for that service; rest assured I cancelled the next day) except for Shabbat and Chag, of course.

2. My phone has both siddur and sefer tehillim apps on it, making it much easier to keep up with davening, bentching, and the tehillim gemach I take part in.

3.  I receive weekly divrei Torah and parsha questions via email and find links to Torah related blogs posted by friends on Facebook.

4. I have met interesting people through my blog and Facebook page - new clients and fellow bloggers - and I have enjoyed and benefitted from the interactions.

5.  Rarely does a week go by when we are not asked to make a "Favorite Thing" cake that includes a computer/iPod/iPhone.  For better or for worse, I know what kids these days are into, because that's what their parents put on their birthday cakes...  Pretty sure there is no putting that genie back in the bottle!

So with the desire to make the great devil a little more palatable and a whole lot sweeter, I present to you a few examples of technology gone cake-y... (Forgive the bad puns, I am a little punchy right now.  So if this post up and disappears or seems wildly edited in the morning, you will know I thought better of it in the morning light.

The laptop and the cellphone are nearly mandatory at this point.

Honestly, what self-respecting teenage would want to do without?


And of course, the ever-present iPod (not an exact replica.  Like a memoir, it conveys the spirit rather than absolute verisimilitude.)
Though you've got to love the anti-technology that this particular birthday boy loves just as well, the Rubik's Cube.

And let's not forget the video games, be they on the computer, phone, gaming system, or just hand drawn on fondant...

But when it comes to the iPod, I have to admit I was a novice, a know-nothing.  Then came the cake order that changed it all, the one that included "that fruit cutting game with the sword."  Just for the record, the new mother-in-law who ordered it didn't know what it was either.  But I was able to ask my kids, and in the name of research, learned to play Fruit Ninja. And play research a little more. And just a bit more.  And to decorate a cake like it.
The best-known game, of course, is Angry Birds.  Why are they so angry?  Dunno, maybe it's from being flung from a slingshot.  As Dani said, my birds are a little more annoyed than angry...

Maybe it's because I keep missing the pigs. :-(

Which brings us to the final nail in the coffin, the iPod cake.  The whole darned cake is an iPod, in the artistic license sense, with the birthday boy's favorite apps on the sides.

Apps. Gosh, who would have imagined not too long ago that I would even know what that meant.

And aren't you just loving those earbuds?



Not posted from my Android, though it could have been...

Dvora


P.S. Did you all notice this new feature - click on any photo in the post, and you can see a slide show of all the post's photos.  You can see the detail in pictures that otherwise might be hard to see perfectly.  It's especially worth it for the iPod cake.  And if it's not a new feature, well, it's new to me!! Cool!
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