Potato Rolls

Mom makes the best potato rolls.

Potato rolls are always good, but Mom stumbled on a special "technique," because she is usually baking them for the holidays, which we used to always celebrate at my Grandma's. Mom would make the dough the morning of or sometimes the night before (when the bread would go in the fridge to rise overnight). She would then make the rolls just before getting in the car to go to Grandma's. The rolls would rise in the car whiel we travelled, then be baked at Grandma's, usually just before we ate, after the bird, roast, or whatever had come out of the oven. But Grandma never lived closer than 45 minutes, and by the time I was 19, she actually lived about 2.5 hours away!

This way of cooking potato rolls resulted in extreme overrising. They would have a really alcoholic smell by the time they were baked. But they were the lightest bread you could imagine, and they taste like heaven!

I almost let mine rise long enough the other night, but I ran out of time...

Wedding dress

My Mom made my wedding dress.

First, we (Mom, Jackie, Mel, and I) went shopping for dresses, to see what would look good on me. We all loved one dress in particular. It had the most amazing, pearly grey sheen. The shop lady was particularly pleased to show us how it was done. She flipped the dress hem up and showed us the most putrid, greeny-yellow lining. Just foul. The dress was white shantung silk - very textured. Putting that color lining under the silk just made the silk *glow.*

So off Mom and I trooped to Mary Jo's to pick a pattern and find our silk and lining. We chose a fairly traditional wedding dress look, with a modest scooped neck and princess lines for the bodice. We found the perfect silk/lining combination.

$123.21 - Shantung silk, 9.5 yards
$26.27 - lining, 8.5 yards
$85.52 - various notions
total = $232.00

Then we went to a specialty bridal shop for the lace for the applique. We found the most incredible piece. Delicate, with just a few pearly sequins. Gorgeous. I think we needed 4 yards. Doubled the price of the dress.

I believe the entire dress cost around $400.

See the result ( here )

Here we go

OK, am about to completely f*** up my journal. Have found instructions on how to make the component backgrounds transparent, but I don't understand them. Am going to try to do them anyway! :)

I have achieved transparency!

Whoa! Less than 20 minutes! But what a new time waster I've just discovered! Time to fix the background to something less columnar! Whoo hoo!

And at this point I should also do the "I love uisgich dance," followed by the "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" dance!