dried cherry toppers Originally uploaded by not martha.

Birthday Cupcakes Test Two -- more about them here.

star cupcake Originally uploaded by not martha.

This is a test cupcake for Scott's birthday. See extensive personal notes of trial number one here.

Cupcakes, in Chicago, has a nice little History of the Cupcake.

Apartment Therapy has a thread on how to frost glass temporarily when you are renting. Readers from years back might remember I had a page about using squares of clear contact paper to create this effect. However, the third place I used this in the contact paper didn't pull off cleanly, much to my dismay. The adhesive was left stuck to the window and I spent an entire day with plastic scrapers and various Goo Gone products getting it off. The thread has some first hand experience from people who have applied the frosting film you can find at home improvement stores, or used glass frosting sprays. I'm also going to point out Ikea's Amorf Frost, someone wrote to tell me this is applied with a little bit of soapy water.

In the family of elf shots (made of candy cane) and gummi shot glasses is Ice Shots, shot glass shaped ice cube trays. The possibilities! They also mention using them to make chocolate shot glasses. via Uncrate.

Adorable and delicious looking mini bagels, with a recipe and par-baking and freezing instructions at Brownie Points.

swiss meringue buttercream Originally uploaded by not martha.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream made from this recipe at The Food Palate adapted from The Joy of Cooking.

This was yummy, not too sweet, but fluffy and slightly spongy, not slimy. Mmm. It got the color-and-Non-Pereils treatment.

Next up: rolled fondant shapes, in my case red stars, on top. See the new-ish Wilton cut-outs which come in many small shapes. I also find the interchangable people cutters rather cute.

plush you! Originally uploaded by not martha.

Sew Dorky donuts at the Plush You! show in Schmancy

plush you! Originally uploaded by not martha.

Loobylu's Big Kitty at the Plush You! show in Schmancy

This Friday is the opening of the Plush You! show at Schmancy, featuring a bunch of artists including Stuart, of Sew Dorky, maker of fine felt donuts, and Claire of Loobylu and all that Month of Softies goodness. The opening is this Friday, August 12th from 5 to 9 p.m. at Schmancy, 1930 2nd Ave., Seattle. A bit more about the show at Tablet and Seattle Metroblog.

Penzeys Spices is opening a store in Portland. I see more weekend trips in my future.

Unseen improvments have been going on around here. I have added a nice little Feedburner page to the rss link you see over there to the right, I have fixed all (I hope) of the broken images in the archives, and I have put up two not-really-new How To Make pages: itty cupcakes which as been waiting around since March (I know!), and lavender, which just consolidates the photographs of lavender at different stages of development that I had put as individual posts. I have also gotten myself some of that Bloglines goodness, finally.

A while back I wondered about sprinkles vs. jimmies - turns out I certainly wasn't the first. It appears that what you call them is something of a regional thing. This post at The Big Apple sums up nicely all the bits of research I dug up, and answers the question of whether "jimmies" is a rude term (it's not).

ask metafilter on the best places to get mail order spices

the cake bible - mousseline buttercream Originally uploaded by not martha.

"It's definitely not as slimy, but it's still slimy." This felt like it would have piped really nicely. Again, not too sweet, but not a texture I liked having in my mouth. This is uncolored and flavored with vanilla extract.