Wearing my heart on my sleeve: An ongoing project

If you have read more than one or two posts here, you know as well as anyone in my face-to-face life this important fact about me: I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I fight it sometimes, I do. But I just can't help it. I put my whole self out there, into the world, just because I feel I have to. You'll not be surprised to learn that I do not have a poker face among my repertoire of facial expressions.

Being this way brings its complications. I'm overwhelming to some people with my puppy-like eagerness. Because I'm not good at pretending ennui, I probably lack a certain mystery; I don't do aloof. 

I love meeting new people and getting to know them. I think most people are interesting, and I love learning about new friends, getting to know the details of their life.   And equally so, I love connecting with people whom I've cared about in my past.   


For years I have been a little ashamed of this kind of enthusiasm.  But now, instead of working against it, I have decided to embrace opening my heart to people. I am wearing my heart on my sleeve, proudly.

Tomorrow I will post the first in a long series of posts I'm calling "Open Heart Letters." These are open notes to people in my life--both currently or from my past--who have made some sort of impression on me. For the people in my life now--well, I am writing these because it's so good to know that someone cares for you and thinks of you, isn't it?

And for those people I knew long ago-- I realize that many of them won't even see these "love letters" I feel compelled to write.  Regardless, I think it's a worthwhile exercise to reflect on the people I have known at formative times in my life, even those I knew for just a short while. They stay in my memory. From time to time my thoughts will land on such a person, and I am reminded how amazing the wide world is, filled with good people who make positive impressions on you just by crossing your path.

This is an ambitious project, and potentially endless--there are so many people I've admired and cared for over the years.  Some notes will be long letters, others distilled into a few lines or a poem.   I invite you to come along on the journey, and consider your own connections as we go...

I've been dreaming of a....

Giselle would say "true love's kiss."  And I have that, lucky me!   

What I'm dreaming of lately is the movie Enchanted, and specifically, Giselle's dress.   If I can manage to gather all of this:

And sew it together here (with some help from our little friend peeperkitty),

Ada will have a Halloween fit for a princess.

I've been stitching this together in bits and pieces, and I am hoping to finish it this weekend. And then it's Esme's costume...just wait until you see what she wants to be!

Happy Birthday AFRICOM

In case you didn't know, AFRICOM is turning one year old today. So I made a cake.

Actually, I was commissioned by my husband to make a cake to celebrate the birthday of US AFRICOM, the newest US Military Command. My husband is a poli-sci kind of guy, and he studies this sort of thing for a living. Yesterday after lunch he called me with a request to "make a cake shaped like Africa. Can you do that? For tomorrow morning?"

Uh, sure. No problem. So, faster than you can say Burkina Faso, I just whipped out my Africa-shaped cake pan and baked away...just kidding. This baby took a while--a lot of sketching and planning, then a lot of piecing and gluing with ganache frosting. The cake itself is a delicious buttermilk base inside, and it's cut from a few cakes and reshaped to resemble the continent. I used a bunch of maps to get it right, and while I was pretty ambitious about the whole thing, I had to stop short of doing outlines of 53 countries. I really liked the waterline I added in blue sanding sugar, though, and I especially love the badge I made for the top. Look at the little islands.

AFRICOM is probably not on the minds of most people that look at my blog, and yet, it's worth taking a look to see what our military does.  You can read about it more on the well-designed official AFRICOM website and in this recent article about it.   My favorite summary is here at The New Atlanticist.   

All in all, the AFRICOM cake project took most of yesterday.  When I finally stopped after 11 pm last night, I was so happy with how it came out.   The poli-sci guy and I were up at 5 this morning admiring it and taking photos, so I think he's happy with it, too.  Maybe this is why I get those lovely gifts!!