Beach House in the Burbs

These cakes are beautiful and weird! I can see them being served at the wedding of most any of my Redneck Tarot characters! Well, except Billy. He's having a Krispy Kreme donut cake. Almost makes me wish I could bake--almost!

This is an entirely inappropriate blog post for someone who not only voted for Barack Obama, but also is thrilled to pieces at what she has seen from him in the days since his inauguration. But I can't help it. For as genuinely happy as I am to have a Democrat back in the White House, I am almost that happy to have temporary possession of a Confederate States of America cuckoo clock. Its tacky kitschy quality speaks to the tackiest part of my Southern soul. Here's how we came to have it. Last week when my sister and I went to Huntsville, Ala., to surprise our mom for her birthday, we found a surprise ourselves. We walked into the living room, a room that has changed little since we grew up in it. A room that hosted my mother's liberal friends during all the dark years when they had to practically meet in secret due to the conservatism that permeates Huntsville. Despite its history, the room housed a CSA cuckoo clock, complete with Stonewall Jackson on a horse, Robert E. Lee...

It's just been birthday central around here lately. First Elvis , then my mother, then my nephew and Chris's is next Thursday. But I can't let Mom's get lost in the shuffle. She turned 70 on January 14, an event my sister and I decided couldn't go by without some sort of celebration, despite Mom's insistence that she didn't want a party. She got one anyway, an intimate party of four. Susan (my sister) and I drove from Atlanta to Huntsville, Alabama, on the 13th, arriving about 6:30 p.m., while Mom and Dad were at the gym. Daddy, who was in on the plot, had left the front door unlocked. We brought dinner, homemade chicken vegetable soup, angel rolls and birthday cake. Plus, we'd stopped at the Piggly Wiggly in New Hope, Alabama, and bought ice cream for coffee punch and to go with the cake. We set the table with Mom's crystal and china. Leroy, Daddy's shih tzu, let us know when they were almost home. He starts whining whenever Daddy's car reac...

In honor of Elvis’ 74th birthday, I thought I’d give you a tour of our guest bathroom, known for nearly 15 years as the Elvis bathroom. I wasn’t a huge, drooling, fawning, panty-throwing fan of Elvis. By the time I came around to liking his music, he was probably dead. Though living in the South my whole life I admit I’ve seen some folks who could have been him, but likely they were just huge, drooling, fawning fans. But then I found this shower curtain. I don’t know what drew me to it. Maybe Elvis possessed it? We had just moved into our trash heap of a house and decided that the hall bathroom had to be remodeled first. The shower curtain was the inspiration I needed. We have a lot of company. I couldn’t ask them to use the scary bathroom. Instead we asked them to bathe with Elvis. We painted the walls in jailhouse stripes, to honor that horrible movie, Jailhouse Rock . (I’m not a blind fan, though I admit to liking Viva, Las Vegas .) A friend gave us a picture of Elvis in the shower....