Not About Cake For A Change

On the right hand side of my blog is a cluster map. It is a visual representation of the number and location of the people who have visited my blog during a certain time period. If you click on the map you can see an enlarged version. Just the other day I went to look at my map and discovered that it provided me with a list of total visits to my blog by country. I thought it was pretty cool. So this list is the number of visits that have been made to my blog between May 1, 2008 and November 26, 2008. I have to say that I'm pretty surprised that there were less hits from Brazil than from the UK. India's rating didn't surprise me too much since I was actually living there and blogging from there for about half of the time that this data is collected from. Anyway, some randomness for you that doesn't involve a cake. :)

Current Country Totals
From 1 May 2008 to 26 Nov 2008

United States (US)	2,108
Canada (CA)	1,293
India (IN)	539
United Kingdom (GB)	350
Brazil (BR)	156
Australia (AU)	73
Germany (DE)	55
Europe (EU)	39
France (FR)	39
Netherlands (NL)	30
Spain (ES)	28
Italy (IT)	26
Turkey (TR)	22
United Arab Emirates (AE)	21
Norway (NO)	20
Singapore (SG)	20
Korea, Republic of (KR)	20
Philippines (PH)	19
Malaysia (MY)	18
Israel (IL)	18
Hong Kong (HK)	18
Thailand (TH)	16
Poland (PL)	16
Sweden (SE)	15
Pakistan (PK)	15
Switzerland (CH)	15
Denmark (DK)	14
Japan (JP)	14
New Zealand (NZ)	13
Romania (RO)	12
Ireland (IE)	12
South Africa (ZA)	11
Saudi Arabia (SA)	10
Mexico (MX)	9
Belgium (BE)	9
Portugal (PT)	9
Indonesia (ID)	9
China (CN)	8
Austria (AT)	8
Czech Republic (CZ)	8
Greece (GR)	7
Malta (MT)	6
Colombia (CO)	5
Peru (PE)	5
Morocco (MA)	5
Finland (FI)	5
Argentina (AR)	5
Hungary (HU)	5
Bulgaria (BG)	5
El Salvador (SV)	5
Vietnam (VN)	5
Russian Federation (RU)	4
Egypt (EG)	4
Nepal (NP)	4
Oman (OM)	4
Venezuela (VE)	4
Chile (CL)	4
Puerto Rico (PR)	4
Sri Lanka (LK)	4
Guatemala (GT)	4
Kuwait (KW)	4
Serbia (RS)	3
Jamaica (JM)	3
Taiwan (TW)	3
Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR)	3
Estonia (EE)	3
Trinidad and Tobago (TT)	2
Moldova, Republic of (MD)	2
Iceland (IS)	2
Uruguay (UY)	2
Latvia (LV)	2
Panama (PA)	2
Lithuania (LT)	2
Ecuador (EC)	2
Slovenia (SI)	2
Bahrain (BH)	2
Qatar (QA)	2
Bangladesh (BD)	2
Tunisia (TN)	2
Lebanon (LB)	2
Croatia (HR)	2
Cyprus (CY)	2
Bahamas (BS)	1
Kenya (KE)	1
Algeria (DZ)	1
Maldives (MV)	1
Zambia (ZM)	1
Georgia (GE)	1
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA)	1
Aruba (AW)	1
Senegal (SN)	1
Netherlands Antilles (AN)	1
Yemen (YE)	1
Ukraine (UA)	1
Costa Rica (CR)	1
Macedonia (MK)	1
Dominica (DM)	1

Christmas Cakes For The Bride To Be

Because I apparently have nothing better to blog about than cakes, here is my most recent creation.


I made these cakes for a bridal shower for a friend of mine. Everyone was asked to bring a Christmas ornament for the couple's first Christmas tree together. I, being the cake person that I am, was inspired to make Christmas ornament cakes! I did them in the colors that Cindy, the bride, had suggested for ornaments for their tree. Red and gold & Blue and silver. I used a Wilton pan designed for making sports balls etc. You bake the two halves and then "glue" them together with icing. Each ball is a different flavor of cake and they're all iced in butter cream. The tops are mini peanut butter cups wrapped in gold foil. If you look closely you can see that I used some florists wire to make the hangy-loop-part coming out of the top. To give the cakes more of a shiny, Christmas ornament look, I "painted" them with colored shimmer powder, also made by Wilton.