Almostgotit.com

It honestly didn’t occur to me until yesterday afternoon that there might be some connection between my love for Aga stoves and my earlier obsession with Easy-Bake Ovens.

Wow, and I call myself a feminist…

“Easy Bake Oven: Teaching girls their place since 1963″
Image: Ebaumsworld.com

I never did get an Easy-Bake Oven, no matter how much I begged for one. My exasperated mother told me I could just use the REGULAR oven if I wanted so desperately to bake something.

My mother just didn’t understand.

The clever artifice of the Easy-Bake Oven was an essential part of its charm for me: by the heat of an ordinary light bulb, one could produce a wonderful variety of cakes, cookies and pies, each a perfect miniature of the real thing. And actually edible, to boot!

The Easy-Bake oven was like a doll’s house come to life.

Nor am I the only person, nor even a member of the only sex, to suffer from an unrequited love for an Easy Bake Oven:

I cannot begin to tell you of the psychic agony of being a “sensitive” male child in the 60s (well maybe not sensitive just plain oddball) wanting and not being able to enunciate the X-Mas Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name: the EZ Bake Oven.

Five years ago, in celebration of the Easy-Bake Oven’s 40th anniversary, NPR ran a story featuring The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet, a combination cookbook and retrospective written by David Hoffman.

With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman and NPR don’t understand, either.

Educational? Gourmet? Wild mushroom flan?

No, no, and GOOD HEAVENS no.

Easy-Bake Ovens, guys, are all about magic, Christmas, and multi-colored sugar sprinkles:

I’m 43 and I’ve just fulfilled a dream. As of a couple of weeks ago, I am the proud owner of an Easy-Bake Oven … Today, I pulled it out of my “tickle trunk” (bedroom closet) and showed it to my 4 year old nephew and informed him that we were going to bake Christmas cookies. His eyes lit up, and our day quickly shot up to a 10 on the excitement scale … I had my mini copper Christmas cookie cutters (which up until this point, had only been used with the playdough I made them — recipe off the ‘net) and sprinkles at the ready much to their delight. …Three batches later, I put the brakes on them eating anymore as their Dad would soon be here to pick them up and take them home for supper… Tomorrow for lunch, we’re going to try out the pizza recipe I found for Easy-Bake Ovens. The 4 year old is bringing some different sparkles from home for tomorrow’s afternoon session of Christmas cookie baking. Thanks for the memories Easy-Bake! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night…   -Nadene, comment on beancounters.blogs.com

O, Sing It, Sister.

Q. What do bloggers want more than anything else?

 A. NO, no, and no: none of the above, silly people. 

If you will all join me back here in the real world, please:

Bloggers want more readers (and more comments,) of course.

One of the best ways to increase reader participation (=comments) is to give readers something juicy in return. 

DISQUS (pronounced “discuss”) is a blog plug-in that encourages readers to leave comments by awarding them with much more exposure of their own.  Readers who comment on DISQUS-enabled blogs can track and archive their own comments all in one place, where they can also edit or even republish them.  Moreover, a reader’s DISQUS profile “follows” him or her from blog to blog, allowing other readers to click through to see his or her other DISQUS blog comments, as well as to his or her own blog or blogs.

CommentLuv is another comment plug-in that has attracted a lot of bloggy attention.  This utility automatically visits each commentor’s feed and embeds a link to the commentor’s latest blog post whenever s/he comments.  This, in turn, attracts readers to a commentor’s own blog while also building upon the latter’s own Technorati blog “authority” and Google-ability.

I’ve not yet had time to adopt either of these plug-ins, but would love to hear from any readers who have.  Have they made a difference on your blog?

Possibly-helpful links:

• A list of 100 blogs using CommentLuv (go get yourself some LinkyLuv right now!)
• Interesting discussion on DISQUS: who should own the rights to your comments: you or the blog where you’ve left them?  ( Copyright protocols and blogging continue to evolve!)

Earlier this week, I somehow stumbled upon a whole run of country-cottage type blogs,  each with a massive, chintz-filled header at top and packed with photos below.  

And, um, soundtracks.

All of these bloggers seem currently to be making their own magazine covers  which they post on their blogs, featuring luscious photos of wide verandas, sweet white wicker, quaint pink roses, and whatever else those blissful homemakers- without- mattresses- mouldering- in- their- back- yards can conjure up. 

I tracked down their online photo toy because I wanted to make a country magazine cover, too.  But I don’t seem to have the right photos. 

Okay. I mean I don’t seem to have the right life, in which those kinds of photos happen.

I did find this bucolic photo we took inside an old stone barn in a cottage farm in England — pretty darn quaint, I’d say — but something funny happened with the photo-cropping.   It seemed appropriate, though, so I just went with it.

I am really conflicted here. I would love to have a beautiful, giant farm house.  And those women’s photos (and magazine covers) were truly stunning.  But I happened to have my speakers turned on when I clicked on several of them, and — I’m so sorry — I giggled until the milk (almost) came out of my nose.

So I made another one, and I have to say, I think this piece communicates something that is so much more authentically *me*. What do you think?

Big Huge Labs has lots of other fun photo toys to play with, too, and you can be sure I’ll be using more of them in future posts.  Just don’t expect any chintz.