Cakes and Cake Wrecks

My aunt sent me a link today to what has to be one of the funniest sites I've seen in a while. Maybe it's so funny to me because I've been doing more cake decorating of late than I have been stitching. It's a blog dedicated to finding the worst of the worst in PROFESSIONAL cakes out there. This doesn't count cakes that Moms like me make for their kids, but ones that people actually PAY professional cake decorators for. OMG I can't believe what some people will try to charge people money for. it's AWFUL!

Anyway, if you want to check it out it's called Cake Wrecks and the address is http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Speaking of cakes I realize that I haven't posted anything much since January when I put up a picture of Rickey's cake. So, I've missed putting up Rachel's 2nd birthday cake and the Bridal shower cake I did for my friend Bridget just the other day. So, here are a few pics.

First, here's Rachel's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday cake the morning of her birthday party before the kids got up. On top of the cake it says Happy 2nd Birthday Rachel in my in my "Oh-So-Awesome Icing Cursive"(TM).

The cake itself is a simple slab cake for the bottom layer. It's iced with plain buttercream icing tinted green, but I forgot that I had bought some green color spray so I wouldn't have to tint the icing. I decided to be smart and spray it over top of the original green anyway- since I had already bought the color spray and didn't want to waste it. *lol* (This will come back into play later in the story. )

The red dome for the clubhouse is made using half of the Wilton's Sports Ball Cake pan and covered in red marshmallow fondant. (known as MMF from now on)

The foot is shaped using yellow MMF and the hand is shaped using plain white MMF. The fingers were stuck on using toothpicks and laid flat to dry for several days. The black arm, leg and neck are made using a length of PVC pipe (bought at the local cake store(*1)) which was inserted into the hand/leg/head and then covered with black MMF for an inch or two below that point. I left enough PVC at the bottom for the head and hand that the PVC goes all the way down to the cake board for extra support.

The Head was made of three styrofoam balls (one 6" ball and two 4" balls) found in the floral section at Walmart and painted black. Here's a tip, don't try and use spray paint on styrofoam. It WILL melt the styrofoam. I found this out first hand two days before the party with no trips planned to go to Fredericton so I could get replacement foam balls. Luckily I always plan my kids parties for Sunday afternoons so that way everyone still has their Saturdays to do their normal running around, so I got my father in law to pick up a new 6" styrofoam ball (the last one in the store!!) and a small can of glossy black paint so I could paint a new one before the party on Sunday.

The fence is yellow MMF rolled out and then cut with a curved top using my pizza roller. The gate is just white with some yellow 'snakes'(*2) on top and then a little curve cut out of the top with my apple corer. Yes, I said apple corer... I also used it to cut the MMF circles that I used on Janice's birthday cake back in January.

I then tinted a small amount of MMF blue and made some windows using the blue fondant and a few black fondant 'snakes'. I also used the black to make the door frame and a small door knob.

*1 Note: I have no idea if there is a difference between PVC pipe you'd buy at the hardware store and the stuff sold for use in food, but just to be on the safe side I'd stick with stuff that you find marketed especially for food rather than take any chances.

*2 Snakes refer to when you used to play with Play-doh as a kid (or as an adult with your own kids) and would roll out the dough in your hands and make a long squiggly snake.

Here's a picture of the same cake at the party. Notice that it only says "Happy Birthday" instead of the original "Happy 2nd Birthday Rachel"??

Well I had forgotten that we had gone to the Disney Store the last time we were in Moncton and bought the small plastic Mickey Mouse Clubhouse figureines to put on top of the cake. Anyway when it came time to put them on there wasn't enough room for the figurines and the two candles, so I had to scrape the "2nd" and "Rachel" off the cake.

Now this wouldn't have been so bad, but remember my smart idea to use the green color spray on top of the grass? (even though I didn't need it) Well, the icing from the lettering dampened the color spray underneath it and when I took the lettering off, it took the extra green off as well, leaving the original green color of the icing underneath it. lol. I had to do a lot of frigging to get it looking half decent again. You can't really see anything wrong in this picture but in real life you could still see the lighter colour where the letters had been. Or, rather, I could still see it. I don't know if anyone else noticed it or if I only saw it because I knew it was there.

Oh, stop making fun of me... you know you do the same thing too!

In case you've never seen Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, here's a picture from the Disney Website that I scammed so I could make sure it looked fairly close. The only thing I left off was the blue slide on the side of the clubhouse.

Here's a more recent cake I did. It's a wedding shower cake I did for my friend Bridget just last weekend. It's done with white MMF and sage green icing (I used Wilton's Concentrated Paste in Juniper to dye it this colour) and a sage green ribbon I found at Walmart. The topping is just three roses I got at my local flower shop and arranged into a small glass votive holder that I then sunk into the top of the cake.

The cake was a 10" cake (3" deep) for the bottom layer and then 3 regular 8" cakes for the top layer. (It was Marble Cake per the bride's request)

Anyway, Hopefully I can get back into posting again, and it won't be nearly so long until my next post as it has been since my last one. (I don't actually count the "Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" post as an actual post... It's just a "go here before it's too late and you can't see it for free anymore" kind of post.)

Random Winter Pictures

A shot of my backyard in mid afternoon with the moon above the trees.

Same location, just a closeup of the snow covered fence.

Olivia, Rachel and Jason out playing in the snow.

My kids and husband in their first snowfort.

"Pew Pew" - Olivia pretending to shoot at me from lazerbeams on her wrists.

(She's been watching Buzz Lightyear on Playhouse Disney lately)

Rachel eating snow. Don't worry it wasn't yellow. *heehee*

Halloween Pics

The three of us Halloween morning getting ready for
a Halloween Party at our local drop in play group.
Rachel as a Turtle, Me as a Juliet (without my wig) and Olivia as Snow White



Rachel the Turtle (too bad I don't have any
pictures where you can see her little shell!)



Olivia with all her treats on Halloween Night after I put Rachel to bed.



Our Dora Jack-o-Lantern the night I carved it.



Our Dora Jack-o-Lantern the next morning
when Rachel punched her in the face!

Like I promised

The other day I promised I'd upload a few of the pictures I took of the girls when we went to the zoo the other day in Moncton. Well, as usual, I forgot all about it until right now. So, without further ado, here we go.

Here's Olivia with the stuffed Moose in the lobby at the Zoo. She was having so much fun, she didn't want to leave him, but others were waiting to take pics of their kids with the moose too. I wanted to get a quick pic with both her and Rachel, but there were SO many waiting that I didn't want to hold the show up any longer.

Rachel posing for a picture in her stroller.

Olivia with a Fallow Deer eating from her hand. Always a favourite!

Olivia and Rachel in a nice little rest area. Whenever there's anyone else around Olivia is always looking at them, she'll never look at the camera.

Olivia with a mouth full of goldfish crackers smiling for the camera with a huge lion in the background.

Tiger Olivia!

Tiger Rachel!

"Wait! I think I can crawl through this thing..."

A friend brought her double stroller for her two kids and since her oldest wanted to walk, Olivia decided she wanted a ride.

Olivia hugging Mallory.

Here's Olivia and Mallory in the double stroller and Rachel in our stroller. If Olivia weren't so tall I'd consider getting one of these for us, but as it is I doubt we'd get more than a few months out of it before she outgrew it.

Spaghetti Face

I made spaghetti for supper last night and this was what Rachel looked like afterwards. You just gotta love those great Spaghetti faces that babies get.

What a cutie.

Rachel's Birthday Pictures

I just realized when I was going through my old posts that I never had a post with the pictures from Rachel's First Birthday party (and my 30th *shhh*) So, even though it's a little late, here they are.

Here are a few pictures of Birthday Girl #1

Here we are opening up some of Rachel's many presents. She was so excited!

Here is Birthday Girl #2 (me) with Olivia and the present she gave me. (One of the Willow Tree figurines I collect -- this one is "Mommy and Big Sister" according to Olivia. I've already got "Mommy and Baby" and "Mommy and Daddy Dancing". Strange, I can't remember the actual names of them, only the names that Olivia gave them.

Here's Rachel helping clean up after the presents were opened.

Here's a picture of Rachel's first birthday cake. (With her little "smash cake" on the right.) I finished making it late the night before. I made the decorations from Royal Icing the week before.

And here are several pictures of Rachel eating her little cake.

Scrappy Stuff!

I haven't been doing much stitching lately, but this week I've gotten bit by the Scrappy bug again. I've done two layouts for my own scrapbook and done a mini album for my friend Bridget who who is taking a trip across the pond to England sometime this month.

Here are some pictures of what I've done this week.

Above is the front cover of Bridget's album and below is a qiuck shot of the pages from the album. I still haven't added any embellishments to them. I plan on adding some ribbon, eyelets and things like that. I've also got a few cute things hiding somewhere that I might dig out, but just haven't gotten around to yet.

Normally I wouldn't post pictures of a gift before it's received but I'm almost positive that Bridget doesn't read my blog. (In fact, the last time I mentioned it to her, she didn't even know I had one! *lol*)

Here's one of Olivia I did up in about half an hour the other day. I've always wanted to try using one of the 10x13 pictures I get from the portrait studio in a layout. I had to trim about 1.5" off the height and I trimmed about an inch off the left side to help center the picture better in the area that was available. I've also always wanted to do a "shabby chic" layout. With all the distressing that goes with it. So I used 3 different colours of ink pad and just rubbed them all over the papers I was using, then put the picture in and put a small piece of vellum over the green border to soften the distressing, attaching them with some terracotta orange conchoes that I had in my stash. I then added a metal heart and a pre made tag that matched pretty well.

I had a large area of empty vellum showing between the heart and tag and didn't quite know what to put in there, so I asked my cousin Janice what she thought. I then realized that I had some red checked ribbon in one of my drawers and "aged" that a bit with some barn red and green inks and tied a bow in the appropriate place. Then today when I was doing the layout below I saw the vellum quote and knew it was perfect to go with the picture in this layout, so I added it to a scrap of paper I had that matched pretty well, and mounted it just above the ribbon. It's not my favourite layout of all time or anything like that, but I like it. And all in all it went together pretty quickly.

The quote says: "Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together, they make this world a beautiful garden."

This one I did today. I've been meaning to do some pages of Rachel and thought I'd start with this page. I had the 5x7 picture stuck to the fridge for the past 10 months and thought it was time to use it. I wanted it to somewhat "match" the title page I did for Olivia's scrapbook all those years ago. The picture was very similar (see Olivia's below) and I wanted a similar feel with the picture tilted etc. Obviously it's not the "same" but similar is all I really wanted, so I'm VERY happy with it.

I used the last of some of my favourite papers I've EVER had. I bought several pieces of these papers at a scrapbooking store in Fredericton a few years ago and I've done a two page layout for Olivia as well as this layout and an altered can I made. The striped paper doesn't go with it, but luckily it matched well enough to finish the layout. I didn't have a big enough piece left out of any of my papers to finish this page without it.

I then hand wrote her information on some vellum and added it and then added two quick embellishments I got at Michaels and a quote (also on vellum) that says "You were made perfectly to be loved- and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. Elizabeth Barrett Browning " I LOVE that quote.

I'm extremely happy with this layout. It went very quickly and turned out exactly as I was hoping.

Here's the original layout I did for Olivia's scrapbook around 3 years ago. In fact, I think it might be my very first page ever! You can see how much better my layouts have become over the years.

On this one I just used a single sheet of background paper. I didn't really know about paper piecing a background quite yet. Then I added some Mulberry paper I had run through the printer to print some information on it. (including all her birth info) Then I added a few stickers and a stork embellishment I bought especially for this page. (I think I paid around $8 for the stork!! -- shhh... don't tell Jason! grin)

The sticker quote says: "Little girls are prescious gifts wrapped in love serene. Their dresses tied with sashes, futures tied with dreams ~ unknown"

Little Rachel Sleepyhead

I was puttering around in the kitchen around 7:00 tonight and Rachel was sitting happily in her high chair eating a little snack of grated cheese and some warmed up veggies when I noticed that she was being rather quiet. I snuck over and found her sound asleep!

Here's the picture

Here's the video
(Click on this picture to watch the video - will open a new window)

To Do in March

Well, it's March and I'm just making my first monthly "to do" list. Better late than never. Maybe this will help me stick to my

March List
1. Stitch and finish 2 small gifts (XS)
2. Sew pants for Olivia's figure skating recital (for all 7 preschool girls in her group)
3. Make two quick quilts for Rachel and Olivia
4. Make progress on "Waiting" (XS)
5. Start "Summer Bloom" (XS)
6. Finish "Quilt" (XS) and finish into a needlebook
7. Clean and organize my craft room (especially my Scrapbooking supplies)
8. Once craft room is usable, start Rachel's Scrapbook... (Remember: take it one page at a time!)

Rachel with a cheerio stuck to her chin!

100th Meridian... err.. I mean Post!

I can't believe I made it to 100 posts without flaking completely on my blogging. I don't blog as much as I used to, or as much as I had hoped after my "New Years" list, but I'm still going somewhat.

Rachel is now zipping around the house on all fours, so we've had to move into the super clean mode when it comes to our floors. She's steady picking up any little thing she finds and shoving it into her mouth. Having to sweep several times a day really sucks, but I guess it's just one of those things that comes with having a mobile baby around.

I haven't been stitching a lot lately. I had a touch of the flu a while back and spent a few days recouperating, we also spent a day in F'ton and ended up a Leons picking out a new Dining room set. We spent a day, along with Jason's Dad, last weekend moving everything around the house. I was just going to take a few pictures to post, but I just looked around and realized how much popcorn is on the floor right now! (Rachel is sleeping and Olivia is having a little snack -- most of which is scattered around the floor.) So, maybe this evening I'll get a picture taken and I can hopefully post it tomorrow.