A couple more cakes

On Thursday my sister-in-law Andrea married Mike (yeah!) It was a very nice wedding except there was a certain 2-year-old that decided to start screaming uncontrollably just as the ceremony was starting, causing me to have to dash out of the room as quickly as possible and miss the whole dang thing!

Anyhoo-- Andrea asked me to make the cake. I decided that it would be less stressful if I spread it out over the course of a few days so on Monday I made gumpaste roses. Tuesday I baked 7 cakes (one of which went straight to the trash as it failed miserably). Wednesday I made 6 batches of fondant and 4 batches of frosting and stacked and frosted each tier. Thursday Drew had the day off (thank goodness) and helped me cover each layer and decorate. The end result was as follows:

The gorgeous bride and groom

The next day was my nephew Ben's birthday party so Thursday night after the wedding we stopped by the store and bought cake supplies and then came home and baked cakes until 11:30 or so. On Friday Drew was also home and absolutely saved my life by doing a good 50% of the cake. I made the frosting first thing in the morning and he got to work coloring fondant and making gumpaste decorations. Ben loves Toy Story and seemed to like his cake as much as any other 4-year-old boy likes a cake.(note that the little figures are toys purchased from the store instead of hand sculpted in an effort to maintain a little sanity)

St. Patty's and More Projects

We decided to be "extra" festive by having a theme dinner for St. Patrick's Day, so Drew whipped up some shamrock pancakes and we finished off the meal with green grapes, green apples, and not-green sausage (thank goodness).
Abbie seems excited, don't you think? Notice the coat she is wearing. I have to ask her to take that coat off or she would be wearing it at all times. She is such a creature of habit.

Sweet Savannah

Our own little leprechaun

I have to take a moment to brag about my wonderful husband. After going to the grocery store on Saturday (Yes...he will volunteer to do the grocery shopping), he and Abbie surprised me with a bouquet of flowers. So sweet. And they are my favorite colors. I love that peachy-pink! Beautiful!
This is a cake that Drew and I made last weekend for one of Carly's awesome teachers. It was for her two teenage daughters and she wanted something fun and vibrant.
Onto the sewing projects for the week. I decided to make Carly a skirt with some fabric I had left over from aprons last year. It didn't turn out quite like I had envisioned and it caused MUCH stress. My sewing machine was doing so well for a while there that I was actually enjoying sewing, but alas! I'm afraid it is back to it's old evil ways of crappy sewing quality. I know that it is a tension problem but I just cannot seem to remedy the situation. Instead I sew, unpick, sew, unpick, sew, and then give up in frustration. But oh well...Carly is adorable as usual! I found a shirt to match at Kohl's (that place is dangerously close to my house and my bank account shows it) and I made a little matching flower pin to complete the ensemble.
And lastly is a car seat cover for the babe. I originally was planning on trying to match the fabric on the inside of the seat but that proved much too difficult. And after all...the blanket covers the seat anyway so who really cares?
Here's a close up of the flowers I made to put on the straps. Gotta glam it up a little, right?

Nesting

I guess I'd say I've hit the send phase of nesting. I got all of the closets organized a couple of months back and now I've moved on to sewing. I just can't seem to get it out of my mind lately. I've been working on making Easter dresses for the girls. They aren't quite finished yet but I'll be sure to post a picture when they are. I think that most of my drive comes from the blogs that I've been looking at lately. I found a super easy pattern for a baby dress on http://www.polkadotchair.com/that I just had to try. It only took me a couple of hours one afternoon, which is saying a lot for me because I am not the fastest or most efficient seamstress. Then once the dress was done I made some little shoes and a hair clip to match. Won't this little girl be a cutie in her summer garb?

I'm excited to say that we got a new camera this weekend. We've been considering this for a while because while we liked our other digital SLR, there were some things we wanted to improve upon. So we bought this Sony something-or-other and a portrait lens to go with it. Hopefully this means that I will stop being so lazy and using my point-and-shoot camera all the time and my pictures will be at least a little bit better. It's sad how my brain doesn't seem to retain much information when it comes to photography. I took classes in high school and in college and I'm afraid I always just revert to using "auto" mode all the time nowadays. I just can't remember what all the functions do and half the time I'm trying to take pictures of impatient little girls anyway. So my goal for the year is to brush up on my photography skills and start taking real photos again. If anyone is interested in buying a Pentax digital SLR camera complete with a couple of different lenses, hood, flash, remote, etc. let us know!

And now on the new cakes. The first was a cake I made for my friend's little girl a couple of weeks back. She was having a birthday party with a unicorn theme, so my friend sent me pictures of the plates, etc. and I made the cake to match. I thought I'd "girly it up" a bit by putting toule around the cake base. It looked pretty cute.
And here is a close up of the little unicorn. She's a bit on the chubby side because I used fondant to sculpt it, which I really shouldn't do. But I did invest in an extruder this time for making the hair so that I wouldn't have to roll out a million little "snakes"...lifesaver!
This next one turned into a true cake disaster. I knew it was just a matter of time. It was for Drew's nephew Logan who was turning 1. His mom requested a teddy bear cake and so I tried to make a tattered, well-loved looking bear but it went a little too far. I thought that using Rice Krispy treats for the head would make it easier to sculpt and more sturdy but boy was I wrong. I guess I didn't use enough marshmallows and his head started to crack in half just as we were finishing up. I also neglected to put in a cake board between layers because I thought the buttercream was light enough but again...wrong! His body pretty much collapsed. So in a desperate attempt to save the little guy we had to remove his head and reposition some things on two different occasions. He made it just long enough to arrive at the party and have his picture taken before he bit the dust. I wish I would have had my camera with me. His head literally crumbled to pieces. Whoops! Luckily the recipient is only 1 and was not bothered by his cake being headless. And my sweet sister-in-law is far too kind to be upset by the ordeal either. I think I handled the catastrophe better than might be expected. I just wanted my five hours of the day back!
Notice that countdown in the corner? You might be saying "Oh, only 50-something days left." I'm afraid I don't share that opinion. I'm ready to have this baby already!