Happy Easter!

Matthew 28

Jesus Has Risen

 ¹ After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

 ² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

 ⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

 ⁸ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them,“Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Although the death, burial, and resurrection should be reflected on weekly, since today is Easter I've been thinking about it more. We're so blessed that Jesus' story did not end at the cross. He conquered Death, giving us renewed hope! A chance to have everlasting life. What an amazing blessing! 

Last year, I was learning more about decorating cookies. I decided to make some for Easter. I think they were a big step in my cookie decorating. I was getting closer to getting the consistency right for the flood icing, which is pretty important. 

 I was so excited about these! I had the time to work on them and got better results than ever before.

I ended up giving these to a co-worker. This year, she wanted some more! Of course I was flattered and eager to make some since I enjoy it so much!

Alright, so they're basically identical to the ones from last year... But they were still fun to make! I like the purple tulips more than the pink ones. (I didn't make purple last year). I was kind of rushed making these too. Cookies just take time! I managed to get them baked one day this week. Then Thursday I needed to decorate them if I wanted to get them to her before Easter! My husband was giving me a hard time. So sweet... he wanted to hang out with me :) I did them as fast as I could, which still took a while. I ended up putting all the flood icing in a Ziploc bags and cutting holes in the corners. Ended up working quite nicely. Then no clean up!! (well less than usual ha)

Yesterday, I had one of my last cakes here in Mobile. Weird.... Anyway, it was for a little boy's first birthday. Baby and young kids' birthdays are the best. The mother gave me the colors and let me decorate as I pleased. That sounds all fun and dandy except I'm the most indecisive person ever!! Obviously, I came up with something pretty much as I was decorating the cake, and loved it!! I'm so excited how these turned out!!

 The colors were lime green, blue, and aqua. The cake is really light blue; although it's hard to tell. There's a little smash cake also.

This is the set of cutters I won from Cup A Dee Cakes. I used the one on the top for the decorations at the top of the cake. Seems so simple but that cutter helps a lot in achieving that design! I also used one of my wonderful pearl molds for the border. Love it.

Well I actually need to go pack up some of my cake things. Crazy. Wonder if my parents are aware it's all going to their house. No way that stuff is going in storage :)

And, I think I'm going to have to throw away my cake dummies... No need for them really, but kinda sad.

Exciting News

I'm going to see how much I can squeeze into this post...

First of all, I would guess you're wondering about the exciting news!! Well I missed April Fool's to pull the "I'm pregnant!" gag... hehe! No, we really do have big news. My husband and I are getting to move back to our hometown! Both of our families are there and we're so excited to be moving back. He got a fantastic new job which he is incredibly excited about and there will be new opportunities for me!!

Now down to business... We have a house to sell! I'm telling pretty much everyone so I might as well mention it here, just in case there's someone who needs/someone who knows someone who needs a house. It's a 3 bedroom/2 bath 1300 sq. ft. house in West Mobile built in 2003. We love it, but must move on.

I won't bore y'all with all the details, so if you're interested PLEASE let me know. I will get you all the info you need!!

Now on to cakes and cookies, of course!! I was pretty excited about these cookies. These are the first cookies I've done for a lingerie shower.

Here are a few of my favorites...

Here's a pretty basic birthday cake. It's for a boy, so they're not much on decorations...

Here's a groom's cake. It's chocolate cake and peanut butter icing. Yummmmy.

 Nothing too special, but it smelled delicious.

 Before we leave town, I have a few cakes I want to make for some people.  This is the strawberry margarita cake. I made it a couple weeks ago and thought it was delicious! I had to share! I ended up having a few layers...

 Top it off with lime cream cheese icing and you're done!! Oh my goodness, it's so good!

 This was for a friend of mine's wedding shower. She's actually the one who trained me at my job when I first moved to Mobile! I was attempting to mimic a design I saw that had the dots sparse at the bottom and more as they went up the cake. Not sure I pulled it off. I wish I had done a little more to the cake. Maybe a ribbon border at the bottom or something. Bummer. I really liked the colors too. I don't think the cake met it's potential :(

 So I finished up the cake, packed it up and drove 15 minutes to meet my friend...

 BOOM!

Lovely explosion.

 Not just in one place either. Nice huh?

I've been told the sun will have that effect. Heat, etc. But it gets much hotter in these parts than it did last weekend. Not sure quite what happened. I sure prefer that it happened on this cake and not the wedding cake the weekend before! 

 And check it out! Only one burn ;)

It's been a while since I've burned myself. 

Here's another cake I wanted to make for someone before I left. It's a peanut butter cake with chocolate buttercream icing. I like the piping. I never do stuff like that.

 Of course, then I swamp it with ganache! But I had some left over and there was no need to waste it!

I hope the recipients enjoyed!

Was that enough in one post? We'll see what else I have time to make before I go! Buy my house!!! :D

OH YEAH!! I actually won a giveaway from a blog! I feel so special. I'm even mentioned in the post!
Check out Cup a Dee Cakes!! Here's the post where I'm listed as the winner! Hooray!

St. Patty's Day

Just to be upfront with you, I have no festive creations for St. Patrick's Day (but maybe I'll throw an oldie in there now that I've mentioned it:). Nope, St. Patty's Day weekend just seemed to be a really popular weekend to celebrate anything! My cousin got married on St. Patrick's Day, but I wasn't able to make it (it was 6 hours away) because of all the cakes. Obviously, I love making cakes!! But I was sad to miss out on his big day and visit all my family. So what kept me so busy??

Friday I had a birthday cake for a girl at my church. Her birthday is on St. Patrick's Day and last year I made this for her.

 This is the festive cake I said I would throw in. I was pretty excited about this cake. I thought it turned out very well. The rainbow is fondant. I did have to use some cardboard to help keep it standing.

This year I made a cake that looked like a phone case she was getting for her birthday.

It was with Nutella icing! Yum. Of course, I like my buttercream because I can decorate with it. Other icings aren't always as cooperative, but I think it worked out alright in this case.

Saturday, I had 3 cakes: 2 anniversary cakes and 1 birthday cake. One anniversary cake I didn't even get a picture of. It was pretty basic anyway. It was a strawberry margarita cake (don't worry, no alcohol). Strawberry cake with lime cream cheese icing. I can't wait to make it again!! It was soooo good! I had some left overs so I got a taste or two :)

This next cake was for a 30th Anniversary for a couple at our church that were renewing their vows. The daughter-in-law who asked me to do the cake, gave me a picture from Pink Cake Box for what they were wanting with a few tweaks. Whew!! Umm just in case you don't know, Pink Cake Box is an amazing cake business! So kinda scary when they see pictures like that and who knows what they're expecting from me!

 The bottom layer was a vanilla with hint of lemon and the top was a vanilla with hint of orange, both with raspberry filling and buttercream icing. Little bit different that the norm, but that's a good thing!

 This is one of the new stands I got!! I'm really excited about it. I got a set of 4 for what I think was a good deal. Hopefully it was, but it's done now anyway!

 The flowers are forget me nots. I think I made them too big. Oops. I didn't hear any complaints, but the couple might just be too nice. Overall I am really exciting with how it turned out.

Next was a birthday cake. A 3-tiered birthday cake. A mini 3-tiered birthday cake. Yup, 8", 6", and a 4" to top it off. With houndstooth decorations and booties! Whew.

 The one picture I managed to get before they picked it up.

The houndstooth booties. I'm pretty happy with these too. It was my first time to make booties and to make them houndstooth, also! Glad it worked out!! :)

Sunday, I had cupcakes to make for a baby shower at church. I didn't get pictures of those either. They were just vanilla with pastel icing. Monday, I had another birthday cake. Ironically, it was for the same birthday girl from Saturday. A coworker wanted to give her a cake at work; therefore, cake no. 2.

 Another mini-tiered cake. 6" and 4". I think I should turn down 4" cake options... But at least I did it Saturday so I had the hang of it. The only way I can figure to properly ice it is to go ahead and stack and dowel it so it'll stay in place!! And the cakes don't usually come out too nicely from my 4" springform pan. They stick a little so I end up having to make the correct shape while icing. I think it turned out well both times, but maybe I should forgo cakes less than 6"...

 Each tier ended up being 3 layers. I had the extra cake and I needed it to be tall enough to do the stencil. Speaking of, I need to use this stencil on fondant!! I'm pretty sure I just make it harder on myself attempting to do it on buttercream... and 2 colors...

I ended up making the design like this on the back since there was only so much room on that 4". Just about when I finished making the cake, I realized they wanted a square cake... I think. I had been given a sheet of what they wanted and it was worded strangely. And how the situation was, it never really got addressed. Therefore, round cake. Which really stinks because a square cake would've been easier with stencils!! Ugh. Oh well. It all turned out ok. 

Oh yeah, and there's another stand I got!!  A 6" stand... who needs a 6" stand?? Obviously it's too small for the smallest cake I make. I guess if you want to display a single cupcake?? But I was determined to use it at least for pictures :)

So that's that.... 3 tiered cakes, 2 regular cakes, and 24 cupcakes in 4 days. Feels good once it's all done!

Grandma's Attic

If you've read any of my recent posts or if you're my friend on facebook, you know that yesterday was the cake competition. Oh man, I'm not sure where to start. First of all, this week was so busy! Valentine's day was Tuesday, my husband and I went to a Mardi Gras parade and ball on Thursday and I had to get this cake ready for Saturday. And the cake had to be ready by Friday night because the competition was an hour and a half away.

I've been thinking and planning this cake for weeks (Thanks to Jennifer and my mom for putting up with endless emails with questions and ideas!!). I managed to finally come up with an idea.

These are just a few of the sketches and notes I made about ideas and details.

As you can see on that top sheet, I finally decided on a trunk with 2 suitcases on top with a dress form standing beside it. I know that probably seems so simple, but it was a lot of work coming to that conclusion. How could I do a dress form?  What sizes should I make the suitcases/trunk to make it look proportionate to the dress form? All those type questions.

 I was determined to do the dress form. On the left is the structure my husband made for the dress form. Lots of figuring just to make sure that would work. On the right was a dress form I found at Hobby Lobby. I planned to make one the exact same size. That at least helped in the process of forming my own dress form.

 It is allowed to use cake dummies for the competition. The last two years, I used real cake. First year, I wasted so much cake. And there's always the issue of now what do I do with this cake?? So this year, I thought I'd use cake dummies to (1) save cake, (2) save time and energy (baking all the cakes etc), and (3) be able to make it in advance. Well all those worked except for the last (and most important) one. 

I ordered my cake dummies kinda late, but according to the website I'd still get them over a week before the competition. I was pumped! Until the day I expected them came and I got an email that they had shipped. They had just then shipped. Ugh. So I got them Valentine's Day. Seems early enough. Except we went out for V-day. I needed my husband to cut the dummies to the size I needed. I think he finally cut them Wednesday but I had no time to work on them with church and all. Then Thursday came along.... and we had the Mardi Gras activities. 

Yup, that leaves Friday night to work on it. I had at least covered the board and started forming the dress form, but that's about it. 

I would've used cake for this, but cake gets heavy. And I had to travel 60 or so miles with it so I settled on rice crispies treats. I like how it looks before I cover it with fondant. 

Around 2 am, I finish. Yay!!

 I had planned to do a tomato pin cushion on top of the suitcase, but I thought the red would clash with the colors I had. 

 A quilt sticking out of the trunk.

 Accents painted with luster dust.

 I hate that it's not very smooth. I put buttercream over the rice crispies to try to smooth it out, but apparently that's not good enough. I'll have to figure out something. 

 They have an area set up for pictures at the competition. How nice! 

Here are a few of the other competitors. There are other divisions. Proffessional, Advanced, Novice, etc. It did seem like there were less entries this year, unfortunately. 

These are some of the Professional. I'm pretty sure the first won.                                                                            

These are some of the Advanced division

So what was the outcome for me? Well...

 I got 2nd place. 

I believe this is the cake that won the Novice division. They announce winners by name and number while the cakes are in a separate room so it's hard to keep track of who won what.

I'm not going to lie, I was kinda bummed. It's not that I thought I should get first, I was just hoping I would. My first year I got 3rd and couldn't believe it. Last year, I got 2nd (although originally I thought first, but turned out it was a mistake - but 2nd was still good for me!). I really wanted to get gold this year! The last 2 years, although I worked hard on those cakes, I wasn't that happy with them. This year, I was. I was content with how it turned out. We do get our score cards back. Fortunately the judges didn't beat me up and I was happy with their comments. I think it looked too simple. It needed more details. I understand that. It's funny though. It looked simple, but it took me so long to plan it all out! As for details, I just ran out of time anyway. Unless I didn't want any sleep. Oh well. There's always next year! Curious about the last 2 years? 

2010 Theme: Fairytale. Umm, kinda embarrassing now and I was really not confident back then. That's why I was incredibly excited when I got 3rd.

 2011 Theme: The 70's

That's me receiving the gold medal that was not actually mine. The girl that one had also done a VW van. Not sure how it got mixed up, but I'm glad I figured it out. Otherwise I would've doubted the whole time. I'd rather have 2nd, knowing I earned it than have 1st, not knowing if I had actually placed at all.

Can you tell I'm completely burnt? The competition is in Gulf Breeze, FL, which is right next to Pensacola Beach. The first year I sat on the beach but it was a little chilly. Last year I sat out there all day! It felt amazing. And I was a lobster. This year... it rained. I was so bummed! I'd bought a book and everything. So instead of relaxing, reading, and napping on the beach, I took 2 miniature naps in my car, passed the time at the mall, and tried on clothes I shouldn't (and didn't but still thinking about) buy. And there was some serious rain and thunderstorms on my way home. I saw a car flipped on its side on the interstate!! Scary! Fortunately, I made it home safely. Even if I had to go 40 mph on the interstate :)

Oh yeah, and here's the theme for next year. Put your thinking-cap on! :) I'm 100% positive this will be easier (for ideas, at least) than this year's. (I hope I don't regret saying that)

Anyway, that was the excitement of the 2012 Cake Competition. If you made it through this whole post: Congrats! You want more??

I did have a cake for Sunday, which added more to the fun events of the week. But don't get me wrong, I always love to do a cake. 

 Here are some buttercream roses. Don't make these often. Obvious?

This was for a co-worker of mine from her boyfriend (who is also a co-worker). It's supposed to look similar to the cake from the movie P.S. I Love You. I haven't seen it, but I thought the "P.S. I love you" on the cake was cute! How sweet. Word is that she liked it. Therefore, success.