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.

Trial Saturday

Ahhh Saturday. I love 'em. And this is the first Saturday in over a month I didn't have anything planned. So I had big plans to try out a new cake recipe. I came up with a really cute cake design too! It included using several of my Christmas gifts too! Well things never go as planned. The cakes didn't come out of the pans nicely. What in the world am I doing wrong?! Well, needless to say, my cake design I was so excited about is canned.... for today. I had a few people try the cake and they thought it was great! At least there's that.

I did manage to accomplish a few other things. I practiced some gumpaste roses. And I used my new ball tool, which I now love!

 I actually only made the two big ones and one of the smaller ones today. The other three I made a few months back. I think I'll just make my own bouquet of flowers out of gumpaste!! They won't die like real flowers and I like them more than silk flowers :)

Here's some growing.

Pretty fun. Now I need to learn some other flowers...

I also played with my Cricut Cake today. It has been a while. I feel like today was pretty successful though.

These are on my old dummy cake. It was actually a layer in a wedding cake I did. The mother of the bride returned it to me! So I've been using it.

 I tried a few different ways. Might look rough in this situation... ha

 I thought I'd try out what it would look like if I piped it. Aaaand back to the Cricut.

Just playing around. Anyway, although all things didn't go as planned, still a good day! Wish I had more days like this! 

Bridal Shower Cupcakes

Oh, I've got a good story to go along with this... At least I think so. I had cupcakes to make for a wedding shower at my church today. Fun fact: the girl (bride) went to high school with me, which was in TN and we're in AL. She's engaged to a guy that goes to our church. Anyway, of course I wanted to make some gorgeous cupcakes. The theme that I knew of was traditional so I was sticking with white. I planned on making some gumpaste roses and flowers and bows. I baked the cupcakes yesterday and planned on decorating today. I had done some gumpaste flowers but still needed to make the roses. I'll throw in some pics now so you don't get bored from my story...

A gumpaste flower is born... Note: using 100% gumpaste is tough. It dries fast!

Anyway. The flowers take a bit longer than planned and I made a few more gumpaste flowers. I make the icing and started piping and realize I've got about 45 minutes before the shower. I wanted to get there early, which is easier said than done for some people. I finish up and quickly get dressed.... no time for a shower so my hair is in a lovely ponytail/bun and pretty obvious that it has not been washed today. But I'm going to make it!! I wrap the present, ever so nicely (haha). I'm getting stuff in the car and ready to go!

Accomplishments:

• I have a present. It's wrapped! With a gift receipt.
• I'm dressed to go to the shower instead of showing up in whatever I've had on while making the cupcakes (aka a slobby look)
• The cupcakes are decorated and looking good.
• My fingernails are all the same colors. Back story: I was looking at nail polish yesterday and tried out a couple colors on my thumbs. So all my fingernails are pink except my thumbs which are two different colors, ha!!
• I'm going to make it before the shower!

Two seconds after I've left, I realize I have forgotten the plates I was supposed to bring for the cupcakes. I go back to my house and set off our alarm. Very smooth so far... I make it to the church without destroying any of the cupcakes. Cupcakes are worse travelling with than cakes, for sure. I rush in and set up the cupcakes. No one seemed to really be worried about timing but I'm still proud that I made it there early even if it was only 2 minutes. I get the cupcakes set up, the arranged, the gift inside and take a seat....

Now if this has not been an entertaining story so far, here's a pretty awful part: My dress is unzipped. It zips up on the side and it's open. No clue how long it's been like that... I did zip it up when I got dressed, don't get me wrong. But something is wrong with the zipper. You know when a zipper separates, it can come unzipped even if the pull zipper is up (I don't know all the correct zipper terminology). So I was able to get the zipper back down and it zip up correctly. By the way, I did have an undershirt on so I wasn't showing off half my body :) Well that was fun... Pretty sure I'll be paranoid whenever I wear that dress now.

So on to the cupcakes :)

To prove I was in a hurry, check out the 2 cupcakes I managed to take a picture of that have no decorations at all. I didn't even realize till I got to the shower.

I took some pictures at the shower too. I like to have staged pictures but I didn't have time so I figured at the shower would be better than on my kitchen counter (above). 

I'm still a little embarrassed to pull out my camera at an event to take pictures so here are the few I clicked really fast.

Alright well I need to get to work... tomorrow is family and friends day at church and I have LOTS of sweets planned for the fellowship. Hopefully I can bake all I have planned. There are 3 desserts and 2 are new recipes I've recently found. I'm excited and hopefully will share it all with you tomorrow!

Wedding Showers

Since my first post was all about the wedding of friends of mine I thought I'd share the shower cakes and cupcakes I made for the bride in the past few months. 

As you can see from the wedding, the bride loves colorful colors!! And she used gerebera daisies so you will see that was my inspiration.  I made these cupcakes for a shower at her work. This was the first time I've ever made gerbera daisies. I don't have a cutter so I used a regular daisy cutter. I used two and layered them to make more petals. Then I used a toothpick to make the indentions in the petals. Then set them in a few bowls covered with aluminum foil to create the shape I wanted. But for most of them I just formed the aluminum foil because I only had 4 small bowls! 

For cupcake wrappers, I made them myself! I saw a great template on one of blogs I follow: The Sweet Adventures of SugarBelle.  I followed it back to this site: Skip To My Lou. I just used regular stock paper and voila!

Can you tell I was really happy with these?! I still like them :)

Then for the church shower, I had some leftover daisies so I made a few more. I really like them :) The shower was only about a week later than the first. 

This cake looks simple enough right? Well I had planned it to be a topsy turvy cake with fondant. Oh goodness gracious.... I did it all. And it looked awful!! I was really upset. But I decided I'd rather it look nice and simple than crappy and "topsy". Then I was nervous about the flowers falling off the cake. So this simple cake took aaaallll day. People have no idea what I go through when I make a cake, haha!

I decided to add the border after I did the flowers... it would've been better to do first, but I'm glad I added it anyway.

I love these colors!

These are at the shower, with the added "A" to the top. That is the initial of the couple's last name. I loved the decor also! It made the cake look so much better than my plan white background.