Two Cakes, Two Parties, Two Different Cities, Same Afternoon.

Quite a while ago a friend asked me to do a baby shower cake for her daughter at the end of March.  A couple of weeks later I had a request to do a Birthday Cake also for the end of March. Then a week after that I realized that the end of March meant the same day (Today) for both cakes, in two different cities. Luckily for me the lady that ordered the latter cake was willing to drive to the location of the baby shower to pick it up. Now I just needed to get all the cakes, my gift and the kids in the car and to that location in one piece. I found great boxes for all of my cakes this time. I packed the cakes in the boxes and then packed the boxes all up in the car. (Ahead of schedule I might add) Nice and safe! Everything had a place and as long as nothing slid as I made the 30 minute car ride to our destination I would be in good shape. For extra insurance I grabbed as many bath towels as I could find and tucked them in between the boxes.

Next, kids. They are never quite as easy to pack in the car neatly! One needs a blanket to keep warm the other has to take off his shoes because he is too hot. (Honestly, too hot!? The thermometre in the car says the outside temperature is -3 today), there needs to be drinks and snacks within reach but not on thier laps so they can spill everywhere. My seat has to be just far enough forward to be out of reach that I don't get kicked in the back during the entire trip but close enough to the back that if something drops I can very skillfully reach to the back seat pick it up hand it to the oldest one to hand back to the one that dropped it and is now screaming in my ear for it.

Everyone is now in the car, I start the car and realize I haven't opened the garage door yet. (I wonder sometimes if there is a subliminal message in that). I quickly open the garage door, take a deep breath (then think that wasn't smart) and put the car in gear. I back out and the backup alarm goes off. I stop. Get out of the car, I remove the tricycle from the middle of the driveway that no one knows how it got there. I get back in the car, another deep breath and off we go. 30 minutes later we arrive at the destination,  it has been a pretty quiet ride and except for being told to Please!Stop Singing! there has not been any incident. A Miracle really.

The cake has been delivered to the first party and the lady that is to meet me has arrived, we have made the exchange and her cake is now on it's second journey to it's final destination. (Not my worry anymore!)

All in All, so far is has been a good day.

Now I will make my kids stay for a portion of the baby shower and when they can take it no more, I will sneak out the back door of the shower and take them to Cheeky Monkey's (an indoor playland)  to play out the rest of the afternoon.

I do tease about them being naughty but in the end they are very good when I have things to do and drag them all over the countryside with me.

This is the birthday cake, it was an "Over the Hill" party, everything I looked at online while researching ideas all seemed a little creepy or tacky. The lady the party was for is far too lovely for that so I thought I would make a hill, with a boulder on top of it and tie a rope to it. Then I put a knot at the other end and draped it over the edge of the hill. I liked the way it turned out.

This next one is the baby shower cake. I didn't research this one online at all. I woke up in the middle of the night with this one on my mind. I dreamed it would look exactly like this. Everything was edible except the cradle. I think the cradle would be awesome in chocolate. I need to think on that design a little longer.

Anyways, this was the end result this time. And I would like to note that "Dreams Do Come True"

 (Sorry, I spent a lot of days at Disney World, not that long ago.)

Sam's Birthday Cake

This was my Brother in Law's 40th Birthday Cake. It is another one of my favourites. It was so fun to do. All of the shells were made by hand, I had a jar of shells that my Mother in Law had collected on her favourite florida beach. I shaped and painted each one in tones that matched the real shells. The Corona bottles are made out of rice crispie square mixture and pressed into forms that my brilliant husband made for me. The ice cubes are also fondant covered rice crispie squares. Sand....you guessed it, brown sugar. And my favourite part of all, the tiny fondant star fish. My daughter loved those too. The thing about using Rice Crispie squares in a cake design is trying to keep them for the cake design. Everyone in my house kept stealing them!

Bieber Fever

My friends daughter, Addison, turned 5 this month and she LOVES Justin Bieber. Her mom shopped around and could not find a cake that fit the bill. She called me and I immediately said sure. One problem, I knew the name, I knew his music from the radio, I had no clue what he looked like, but I was committed. The birthday was only 3 days away. I hit the internet and researched everything I could about Justin Bieber, I needed photos mostly but found, videos, blogs about him, his interests, his love life, his even favourite colour, which also happened to be Addison's favourite colour. Lucky for me I had lots of Purple. I listened to songs, I watched videos and then stumbled upon the fact that his girlfriend is Selena Gomez, which the entire world is aware of except me. Well my 5 year old daughter's favourite singer is Selena Gomez, so then she decided to help me do research and eventually steered everything we were looking for closer and closer to her end goal of  watching Selena Gomez videos. Oh well, I now had what I needed and I set myself to recreating Justin Bieber in Fondant!! Here's what happened...

Getting the hair just right was tricky but the hardest part was keeping his legs from shrinking under the weight of his torso and head. I ended up taking him apart and drying him in two sections. His hair took some work and I wanted to get it right because it really is one of his signature features.........or should I say WAS!!! He cut his hair the day before the party! Oh well! Hopefully the 5 year olds were not that up on the news.

Here's what else happened.... now my household has Bieber Fever. Emma wants to watch every you tube video she can find of him.

Sorry the Pic is so small.  I am going to have to find another one and rescale it. I will replace it.

Birthday Party Extravaganza

My daughter's birthday is in the middle of June, my son's the first week of July and in 2009 I was acting as the volunteer camp director for approximately 120 teenage girls and leaders the second week of July. I was swamped and decided to combine 2  birthday parties into one. So we had the ever so clever, Princess and Knights in Shining Armour Party. The girls all came in thier finest royal apparel and the boys......  well they came in whatever they wanted but when they arrived they each got a "FOAM" sword and they were all knighted to the royal court. We rented a bouncy house that looked like a fairy tale castle and we had a pinata that looked like a princess. The girls loved it because it was a princess and the boys loved whacking it with thier swords. I designed the cake and guess what I iced it with........that's right.....French Vanilla Icing!!!

We put sparkler's in each of the towers, I thought it would be a "Magic Kingdom" effect. Great idea right? Wrong, there were too many sparklers which terrified the kids and instead of singing Happy Birthday they were all screaming and running away from the cake!!!! I only ever claimed to have a lot of ideas, I can't really say that they are always good ones.