Baby Girl’s 1st Birthday!

First of all, I have to say that a birthday for me is generally not a one-time event…it can easily be a couple of parties to make up the whole “birthday”.  I think this comes from being in a family that would have a party on each of the grandparent’s side and then our own little celebration on the day.

I was so excited to have a girl (not that I don’t love my little man) I have always wanted to go all out on the girly theme…so that’s exactly what we did.

For the beginning of our celebrations, we were visiting family in Utah for Christmas and my baby girl’s first birthday is four days after Christmas, we decided to have a party while we were there.  I made royal icing roses before we left for our trip and kept them in a shoe box lined with tissue paper until it was time to use them.

I also insanely decided to make a banner for her the day before we left too just for some more pizzazz.  No I don’t have a machine to help me cut out letters so I did it the old-fashioned way…printing out letters on my computer and then cutting them out by hand.

I did do one clever thing with the banner though and that’s to put eyelets in all of the holes I made.  This way, my banner is totally re-usable and if I so desire, I can trade out letters for a different color or whatever! I glittered each letter with fine white glitter which was a nice little mess but I think it gave the sign another needed dimension.  I also added the circles with little faux flowers with “gemstone” brads in the middle as spacers when I realized that it’s kind of tricky to read when there’s no spaces (this came from looking at a note my 4-year-old was writing as I was making this that had exactly the same amount of space b e t w e e n  e v e r y l e t t e r and I realized I was doing the same thing).

I decorated the cupcakes the night before the party (which was Christmas) while everyone was watching a movie so they were totally ready the next day when we were ready to set up.  I choose to do them in lemon and filled them with raspberry and then chocolate with chocolate pudding (I hid them in the laundry room…it seemed to work to keep them out of little children’s prying fingers and little lips).

All I did was what I call the classic “twirl” with a large star tip, sprinkled with sugar crystals, plopped a rose on top and finished with a leaf for a little more color (I was considering monochromatic but I think it would have been a little less appealing with a bright pink leaf).

I arranged the cupcakes in the shape of a “1” a little trick I learned from my friend Charisse.

That party was very fun.  I love having parties with family, they always keep things interesting. :)

For the real day which was three days later and the day after we got home from a VERY long drive.  We set up the sign over my girl’s chair and then I made homemade buttermilk pancakes for dinner.  After dinner she got to open a gift from us.  Not too elaborate but I was exhausted!

 

Our little birthday girl!

Hubby also brought her home some roses…she didn’t get it but maybe someday she will.  The vase I had was a little short so I had the brilliant idea of filling it with river rocks…I really like the effect.

The next celebration we had with our friends who live here in AZ.  I actually did make a cake for this with some of the better roses left from her UT party.  I also colored a bit of icing and made the darker roses for some higher contrast.

Here’s a view from above…

I need more practice I know but I thought it was pretty cute.

I really thought the one candle on the top was pretty funny.  I could not find one single “1” candle at any store I happened to go to.  I wonder if everyone was putting 2011 on their cakes that week or something!

Let them eat cake….

As some of you may know, I’ve started taking a cake class at our local Michaels.  Around Mother’s day I was really depressed and lonely feeling.  Jared and I decided that I need to have more to think about than the in-and-out day-to-day mommy things and do something that is for me.  Of course we both are school addicts.  For me at least I think it’s the feeling of accomplishment I get while I’m working on a course as well as the challenge of staying organized and getting assignments completed.  I didn’t necessarily want to take a college course though with the way those are priced.  Since I enjoy crafting and sewing we called the local Michaels to see what classes were available.

The only ones offered at that time were Cake decorating classes.

Honestly, I make the UGLIEST cakes known to man, woman and children kind.  They taste great but they lack in the looks department.  Part of this may be that I don’t like frosting.  I scrape it off to the utmost bare minimum because I really hate the taste of it.  When I decorate a cake I’ve always tried to keep it as thin as possible.  Well, those days are over.

I’ve decided that this is the best time in my life to practice decorating.  Vivian is almost 6 months, I will take the three courses offered over the next 3 months and (hopefully) by the time her birthday rolls around I can make her a cake that is not only delicious but nice to look at (at least until we eat it).

Jared went into Michaels with me a few days later and we signed up for my class and got the supplies listed by the instructor.  I was honestly a little shocked (and still am) over the lack of complaints about price from Jared.  I knew it was going to be expensive but I didn’t know if he comprehended it.

I took my first class last Wednesday.  I got really excited when she told us that to make black icing it’s best to start with chocolate (duh, why didn’t I think of that when making Christian’s 2nd Birthday cake?!?), and that you use thin icing to ice cakes not thick because it pull up on the cake (mistake from Christian’s 4th Birthday).  I’m so excited to know that if I really just learn the proper techniques, what in the heck each odd looking tool is, and have the right materials, I too can make a good-looking cake.  What a relief.  I was really thinking it was just me and that I’m incapable of making something good-looking that you eat.

I’ve been practicing as much as I can and this is what I made last night…

I still need a lot more practice but at least I forged ahead.  It took me about 4 hours from the time I pulled out the supplies until I had cleaned them up (I baked it the night before).  The icing started melting (thanks to AZ heat) and I still need to work on uniformity, straight lines, control…etc, but I think I’m getting better.

 

Here are some of my frustrating cake decorating experiences from the past four years:

 

#1   Here’s Christian’s 1st Birthday cake.  Look familiar?  Actually, I didn’t really end up decorating this.  I got all ready to do it, freaked out and let my wonderful sister-in-law Megan, who’s pretty dang good, take over.

 

 

#2  This is from Christian’s 2nd Birthday.  He wanted a lion cake.

Mistakes:

1) I didn’t find the pictures I had printed out of a cartoon lion before I starting to frost

2) I feel like a complete idiot about this, but I got brown and black food coloring at the store, started from white frosting, and worked my way up; only to realize later that chocolate is BROWN!!!

Now I know that if you start with chocolate black is faster to get.  It probably took me at least an hour to get the little amount I need to be black.

Review:

Honestly, this cake wasn’t that bad all things considered but it took forever to do and just made me frustrated when it was taking so long.

 

#3  This is Christian’s rocket-ship cake.  I think that my ideas are actually pretty fun but it’s my execution that stinks.  I used a #10 can to bake this cake and let me tell you, it took FOREVER just to bake (thank goodness I learned my lesson from the previous year and started two days ahead).   It looks a little more like the tin man’s hat than anything.  The icing was the problem on this one as was most everything.  I think if I did two #10 cans it may have worked better.  The icing on this just wouldn’t get smooth but now I know that I must have icing consistency problem.

 

#4 Christian’s 4th Birthday was a “Book of Mormon Hero” theme so we used two 9X13 baking pans.  I sliced each one in half and then layered them on top of each other.  I used sandwich cookies for the rings and then used black piping gel for the lettering. 

Mistake:

The biggest problem with this cake is that it started falling apart.  I have now learned that you actually should add a little extra water to cakes in AZ as well as thin your icing a little more because it’s just too dry here and the icing started to pull up on a dry cake.

I’m really hopeful that these cake decorating courses will really help me.  Jared has been teasing me because I’ve been dreaming up all of these ideas for cakes since I started the class and my sleeping dreams are full of decorating cakes.  What can I say?  I get excited about something and it becomes an obsession until I get skilled.  I also have signed up to bring a dessert for the ward party this weekend and have begged my friend Christina to decorate her son’s 1st birthday cake next week. Hooray for extra practice that I don’t have an opportunity to eat!