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!

Winter Baby Boy Bear Cake

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I helped throw a baby shower for my friend Sherrada who’s having a baby boy.  Her sister Kalei and I threw it at my pretty much empty house since we more than doubled our square-footage when we moved and  do not yet have much furniture downstairs and though I have some ideas what to do, I’m not completely sure what colors I want in those rooms yet.  We had a spread of veggies, fruits, cheese and crackers and meats and some sweets Kalei brought and then I made some breakfast casseroles: a baked French toast one and two different egg ones.

I also practiced by piping skills the night before by making a polar bear cake with a bow-tie the night before.  I love the 3D mold I used for this bear.  I bought it a while ago and was excited to try it out.  I think it is tempting me to buy a tilting cake turner so that I can get the detail better on the bottom when I make it again.  I used tip 233 for the fur because I absolutely love the fuzzy look it gives the bear….much cuter than stars in my opinion.

Here’s our “Brunch” spread.  Kalei brought such yummy things.  It was great that I had her help with the food! Here’s the detail on the bear.  It’s difficult to see the fur and it probably would have been cuter if I did it in brown but I wanted to have white butter-cream since it was a spice cake to go with the holiday season.    Here’s pretty Sherrada filling out a paper for one of the games.

This is her mom getting ready to guess how big (actually little) Sherrada’s belly is.

One of Sherrada’s husband’s  aunts made this with regular grocery bags from the store.  I thought it was such a great idea, I had to take a photo so I can steal her idea.  She mentioned that using lunch sacks with the same idea makes a really cute bag for little cookies or something.  Love it!

Here’s Kalei with her brand new baby and Sherrada with her darling baby-belly.  So much fun that these sisters are having babies around the same time!

Baby Boy “Bear” Shower

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been up to anything.  In fact, in the last three weeks, I’ve thrown two baby showers, hosted Thanksgiving and in between all that partying/work, our family moved and I have begun the task of painting and decorating each room.  Here are some pictures of the shower I helped throw for my friend Claudia on the 4th of November.  Her little boy showed up yesterday, so it’s about time I put up the pictures. My friend Brooktynn, who’s house we had the shower at thank goodness because I was moving the next week and my apartment was decorated with cardboard boxes from the grocery store, made this cute sign above the buffet table.  I loved that cute paper she used I wish it came out better in the photo.

Here’s my darling friend Claudia in all her glowing motherhood glory.  She is so cute! This is a photo of the spread.  Claudia’s been on a fruit and veggie kick since she got pregnant so I thought it would be appropriate to have Crudités and various dips, along with some wraps and French bread for dipping as well.  We had Hummus, Babba Ganoush,  herb vinaigrette, ranch and artichoke spinach dip for the dips along with broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, olives, tomatoes, baby corn and snap peas and a bowl of mixed fruit.  It was delicious and a pretty easy spread to put together.  The trickiest part was transporting it all to Brooktynn’s house.

Here’s the cake I decorated.  It has a mini bear on the top to honor little baby bear (that part was actually a brownie since who wouldn’t rather have a brownie than cake?).  The bottom cakes were white with strawberry preserves for the filling since strawberries are Claudia’s favorite.  It was delicious if I do say so myself.

We didn’t play any games (at Claudia’s request) but instead we put together scrapbook pages that Claudia can just add photos to since life gets pretty hectic once the baby actually arrives and that’s when you need it done, we thought that would be fun.

It was a little crazy to give a shower the week before a move but it was great fun and I’m glad I did it!  I hope Claudia enjoyed it too!

First Fondant Cake

I finished my fondant and gum paste class at Michael’s last night.  I’m pretty pleased how my cake turned out.  It is white with yellow black-eyed Susan’s on it.  I’m really glad I decided to add the leaves because I think they give it a lot of movement plus a more whimsical feel.  I really like the “eyelet” ruffle I did on it to.  It makes seem kind of vintage or something.  My teacher seemed pretty pleased with it and took tons of photos…maybe to do something similar?  Anyway,  I’ve always been so terrified of fondant before taking this class. I’m glad that I no longer am nervous of it.  In fact I just wish I had more time to do cakes!  It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty pleased!

My Susan Cake

 

Side view.  Those eyelets can use a little more work but they are slightly tedious…especially trying to do them before the fondant dries out.

First Royal-Icing Flower Cake

I finished my Cake Flowers and Design class at Michaels last week.  Here is my finished product:

I’m getting better at piping flowers though it sure has its own learning curve.  I thought I’d go crazy in class when the teacher first showed us how to do it.  So, I went to the Wilton site and found some tutorials.  Hurray for tutorials!  Christian thought it was really weird that I was watching a movie that wasn’t a real movie…it was women talking and holding bags of icing…  It really helped me.  That’s for sure.

Here’s the side of the cake with the basket-weave pattern.  I think it looks okay.  I would like it to be better though.  I guess I just need to practice some more.  Jared’s work will be pleased.  They were very happy when I made Jared take this cake with him.  Thank goodness.  Who wants to eat their own creation?

Patriotic Treats

Mostly due to my cake decorating class, I have decided to volunteer making desserts for everything that I can.  Our ward had a Patriotic Party last week and since I will be out of town for July 4th, I thought it would be super fun to actually make something patriotic.  So, I did cupcakes and a cake.

 

I kind of went crazy and did any patterns I could thing of with the frosting I had left-over from my class and other practice sessions (thus the strange blues I used).  My very favorite ones are the red stripes and the dots.  If I had two 12’s I might have done just dots and stripes in both colors rather than doing everything that entered my mind :).

 

I also decorated a cake so that I could practice getting the frosting on smoothly…I think I’m getting better though the uniformity of the dots on the border could use a little more practice.

 

Here’s my little boy doing the “hover” around the treats once he woke up from this nap.

 

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!