Making birthday magic!!

September is birthday month around our house.  We have 5 birthdays, and 2 anniversaries.  The cake eating is non-stop.  October is affectionately referred to as "get your butt to the gym month"  I only made a couple of the cakes this time.  Work responsibilities and time shortages prevented me from doing all of them.  

First up was our granddaughter's candy land, wonderland cake.  I rose to this occasion like Phoenix rising.  

Three cakes were made with box mixes, and I added an extender recipe.  This makes the cake a little larger, and firmer in my opinion.  I also used spring form pans.  I googled advice on that, and some said don't do it, others said go for it.  So I decided to give it a try.  I had just bought the Wilton spring form heart and really wanted to use it,  Total success.  No mess.  That's what ideal cake making is all about.  These are the baked cakes with their crumb coat on.  

Using Wilton gels, I then tinted the icing is pastel colours to do with the awesome pearlized gumballs I purchased from The Bulk Barn.  I love that store.  Candy land heaven!!! This is what that looked like.  

I had to use dowels to keep my cake together, and this speaks to the fact that I didn't cut and level the cakes very well, (or not at all as is the case here)  Lesson learned.  Future cakes will be levelled properly.

Next was the best part.  Adhering all the additional candy bought to make this little girl's dream a reality.  So easy, yet so time consuming.  I cut the gum drops in half to make them have a flush side to "glue" with the buttercream.   The sour ribbons were a great addition to hide a multitude of sins in the cake making industry (in reality, just my kitchen)

Topped  off with candy floss suckers!!!  How precious right?  Candy floss on little lollipop sticks, so cute.  Life lesson, do you know what happens to candy floss when left out in the open air????  Well here is a lesson, a big life lesson, probably just for those that don't ever eat floss, possibly because it has a strange gritty texture that makes your teeth want to fall out of your head.  This is an example of what candy floss becomes.

Not very appetising to say the least.  A little horrifying to be honest.  That was within 25 minutes.  Just a big ball of yuck.  Lesson learned.  After a side trip to buy some great lollipops all was right in the world again.

Finished cake!!! Transported and delivered without further issues!!!  On happy little girl with her dream cake.  That's what its all about folks, smiles, and family.

Next up was our big girls birthday.  Our oldest daughter turned 29 and she has a thing for Kit Kat bars.  Always has, from the time she had her first one.  I just feel like everyone's birthday should be a special, just for them experience.  So this is the cake I created just for her.  I have to say, she loved it and so did all the guests are her birthday bonfire.

Super simple, easy to achieve by anyone that attempts this cake.  Bake cake, Ice cake.  I actually just used pre-made icing for this.  Edge with the chocolate bars and fasten with a ribbon.  Section off the top with lady fingers, and fill the spots with chocolates of your choice.  I was done the decorating portion in about 30 minutes.  It was a bit of a nightmare to cut and serve, but hey, all is good in great cake making.

Making birthday magic!!

September is birthday month around our house.  We have 5 birthdays, and 2 anniversaries.  The cake eating is non-stop.  October is affectionately referred to as "get your butt to the gym month"  I only made a couple of the cakes this time.  Work responsibilities and time shortages prevented me from doing all of them.  

First up was our granddaughter's candy land, wonderland cake.  I rose to this occasion like Phoenix rising.  

Three cakes were made with box mixes, and I added an extender recipe.  This makes the cake a little larger, and firmer in my opinion.  I also used spring form pans.  I googled advice on that, and some said don't do it, others said go for it.  So I decided to give it a try.  I had just bought the Wilton spring form heart and really wanted to use it,  Total success.  No mess.  That's what ideal cake making is all about.  These are the baked cakes with their crumb coat on.  

Using Wilton gels, I then tinted the icing is pastel colours to do with the awesome pearlized gumballs I purchased from The Bulk Barn.  I love that store.  Candy land heaven!!! This is what that looked like.  

I had to use dowels to keep my cake together, and this speaks to the fact that I didn't cut and level the cakes very well, (or not at all as is the case here)  Lesson learned.  Future cakes will be levelled properly.

Next was the best part.  Adhering all the additional candy bought to make this little girl's dream a reality.  So easy, yet so time consuming.  I cut the gum drops in half to make them have a flush side to "glue" with the buttercream.   The sour ribbons were a great addition to hide a multitude of sins in the cake making industry (in reality, just my kitchen)

Topped  off with candy floss suckers!!!  How precious right?  Candy floss on little lollipop sticks, so cute.  Life lesson, do you know what happens to candy floss when left out in the open air????  Well here is a lesson, a big life lesson, probably just for those that don't ever eat floss, possibly because it has a strange gritty texture that makes your teeth want to fall out of your head.  This is an example of what candy floss becomes.

Not very appetising to say the least.  A little horrifying to be honest.  That was within 25 minutes.  Just a big ball of yuck.  Lesson learned.  After a side trip to buy some great lollipops all was right in the world again.

Finished cake!!! Transported and delivered without further issues!!!  On happy little girl with her dream cake.  That's what its all about folks, smiles, and family.

Next up was our big girls birthday.  Our oldest daughter turned 29 and she has a thing for Kit Kat bars.  Always has, from the time she had her first one.  I just feel like everyone's birthday should be a special, just for them experience.  So this is the cake I created just for her.  I have to say, she loved it and so did all the guests are her birthday bonfire.

Super simple, easy to achieve by anyone that attempts this cake.  Bake cake, Ice cake.  I actually just used pre-made icing for this.  Edge with the chocolate bars and fasten with a ribbon.  Section off the top with lady fingers, and fill the spots with chocolates of your choice.  I was done the decorating portion in about 30 minutes.  It was a bit of a nightmare to cut and serve, but hey, all is good in great cake making.

A Roaring Good Time

I have often thought to myself that once my children were grown and gone, life would blend into a quiet existence, boring, with little to do.  The second phase of adult life brings better things, like grandchildren!!  Our youngest grand, turned 5 on the weekend and he had requested a dinosaur cake.  I am thrilled that our daughter allows me to make their cakes, it gives me something to do, and hopefully the Little's will remember that.  So this was going to be my first attempt at a dinosaur.

We started with some rice krispy treats fashioned into a dino head.  I didn't take a picture of what I used for a mold, but I picked up a rubber dinosaur hand puppet at the dollar store washed it out, sprayed the inside with Pam and stuffed it with the rice krispy mixture.  When it was set I just cut it off and came out with this.  I had some trouble keeping the mouth open, but I solved that as you will see later in this post.

I made 3 boxes of cake mix, 2 chocolate and 1 white.  That gave us 3 layers to the cake.  I made those a week in advance and froze them, I find it easier to work with a frozen cake to crumb coat.  They aren't as delicate, and they don't fall apart as readily.

I had a plan somewhat, but I thought we should see how this developed.  At the last minute I decided that I would cover the head with fondant.  Originally I planned to use butter cream, but someone suggested the fondant, and I have had limited and not good experience using this stuff, but I gave it another try and am really glad that I did.

After applying a layer of butter cream, I began working my fondant onto the head.  I stuck it back in the freezer for a bit to get it really hard so it was easier to work with.  I used the bottom end of an icing tip to create a circle pattern all over it to represent a scale like texture.  Behind is my three layer crumb coated cake.  

As you can see I was using a small object to keep his house open during this stage.  I am not sure how you get the rice krispy's condensed enough to stay in position at all times.  Certainly something to work on in future projects.

A second layer of brown butter cream created a dirt look to my cake.  I trimmed the bottom in candy stones from the Bulk Barn, and after it sit long enough to form a light crust I used a piece of parchment paper to smooth out the finished product.

I rolled out another piece of fondant and attached it to the inside of  the mouth to create the tongue, and used brown edible dust to shade in along the snout and around the eyes with a new paint brush  to give it more of an authentic look.  I made some tooth shapes out of fondant also and attached them with a dab of butter cream inside the mouth as well.

Finally it was time to assemble it and finish the grass around the head.

I love the grass icing tip, easy to use, and you really can't do it wrong.  I stuck a Kinder Egg in the mouth to prop it open.  I made some eyes from fondant and used a dab of black colouring for the centres.  And here we have the Dinosaur cake that our grandson just adored.  Totally edible, and a huge hit at his party.

Perfection is optional!

I spend way too much time on Pinterest, looking for cool ideas, and pretending that I can totally pull those DIY posts off.  Something I learned after trial and error is that most of this stuff is made by professional crafters.  I don't think I fit in that category.  I am just your average Mom and Grandma trying to be impressive!!!

One thing that I have always loved to do is bake.  Well, actually cook anything.  I like homemade food, not packaged for the most part.  Unless you count cake mixes.  Those are invaluable, I have never made a homemade cake that tasted as good as a box cake.  I try to make cakes for my grandbabies birthday parties.  The point to this whole post is that it doesn't need to be perfect, they just love that grandma took the time to ask what they wanted and then scoured the internet and pinterest to figure out a way to make it happen.  Here is a showcase of some of the cake I have done.

Baking birthday cakes is simple with a few easy tips.  First check out the internet for free colouring pages.  I cut out all the parts I want to use, and then trace the images on the main cake with a toothpick,  fill in the outline with the proper colours and you are good to go!

Two tone icing is easy to achieve.  Simply mix two colours in separate dishes and then combine them side by side in the piping bag.  Elevates a plain cupcake to something special.

Arrange those cupcakes to represent something.  I love these flowers!!!  The centers were iced and then covered in sprinkles.  Pour sprinkles in a bowl and dip the cupcake in so as not to make a huge mess of your kitchen.

This teapot was created using Pyrex mixing bowls.  You can put them in the oven, they are round, so it's a win.  I did use a pound cake recipe though, you need something sturdy to construct these.  Two bowls make the body of the cake.  The spout and handle are just cardboard iced to match the cake.  Piping roses are possibly the easiest thing to learn to do, some of the other techniques are more difficult, as you will discover I use the piped rose liberally.  

Again, use those colouring pages!!!  Also I usually use a toothpick to inscribe the writing, so I have something to follow, If you make a mistake you can smooth over it and try again before you actually write on it with icing.

Cupcakes and cake are a good idea for every celebration.  Kids love them, and most adults do too!

This was my second foray into fondant.  I am not a fan!!  I just don't have the skill for this particular task.  Although the cake looked fine, it was just difficult to work with.  The bottom of the superhero cake is a giant cookies, and I used pre-made cookie dough.  A pizza pan and some partchment paper and voila you have a giant cookie.

I think this is one of my favorite cakes of all time.  It just turned out better than I expected.  I am not much for Sponge Bob, but he makes a cute cake.

Fun fact about placing cupcakes on waxed paper:  Bad for transportation purposes!! I made this arrangement for our youngest grandson, and I was unable to attend the party as I was tending to another family member that was ill.  I enlisted Grandpa to take the cake and go to the party.  Well......he called to inform me that he had cupcakes sliding all over the back of our SUV, and perhaps next time I could possible fasten those down.  He did salvage them, and put them back in configuration,

Lesson learned and this one transported for more than an hour and looked perfect on arrival.  I just use a dot of icing to fix them to the board.  Works like magic!

As you can see these cakes are not perfect, but you don't need to be.  The "Littles" are just so happy that you made them what they picked out, perfection is optional.  

25 years, a celebration

Two years ago for Christmas my husband gave me a new engagement ring.  Inside the box was a note that read "Will you marry me again?"  I said of coarse I will, but are you serious?  Like a whole new wedding?  So it was ON!!  We began planning our renewal of vows.

I searched for ideas, our first wedding was very traditional, we were young and poor, and my mother in law took over.  I didn't get to buy a dress, she just started making me one. (for all new mother in laws, I do not recomend this approach, Or atleast ask first, don't just tell the bride this is what I am doing after you already have it started.  It makes for awkwardness, and perhaps hostility, and anger.  Just saying.)  I settled on a rustic theme, and searched out a venue.  This seems the most economical way to go, and the venue was only $200.00.  It was a chariming little barn, on a conservation area, built in 1840.  It was equiped with a kitchen and bathrooms.  We could hire a caterer, and entertainment, obtain a liquor license and have our own bar.  Seemed perfect.  I paid the deposit and began making the rest of the plans.

All winter I sewed burlap runners, edged in lace.

I made little bags for gifts and put iron on transfers on them.  I made little clay tags than hung to the side with twine that were stamped with "Thank you" and filled them with coffee and tea

  I crafted tissue paper flowers in vaious soft colours, and decorated mason jars with paper doilies that I printed love song lyrics on with my printer.  These were also adorned with clay tags that said "love" attached with twine.

I used tree limbs from our yard and set them in concrete to make memory trees, I used those cute little clothes pins to hang picture on through the years.

I enlisted my husband to make birch log candle holders.  And he did an amazing job.

I also printed up menus and fixed them to the front of kraft paper bags, I used them to decorate the dinner plates and hold the napkins and silverware.  The tops were punched with a Fiskar punch just to dress them up a tad, and a small white or yellow daisy was attached with a glue dot.

Next I focused on the bouquets  I really wanted the brooch bouquet, but knew with 2 kids in university it wasn't practical to purchase them at $250.00 a piece.  I set about trying to find the supplies I needed, Amazon and Ebay were very helpful here.  I checked pinterest to see what I wanted exactly and then tried to find You Tube tutorials.  I didn't follow any one idea, rather tried to sort it out on my own, in the end it worked out but I recommend following all their advise.

I abhor eating off paper plates, and my intention was to use birch wood plates with matching cutlery.  However, I opted to use real china.  I was able to buy all the dishes from a church that was shut down and it was less money than paper plates and such.  Also there is a web site called http://www.webstaurantstore.com/ and I was able to purchase  cutlery from there and also salt and pepper shakers.  I also purchased a box of restaurant crayons to put in the little ones grab bags.  

I figured I could always sell off all the stuff after, and it looks like I have it all sold, so that makes it an economical route to take.

I purchased a lot of stuff from this site also http://www.giftsintl-us.com/.  They sell bolts of fabric and bows and such.  Great prices all around.  I highly recommend them.  I needed a lot of burlap to make a fence and I called our local bag making factory, They make sand bags and feed bags, etc.  I purchased 25 yards of burlap for $22.  

It seems as though I had it all figured out, everything was planned and then the unexpected happened 3 weeks prior to our event.  I received a call from the conservation area informing me I could no longer use the barn, the Municipal Fire Inspector had been in and had shut it down.   This barn was built in 1840 and donated to the conservation area.  They in turn had installed a kitchen and bathrooms, he felt that it needed to be rezoned, since there were so many weddings happening there.  So until they could do 100,000.00 in renovations no one could rent it for any purpose.  I now had a tent!!!!  The exact thing I said I would never do just became my reality.

This is where the wheels fell off, but luckily we were able to get back on track and come up with  solutions in a hurry.  A tent does not having lighting, so Thank the Lord, Walmart puts their Christmas decorations out so early, we were able to buy lights.  The next issue was no dance floor, We had a DJ but no floor, I work in construction and we were able to get road signs, which are black on the back, and one of our brokers also owns a pallet company, I called and he came to the rescue with 9 pallets.  My husband and his friend spent an afternoon putting it all together, and then we edged it with burlap so it didn't look like signs and skids.

I purchased a chandelier off a facebook sale site and we designed a way to hang it at the entrance,  Again construction supplies came in handy as we used 2x4 holders to but it all together.

I would recommend using a fuller looking fabric though, our issue was it was raining for 2 days and I was in a hurry so this was the end result.  I used battery operated candles in the chandelier and our daughter is going to hang it in her dining room.

Our service was at 4:00pm and the rain finally quit at 2:30.  I was a nervous mess by this time.  We hustled and got it all together, We had set it up the day before but the pews had to be dried off, and we were ready just in time for the guests to arrive.  

And finally the party began.  The drinks were ready.  We stored the wine in a portable fridge that we used on camping trips.  Our meal was wonderful, a southern treat!

We danced all night long.  It was a wonderful night, and I was lucky enough to share it with my favourite peeps.