Happy 93rd Birthday GG

Seriously, how cute is my grandmom?  She just celebrated her 93rd Birthday.  It was great to have the family come together to celebrate.  My niece slept over at my house the night before and she had a chance to help me decorate GG's cake.  She rolled the fondant to make the daisy.  She learned how to cut the flowers out and she even kneeded the fondant to mix the color's needed.  She was a great helper!

 All of the pieces drying ready for assembly

 Picture of back of cake

Hoppy Easter & Birthday

Today we celebrated Easter and my sister's birthday.  Good times and good food... Yummy!  I made Cindy a cute little cake to go along with the 20 other desserts that were on the table...  I also made strawberry cupcakes to add to the table as well.  I had my mom make cupcakes wrappers from her leftover scrap booking paper.  They dressed up the cupcakes nicely... Possibly mom's next craft project for the winter bazaar's... Overall a great day!

The beginning- Smoothed out buttercream icing

Used my new Funky Alphabet Cutters- Very Excited about them. You will be seeing them again...

Made the green swirly things using the clay gun.  I added gum paste to the fondant and it was 1,000 times easier to push threw... Thank goodness I discovered this trick because I was thinking I was going to have to give this tecnique up since it hurt my hand so much to use... Yeah!

Made the flowers and rolled a yellow circle for the center.  Made them pop off the cake.

The end result... Cute!

The final result...

Here are the Easter Cupcakes... Cute as well...

Mom working hard putting together the cupcake wrappers... 

College Reunion

Reconnected with a wonderful group of friends from the first years of my college life. We haven't seen each other since about 1994... A lot has happened since then- We had a lot to talk about! :) Facebook reconnected all of us but it was nice to see each other and truly reconnect. It was fun listening to everyone share stories and talk about the old times. We even broke out some old albums... I feel so fortunate that I had such a great group of friends when I first moved away from home. We have a bond that is undeniable. I'm hoping this is one of the first of many get together's...
Andrea (who was my roommate my freshman and sophomore year) celebrated her birthday yesterday so it was only perfect that I got to make her a cake. I used some of the new tools I picked up at the cake convention. I also used my clay gun for the first time to make the rope for the leaves and around the base of the cake. The cake was raspberry with buttercream icing and fondant accents.

Pictures of the cake coming together...
Used my clay gun to push green fondant through for a nice even rope to make the leaves and the base around the cake...



Used my new flower plunger/cutters. They make it easier to make flowers because the plunger pushed the finished flower out from the cutter. I rolled impressions of leaves on each petal and piped yellow dots for the centers.




The larger daisy flower is drying in the flower former... I wanted it to stand up from the cake to give a little more depth...

The finished product. I was happy with they way it turned out...

My super cute friends! In the back row- Anderea, Amy G & Amy V, Front Row- Robin and Jacqui


My very first roommates- Amy G & Andrea... OooohhHH the days of triple room assignments...

August Babies

There are 5 family birthdays this week including my own. I've been wanting to make this blue flower cake for a while and decided to attempt it for my birthday. I found the idea on cakecentral, there are so many talented decorators out there. I'm glad to borrow their creative cake ideas.
This a chocolate cake covered in buttercream. I made the flowers on a flower nail and then froze them to make them easier to get on the cake. I had a few placement issues but covered them up with extra icing.
I made a second cake for a party on Sunday. I used the leftover pansies and chocolate butterflies I made earlier in the week with Michelle's help. Overall, another cute cake...

Happy birthday to Mom, Katie, Nicole, Luke & Me!!

Roses ready to go into the freezer


Pansies awaiting the freezer as well


Start of the assembly. I moved the roses around a little and covered the mistakes with extra icing.


Adding the pansies

Diane's Farewell

A Victorian Tea Garden (or something like that...)
Naked Cakes :)

Another co-worker is leaving... Diane is moving on to bigger and better things in the " MW" that's Mid-West for those not in the know... :)

Diane is one of those people in your life that makes you feel richer just for knowing her. Not monetary rich but rich in friendship and life. I don't want to get too sad but I'm going to miss her positive spirit in the office and in the lunch room...

I wasn't able to attend the work party they had for Diane today but I wanted to contribute. Diane likes her caffeine. The theme of the party was Tea or most things caffeinated, so I made some cupcakes for the tea party...

The cake flavor is strawberry ( added 10oz pureed fresh strawberries, 1/2 c. applesauce, 2 eggs and a little bit of water to a box of white cake mix). Made mini and regular sized cupcakes and covered them with buttercream flowers. The inspiration came from Janek on cakecentral. I have issues with roses and this attempt was just as frustrating as previous attempts. The buttercream I was using wasn't stiff enough. The centers kept falling over when I was adding the leaves. A few fell off the nail as I was making them... I've been playing with fondant a lot recently and haven't really made a lot of buttercream flowers. I'm hoping to change this... I found a few new videos on Utube and will be practicing on future cakes.