Joint Birthday Party! Cake Pictures Abound

Last Saturday, we celebrated Aubriana's and Graham's birthdays. I'm thinking celebrating them together is going to be a common occurance, with my nephew Graham's birthday being just two days before Aubrey's. I was hoping he would be born on her birthday (also my parents' anniversary), but nope.

Aubriana turned three and Graham was turning one. Melissa and I spent all of Friday doing their cakes together. Melissa is fantastic at baking. Seriously, she is so talented. She baked this delicious Devil's Food cake. Let me tell you, it was almost like brownies, it was so rich. It wouldn't come out of the pan though. It also didn't shape well. It was a delicious pain in the rear end, but we made it work.

I had been wanting to do a purse cake for Aubrey, but we sort of wanted the cakes to coordinate. David suggested the tool box for Graham, and it was perfect! Melissa wanted a smash cake for him, so we made it much smaller than the purse cake which was to feed everyone. She baked the cakes, made the frosting, helped me stack them, frosted them, and then she had to leave, just when we were finally ready to go the fondant part, so I ended up finishing all that up on my own.

This post is loaded with pictures of them, so beware.

Ok, here we have a shot of them together. Remember the cake that was being so difficult? That is part of the reason Graham's cake is the leaning tower of toolbox.

The hammer and all the other parts are fondant. We have a great little cake shop in town, which is where I bought the food-safe silver paint. Actually, I didn't buy it. David bought it. *Love*. That man is so nice to me.

I knew I wasn't going to have room to pipe "Happy Birthday" so I made the cute little flags. I love how they turned out.

Graham's has little hinges in the back.

Aubrey's cake was so fun. I went a little crazy with it. I wish I had done the handles a bit differently, but I think they still turned out all right. I did all the little stitching with a knife, and then later, a fondue skewer.

It's complete with a zipper on the top.

I rolled fondant to make her name, then decorated it with little flowers I cut out with a cookie cutter. For some reason, I didn't notice the drifting flower that's supposed to be on the A. I moved it for the party, but alas, the cake has been eaten, so no more picture opportunities, so the rouge flower is in the permanent cake record.

When Aubrey woke up, we told her happy birthday. She stumbled around for a second and then wished us both a happy birthday. Later in the day, when we told her happy birthday, she would respond, "Happy Birthday, Aubrey." By the party, she was saying thank you.

The party was great. I love having people over. I made bbq beef for sandwiches for dinner.

We sang to Aubrey and she blew out her candles.

Graham was a different story. We sang to him seperately.

Here, Melissa approaches with the cake. He looks apprehensive, but interested.

Oh, look, he likes it.

. . .

Oh look. He doesn't like it.

He was too upset after that to really eat it. I think it was the combination of everyone looking at him and singing. Poor little guy. He does the most pity-inducing lower lip stick out/quiver.

Then we ate cake. Aubrey stuffed most of the butterfly into her mouth.

She also got a ton of presents. I did three days of sewing for her. I'm planning a bunch of posts over the next few weeks to show you everything I did. She was completely spoiled.

Also, a huge shout out to my parents, who also celebrated 30 years of marriage on Saturday. They have always been a wonderful example of love and how to make a marriage work. They went for a hike together on Saturday, and look what they made. So so cute!

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Share-A-Craft: Open House Wedding Cake

Something new! Share-A-Craft is just as much fun as a tilt-a-whirl, but with less stomach upset and possible vomiting. I'm going to be sharing something I've made on a regular basis. I make a lot of things that never make it to the blog, because I'm not always the best at picking up my camera. This will force me to get pictures. If you want to share right back, I'd love to see what you've been making recently.

Today's project is a wedding cake for an open house. My mom has been helping her friend (the groom's mom), plan the open house for a while now. My mom did the most incredible mural for it that I will have to share at some point. Anyway, they had someone making their cake, but they backed out at the last minute, so my mom asked me if I would help. That was on Wednesday afternoon. The open house was at Friday at six.

I was in a cake decorating kind of mood, so I said yes. Two days is not a long time to make a cake this big, even with the bottom two layers being dummy cakes. I guess I could have gone smaller, but that's not my style. Be bold or go home. Go big or die. Those types of "or" statements are the framework for my crafting philosophy. Really, I just like challenging myself, and I LOVE impressing others. It's almost a sickness. Hence the blog.

I'm not sure how well I succeeded here. My vision was big, but my time was short. I ended up rushing the most involved and time consuming steps. I figured it would take me about 3 hours to pipe it the way I wanted and I ended up with only an hour to do the piping (it's rather messy as a result). I wanted to do more of a ribbon band around the bottoms, with pipping along the bottom and the sides, but I ran out of time and had to the snake rolled things. In the end though, I think it turned out cute and whimsical, which fit the rest of the open house, which was Disney themed.

I will have red palms for a week from the food coloring.

One thing I am very proud of is the monogram. I cut it all out myself on a scroll saw and drilled the hole in the bottom for the dowel. I usually leave those types of things to David (he built me the base), so go me for doing it all by myself.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Hummingbird Cake

The whole cake:


Matching cupcakes:
A whole bunch of cupcakes! If you haven't see me recently, this is why. I've been making 150 cupcakes and a cake for a surprise 50th birthday party for a neighbor. It was such an amazing party, at a resort up in Midway and the theme was hummingbirds. I did bright gumpaste flowers with cake shimmer on them for each cupcake and then put some on wires for the cake, which was a 6" round and about 10 inches high. I did lemon, strawberry and chocolate cake. They were delicious. I'm so glad I made my deadline and huge thanks to Melissa and Kathy Colton for helping me so much! Love you girls!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Another Cake Post

Yep, tons of fall birthdays in our family. Melissa asked me to do a pumpkin cake for Miles' first birthday and she wanted a small one for his smash cake, but it wouldn't be right to do only two, so I made a medium one as well. The cake inside is lemon with lemon frosting. Everything is marshmallow fondant, except the words, which are piped.

I'm so happy with the way it turned out and it is actually one of my faster cakes. I think I spent maybe 6 hours on it. I can't wait for him to dig into it tomorrow at his party!

The lettering: Close up of the stem. I love the stem. Another view, slightly from the top.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

We are go for Griffin's party tomorrow!

I had such a hard time deciding what kind of cake to make Griffin for his birthday. The only thing he was saying was Power Rangers. After just doing the TMNT cake for Xander, I wasn't in the mood. Plus, he's only turning three, so I wanted to do something less middle-sized boy and something more little boy. I'm sure I'm going to do roomfuls of Power Rangers, Batman, Spiderman, and other various and assorted super heroes in the next few years and I wanted to do something fun for me. Selfish mommy. Anyway, I asked him what his favorite animal was and he said puppy, so I give you Bingo, The Cake. He took me about 10 hours to do, but since Griffin's party isn't until tomorrow, I'm feeling relaxed and happy he's done.

I had a lot of fun making him, not any stress at all, except the stress of keeping Griffin from stealing frosting, marshmallows and fondant, all of which disappeared into his hollow gut and from there into his bloodstream. Luckily, the damage was minimal: I had to write his greeting in fondant instead of frosting since it fell victim to his sneaky fingers, but the rest I was able to retrieve in time to save most of it. He also asked me about 100 times if he could have the leftover fondant yet (I always let them play with the leftovers). Yeah, that got old. I don't know how he has the patience and good humor to say it the 100th with the same energy and hopeful enthusiasm that he used the firs timet. Sometime that skill will come in handy for something other than driving his over-achieving mother nutso.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Xander is 6 today!

That's the cake that I spent all of yesterday making. I had a really stressful weekend, I have to say I am so glad it is over with! I think I cried twice over that cake--the fondant was giving me attitude. Also, the kids were sick this morning, we have a cacophony of coughing at our house right now. So fun. (I probably shouldn't be writing this right now, because I am grumpy).

Anyway, he had a pretty fun birthday and he's very excited to be six. He loved his cake, which was inspired by one I found on cakecentral.com. He got a box of cereal too, which was almost the only thing he asked for present wise. We usually by the bagged Malt-o-Meal cereal, so having his own box is going to be a real treat. Here he is with his favorite present:He also got a shirt, his first set of Legos, a pop-up punching Superman, a rocket from the Blairs, and a set of the Bob books, since he's out-grown his first reading book (he is on his way to reading everything in sight), and Othello, which is a board game. We are going to Chuck E. Cheese on Wednesday, so hopefully we will all be less sick, less stressed and more cheerful.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Aubrey's First Birthday

We had Aubriana's birthday party yesterday. I'm trying not to cry that she is one today. It just doesn't seem possible that my last baby is growing up so quickly. She is pretty cute though, so I guess I'll keep her even though she is growing up.

After searching the web high and low for the perfect cake, I decided to go with a ladybug theme. It just seemed to fit Aubrey. I hobbled a bunch of ideas together and then added my own touches.

She loved her cake. She was so excited the first time I showed it to her, pointing and cooing and reaching for it. She's getting expressive with everything and babbling all the time, in addition to saying words and sometimes sentences. "What's that?" accompanied with a pointed finger was a favorite for a while recently.

David helped her blow out her candle. She makes the funniest faces. She loved us singing Happy Birthday and even started dancing with the music.

After that, she got very messy with eating her cake. For a while when we put the ladybug on her tray, she just touched it softly and cooed at it. David had to help her by breaking the ladybug's head off. Then she tried to put the whole thing into her mouth. The funniest was watching her grab a fist full of ice cream and holding on to it while shivering and making faces from the cold. Grandma gave her a fork at the end. She thought that was pretty cool.
Then it was time to open presents, after a quick bath in Grandma's sink. She thought the presents were pretty cool. She got some shorts and a shirt, an animal puzzle (right now, Old MacDonald Had a Farm is her favorite song), a baby doll, one of those donut baby towers (I have no idea of the proper name of that toy, despite it being a classic, and from the Blairs, a CareBear, which she adores. See pics below. Maddy really liked the bear too. She tried to tell me that Aubriana didn't like it so she should have it. :)


It was a great party.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.