A few more cakes.

Contest Cake

This is the cake I made for our local festival, Honeyfest in Clarkson, Ky. It was an orange honey cake. I actually won 1st prize! It was a very fun experience.

These are just a few cakes I have done in the past year or so.

Fish Cake

This is my latest cake adventure. My friend's son just turned 5 and is presently a fishing fanatic. That is how I came about creating a fish cake. I have been told it looks like a carp but I know very little about fish so I'm sticking with "fish cake".

Anniversary

Seven years!!!
We have been married for seven years, and it really doesn't seem like it at all. I feel like we have known each other forever and I also feel like we just feel in love yesterday. We have been so blessed to have found each other and to have been given a family.

This year it was my turn to take care of our celebration (Josh and I take turns so we both get to enjoy the fun of planning a special occasion). We tried to keep it simple this year by celebrating in our very own home. I made us a special dinner or fresh baked bread

and homemade spinach and chicken calzones

and a last minute cake.

It was just the two of us so although we got lots of pictures of the food ... this blurry one is what he have to remember ourselves by.

Cupcake celebration

This was a cake a did for my brother (again! that makes 3 cakes for one wedding).
This one was for their reception that we held for them a month or so later. The cake is just a yellow cake with buttercream icing but covered with white sugar and real flowers.
The cupcakes were chocolate. This was especially fun to put together and tasted delicious!

T-ball

You can't see it but he is actually stopping a ball.


This is the line up at the end of each game, it is so cute. The all hold their hands out and walk past the other team saying "good game" and slapping each other some high fives.


Thought I would brag about my son a little. Elijah is playing t-ball this summer for the first time. He has improved so much since the first game! He started out having to use the t most of the time and not able to swing the bat (he wasn't used to a real bat, we had him use a foam one for safety's sake). So he has practiced quit a bit at home with me and his daddy and his last game he hit the ball without the t both times he was up! He was so proud...you could see it in the way he held his whole little body. He was also able to get four balls in the field and throw them (we still have to work on the throwing part!)

Anyhow, the whole point of the game is to learn how to play. He has learned some little lessons along the way that I dare say are far more important that the art of the game. He knows that hard work pays off and that if you want to be apart of something you have to be apart of it even when it is boring (the field), and he has also learned that if he doesn't take care of his stuff...he might have to do without (he lost his glove for one game).

I have learned some lessons too.

1. bring your own seat
2. don't forget to wash the uniform
3. I didn't know how proud I would be to see my son succeed.

My three blessings.

The never ending mother's day gift...watching your children grow up.

The Beginning of a Garden

I have captured some beautiful colors this week from my mini garden. I say "mini garden" because compared to that of my mother's I don't have much to brag about...but God does! He is the ultimate gardener and the ultimate artist mixing colors to create a fantastic palette. Just look at some of the colors!

It was a 5/6hr trip with three children. It was a week-end away. It was a long awaited wedding. It was exhausting, exciting and well worth it.

My brother was married a couple of weeks ago. He and his bride decided to have a very small wedding in Gatlinburg, Ky April the 18th. It was not something that I could pass up, so we packed all the children and made the daunting journey to the mountains.

We got lost up in the mountains trying to find the cabin they would be married in!

The children were so excited about it all, there was a little fear of falling of the mountain but that was just kinda funny. Elijah had the shoes, Josie loved her dress and Molly was so proud of the dress I made for her. She got to watch the whole process from beginning to finish and when she got to wear it, it made her day.

The wedding was perfect. The bride and groom were very much in the moment, feeling it for all that it was. I think sometimes that is hard to do when you have a huge bash, especially if you aren't used to all the attention. Attention is not something they were short on at this wedding though. There were two video cameras I think and at least three digital cameras beeping all the way through. It will be a very well documented occasion.

My first wedding cake.

The wedding is over, the cake turned out fine. I will post more about the whole wedding when I am not so tired.

This was my very first wedding cake, I hope that it isn't my last. I really enjoy doing this. I will say that it is much easier to do in your own kitchen where you have all the tools you need and without an audience.

I baked the cakes at home and cooled them, cut them into four layers. I also iced the layers and put the crumb coat of icing on both cakes. I then froze them over night so they would stay cold all the way to our destination (6hrs away). All of this went fine. I had my icing, vanilla buttercream and mmf(marshmallow fondant), prepared before we left as well. So all I had to do once we finally arrived was to put the final coat of icing on each layer, getting them as smooth as possible, roll some fondant dots and stack the cake. Sounds easy enough.

Unfortunately I forgot my icing spatula and my powdered sugar. So I did the best I could with a butter knife and my mom and I shaped the dots in our hands because that was the only thing they didn't completely stick too. The cake wasn't the perfect gift I had wanted it to be but it was good enough and was quite tasty.

The top cake was lemon with lemon buttercream in the layers, the bottom was yellow butter cake with vanilla buttercream in the layers. Both top and bottom layers were covered with the vanilla buttercream.

I can't wait to do another one!