Monday, June 2, 2014

Twin cake for twins

Recently I had the opportunity to make a cake/s for the sweetest twin girls ever!  Birthday mom gave me creative freedom to do whatever I liked - she'd give me the theme and the rest was up to me.  Things got a little nutty, though, when the girls chose their theme.  One wanted Hello Kitty...but the other wanted "Hello Kitty Princess"!  HAHA  how do you do one without doing the other?  In the interest of finding a design, I asked Birthday Mom to ask the girls to draw what they wanted for a cake.  I thought they might work together on a single picture (which would make things very easy) but they might also each do their own thing (which could make things a little more interesting) haha.  Either way - one of my favorite things is creating a cake that a kiddo has designed themselves and knew it was going to be fun.  :) 

Well - Birthday Mom came through with flying colors and sent...two separate drawings of two separate cakes!  HAHA  Ok - let the fun begin!

Not only was it 2 separate cakes, but there wasn't a single thing about either that was the same, except for Hello Kitty wearing  tiara....I thought about doing the top tier from 1 cake and the bottom of the other but only Erin's cake had 2 identical tiers. HAHA  So...I did the only thing I could do...
 
I had alot of fun with these and was really happy that I managed to duplicate their pictures with frosting. :)  But that's still not the very best part!! 
Oh - don't get me wrong - they're pretty great, but I was the most pleased with the sneaky side of these cakes. :)  And the sneaky part is...IT'S ONLY ONE CAKE!!!!! :D
 

The birthday girls got what they drew and I got to have a TON of fun with frosting!!  Happy 5th Birthday kiddo's! :)


Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Building my Pantry #3 (Shelving...or something close to it.)

I muddled my way through the installation of 3 shelves on Sunday and ran into a few snags. First is that the back wall is the absolute opposite of level…like – we’re talkin – Alice the Camel’s back is more level than my wall! Snag #2 is that the left wall of the pantry is full of wiring, the stack for the bathroom, and not a single stud to anchor into for support! Now that I’m typing this it occurs to me that the pantry wall used to be the opening into the kitchen…so why isn't it hollow??  I can’t imagine why there would be wiring in there?? Oh well – who knows…my friends used to call this house “Lego Land” for years! Lol The strapping for the first shelf took the longest, and the next 2 shelves went in pretty quickly. Even though I had a chop saw readily available, I opted to use the hand saw to cut it all (cuz it was quieter and less scary).





































When I finally had the 3 shelves installed it became very obvious that the walls are beyond crooked. There was an obvious hump in the wall that was keeping the shelf pushed out and off of the strapping. 















I had to cut into the drywall and create a space to push the shelves into (more mess). Once that was done, hubby silicone all the shelves down and caulked all around the top to finish the seams and make it look "pretty".  (Trus that it looked WAY prettier once it was sealed...I'll post more pics later)



…and 2 hours later I stood staring into my pantry, even more perplexed than I was before my last post… A Pantry, by definition, is supposed to be for food storage and I get that – but – in my case, my Patry is turning into a “Kitchen storage closet”…






Time for a cake break

I really do Love to bake (which is unfortunate for my middle).  Life has been pretty nutty lately, though, so I haven't had the chance to bake as often as I would like.  Today, though, a co-worker had a birthday and since I was out sick yesterday...he didn't get his cake today. :(  (Bad cake lady!!)  Anyhoo - I decided that I'd bake a cake tonight.  The only problem is which cake to bake??  I know I want chocolate with boiled icing...but which recipe to use?  I've been using my "old faithful" recipe for a dogs age, but really want something different so tonight I picked this recipe that I found on relativetaste.com.  I've made it before and I recall that it was delicious...but I'm nearly out of sour cream. :(  When I made it tonight, I had to use half sour cream and half mayonnaise...then I added a little extra vanilla (not by choice).  It's in the oven now and has been for about 30 minutes...I reeeely hope it works out cuz I'd LOVE some alternatives to my old faithful chocolate cake. :)