Busy With Birthdays

The last couple of weeks have been busy with celebrating birthdays! At the end of January, my brother-in-law celebrated his 40th (pictures to follow). Last week, we celebrated birthdays three days in a row: mine, my mom's 50th, and a good friend's 30th! My posts have been non-existent because I have been busy. I'll admit the blog is the first thing to go during busy weeks and days because it is by far the least important thing on my to-do list. Taking care of my family and my home is the most important task the Lord has called me to do and I have learned that means I can't do everything I want to do all the time.


With all that said, I wanted to share the fun cake I made (with my sweet husband's help) for my brother-in-law's birthday. Since he was turning 40, it was only appropriate to do an Over The Hill cake! The cake turned out much better than I expected, especially since I started off with problems.

A few weeks ago, Crisco sticks, which I use to make icing, were on sale and I had a coupon (of course!), so I decided to stock up on them, but I bought butter flavor instead of original. At the time, I thought this would be a great idea and would make the icing taste even better. The icing tasted great, but the butter flavor Crisco also had the color of butter and when you try to mix black food coloring with a butter color, it isn't gray but an ugly green color! I tried to turn it gray for a while and eventually it turned a dark gray color that I used for a border, but my mother-in-law was gracious enough to buy some original Crisco sticks and everything turned out great!

I'm not good enough to go into the cake decorating business (ever seen Ace of Cakes?), but I do enjoy making cakes for my family. What do you think?

Thomas is Two!

On Friday, my sweet boy celebrated his second birthday. These two years have flown by for me and sometimes I just want to stop time because it passes so quickly. I feel like we just celebrated his first birthday! We decided to take him to Chuck E Cheese on his birthday, since his party wasn't until Saturday.

Thomas is shy around people and places that are unfamiliar and that proved to be true at Chuck E Cheese. He liked the Bob the Builder toy, but would have nothing to do another ride that had Barney on it (we have never introduced him to Barney and I don't plan on it!). Josh and I ended up playing more games than Thomas did, but we won enough tickets for Thomas to get two balls. One funny story... Chuck E Cheese came out and threw out free tickets to the kids standing around. Thomas immediately started picking up the tickets and handing them BACK to him! He must have thought he dropped them and he was helping clean up. Isn't he such a sweet boy?!

Saturday, we had our family (minus my dad and step-mom) and one little boy from church here for his party. We had a great time eating hot dogs and the train cake that I made. Since I took the cake decorating class earlier this year, I really wanted to make his cake. It was a LOT of work making the train cake (and Josh was a big help), but definitely worth it. Just about the time we were singing happy birthday and he was blowing out the candle, we heard a choo-choo! We live near a railroad track and it was perfect timing for our boy who LOVES trains.

Thomas is such a joy to us and we are so thankful the Lord blessed us with such a sweet boy early in our marriage. He was a big surprise to us, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Our prayer for him continues to be that he would trust in Christ and turn away from his sin at an early age. May the Lord use him mightily for the Kingdom!

Cakes

Last night I finished course 1 of the Wilton Cake Decorating class. The last 4 weeks have been fun, but a little tiring as well. I'm glad I took the class, but it will be a while before I take another one for obvious reasons. Right now I'm content with what I have learned and I think I have enough knowledge to make Thomas a great birthday cake in August.

Here is last week's cake:

Yes, I made the clowns (except of the heads) and one of the clowns is pregnant! They were actually very easy to make and I hope in the future to find some other type of "heads" instead of clowns (they can be kind of creepy!).

Here is this week's cake:

I made the roses before class and they turned out okay. I definitely need more practice. The bow isn't great, but she didn't give us a lot of practice before telling us to put it on the cake. I was really hoping to write "Happy Mother's Day" on it, but there wasn't enough room after the bouquet of flowers were added.

After Josiah is born and we get into the routine of having a newborn again, I'll definitely have fun playing with my new skills. And by the way, Josiah is due one month from today - I am more than ready!!

First Cake

Last Thursday I went to my cake decorating class and this is the final product:

The icing on the cake is a little darker than I wanted (it was supposed to be a sky blue). Josh told me I should have made rainbow fish to match the color of the ocean, but the rainbow still turned out pretty. My icing was a little too stiff, so I have to thin it out a little bit for this week. I was sitting down when I transferred the rainbow pattern and didn't get my rainbow centered. Next time, I think standing will help so that I can make sure it is centered. For the most part, I was very happy with this cake. This week is a clown cake - not sure if there will be pictures or not - depends on how my clowns look!

Birthday Cake

The cake I baked for Josh's birthday didn't turn out as pretty as I would have liked. You can definitely see the crumbs from icing the cake and I wished I had some pattern letters to make all the letters the same height and size. However, with very little training, it still turned out okay. Josh says the cake is delicious and he was thankful for all my hard work.

Hopefully, his next birthday cake will look fabulous as I am now taking a 4 week course at Michael's on cake decorating ( I already learned a better way for icing the cake and I shouldn't have any crumbs next time!). For the next three weeks I'll be baking, icing, and decorating a cake for class. Josh took a look at the cakes I will make and he seems a little skeptical that mine can look like the picture, but I'm going to try! I'll make sure and post pictures of my cakes in the coming weeks.

Below is a couple of pictures of Josh's cake.

It may not look like a masterpiece, but it sure does taste good! I'm going to have a piece now!

Cake Decorating

For a while now, I have been interested in learning how to decorate cakes. It is such a useful skill for birthdays and other special occasions. I looked online a couple of months ago to see if any classes were offered in the area. There was one class offered about 45 minutes away and it was $40. I was willing to pay the money, because I wanted to learn so desperately, and emailed some ladies in my church to find out who else might be interested. One of the ladies at church, Lisa, called me and told me she had an even better idea. She knew a lady who had been doing cake decorating for years and wanted to teach other people because of arthritis in her hands. The best past? We would only have to pay $10 and we could do it locally!

Last Saturday, a group of 4 of us gathered at Lisa's house to learn some basics. A couple of the other ladies already knew the tricks to icing a cake and using tips for decorating. I definitely was the novice, but I had plenty of people to help me! It was such a fun experience and I walked away wanting to know more. The supplies aren't cheap, but I'm going to start slow and build my collection. Josh's birthday is next month and I hope to bake and decorate a cake for him. One of the ladies at the class gave me her pound cake recipe last week and it is so yummy! I almost baked a boxed cake to take to the class because that pound cake was delicious without any icing.

Here are some pictures of the cake and everyone enjoying it!