Tea Party Cake

I love how this tea party cake turned out! I was given free reign to design a cake for a 4th birthday tea party (from an amazing customer ;) )and came up with this design. I made the tea pot out of rice krispy treats and fondant and everything else was buttercream with fondant details. I must say this is one of my favorite girly cakes so far.

iPhone 5 Cake

This cake was pretty exciting for me to make since my hubby and I JUST entered into the 21st century and got our first smart phones (iphones)!! I tried to get the dimensions exact on this cake so I measured mine and multiplied it by 4.

Minion Cake

I'm lovin' these little minions lately. After I made this cake, we ended up having a family movie night and I watched Despicable Me2 for the first time....it was too cute! 

This cake is a 3-D cake that I made with several 8"round cakes. It is covered and decorated with fondant. 

Pumpkin Carriage Cake

 My friend Dianna ask my to make this precious cake/ matching cupcakes for her boyfriend's daughter who turned 5. I haven't met them yet, but I hope to soon! I LOVE how the cake turned out and it was a perfect combination of Fall and Cinderella.

Hot Air Balloon Cake and Cupcakes

Last weekend, I had a pretty cake crazy kitchen! I made this cupcakes and cakes for a little girl's first birthday party as well as the baptism cake below. I made it from sheet cakes and cut out the dress shape. Dave and I have had plenty of extra cake around here this week! 

Baby Bum Cake and matching cookies

I'm almost all caught up on the blog. I made these matching cake and cookies for a recent baby shower. The cake was two flavors - the "bum" was triple chocolate and the bottom cake was vanilla. I made the feet out of rice krispy treats and I covered them in buttercream and fondant.

On another note, we have had an awesome, relaxing week at the beach with some really good friends. It has been a nice week to hang out and take a little time off from cake designing :) 

Mickey Mouse Baseball Cake

I made this Mickey Mouse birthday cake for a 2nd birthday party. I had free range to do what I wanted - I love those orders! I just had to incorporate Mickey Mouse and baseball. It was a triple chocolate cake and was covered in buttercream and fondant. I cut Mickey out of fondant and used royal icing to outline him and add the stitching to the baseball. 

Annnnddd here is a pic of my little helper. He loves to lick the spoon ;) 

Cheerwine Cake

Here's a cake for all you Cheerwine lovers out there! Our good friend, Nick, turned 30 last month and his wife, Gwen, asked me to make a cake for him. He loves Cheerwine (even created a Cheerwine app called Cheerwine Finder) so I made a Cheerwine flavored pound cake for him.This was a new flavor and it turned out pretty yummy.  I used 6" round cakes and stacked them on top of each other to make it look like a can.  

The most time consuming part of this cake was making this label. I used the smallest tip and royal icing to try to get it to look as close to the real thing as possible. 

And here are Nick and Gwen....don't ya love the Cheerwine artwork in the background to match the cake?! Happy 30th Nick!

Dianna's Graduation cake

Back in May, my roomie (from college) graduated with her Masters in Counseling. I am so proud of her and can't wait to see how she uses this degree! I think she is going to be an amazing counselor. She is so dependable, kind and a good listener. Way to go Dianna! In celebration of her graduation, she had a party and I made the cake.

 

 

The books were triple chocolate and I made the graduation hat out of Rice Krispy treats.

 

And here I am with my roomie! Congratulations!

 

 

 

Boston Red Sox Baseball Cake

My friend, Erin, got married this past weekend and asked me to make a groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner. I LOVED the engagement pictures they took at the Durham Bull's baseball park and she wanted a cake to show their love for baseball. Here it is...

I love how the baseball turned out! It was my first time using rice krispy treats to mold. Believe it or not, the baseball is a WHOLE recipe of rice krispy treats. I had to mush it all together to make the ball and then iced it with buttercream and covered it with fondant.

 

This is also the first time I used a grass tip to make the grass on the cake. It is buttercream grass and the rest of the cake is covered with fondant. The flavor- chocolate with buttercream.

 

I hope the groom liked it!

Farewell Cake

This cake was so much fun to make! It was made for a going away party....for a blond haired, blue eyed frisbee lovin' girl who is moving to Colorado. I have never met Stacey, but she has some great friends! When I dropped off the cake they were making so many fun decorations for the party. I hope they had a great time.

I love making cakes like this cause they are always one of a kind.....and I get to be pretty creative. Emily, Stacey's friend who ordered the cake, asked me to paint the state flags on each corresponding state and connect them with a frisbee. I painted the flags with food coloring and the girl was made out of fondant. One half of the cake was butter golden with raspberry filling and the other was triple chocolate....yummmmyyy.

I was playing around with Picassa and thought I would also share my artistic shot of her feet ;)

Landon's Winter ONEderland

Get ready for a super long blog post...this time I get to post about my baby's party!! I have wanted to plan a first birthday party for such a long time and boy oh boy I sure had fun finally getting to do it! We were blessed with so many special friends, and family, that came to help us celebrate. Dave's parents drove all the way from New York just for the weekend. L is a pretty loved little boy.

Welcome to Landon's Winter ONEderland......

I am NOT a graphic designer by far, but I did design the invitations and other party printables on my laptop. Since I don't have photoshop I was determined to figure out how to use microsoft word and excel using a few tutorials from pinterest and some good ole clip art.

So, I can't take credit for the awesome pinwheels. My friend Emily and her hubby made them for her little boy's first bday this past summer and used the same color scheme. She was so sweet and let me borrow them!

Here's the table. So, I must admit that I get obsessed with all those pretty party tables I see on blogs and I really didn't know how to make mine look like those. I tried putting a couple of different wrapping paper pieces up and it just looked cheapo so I got a big ole piece of beadboard from the garage. We have a bunch left over from Landon's nursery and I love how it turned out! I got the snowflakes from the Dollar Tree and spray painted them red, designed and printed the banner on cardstock at home, made the table runner with some wrapping paper and covered it with transparent contact paper (so the food wouldn't mess it up), and spray painted the cake stands I made for a previous cake customer. As you can see, it was a party on a budget!

Here is the seat for the guest of honor. My friend Raeanne let me borrow her antique highchair...love it! I don't want to give it back ;) The hat, oh how I love the hat, was made from some fabric scaps and a cereal box. I found the tutorial here but gave it my own spin by doing an appliqued number one on it before putting the hat together. I also made the little pom pom on top.

I designed the little cupcake toppers and made the cupcake sleeves out of scrapbook paper. They were triple chocolate cupcakes...yum yum.

 

 

I loved making these little penguin cake pops! I always get aggravated when I make cake pops because I have a difficult time with the chocolate hardening before I have used it.  I found this awesome tip on pinterest that suggested using a mini crock pot (the little one you use to keep dips warm) and it made the process sooo much easier. I used a little ice cream salt to keep the cake pops standing up in my ice cream dishes. I love how it looks like ice (something else I found on pinterest).

 

 

AND here is the guest of honor's little smash cake! I made the cake topper out of polymer clay so he will be able to keep it forever. His little face always lights up when I let him play with it. A few years I taught all of my 5th graders how to make little clay penguins and this sure brought back memories.

 

 

And here is one of my fave cakes yet! Polar Bears are my favorite animals and I have been wanting to make a bear cake for a long time. My friend Taylor got me this AWESOME Build-A-Bear cake pan a few years ago and I had yet to use it. I was so happy I got to finally put it to use and I hope I'll be able to use it for many more cakes! I'll try to do another blog post where I explain how I put this little guy together.

 

 

Haha....I think this pic is so funny. Landon grabbed the cake before we were even able to put a candle in it! Everyone ran over to sing Happy Birthday before he devoured the whole thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Don't stick it up your nose silly little guy!!

 

 

Here's the hot chocolate bar, but I don't think anyone had any because it was 72 degrees outside! Not the best weather for a Winter ONEderland ;)

 

 

A closer look at Landon's Polar Water...

 

 

 

One of my favorite activity at the party was making snow!! We bought some snow from the Teach Me store and it was awesome. The kids loved it and Landon is still playing in it. I found this swimming pool, literally, in the middle of the road...it was a perfect color and size :)

 

It's a little difficult to see, but the mantle has all of L's weekly pics that we took of him this past year. It was so neat to see them all together and printed out. I used some picture frames that I got for yardsales, spray painted them and attached some jute twine and hung the pics with little mini clothes pins. I LOVED how they turned out and it was sad taking them down.

 

I made the Igloo out of a big piece of cardbaord we had saved from when we bought our kitchen table. I spray painted it white and drew the ice blocks on with a sharpie. It was supposed to be a picture prop, but I am not sure how many pics got taken in it. We still have it up for a Christmas decoration.

 

 

 

 

 

And last, but not least, here is the Penguin Adoption Center! I bought all these little penguin beach balls from Oriental Trading and the kids were able to play with them at the party as well (another pinterest idea :) )

 

 

And there it is!! I hope that everyone had fun cause I know we sure did. I know Landon won't remember this day, but I hope we have a lot of good pics for him and maybe one day he'll be able to look back and see how many people love him and came to celebrate! We love you Landon David Eshleman!!