My Mom's Birthday

I'm really tired but I wanted to leave you with a little something before I go to wonderful land of Nod.

My mom's birthday will be next weekend but being as it's father's day weekend we decided to celebrate it a bit earlier.  Today!

I finally made my mother a cake!  I've been "caking" for over 2 yrs now and I hadn't made a cake for my mom.  I made one for my mother-in-law in '09.  Does that make me a bad daughter or a good daughter-in-law??

Anyhow, I made a cake and we celebrated my mother...complete with Karaoke!  She loved it!  We had a great time, all of us "kids" made it, we had fajitas and there's always a bunch of laughing because my family is full of comedians!  We love to act silly and make each other laugh.

My mom loves cheetah print and her and dad have a Harley which they ride whenever they get the chance so I thought I'd combine the two.  Throw in a strawberry cake with fresh strawberries and cream filling and you've got a pretty good thing going!  At least in my humble opinion.

What's something special you've done for your mom?  I'd love to hear how you celebrated her birthday!

As always...God bless, leave some love and thanks for stopping by!

Crawfish Boil Cakes and More

Hello everyone!  I’m finally making the switch over to a Mac!  I’ve been a PC for years but have been wanting a mac when I started doing digital scrapbooking and getting more into photography about 7 yrs ago.  See, you learned two new things about me that you probably didn’t know!  So please bear with me as I hone my skills and maybe change the look of our blog.  I will also be publishing a web page soon for my cakes, but more on that later.

So, in the beginning of May I created a "Crawfish Boil" cake for my SIL, Rachel.  It was the first one I've ever done and ended up being very please with how it came out and how easy it was to put together.  Everyone LOVED it and even the chef from the restaurant wanted one of my business cards in case he "has any events he could use help with!"  Sweet!  I started with my go to vanilla buttermilk cake recipe from Sky High, Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes.  Then I filled and iced it with a chocolate buttercream frosting.  We're not talking about greasy, coat your mouth, shortening based frosting...we're talking real (organic) butter and sugar.  The good stuff!  Is it rich?  YES!  Is it sweet?  Yes!  But that's how it's supposed to be and that's also why you only need a small slice.  Back to the cake.  I created a little crawfish for the top with some corn and potatoes made out of fondant.  I dusted the sides of the "pot" with silver to give it that metal look. and added handles to the sides and flames around the bottom.  So, without further a-dew...

I happened to show my neighbors this cake because they are originally from Louisiana and after they saw it she wanted to order TWO of them!  One of them I made last weekend for a graduation party.  They need something a bit bigger so that's why it doesn't look as tall..

The third one I'm doing on Wednesday so you'll just have to wait to see that one.  

In between the two of these I did two other cakes and on Saturday I did another baby shower cake for my other neighbor. 

First we have a Princess Castle cake for a sweet one year old of some friends of ours.  It came with a dozen cupcakes.  This was also my first castle to make so I was a bit nervous at fist but I did my research and at the end of the day I thought it was "fit for a princess".

Then I made a German Chocolate cake as a "Thank You" gift for someone.  I. LOVE. THIS. CAKE.  :-)

Doesn't it look absolutely delicious!  I can not have this kind of cake sitting around because I will unashamedly stuff my face until it's all gone!

Okay!  The last cake I did this weekend was a baby shower cake for my other neighbor.  These are also the neighbors that I made the birthday cake for with the twin brothers turning 60.  Anyhow, this cake was an 8" vanilla buttermilk cake filled with a fresh strawberries and cream filling and frosted in my white chocolate swiss meringue icing.  It is delicious!  (I always have scraps and leftover icing to taste)  The design and colors I took off the invitation.  They haven't found out what they are having so it had to be a "neutral" kind of cake.  I think it was simply beautiful!

So that's been my month of May and beginning of June.  Throw in Mother's Day,  vacation, attending the first IronMan Texas here in The Woodlands (ALL DAY), my sons end of school party and my hubby being gone Memorial weekend and I say I'm glad May is OVER!  Now time to focus on June!

As always God bless, leave some love and thanks for stopping by!  Oh and I hear thunder so maybe we might get some more much needed rain!

Progress Report

Welcome to my "Progress Report".  I've accomplished a couple of things since my "What's New Wednesday" post.  I'd like to share a few of those with you and get some feedback.  I warned you of my sporadic posting habits.  My life is just too hectic right now to be consistent so you'll have to take what I can give ya'.

First, I'll start with my laundry room.  If you recall, I wanted to reorganize it and clean it out.  This is what I've accomplished so far.  See before photos here.

 I painted the walls a soft yellow color that someone else had returned and I got it for 50% off!  I then painted the shelves with a white paint that I already had...Money Saver!  The stencil I ordered from, CuttingEdgeStencils, because I knew what I was looking for and could not find it anywhere else.  It was worth the splurge!  I purchased another small can of orange paint AND a grey/khaki color that I happened to see on the clearance shelf, while I was looking for a red, and knew I could incorporate those colors so I grabbed both!  Again...50% off!  I found a can of "red", at least that was the color splattered around the outside of the can but when I had someone open it for me it was pink!  So glad I didn't buy it.  Well, I was bummed that I hadn't found a red yet and did NOT want to pay full price but then bells went off in my head and I remembered I had bought a tiny can of red a while back for the boy's room.  I began searching everywhere for that can and finally found it in the garage on a shelf!  SCORE!  The paint quality definitely was not the best but it served it's purpose and I was thrilled.

Below is a picture of an old window frame, one of three that I had purchased for $20 about 7 years ago when we were renting our first home.  I'd kept them this whole time because I really liked them and knew that at some point I would use them.  This particular one I had repainted previously and someone decided to use it as a spray paint tester!  So I carefully removed the glass panes and repainted it with the grey color.

You can see the window on the right side of the picture.  I'm not sure if that's where it will stay so if you have a suggestion I'd love to hear it!

As you can see the floors aren't done...BUT...I got a steal on the tiles that I bought for this!  I originally was going to purchase 12" square "sticky" tiles.  They looked the most like real tile for a decent price.  Well when I went to go pick them up they were out!  BUT...the gentleman helping me said that they just got a return for 18" tiles that had the same colors as the ones I wanted except these looked way better.  Well, they were twice the price! :-(  I wasn't about to do that for the laundry room.  The guy came back to me and said he could sell them for HALF PRICE!!!!  That would make these LESS than what I would've paid!  SCORE!!!  Plus I got about 1/2 more square footage!  Double SCORE!!!

I'll have to show those pictures to you when it's completed.  Sorry for making you wait so long.

Well that's all for now.  I'll be posting some cakes that I've done later.