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Ca-CAWpcakes

From the "better late than never" files...

My little boy turned three at the end of April.  THREE!  I can hardly believe it.  Wasn't he just born yesterday?

He is, like most preschoolers, quite opinionated, and he was adamant that he wanted an Angry Birds birthday party.  His obsession with Angry Birds kind of cracks me up -- he went through a phase where he did pull up the game on my phone all the time (not that he could actually play it -- he'd just fling the birds in the wrong direction -- but he liked to listen to the music or watch me play it), but I can't remember the last time I saw him do that.  But despite not playing the game, he loves his stuffed Angry Birds and his Angry Birds t-shirts and all that other stuff.  And, well, *I* love Angry Birds (I had to MAKE myself stop playing it, it was such a huge time-waster), so I was all over an Angry Birds party.

Knowing that the birthday boy vastly prefers cupcakes to regular cake (what kid doesn't?), this is what I did for his cake:

I'd seen these scattered over Pinterest and various other places online; I didn't really need a tutorial per se because they're pretty self-explanatory, but this post from The Crafting Chicks is the one that I referred to.

These were fiddly, but not difficult, to make.  I made a single batch of buttercream, split it into quarters, and dyed each quarter a different color.  After frosting the cupcakes, I also used Wilton colored sugars for a little bit of texture and sparkle because, well, what isn't improved by a little bit of glitter? The eyeballs are half mini-marshmallows; the beaks are gummy orange slices; the white bellies are slices of regular marshmallows; the pig nostrils are chocolate chips; and the eyebrows and pupils are chocolate twizzlers that I cut up (I couldn't bring myself to use black licorice rope, because ew).

The pigs were the hardest to do -- their snouts are half-marshmallows, and it's surprisingly difficult to frost a half marshmallow.  I was afraid that my nails would be food-dye-green forever, but to my great relief it all washed off with no trouble.  (In all the cake decorating I've done, I've never gotten THAT messy before!)

It occurred to me after the fact that the yellow birds should have had white bellies and the blue birds shouldn't have (I was following the designs on the blog linked above, but they had it backwards too).  I don't think anyone else but me noticed that, though.  :-)

These were a HUGE hit.  Ian LOVED them, and I think our guests did too.  Absolutely, totally worth the time and effort.

The title of this post is a bad pun on the ca-CAW noise/call that the Angry Birds make in the game. Sorry.

House's House

I'm always impressed by gingerbread houses.  Every year around the holidays, images of amazingly detailed masterpieces start doing the rounds.  I don't have much in the way of architectural or construction skills, so something like that is well beyond my expertise.  

Basic little houses, though?  THAT I can handle.  I had thought about doing a gingerbread house with Ian this year, and had spent some time idly looking up recipes and things.  But one day we were at Michael's getting some craft supplies and I saw the Wilton gingerbread house kits on sale for $8.  Can't beat that price!  It came with everything necessary (I was especially happy to not have to make icing!), including gumdrops and some little round fruity candy things.  We augmented with several Hershey's kisses, green sugar sprinkles, a peanut butter cup, a couple of candy canes and two Ghirardelli squares for the front door.

It was a fun way to spend an afternoon during that week between Christmas and New Years.  The grownups did the hard parts; Ian stuck on the embellishments.  The result was adorable.

Ian decided that "it's House's house."  House, you'll remember, is what he calls his grandma; I assure you that her house doesn't really resemble this at all, but he's insistent.  :-)

The question now is, how long do we keep this thing around until we throw it out?  I hate to do it, but I also know we can't keep it forever.  It's well-documented in photographs, though!

One

The big day was nearly two months ago now, but I still can't quite get over the fact that the little man is ONE.

I hadn't decorated a cake in quite some time, but obviously the big 0-1 was just the occasion to bust the Wilton equipment out again.  And, like all good cakes, this one was decorated well after midnight.  ;-)  (What, you don't decorate cakes in the middle of the night?)  Nothing too fancy -- just a star-tipped dino (the outline was stolen from, of all things, a quilt pattern).  We had a whole dino theme going for the party.

My mom insisted that Ian needed his own cupcake rather than just having a piece of the big cake, so I made him a GIANT cupcake using my brand-new giant cupcake tin (thank you, Target clearance endcap).  He had never eaten anything so big before, only cut-up food, so we weren't sure he'd know what to do with it.  Obviously, we shouldn't have worried....he just picked the whole thing up and shoved it in his mouth.

And really, have you ever seen anyone SO happy to eat cake?  Just look at this face!

That photo pretty much sums up the whole day.  The celebration of our little guy's first year was SO much fun, and it was wonderful that all his aunts and uncles drove in from far and wide (Ohio! Virginia! New Hampshire!) to be here, along with our local family and friends.  

Since then, the big news is that we have a TODDLER!  Ian took his first steps on May 31.  He still very much prefers crawling as his means of ambulation -- he pretty much will only take a few steps at a time, and only to show off, not to actually get from one place to another -- but he's getting less shaky and more confident with each passing day, and in no time I'm sure he'll be running around all over the place.  And in related news, he got his first little pair of shoes.  He has a whole box of hand-me-down shoes (many of which are brand-new!) but none of them fit him quite right, so off to Stride Rite we went.  There is not much cuter than TINY LITTLE SHOES -- although I can't get over how un-cute the pricetag is.  His shoes are more expensive than mine!  

He doesn't have many words yet, although he "talks" quite a bit -- he says four things, pretty much: "uh oh," "dada," "mama," and -- his favorite -- "dat!".  "Dat" is quite a useful word: it seems to mean "What's that?", "Give me that!", "Look at that!", and sometimes, even, "here, take this."  And it's usually accompanied by finger-pointing. "DAT!"  And there's also "Wha," which he says all the time and doesn't seem to mean anything in particular, unless he's just wandering around all the time saying "What? What?"  Which is, I suppose, entirely possible.

I'm a broken record when it comes to his personality, but he contines to be the Best Baby Ever.  He is HILARIOUS and goofy and affectionate and, if I may say so, very very smart.  He makes this whole parenthood thing easy (at least, as easy as it could possibly be!) AND fun.

Some pictures that I just want to share:

(At the Memorial Day parade - the big loud horn on the fire truck scared the poor kid half to death!  He loved the rest of the parade, though!)

A day late

Friday the 13th was an auspicious day around here -- it was our nephew T's 7th birthday! 

We celebrated last weekend, on my grandmother's 85th birthday -- our family has a TON of February birthdays, and so it makes sense to combine the celebrations when we can -- after all, how much cake can you eat in one month?  My grandmother was more than happy to not have a cake of her very own, so Thomas got to choose the design.  Longtime readers will remember that I've baked T's birthday cakes for the last few years -- I always let him pick what he wants, and in the past we've had Spider-Man, Lightning McQueen, and Bob the Builder...all of which are conveniently available as a shaped pan from Wilton.  But this year, T's request was Iron Man.  A little harder to execute -- there's no Iron Man cake pan that I could find!  So I had to freehand it.  I'm not One With Drawing, so he's a tad bit lopsided, but all in all not too bad for a completely from-scratch design, I think.

The most important thing, of course, is that T was thrilled with it.  :-)  Here he is with his great-grandmother, blowing out their candles together.

It's hard to believe that this kid, who was a baby just yesterday, is now a seven-year-old hockey player.  How time flies.  Happy birthday, T!  (And happy birthday to my grandma, too!)

Because I promised my mom that I would.

To my loyal three readers who are left after my Summer of Extremely Sporadic Posting -- Happy October!  I'm so excited that it's October!  First, I think it's my favorite month...I LOVE fall!  And second, it means that September is OVER.  September was a crazy-busy month for me, but after today things are quieting down significantly.  I'm looking forward to having more knitting and blogging time....not to mention RELAXING time!  I still have today to get through -- a brunchtime jewelry party, apple picking with some friends, and then a birthday dinner for Jim's grandma (HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!) -- but then I'm back to a normal level of busyness. 

I'm happy to say, though, that while I've been busy, it's been a good kind of busy.  Lots of fun things going on!  The highlight, though, was my mom's birthday party!  Mom has a big birthday coming up (hint: I'm catching up with her, and this year I am up to half of her age!) later in October, but we engineered her an early surprise party last weekend.  And boy, was she surprised!  She had NO clue, and in fact my sister had trouble getting her here from New Hampshire because she was SO clueless that she disappeared on the morning they were supposed to be driving down here for the party.  ;-)  But as one of her friends noted, "it wouldn't be your mother if she were on time!" 

The most notable thing about this surprise?  My six-year-old nephew had known about the party for MONTHS, and knew it was a surprise party for Gamma, and DIDN'T SAY A WORD.  I think that that is an AMAZING show of restraint for a first-grader, don't you think?? 

I'm not really going to share any photos from the party, since they wouldn't be interesting to anyone but the people who were there, but I did promise my mom I'd post a picture of her cake.  You all know that I do a little cake decorating here and there, and I do a pretty good job of it.  But a combination of No Time, High Humidity, and Running Out of Frosting With No Time To Make More led to my poor mother's birthday cake being The Ugliest Cake Ever.  Seriously....not only did I not have time to decorate it, it was barely a passable frosting job.  Sheesh.  Luckily Mom is a good sport, and even more luckily the cake tasted great (red velvet with cream cheese frosting) so who cares what it looked like?

So in keeping with my promise, I present The Lamest Cake Ever. 

I tried to cover my bad frosting job with red sugar crystals, which sort of worked, but in the end....man, that was a bad cake.  I'll do better next time.

Happy Birthday, Mom!  Love you!

Six!

It's that time of year again!  You might associate mid-February with Valentine's Day, but since we are old and boring and no longer romantic, mid-February instead means it's time for our nephew's birthday!  This year he turned six.  Six!  How is that even possible???

As you may recall, my role in the birthday festivities is always Official Cake Provider.  This year was no different.  The birthday boy's chosen theme this year?  Spider-Man. 

The colors looked very patriotic.

But the cake, somehow, didn't look quite as red-white-and-blue as the colors might have suggested!

Spider-Man was fun.  He was more fiddly yet easier than last year's Lightning McQueen cake, if that makes any sense. 

Happy Birthday, T!

Ace of Cakes

I'll tell you what -- after tonight I feel like I've earned that "ace" title!  K and I had our final Fondant and Gum Paste class tonight, and here's what I made:

Before class we had to bake a cake, ice it and cover it with fondant, and then make all the flowers needed for our design.  In class tonight we learned how to do a couple final random things, and then we assembled it all together.

I'm quite happy with how this turned out!  It's far from perfect, but I feel like I really accomplished something -- this is far more presentable than I was expecting!  I had all kinds of issues last night with the fondant and the gum paste while trying to cover the cake and make the daisies-- it is SO disgustingly humid, and everything was sticking and just generally acting wonky -- so the fact that it all came out more or less okay is even more surprising!

I wound up not making my own fondant because of the aforementioned humidity issues -- I just couldn't even deal with the idea of something so sticky -- but K did, and she says that it is much, MUCH better tasting than the boxed fondant.  That makes me feel a little better about spending all this time decorating a cake, but even if I make my own fondant, this is sufficiently time-consuming that I don't see myself doing it too often.  Maybe for special occasions.

I am thinking of taking Course II during October, and then K and I can take Course III during November, and our Wilton journey will be complete.  In the meantime, I have to figure out how, and where, to store all this equipment I've got now!

Insert fondant-related title here

I've been taking a cake decorating class with my friend K for a couple of weeks now.  We took Wilton I a couple of years ago, and then she went ahead and took Wilton II by herself (the classes were always scheduled on Wednesday nights, which are the one night I can never do anything since I work till 8pm).  She'd been wanting to take the Fondant and Gum Paste class, and a time finally opened up when we could both take it.  So we've spent our last couple of Monday nights rolling fondant and ruffling gum paste.  I don't have much to show for it yet, but here's my first cake.

It's not a real design -- we were just experimenting with different coloring and shaping techniques, so the cake consists entirely of random shapes stuck onto a fondant base -- but it's my first go ever with fondant.  It could be worse, I suppose.

I'm not entirely sold on fondant yet.  It looks pretty (well, when it's done better than it is in the cake above!) but it tastes gross and there's something sort of counterintuitive about covering a cake with sheets of something that can barely be cut and that you probably don't want to eat (the cake is iced beneath the fondant, so you can peel the fondant off when you cut and/or eat the cake).  I don't want to say I'll never make a fondant cake -- especially after spending all the money on the equipment for the class! -- but it doesn't appeal to me as much as regular icing and buttercream decorations.

The gum paste, though, I like a lot better.  You use gum paste (which has an alternative fancy French name that I can't remember now) to make flowers and other decorations.  The stuff dries solid as a rock, and so you can make flowers in advance and use them to decorate your cake later.  We made some flowers in class last night. 

That's a carnation, a daisy, a leaf, and a Wilton "Fantasy Flower."  (Can you imagine the focus group that came up with THAT name?)

Our next -- and last -- class is in two weeks.  I need to decide on a design for my final cake, make all the flowers necessary in advance, and bake, ice, and cover a cake.  We'll assemble the whole thing in class.  I may see if I can find a recipe for fondant, in the hopes that homemade fondant might taste better than the nasty Wilton-in-a-box fondant.  I suppose it depends how ambitious I'm feeling.  :-)

I need to catch up with K, and find somewhere I can take Course II.  The flowers are my favorite part of cake decorating, and Course II is all flowers made from royal icing. 

And can I confess something?  I'm not really a huge fan of cake, as far as desserts go.  ;-)

Sunday accomplishments

Today is my SIL's birthday.   I wholeheartedly reject the notion that we can no longer have fun cakes once we become adults.  I mean, really.  Why should kids get to have all the fun?

I really can do things that are fancier than stars-on-a-shaped-cake, honest.  But there's something fun and actually sort of satisfying about doing these!  I need to make a cake with roses sometime soon, though, before I completely forget how to do it.  That's another thing on my resolution list for this year, along with knitting more gifts: Decorate more cakes.  Don't want the skills to get rusty!  If they ever schedule Level II cake decorating for a night that I can actually go, I'd like to take it, too.

I also finished my obnoxious pinkandgreen bag!

Pattern: Little Slip of a Thing, from Knitty
Yarn: Two skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted: one Limeade, one RPM Pink
Needles: size 13, 24" circular
Time: March 16-21 for the main part of the bag; the i-cord and felting took me till March 25.
Modifications: Several; see below.

First of all, I absolutely promise that this bag is NOT eyeball-breaking in person.  Honest!  I just canNOT get good color when I photograph this, no matter what I try, so I'm going to have to wait for a nice bright sunny day and try taking a picture in natural light. 

This was a fun, and fast, knit.  I ignored some things about the pattern, though.  First of all, it calls for two different needle sizes (13 and 15), presumably to make up for tension differences in the sections with floats.  I couldn't be bothered, and knitted the whole thing on size 13s with no ill effects.  My colorwork puckered a tiny bit before felting, but is perfectly smooth now.  I also skipped the bit about making the ridge along the bottom of the bag -- it was too fiddly for me, and I'd originally intended to just whipstitch a ridge in before felting, but wound up not bothering with that either. I also didn't bother with the grommets -- just threaded the i-cord through the body.

I learned two new things in this project -- slip-stitch colorwork, and i-cord bindoff.

This felted VERY well -- just one trip through the washing machine as part of a load of towels, and it was done!  It's a nice, thick fabric and even stands up on its own.  I do think I'm going to put a piece of plastic canvas in the bottom of the bag to keep it flat when there are things in the bag, but beyond that I don't think it needs any lining (though I may put some in anyway, if I see some cute fabric somewhere). 

Now I need to decide what colors to use for Version 2 -- I need to knit one along with my class when I'm teaching!

Ka-chow!

A couple of years ago, my friend K and I took a Wilton cake decorating class together.  I don't make cakes too often, and to be perfectly honest a lot of the time I simply can't be bothered to go crazy with the decorating (I'd no doubt feel differently if I had a dishwasher and more counter space -- my kitchen doesn't lend itself well to any kind of cooking that requires a lot of steps or a lot of mess).  But every now and then I can be convinced to do a cake, and when my nephew asks for one, how could I say no?

Two years ago, when he turned three, T had a Bob the Builder-themed birthday party.  It was just after I finished the class, and so I got to show off my new skills in public for the first time. 

This year, T turned five (and do you know how old that makes me feel?).  This year's theme?  Well, on Daytona 500 Sunday (although the timing was just a coincidence), what other theme could a boy possibly have?

Yes, it was a Cars party!  Lightning McQueen was a little harder to make than Bob the Builder, but I think he turned out okay.

The important thing, of course, is that the birthday boy was thrilled.

Happy Birthday, T!