Simplicity

Leah's Kindergarten Graduation Celebration

I can't believe my little baby graduated from Kindergarten.  We had a small celebration with just a few family and friends.  I made homemade pizzas, cake and gave her a diploma.  I also made this cute banner that I couldn't seem to get a good picture of.  She is obsessed with dolphins so her gift was a Barbie dolphin trainer :)  Didn't get a picture of that either :(  The important thing is that she had a great time and we celebrated her accomplishment!!

Reveal Cake

This is a gender reveal cake that I did for some church members of ours.  The cake batter was dyed BLUE :)  This is how they chose to reveal the gender to their parents.  Cute, huh?  Hopefully, I will figure out how to get the picture she texted me off my phone and put it on here to show you the actual reveal.

A Big Flower

One thing I love about my friend, Christy, is she doesn't mind letting me experiment.  She asked me to make a cake for one of her daughters and do whatever I wanted.  I had seen a version of this online and wanted to try it for myself.  The online version was better, of course, but I had fun trying!  The cake is iced to a smooth finish and then a big fondant/gumpaste flower is attached to the side to cover the entire height of the cake.  It looked better when I first did it, but after a bit it started to droop....guess I should have used more gumpaste??  Either way, they liked it and that's really all that matters :)

A Friend turns 50 !

Our friend, Bryan, just celebrated his 50th birthday.  There was a party for him on Saturday and then another celebration in Sunday School the next morning.  For his party, I made german chocolate cupcakes and a chocolate cake.  For Sunday, I made a german chocolate cake.  He loves my chocolate cake and he loves german chocolate cake, so I used the recipe for my regular chocolate cake and just added the coconut pecan icing. 

Chocolate cupcakes with regular chocolate icing around the perimeter and coconut pecan icing in the middle

Chocolate cake with an chocolate almond buttercream icing, chocolate ganache, and strawberries

Chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream and coconut pecan icing

Roses for Emilee

This is a cake I did for our friend Emi.  Her mom asked for a simple cake....nothing fancy.  I had seen these rose cakes and wanted to do one and everyone said how simple they were to ice.  Her favorite colors are blue and green so teal makes her happy :)  It is certainly not my best work, but I would use a different tip next time.  I think that would help.  But, she like it so that is all that matters :)

Dolphin Tale Party

I can't believe it, but my baby is 5 !!!!!  She wanted to have a Dolphin Tale party.  If you haven't seen the movie, you need to....(this movie started Leah's love of dolphin everything).

The Invitations

The invitations were not my idea.  I must give credit to my neighbor, Stacy, and her creative brain :)  She came up with the idea and helped me put them together.  We made them with my Cricut.  I especially loved that they were unique and not like any I've seen.  You pull the dolphin up and it has the party information on that card.

The Decorations

This is a balloon wreath that I made for the front door.  I found inspiration on Pinterest, of course ;) and wanted to have it done for Ella's birthday but didn't make it.  There is a number 5 with her name on it that I can take off and replace with whoevers age/name.  

The centerpieces of the table were hurricane vases filled with green crinkle paper packing filler and then dolphins and a number 5.

Ok, so sandwiches are food and not decorations, but I just wanted to show that we made ham sandwiches in the shape of dolphins.  I found a sandwich cutter at Wal-Mart and when you use it to cut the sandwich you get two dolphins and a heart.  Cute, huh?

I also had blue Hawaiian Punch in a drink dispenser that had a chalkboard tag around it that said "Ocean Water" and I had decorated around the bottom with sand and seashells.  I know I took a picture but perhaps I dreamed it as I can't seem to find it now.  Big sigh.......

The Cake

We had a cake tragedy this morning.  Oh my.  I can laugh now, but was on the verge of tears this morning.  The story goes like this.....Ella and Leah had their friends Eva and JB spend the night last night.  I got up at 6am and started cleaning and getting ready for the 10am party.  I asked Charles to go get Leah's dolphin balloon filled with helium.  He said he would rather me do it so I asked him to get the kids breakfast started (I had bought Pillsbury cinnamon rolls).  I always put my finished cakes in the oven to keep them from little fingers in the icing or some sort of accident or something.  I always do this.  See where this is going??  He didn't think about it until he went to put the cinnamon rolls in the preheated oven.  You've heard of twice baked potatoes??  Now we had twice baked cupcakes!!  Luckily, the cupcakes themselves were fine, but the icing was a different story.  It had changed colors and gotten so hard and cracked I couldn't even get candles to go through it.  When I got home and found out, panic ensued.  I took a shower and prayed.......prayed that God would help me be loving and forgiving to Charles because I know he didn't ruin them on purpose and that He would help me to salvage Leah's cake.  So, I scraped off the hard, crusty icing and made a new batch.  I re-decorated the dolphin (though this rush job did not end up as cute as yesterdays).  The cupcakes, thankfully, we just as good and moist as they should have been :)

The cupcakes in dolphin formation.

The re-decorated dolphin.  See the waves (how crusty and hard) that's how the whole dolphin was!  Eek!  This rush version wasn't as cute as the first one.

I wan't sure I'd have enough cupcakes with just the dolphin (though  I did) and so these are decorated  with teal icing, sprinkled with brown sugar for sand, and fondant sea shells, starfish, coral, and sand dollar toppers.

The Games

They played three games:  (1) pin the tail on the dolphin (again, if you haven't seen the movie, you might not understand)   (2) water balloon fights   (3) dolphin pinata.  

Pin the Tail on the Dolphin

The pin the tail on the dolphin, I again have to give thanks to Stacy.  She drew him out and painted him as well as all of the individual tails.  I think she did a great job!!  The kids had fun.  We blindfolded them, made them spin around five times (since it was Leah's fifth birthday) and then pin.  I think Leah actually came the closest but pretty much tied with Annalee and Matthew.

Water Balloon Fights

I had in mind a couple of games to play with the water balloons but the kids just wanted to throw them at each other.  It was so hot I didn't even care :)  It will kind of hurt your feelings though that you spend hours filling up 110 water balloons and they were confetti in the yard within a matter of minutes!!!

(No pictures of the actual fights.  I was actually using the camcorder during that.)

Dolphin Pinata

I had the pinata filled with Skittles, Twizzlers, DumDums, dolphin stickers, dolphin necklaces, and gum.  As soon as it was open, chaos erupted.  The sweet children turned into little vultures.  Seriously.

My Sweet Baby Leah

Here are a couple pictures of Leah.  The first is her blowing out her candles and the second is her opening her presents.  

I am so grateful and thankful to the Lord for all of the great family and friends that He has blessed us with.  Those who don't mind enduring the Alabama July heat for a couple of hours to bring a smile and a sweet memory to my sweet baby's heart.  We are so very blessed!!

The Fresh Beat Band

These are invitations and the cake I made for my nephew's (Robbie) birthday.  The theme was The Fresh Beat Band.

I used my Cricut to make the invites.  They were drums and you pulled the inside part out to see the actual party information.  I must give credit to my neighbor, Stacy.  These were totally her idea and she helped show me what to do.  I think they turned out super cute.  

The cake was chocolate.  I covered the cake board in fondant and tried to make it look like piano keys.  The top of the cake had the logo on it with a few music symbols.  The front had his name made of fondant accents and then the back of the cake had fondant square accents.  There were lots of little imperfections in this cake that drove me nuts, but thankfully my brother and sister-in-law were pleased.  

Little Mermaid Cake

This is a cake I did for my friend Shelia's little girl, Colbie.  It is a Little Mermaid cake.  There is a 8" round cake base with an 8" round half cake on the top to make it look like an ocean shelf.  The cake is iced in buttercream and has waves, coral, seashell, starfish, and sanddollar fondant accents.  I used graham cracker crumbs for sand.  Ariel is a toy.

Baby Girl Butterflies

This is a cake I did for my friend, Dana.  She is having a baby shower this weekend and the them is pink / green and butterflies.  So, naturally this is the direction I went with the cake.  The cake is vanilla with rasberry filling and buttercream frosting.  The cake has a very simple look.  There is a baby made from fondant/gumpaste on the top (my new favorite way to top a baby shower cake).  Then, I made just a couple of 3D butterflies to accent the cake.  Hope she likes it.....

Mickey Mouse Cake

This is a cake I did for my next door neighbor's grandson.  His party came on the heels of his first visit to Disney World so a Mickey cake just made sense!    This was a chocolate cake with buttercream icing and fondant accents.  The topper is a Mickey head made out of rice krispie treats and covered in fondant.  This was my first attept at this, but it turned out okay...I learned a few things for next time, though.

Stacy, my neighbor, wanted to also do some Mickey pops.  This was our first attempt but turned out pretty well...I would probably use smaller sprinkles next time but these were fine, too.  You start by taking a double stuff Oreo and taking off one side.  Bury a lolliop stick in the creme and put the other cookie part back on.  Next, take mini Oreo's and take them apart and scrape out the creme.  Dip a little of it in some melted chocolate bark and put in the top of the double stuff Oreo for an ear.  Repeat for the other ear.  Let the ears harden (can place in fridge to expedite) and then drizzle entire pop in melted chocolate.  We found that if we dipped the whole thing in the chocolate, it would break apart.  Finally, sprinkle before chocolate hardens.  Allow to harden completely.  How else could an Oreo possibly get better but by adding more chocolate, right?  And they were super yummy!!