Baking My First Cake

My journey with baking started about a couple of years ago, when some of my free time was spent watching cooking and baking shows on the Food Network Channel.. I have to thank them for inspiring a great deal out of me. There are so many great shows out there like Cake Boss, Lynn Crawford's Pitchin' In, French Food at Home, Ace of Cakes, Bobby Flay's Throw Down, and many more..

Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Icing

But enough about my favourite tv shows. My boyfriend's mother also happens to be a baker of really good goodies which motivated me even further. So I baked myself away and started out with cupcakes because I found them to be less intimidating than baking a whole cake at that time.

I made this last year and this was my very first fondant cake. It was a birthday cake for a young and growing Princess! She's actually one of my godsons' sisters; the second oldest of 4 kids. As this was my first ever fondant cake, I under estimated the time it would take for me to make it! So I called out a friend and thankfully she came in to rescue me! Phew! Thanks Agnes!

The princess, wanted a tiara on her cake and so I went online and searched for videos on Youtube that could help me out. I found this amazing tutorial on how to make gumpaste tiaras. Hers however, look really amazing and mine was.. well, not nearly as good as hers but it'll do.


I am so glad that the birthday girl liked it though!


Anyway, for the next few days I will be backtracking and posting some of my previous works. But I'll be posting some of the new things that I am also working on in between. So stay tuned!


With lots of love,
May

A Dr. Seuss Birthday Celebration

This project is a special one because it was for my twin-god son's birthday celebration.  My friend (who is my bf's sister-in-law), asked me if I could help her plan the celebration.  And who could resist?  I knew this was going to be extra fun because the first thing that popped into my head was Dr. Seuss!  Thing1 and Thing 2.  Awesome.

We had about 2 months to plan for it and one of the very first thing I did was design the invitation.  I browsed the internet for some of the wordings, and added my own into it.  I don't really know which application to use for the invitation so I ended up using Paint.  That is were I spent a long time trimming the Cat In The Hat.  I'm sure you could do that in Photoshop or something, but since I don't have that.. I decided to use paint and saved the image as PNG so it could retain it's actual colours.

It's a Red and Blue Party!

I simply used cardstock to print the invatations and voila!  That's what we got.  Cute and simple.  I printed the names separately on Excel, cut them out, and pasted each one on the invitations.

Next on my project was to buy the treats that would go on the Candy Party Favour Station.  We (my bf and I) headed to Seattle where we could score awesome deals.  We got those amazing Dr. Seuss items at Target, all for a dollar each and used them as prizes for the games. 

The next thing I did was bought tissues for the flower pom poms, that I wanted to use for decorations.   If you want to know how to make them, check this how-to video here.  I went to Deserres to buy my tissue paper and lucky me they were on clearance!  80pcs/set of sheets for less than $2.00, and I got about (I think) 3 sets each of red and blue tissue paper, and I remeber having way more than what I needed.   We decided to use the left over tissues for the table that didn't have a cover.

I really wanted a set of balloons on each of the tables.  And after doing a lot of research, we placed our order at Ballonatics Designs.  On the day of the party, they arrive at the venue earlier than we expected, AND gave us 2 sets of balloons at no additional charge!  I absolutely loved them!  I love the look of them hovering over the tables.. Don't you? :)

As for the table cloths we got a couple of them at the Dollar Store, I was a little bit disappointed with the colour so I headed out and bought some at the The Party Bazaar on Terminal and Main St.  These were much better, so I got one for each table (10).

I got the idea of this framed message on Hostess with the Mostess.

I thought it was a brilliant idea so I went ahead and printed it on a piece of paper and framed it on one of the picture frames that we already have!  Check out their awesome website for great inspirations!  Anyway, we had this set up by the entrance of the venue where visitors could sign and write their wishes for the birthday boys.  

The games we used include: Find the Green Egg (similar to the Easter Egg Hunt), Find the Cat In The Hat, where we cut up a small picture of the CITH and pinned it at the back of one of the adult guests for the kids to find. And then Pass the Fish Bowl, sort of like when Thing 1 and Thing 2 were throwing the fish bowl at each other on the first (I think) tv episode of The Cat In The Hat.

By the end of the day everyone, especially the kids had a ton of fun.  Who wouldn't have fun with a Dr. Seuss themed party anyway?  And once again, thanks to every one who pitched in on this party, especially the twins' awesome parents!  I swear, I have the most awesome-est (if that's even a word) friends and family ever. Love them all. =)