Busy busy!

Wishing my nieghbors a Merry Christmas. :) No better way to do it than with homemade coconut cake bites.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls...{Drool}

So...These are yummy. REALLY yummy.  Like, "I had 3 of them in the same day" yummy. I took this picture because they just looked so pretty fresh out of the oven. After I applied the icing...well..I just didn't get another picture...I decided to share so that all of you can share in the fantastic fall goodness as well.
Here's the recipie : http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=204&sid=17662360
I wasn't in LOVE with the icing so I thought the recipie below might work better. I haven't tried it yet so you'll have to let me know how it turned out. :)
 Icing:
Try this:
4 oz. cream cheese (totally room temp)
1/4 C. softened butter
1/4 C. Crisco
3 T milk
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
*Beat all these together in a mixer until incorporated.
*Then slowly add:
 1 1/2 lbs. powdered sugar.
*After that is incorperated, add:
 2 teaspoons of GOOD vanilla
*Beat again.
* Grab a spoon and dig in!! Spread the icing on the cinnamon rolls and dig in. ;)

Carni Baby!!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of throwing a baby shower (with the help of my SIL, Lia) in honor of my other SIL, Emily. :) We had a great time...right up until a HUMUNGO windstorm showed up and started ripping everything down including huge branches from the tree. And even then...we had a blast running around trying to take everything down and go inside. It was the quickest clean-up in the history of baby showers, I'm sure. :) The theme was "Vintage carnival" and I wish I had a never-ending party budget but alas...all good things must come to an end. :) I wish that I could have bought that cool vintage-looking popcorn machine and rented that Cotton Candy maker and then added that cool golden raffle-spinner to the tab.  Arial Dancers and Flame eaters would've been great too...ya know...IF there was no budget.
These pictures are in no particular order...because I hate  am not fond of Blogger's picture-loading method and I find it extremely frustrating to put them all in order. :)
Let's start with the invites, shall we?? These were done by my wonderfully gracious and super-oober talented sister, Crystal Carlson with http://www.crystalruby.com/. This is the the version that I sent to the photo shop in a 5x7 then cut in half and mailed as "tickets" for the carnival. So fun.




Black Forest Cupcakes



My Kiddos loved the Photo Booth. I found this amazingly perfect red & creme ticking stripe fabric at Wal-Mart of all places. I just got 2 yards of fabric, stretched it over and staple-gunned it to some extra plywood that my hubby had...in fact...my hubby is so awesome that he actually stretched and tapled it FOR me. Aren't you jelous of my hubby??







Black Forest Cake. I went rustic because I wanted that 'Vintage' feel. The sign was made by digging this piece of wood that I already had from an earlier craft that never got finished out of my craft stuff. It was actually already painted the colors that I wanted so I simply printed a font off my computer, cut them out and glued them to the sign. I also grabbed some gold paint that I had in my craft stash and roughly outlined the letters then added flourishes around the edges.



This is my SIL's backyard. it was a great size and location. We used lots of ladder-back chairs and the photo booth is just around the corner. It's hard to see all of the mason jars in the picture but they really did make an impact in person.




Bubble Gum everywhere. I loved the color that they provided. They were put in baby jars because...well...it's a baby shower. :)




I was so thrilled when I found these popcorn bags at my local Kitchen supply store.




Me with the Lady of the Hour. Love her. K, so this is NOT a flattering picture of me but it was so fun taking it! :)





The 'BIG BROTHER"!!






Photo Booth Props: Hats, clown noses, paper mustaches & bow ties on skewers, chalkboard, chalk.

 


"Guess the Girth" booth. A new twist on an age-old baby shower game. The same process for the "Tickets" sign at the Dessert Table was basically repeated for this sign except that I had to start from scratch. I had my hubby cut the sign out of MDF then I found leftover paint in the colors that I needed (just a lucky coincidence) and painted away.  Then I attatched the paper letters and added some gold detail.

 


I wanted the games to be baby-inspired. My Lizzy came up with this one. It was a hoot. I got these beautiful wooden spools from my local Electrical Supply store. I offered to pay for them but they just gave them to me. :)





Aaaaand...back to the food. Caramel Apples...need I say more? It's been way too long since I've had one. I picked the smallest apples that I could find then found these corn skewers in the produce section at Wal-Mart. They were so cute. I made them simple and rustic to go with the vintage theme. 




Loved the dark glass bottles. In retrospect, this would've been a good opportunity to put a lovely little clever message to the little peanut on here instead of just the boring "Old Fashioned Root Beer".  Everything is better in retrospect. :)




The dessert table minus the Churros. They were still in the oven.




Again with no Churros but now you can see the banner. ;)





Can't do "Carnival" without doing Nachos. I know it's not "dessert" but it is "yummy". ;)





Oh look the Churros made it. :) They should have been put in a cute container but oh well. The guests were eating by now and the light was getting bad.




Makes you hungry, huh? I totally want another Churro right now.




"Ambiance Lighting" :) Just Mason Jars that I wired and hung from the fence with tea lights from the dollar store!




I just added this picture because it was funny. ;) Don't worry...it's just root beer.





 


My sweet niece made these plus a pretty blue on for me. Super fun.




We invited these boys to the party to help us eat the food and to provide us some entertainment. ;)




This was what the party looked like after we all ran for cover from the wind storm. :)



Rustic Wedding Cake Trio

"Charlotte Cake". Cheesecake topped w. fresh berries and wrapped in Lady Fingers.

10", 8" & 6" tiers.

My wonderful, handsome hubby built me my cake stand and even stopped by my cake supply store to get my supplies! Thank you, honey for eating hotdogs and pizza for dinner for the past 3 nights! ;)

Chocolate Fudge cake w. Rassberry filling and Amaretto Buttercream. Garnished w. white chocolate 'Petals'.

4-layer 10" and 2-layer 7" tiers.

Red Velvet w. Cream Cheese Buttercream. Garnished w. fresh berries and red Gumpaste Leaves.
8", 6" and 4" tiers

Gumpaste Flower Tutorial

As promised in the "Soft Vintage Pink and White 1st Birthday Party" post, here is your

Gumpaste Tutorial:

{Here are a couple of other examples of other cakes that I have done using this fabulous flower.}

Gumpaste Tutorial:

Here's what you need:

1.A set of round cutters (close-up shown below) {or you can find concentric circular shapes around your house and use those as a template, cutting them out with an Exacto knife} 2.Cornstarch 3.Wilton Ready-to-Use Gumpaste {or mix} 4. 2 sizes of silver, metallic Dragees - close-up also shown below. (For the smaller size, I used the tiniest dragges that I could find!) 5.Wilton Piping Gel 6.Small rolling pin (again, from Wilton) 7.Tweezers 8.A fondant and gumpaste ball tool (2 are shown but you only need 1) 9. Thin foam pad (Wilton) 10.Wilton Practice board OR a ziploc baggie. 11. Small parchment paper bag filled with the said Piping gel. ;) Tutorial here {In the video, she cuts her triangle in half. I make mine even smaller by cutting it in half AGAIN to have more control of the bag}. *Food coloring is optional depending on what color you want your flowers. You just add it to your gumpaste and kneed it before beginning. ;)

To Begin:

*Select the size cutters that you want. {I used every other size in my set and you can make this flower with as many layers as you want!!}

*Get a boulder-sized {'boulder' as in way back in the day of playing marbles} ball of gumpaste.

*With a super-thin coat of cornstarch on your mat (or surface; you really don't need the mat) and rolling pin, roll out your gumpaste as THIN as you can get it. I'm talking, PAPER THIN.

* Cut out your circles and place them under the practice board (or ziploc baggie) to keep them from drying out.

*Kneed the excess gumpaste and place it back in it's original bag.

*Place the largest circle on your thin foam pad and place your ball tool half-way onto the foam and half-way onto the gumpaste.

*Make sure you have a thin layer of cornstarch on your ball tool and with a fluid motion, rub tool around your gumpaste's edge to create the ruffled edge.

*As you finish each circle, use your piping bag to adhere each circle to the next.

*To make the Dragge center, place a (very small) pea-sized drop of piping gel in the center of your smallest flower.

*With your tweezers, place a large dragge in the center of the piping gel drop.

* Through trial and error, I have found that the easiest way to place the teeny-tiny dragess in place is to pour a few around the center dragee...

*...then sort them with your tweezers.

*Let the flower dry at least 8 hours before assembling them on the cake {or cupcake! They make SUPER cute cupcake toppers!}.

Happy baking, everyone!