Cakes, Cakes and more Cakes

Ok, so I finally located the pictures Mike took of the cake I made for our church graduation Sunday. It's the Sunday in May when we celebrate all the seniors who are graduating and we have a little reception after church for them. So I made the cake... Four different torted cakes, two were butter cake with apricot filling, one was dark chocolate with chocolate buttercream filling and the last was dark chocolate with no filling, but covered in melted bittersweet chocolate. The flat portion of the grad cap is made from a matzo cracker, coated in bittersweet chocolate. Each of the book cakes started as a larger flat sheet which I split into two pieces for the layers. Two are wrapped with fondant (the red and yellow ones) and one is iced smooth with buttercream. It was a blast to make!

Since I'm sharing cake photos, I figured I'd share a couple other from this year. Next is my grandmother's birthday cake. It was a really warm April day making this one and we didn't have the window A/C units on, so the fondant was "melty" along with the buttercream... I think this would have been much prettier but it was what it was :)

Then there's the cake I made for the Women's Ministry cake auction at our spring Fiesta. I actually made two cakes, but this is the only one Mike remembered to take a photo of. It was a coconut cream cake with fresh shaved coconut on top which I made into a bonnet cake. I created the flower out of fondant using templates from my scrapbooking stash. It sold for $30! Pretty good if you ask me! :)

Next is the cake I made for the closing of our summer vacation bible school. Our theme this year was based on hot air balloons, so I created a hot air balloon cake. Anyway, I used the gel colors to fill it in and covered the board with some cloud scrapbooking paper :)

And last but not least is the birthday cakes I made for my niece Kayla's birthday in November. One is a Dora the Explorer cake made from the custom Dora pan and the other is my own version of "Backpack" (from Dora cartoons). I cut two 8x8 square cakes to make the backpack. Kayla seemed to enjoy them both so that made me happy :)

Hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I have enjoyed making them!

How fun!

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Gad Zukes!

Wordless Wednesday

What Kind of Yarn Are You? (Quiz)

This was fun... Found this quiz link on another Loom Knitter's blog She's got a lot of cool patterns, including one for a "Three Crosses" dishcloth that I'm hoping to knit a few of! So take the quiz and see "What Kind of Yarn Are You"?

Duct Tape Christmas Gift Bag

I also thought I'd share the fun project I did for Mike's Christmas party gift exchange in 2006. It was a white elephant type gift exchange and his group is all computer folks. And of course he didn't mention needing a gift for it until the night before Fortunately we had a book:

(Clicking on image will take you to Amazon.com)

that he was able to give as the gift, but we didn't really have any appropriate package for it. Of course he didn't find out until the next day that he was SUPPOSED to wrap it in newspaper so no one could tell one package from another, but oh well! So anyway, being that he loved his duct tape wallet that I made for him so very much, I came up with the idea to make a duct tape gift bag for his gift exchange present. J So I used a paper bag as a template and then scaled to match the book, allowing for overlap at the top to make the closure. I then created a sheet of "duct tape cloth" using the technique I learned in doing the wallets, which is basically like this...

1. Start by having a non-stick, cut-able surface available. I use one of the large quilter's self-healing mats for this and it works well.


2. Tear off a strip of duct tape the length of your finished piece plus 1". So, if you need a sheet of "cloth" that is 14" long, you'd make your first strip 15"


3. Tear off two more strips this same length.


4. Place your first strip sticky-side-up on your cutting surface.


5. Line up your second strip and place it, sticky-side-down, half-way onto this piece. So, if your duct tape is 2" wide, you'd place the edge of the second strip 1" onto the first strip, with 1" hanging off. So at this point you should have 1" of uncovered tape, sticky side up (the first strip) and 1" of uncovered tape, sticky side down (the second strip).


6. Line up your third strip, sticky-side-down, and cover the remaining sticky-side-up portion of strip 1. So now you should have two strips, sticky-side-down showing with none of strip #1 showing at all.


7. Flip your strips over so that strip #1 is now on top and the sticky sides of 2 & 3 are face up. Fold one of these sticky sides down onto strip #1 to form your edge strip.


8. Now repeat adding strips in alternate fashion (sticky-side-up, sticky-side-down, etc.) until you have a sheet that is the width you need. When measuring for your final width, don't forget to account for the extra "fold down" part of your sheet so you can have a nice clean finished edge. Once you have enough strips joined together, fold that last strip over like you did at the top of your sheet to finish it off.

Viola! You now have a sheet of "duct tape fabric" that you can do lots of things with!

So, I took the sheet of "fabric" and formed a "lunch sack" type bag with it, complete with folding sides and bottom. I just used extra strips of tape to create the seams. I put the book in to find where I could fold it down and then marked a spot to put holes to tie it closed. Using my eyelet hole punch (from scrapbooking) I punched holes in the top of the bag and in the body of one side of the bag for tying. Mike got some CAT-5 cable from his stash and stripped the insulation off so I was left with a bundle of twisted colored wire, which I used to make the bow tie closure. I then added a red poinsettia paper flower ornament with a glue dot because I told him the black bag just didn't look very "Christmasy" to me Anyway, he liked it and said it was a hit with those who got to see it before he had to take the book out and re-wrap it in newspaper And he gave the bag to the person who got the book (his friend Doug I think) in the end as well. It was a very sturdy bag and would probably make a really neat lunch bag for a fun-loving kid. Surface washable too! Anyway, here's a couple of pics of the finished product (click on them for larger views).

Still trying to decide where to put the poinsettia...

The finished product!

Christmas in Boerne photos

Ok, so I'm finally getting some of the photos uploaded to the web from our Christmas picture taking... I've put some of the pictures Mike took of our outside decorations as well as some of the ones he took of downtown Boerne on my photobucket site if you're curious.

Click on the thumbnails to see each picture.

Side View of our front yard decorations.



The 5'x8' canvas I painted two years ago. Miniature lights are strung through it as stars. I hope to add another canvas this year...



This is a look through our front gate.



Ella Blue. A boutique clothing store in downtown Boerne. I just love the snowflake lights! They won best storefront this year I think.



The gazebo in town square.




Our historic public library building. It is so beautiful this time of year!



Another shot of the library...



A different angle shot of the library. Can you tell Mike likes the library?



Last shot of the library. This one a little closer so you can see the building sign.



Looking down the lawn of town square. The light tree in the distance is probably 2 stories tall at center.



A little closer look a that light tree.



This is my favorite shot of this past year. Looking through the gazebo down the lawn at the light tree. Beautiful shot hun!