First Christmas Cake for the year

This is the discarded shoe box cake!

This didn't photograph very well as i only had tin foil to line the board with and it reflects.

But Felicity was very happy with her cake :-)

Abby passed her green belt in Karate only 3 more to go and she will be a black belt - here is our little Ninja posing for me!  She still has to do what her mother says though lol.  Well done Abby!  Now i have to scrap these and the ball photos - one day lol.

Today I made a red velvet cake - has anyone out there made one of these?  I googled the recipe and made it as I have a 21st cake to make in three weeks and they wanted red velvet - I think a good chocolate cake tastes WAY better (actually i shouldn't say that because i have not tried it yet but it is more of a sponge sort of a cake and I don't particularly like the icing - licked my fingers i have lol)
I also made some gluten free chocolate cup cakes for them to try too.  The birthday girl is calling in today to have a taste test - gosh i hope i pass!

here is the the practice cake:

So if you are calling past today - pop in and try some red velvet I might even make you a cuppa to go with it!

And here was some cupcakes and cake pops Abby and I made for Halloween, the brains had mixed berry sauce in so when you bit into the cake - :blood: ozzed out lol.

Hope you are all having a great weekend, and thanks so much for popping in.



Rachel

Wedding Cake

Well by now Mr & Mrs Smith will probably be married - congratulations!

I have spent the last 5 weeks making this cake.  To say it was stressful was an understatement!
I don't think that I am yet wedding material with cakes and although the bride was fantastic to work and very easy ozey - and happy with her cake, I think maybe I will stick with Birthday cakes for now.
I made 4 practice shoes here is the shoe that I was trying to copy:

I am not sure that the bride ended up wearing this shoe in the end but we had to start somewhere!
The couple own a shoe shop so the cake was fitting to them.
I did EVERYTHING at least twice and that included baking the cake which had 3 Christmas cake recipes in it, it took 3 packets of Almond icing and two of white icing just to cover it. Then another packet of icing for the stripes.  The first cake didn't have nice square corners when i covered it so I re made it.  The cast off cake is being decorated as we speak for a Christmas cake!
I learnt so much doing this cake and if I did it again there are many things I would do different - I was not happy with the "lid" of the cake should have done this as one piece to get it tidier but I didn't have time to bake and re cover a third cake!
So anyway here is the cake:

With it being cold today I have started to make the "bits" for the discarded "shoe box" cake and hopefully I will have that one finished this weekend and then I have to start a 21st cake for a client - this one is a Vet technician so should be fun!

Catch you all later, thanks so much for stopping in :-)

Have a great weekend.

Rachel

MIA

Hi there

Gosh doesn't time fly!  Actually I have been deciding if i actually want to continue with a blog my focus has shifted and I wonder if there is any point in posting - only time will tell i guess!
I made a couple of cards for Jo at Embellish It to showcase some of her new papers, here is what I came up with:

Abby and I made some cupcakes and cake pops for halloween - just because i could - because I don't beleive in Halloween and wouldn't let my kids go trick or treating!

But they were fun to make - the "brains" had "blood" ( mixed berry sauce) in them when you bit into them!
Abby and Oliva decided to dress up for Mufty day at school, Abby brought a $9 wedding dress from save mart pulled off the sleeve and cut the dress up and this is what she turned it into - the courpse's bride:

They had a blast - can't you tell they are drama students!
Jamie had his first school ball and like proud parents we spent "HOURS" waiting and watching all the students arrive in there vehicles, there was fire trucks, limos to wheelbarrows! Stacey and Jamie looked stunning.

I have spent the last 5 weeks making my first wedding cake (and probably last!)  Tomorrow the bride and groom will be married and I can show you what i have been up to :-)

Have a great weekend everyone, thanks so much if you stopped bye :-)

Happy 70th Birthday Mum

For a wee while we had been planning a "get together" for mum's 70th birthday. My cousins from Wanaka and Invercargil were coming and family from Christchurch.
My Aunty had decided to come over from Australia to suprise mum so after may e-mails and secret squirrel business Dad and I went to Christchurch on Wednesday to pick her up from the Airport.  When we got home to Mum and Dad's Aunty went to the door and rang the door bell - mums reaction was so good untill she cried lol.
Wednesday was mum's actual birthday so I took the afternoon off work and we went out for lunch and then went into town which was really nice!
Friday night Nigel and I had been invited to the Business Excellence Awards which was a black tie event - we haven't been that dressed up since we got married!
So just for a laugh here is a photo taken at midnight when we got home from a fantastic night, some didn't even recognise me with straight hair - lucky it didn't rain because that would have been the end of straight lol!

Then I was up at 7am to make mum's cakes and of course Joe's (last post).  I had already made mums topper and love heart but was not sure how much icing I would need and I wanted to do an ombre effect so I made 5 times the recipie and made three colours.MAN my hand was hurting by the time I had piped all those ruffles.
We had 33 people going out for tea so I needed to make sure there was going to be enough cake!
Anyway here is the picture of mum's cake which she was really happy with:

We ended up not cutting it on Saturday night so everyone came over to Mum's on Sunday and we cut the cake and had another excuse to catch up again.
Aunty Lyn headed back to Aussie today (we miss you already) and the cousins and all visiting family headed home to so I am sure Mum and Dad will have a well earned rest tomorrow.

Right that's about it from me!  Thanks so much for stopping bye and thank so much for letting me know that you have visited :-)

Rachel

Cards and more cake!

This past fortnight has just been crazy at our place.  I had been asked to make a thinking of you card so of course you have to give options just in case they don't like one :-)  So these are what I came up with.

This was a take off of one that I had seen somewhere - sorry I can't remember where it was!  And this was the second option:

The first card was the chosen one :-)

I also made two cakes this weekend here is the first one that I made for a friend of Jamie's who turned 17.
Joe's favourite cake is lolly cake so after some googling I found out that you just cover it with gnache and then white ice over the lolly cake so that is what i did.  The actual cake is 3 recipies so he should have enough to last for a week at least :-)
Joe has a nitendo game (cake was the controller) and he loves Mario so after seeing a tutorial on how to make Mario a wee while back I decided to give it a go and here is the resulting cake:

I was pretty happy with how it all turned out in the end!  Ok so Mario doesn't look as good as the tutorial one but I was happy!

The other cake was my mum's 70th which I have been working on for a few days but I will post that one tomorrow.
I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

Cheers

Rachel

My Baby is 15!

I say it every birthday but seriously where did that 15 years go?

Abby turned 15 yesterday and was meant to be heading out to karate camp.  We had lots of chocolate cake in the freezer ready to make her topsy turvy cake (just because i wanted to have a go at one) and then next weekend for her birthday party we had a smaller cake planned.
Abby made her own invitations buy using distress ink and then burning them all to make them look old, she wanted a fantasy theme for her party here are the invites;

I took Friday afternoon off work to finish the cake but got waylaid helping dad fix the caravan roof - that aside i still would not have got it finished in time to take to camp - except Thursday night at 8.45pm and after the cake was actually put together Karate Camp was postponed.  So what to do with 7 chocolate cakes?
Abby phoned around her friends and lucky they could all make it this weekend for her party instead of next, so tonight we have 5 teenage girls for a sleep over!
Here are some photos of her cake:

 Here is the birthday girl cutting into her cake and a close up of the dragons head - I put the candle in his mouth so he could "breath fire" but it didn't really work lol.

This is a photo of her dress up with her friends:

I think they all look awesome although the costumes only lasted for a couple of hours then they went swimming and the "theme" of the night has been lost lol.

But the shreeching from up the front as they all do singstar is shocking lol.

My first attempt at a topsy turvy cake turned out OK for the theme but if it was meant to be a pretty cake the covering on it was shocking and I would be very nervous making one for someone else - scared in fact!

So tonight might not be one of much sleep for us with the girls ruling the house but they only turn 15 once!

I hope you are all having a fantastic weekend and made the most of the sunshine today as looking at the weather forecast it is not going to last!

Have a good one :-)

It's Missing something!

Hi there

This is the card I was talking about in my previous post:

I love this cupcake thief from Mo Manning, she is so cute and sneaky!  Nic came over a week or so ago and we put some bling in the corner top left and that defiantly helped.
Here is a picture of a cake that I did this weekend for friends that have just built a brand new home after having theirs destroyed in the February Earthquake, they have re built in Rangioria - hey Trace if you are reading, we went the back way to get there and I got all excited when I past the sign saying Swananoa!  I know where you live (well the area lol).
Anyway here is the cake it was a quick - ISH one lol:

The photos actually don't do this one justice, it looked sweet and was a copy of a cake that I found somewhere on the Internet!
This week I have Abby's 15th Birthday cake to do - this is a made up creation so it could be interesting, she is taking this cake to Karate camp as Abby heads to Raincliff on Friday (her birthday) for the weekend then next weekend we make another one for her slumber party and the following weekend I have to make mums 70th birthday cake so it is all in the kitchen for me over the next 3 weeks!

Right time to hit the shower and head to work!  Have a great week everyone :-)

Copic 1st Birthday

Copic Marker Europe are celebrating their first birthday and to celebrate Krista Smith from Saturated Canary designed two images that for a limited time you could get.  Then you enter your card and go in the draw to win some copic's. 
Now I don't own copic's and as this competition was only open to Europe, so I didn't think they would mind that I used my distress inks to colour this image in :-)

Photos don't really do this card justice as it looks way better in real life, I was very happy with how it turned out.
It has been good to get in and have a bit of a play - I have even found images that I haven't even played with yet!
I have two cakes to get done in the next month so looking forward to that - why is it my daughter thinks I can make anything and has ordered a MASSIVE elaborate cake?  Perhaps she can help for the many hours that it is going to take to make it, instead of just helping eat it lol.  But i guess you only turn 15 once!

Right off to take photos of the other card I have made, didn't quite turn out how i had hoped there is something missing perhaps you will be able to suggest how i can "fix" it!
Until then I hope you are having a nice lazy Sunday :-)

Thanks for popping in.

Rachel

Holidays

Aha the bliss of being on holiday!  Until the week comes to an end and you realise that it is work on Monday - now don't get me wrong I love my job - but I love holidays more!

We went to Dunedin during the holidays and had a fantastic day, went shopping of course, did Ten Pin bowling and Laser strike, ran/walked up Baldwin Street, went to the museum and caught up with an friend.
BUT the best the funniest part of the day was our Driver (who shall remain un named) drove the wrong way down the one way street.  We all had tears in our eyes from laughing - you had to be there it was just so funny!  We were making up the next visa adds, Ten Pin Bowling $24.00, Laser Strike $35.00 driving down a one way street the wrong way - PRICELESS!!!!
We were just so lucky it was not busy and we had plenty of room to correct our mistake - we laughed all the way home!

Finally today I got to play in my scrap room and use my new Nestability!  This is a free digi image from Krista Smith - Saturated Canary, she is an amazing artist go and check out her blog - she will be giving another freebie on Monday!

I woke up this morning with a nagging cough and sore throat - no wonder I played terrible basketball last night!
Anyway I think I will head back to my table (why is it once i get it cleaned up so we can actually have  a meal on the table I manage to get everything out again and make a mess!)

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks so much for stopping in :-)