Mermaids, Wizards and New Moon

Title got ya wonderin'?

That is the theme of the last few cakes I have done.

This was a wizards hat that I did for a Wizards of Waverly Place theme party. This cake is 100% edible. The bottom is a 8 inch chocolate cake, filled and iced in vanilla butter cream. The hat is also chocolate cake, iced in vanilla butter cream. I baked the hat portion of the cake in a 4 cup & 2 cup pyrex measuring cups and then stacked and iced. All the yellow accents you see are fondant. The clients were very excited. The mom had originally asked me to just do a 2-d version. Me, being me, and loving a good challenge, I was like OH NO, we can make this bad boy stand up. So they gave me the creative leniency to go for it. I always hate myself during the process for saying I will do something like that. But in the end when I have the finished product and it turns out great, and the client is happy..then I am happy I took the challenge on.

This cake was an 8 inch red velvet cake, filled and iced in vanilla butter cream. The mother to be was decorating the nursery in the sock monkey theme, so I was asked to make a sock monkey cake. This was my own design I came up with. If you ever google sock monkey cake, you will see some very scary cakes! All of the accents I hand made out of fondant; the monkey, blocks, dots and banner.

This was an 8 inch strawberry cake; filled and iced with vanilla butter cream. The wine bottle is made from fondant. The grapes and vine are all butter cream.

This Emma's 6th birhtday cake. She wanted a mermaid cake. It is a 8 inch red velvet and 6 inch white cake; as requested by the birthday girl; filled and iced in vanilla buttercream. The stars are made from chocolate using a mold.  All of the other accents, anemones, clam shell with pearl, turtle, fish, sea horses, mermaid, lobster, were all handmade by either the hubby or I. 

This was a 8 inch chocolate and 6 inch vanilla cake; filled and iced with vanilla butter cream. All of the accents are made out of fondant. This was designed to make the plates and napkins for the party.

Here is mine and the hubby's version of the New Moon book. It is all edible. It is a vanilla cake, the "pages" are vanilla butter cream scored to look like pages. Then it was covered in black Satin Ice fondant. With fondant accents on the cover of the book.

This is just a few of the things that have been keeping me so busy over the past couple of months.

Call me crazy

After a 4 1/2 hour wait, a couple of new friends made ( Hi Charlotte!) I finally got to meet PW!!!!

She was at Border's Bookstore in Dallas last night promoting her new cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks. The hubby and I arrived about 5:15 p.m. I got my pink wristband (how fitting...if you know me...you know I love me some pink.) Each wristband color represented 100 people. I was the 4th color. That's right, that means there were 300 plus people ahead of me. But oh the number of people behind me....I believe there were at least three more colors behind me. They called my color to line up around 6:30 p.m. I finally made it to the front and got my booked signed about 10 minutes after 11:00 p.m.

It really didn't seem like 4 1/2 hours. All the ladies in line around me made it go by pretty fast. I stood in line next to a sweet older lady whose name was also Ree. Her name was not short for anything though. Apparently it was an old family name. I am sure you will see her on PW's site. PW took some pics of her when she made it to the front. Hubby stood at the front and called me on my cell phone with updates of when they made announcements and as each wristband color passed through. So we kind of felt like we were in the know.

I had plenty of time to look through the cookbook. It is great, of course! I love that it is so personal. She has included all kinds of photos of friends, family and the ranch life. The recipes have step by step photos; which is just awesome in my book. I love to know what something is supposed to look like so that I know I am doing it right. I can't wait to try out some of the recipes.

I met Charlotte while standing in line. She was standing in line getting a book signed for her mom who lives in Ohio. Charlotte herself, had never been to PW's website until that day. She went to look and see what this woman she was about to go stand in line for was all about. I think by the end of the wait though, she may be a fan of PW now also. She was even talking about getting herself a copy of the book. Gotta love it!

All in all, it was a great experience. Note to self: eat before you go and take a bottle of water!

Can't wait for Black Heels to Tractor Wheels to come out; I will go do it again!