Mustache March Madness!!

So, Mustache March is finally over, here is a link to the Wiki. The husband only lasted about two weeks with his lip weasel. It was causing too much distraction at his office, people kept giggling during meetings, not productive.

I started out with these mustache templates I found on The Inspired Bride.

I ended up having to cut them apart to account for the sticks. Here is a photo of a bunch of them piped out in chocolate.

A whole bunch of chocolate 'staches that have set up.

The finished product

The problem with the little sticks is that the 'staches kept twirling around, but overall a great success!

St. Patrick's Day

We started our day with some green eggs and milk! I think that she was somewhat nervous about trying these. It's just food coloring babe!
Here is Steve the Sock Monkey modeling one of the pins I gave out this year.
A fantastic pattern from another outstanding crafter and blogger, Betz White.
I only made one glittery & sparkly one, four guesses who got this one, I only have 4 friends after all....
If you answered Lenae, gold star for you! She was actually pouting because I was handing the pins out to my other 3 friends since I wouldn't be seeing them on St. Patrick's day. Yeah, I made her wait, evil laugh....MWAAAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Well, it didn't end there. It ended with St Patrick's Day (night)ZUMBA!!!
I actually bought a pair of green legwarmers, and then when I was cleaning my "closet" I found another pair! So, Teri got my extras.

Lenae and Me rockin' the green fishnets!

I also prepared some appropriate sweet treats for the evening.
Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes, with bittersweet chocolate ganache centers and white chocolate and Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream. I used the recipe I found on Confessions of a Tart! What kind of an awesome blog name is that?!?!?
I didn't use the whiskey in the ganache, and I had some white chocolate buttercream left over from The Husband's birthday cake, so I mixed my Bailey's right into that.
Who knew beer (stout) in cake would be so good?!?

OK, so I managed to work Crafts and Cakes into this post....

I'll round out this St. Patrick's Day post with my favorite Patrick on the CrossFit circut, Patrick Barber. Currently tied at #33 on the Crossfit Open Leaderboard.

The big 2-9

This was a wonderful cake to make. There was much discussion on theme, colors, shapes, everything. I'm glad because it shapes my ideas of what someone's expectations are.

It was just pretty, pink, and still grown up somehow at the same time.

Obviously it was for a 29th birthday party.

There were of course coordinating cupcakes to go along with the cake.

Here is a close up of what I call scrolling, for lack of a better word, on the bottom tier of the cake.

Getting better, I think that my days with henna parties really paid off there.

Go Sox GO!!

I will refrain from that classic school yard chant regarding the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Baseball season has ended for the kids on our base and I was asked to make the cupcakes/cake for the two Red Sox teams.

First were cupcakes.

The Boston B.

And then the cupcake/Cake combo for the older kids.

Hello Kitty

After making cakes pretty steady for about a year I finally have my first Hello Kitty cake request. And, I actually have another Hello Kitty cake later this week as well. When it rains it pours cute little kitties.

The colors and idea was based off this napkin that I was given.
She's pretty cute for a cat with no mouth.

Here are the coordinating cupcakes that went along with the cake.


Nom, nom, nom!

Elephantitis

Somtimes it's those seemingly easy requests that really trip me up.

Elephants.

I could imagine what I wanted to do in my head.

But the ears, they really tripped me up for some reason.

And then the cupcakes kepy spontaniously generating powerded sugar somehow. I would brush them off, and then the next time I turned around there would be sugar everywhere again.

Those fondant Elephants really love their powdered sugar dust baths I guess.

Living Large

As a kid I absolutely loved Garfield comics. I think I had about 30 of those books. So, imagine my surprise when I was asked to make a Garfield themed cake for one of The Kid's BFF's birthday party. I also made her cake last year, which was an American Idol theme, but I don't think I've ever posted it here.

Anyway, Garfield, Yay!

I was lucky I also had some inspiration. Thank you Bakerella.


The cupcakes ended up being served at the party, and then they took the cake home to be eaten later.

This is the only fully fondant covered cake that I've done in a really long time.

The Big Freeze

These were kind of a last minute creation for one of The Kid's classmates. I made his cupcakes last year too, so I was more than happy to do these as well.

He wanted Ice Age cupcakes this year.

Sid and Manny were the only characters I could sculpt, the others kept coming out too blobby.

Add some snowflakes and a few acorns here and there.

Skate party

First time ever making a skateboarding themed cake. Cakes for older boys can get tricky, add too much and it gets to looking too girly. Lucky for me, this family had a pretty firm idea of what they wanted.
Originally it was going to be just a skateboard shaped cake. But we got to talking and decided on a Vans inspired red and black checkerboard with some skateboard decorations.
These skateboards are gumpaste painted with icing gell colors. I know that on a real skateboard it's the bottom of the deck that is painted and decorated, but I thought that it would look weird to have them upside down, so I painted the tops. Artistic license.
And some cupcakes to go along with it all for easy serving at the party.

Yarn Kitty

This was for a teacher's birthday. She ordered a small cake and cupcakes to share with her class.

She likes crochet, and kitties.

Here are the cupcakes that go along with these. She has a rather large class.

Hot-Cha-Cha!

Our PTSA did a Teacher Appreciation lunch this week with a spicy theme.

I'm not so much for cooking spicy foods these days (The Husband has a sensitive palate), eating spicy foods yes, cooking not so much.

I'm usually on desserts for these things, so I decided to try something new.

I hear that the chocolate/chili combo is supposed to be very nice.
So I did chocolate dipped chili peppers on regular chocolate cupcakes.

Here is The Kid's teacher after braving the first nibble.
I'm guessing it was a little hot, though she did admit that her tongue was a bit numb after the rest of her spicy lunch.

The consensus of those who braved the pepper was that it was a nice flavor combination.

Who knew?

Going to the Dogs

So, puppy dog cupcakes for a birthday.

Luckily I had just checked out this book from the library, and it had some great ideas for making dogs.

A sort of Dalmatian.

My favorite, a disapproving Scottie.

Some sort of squishy faced dog that kind of looks like Chewbaca.

And a sort of a Westie.

One little girl went around the room collecting all the dogs from classmates willing to give them up. She ended up taking about six of them home on a plate, it was kind of strange.

Movie Night

Here are some popcorn cupcakes I made for a birthday party held at the movie theatre.

I was unable to find any white and red striped paper to make the cupcake cups, so I made some out of solid red paper and used white electrical tape to create the stripes.

These are rainbow cupcakes covered in buttercream icing.

All displayed on my brand new cupcake stand.

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Started out the year with Pokemon Cupcakes!


Poke balls???? Catcher balls???

Fun and easy to make.

Nothing Says Christmas Like....

CUPCAKES!!! Christmas cupcakes.

These were a last minute creation for a kid's Christmas party.

Easy, but fun! Pretty much the only Christmas themed items I made this year.

Ornaments.

And little trees!

Sweet!

There were little kids with green teeth talking to Santa all night long. It was awesome!