Raiford's Construction Cake

I haven't baked in awhile. Ok in a very long time. I now remember WHY I don't bake anymore. It takes SO much time. However, that being said, I really enjoyed making this cake. It was actually probably the most fun cake I have ever made. It was like playing with toys instead of making a cake!

Raiford is Tabor's little buddy that he met at church and he turned 2 this week. So we took him this cake to celebrate. Lindsey said his favorite things were construction trucks so... here's what I made.

Everyone played a part in this cake. My mom went shopping for the cars (since it is hard for me to run errands AND bake) then her and Ilka stayed up until almost 2am chatting with me while I baked all the cakes. Ty printed all the signs that I made and went shopping for the chocolate rocks (which by the way are delicious!) and he helped me place all the decorations on. The chocolate boulders were my favorite part. (thanks Ty!)

Raiford was super excited when he saw it. He loved eating the rocks off of it and then LOVED playing with all his new trucks! Happy 2nd birthday Raiford! It was fun celebrating with you!

Tabor's FIRST birthday PARTY

 Well the day finally arrived. We celebrated our baby boys's first birthday.

Tabor we had such a blast celebrating your first birthday! Everything went so smoothly thanks to everyone who helped out. 

I could not have done this without everyone's help.  Check out the amazing invitations Monica made:

Here's a few pics from the Little Man's First Birthday Bash!

The Birthday cake - thanks to Sarah we actually got this done! I was pretty close to ordering a cake from the grocery store but she saved the day!

Mustache chocolate pops. All the amazing labels, invitations, basically anything that could be printed was thanks to Monica's handy work. Again another life-saver! Couldn't have done this without you Monica- thanks!!

I loved how cute the water bottles turned out!

The sweets setup. Dessert is always the best part!

Our new family tradition. Everyone gets a giant cupcake smash cake for their first birthday and probably for each birthday following. They just don't get to smash it after year 1! ha

The mustache party favor cookies. These were delicious! I actually can't wait to make more of these soon! I think I prefer making cookies now!

Here's a close up of the cookies.

The T-shirts turned out really cute too. Again thanks to my aunts and Sarah who helped cut and iron these on with me. I was serious when I said I owed a thanks to a lot of people!

Here's a pic of all the kids wearing their t-shirts.

AND a pic of the proud parents with their little man. Yes we had fun playing dress up too!

The Smash cake was fun, but Tabor wasn't excited about having to stop playing to sit in his high chair...

He was even LESS excited to be covered in sticky stuff that his mom got on his hands...

Even after he tasted it he wasn't so sure that he liked this cake stuff...

Nope definitely not a fan! That's what we get for giving him zero sugar until this point.

The cute little birthday boy covered in icing and wanting so badly to be covered in dirt instead.

My sis got a great pic of the "after" smash cake (actually I think she took most if not all of these pictures- thanks Steph!!) 

Proud mama with her Little Man Tabor.

PART 2 - PLAYTIME - The kids had so much fun playing at Ready Set Go. Even the little ones had a blast rolling around on the mats and foam blocks.

The birthday boy crawling around.

Gabriel & Jake playing with the blocks. Jake had a blast under the half moon block. I think he spent most of his time playing peek-a-boo under it.

Even Baby Sawyer got all dressed up complete with mustache! You're so precious little Sawyer!

Aunt D with Gabriel. I love all these little guys so much!

A nearly one year old Jake posing for the camera. I wonder how he learned this with a momma photographer! Too cute!

The big kids had a blast swinging themselves into the foam pit. Gains was an expert in no time!

Sweet little Cape was off with the big kids the second he got the chance. Cape you are too much fun!

Brecken telling the guy in charge a story, Ava looks very entertained by whatever she is saying, Breken helping Crockett reach the ring as Braidy and Jake watch and little Denham plays peek a boo down below in the foam pit. I'm so glad these kiddos were able to help us celebrate Tabor's big ONE!

One of the biggest surprises was that my awesome aunt Agie did not come alone. She brought my beautiful grandma, one of my favorite cousins, another amazing aunt along with my sister and her fiance all along to surprise us. It was an amazing weekend. We will never forget it!

Getting him to sit still for a picture is nearly impossible but here is the birthday boy with his momma and again with both Ty and I.

Ty I think you should rock the tie look always. I love it!

Tabor and Gabriel climbing

Sweet little Quin crawling and blowing kisses at the same time. You're so precious Quinny!

Finally, when we looked up to see what Tabor was doing we saw a little boy nearly passed out from playing too hard. ha! I think we succeeded in making sure he had fun at his first birthday party! (Which for the record will take place at Ready Set Go as long as possible because it was so much fun and so easy for us!)

And finally a pic of the boys after the party with their cute momma's in ties and the boys in their matching shirts. :-)

Thanks again to everyone. Thanks to Bob for playing and watching the kids so Sarah and I could make the cake. Thanks to Ty's parents and my parents for all their help, love and support. Thanks to our grandparents for loving their great grandbaby so much and thanks to all of our friends and family that came and helped us make this day so special for little Tabor. We love you all so much.

Tabor...you may not remember this, but we hope you love these pictures someday. We love you little man.

Clover's 1st Birthday Cake

Mandi came into town for her niece Clover's first birthday and she asked me to help her make a cake. How could I resist getting to hang out with Mandi AND making a cake.

I started baking the cakes on Thursday. My mom stayed up until 2am baking with me. We made 8 cakes! (Actually she stayed up mopping the floors so I went to bed before her. I told her not to bother because we'd have to mop again after decorating but she likes her kitchen clean.)

Tabor and I ran to Michaels in the morning to get a few last minute supplies and then we started decorating the cakes after lunch once Mandi got in town. Her sister-in-law, Kimberly, & the birthday girl Clover came too! It was fun spending time together and decorating!! (Clover was so cute all dressed in pink with little squeaker shoes!)

The most fun part was the bottom pillow layer. We needed Sarah to measure and help us but we improvised and it turned out ok. I gave up trying to use the ruler and make it perfect and I think it turned out better that way. A little pearl was added to each corner which made it even cuter.

The top layer was covered in white fondant and spray painted with gold edible spray paint. (That was fun!) Mandi added the decorations on the top. Everyone made fondant roses (even Kimberly who was certain she wouldn't be able to make them) They turned out so pretty! Especially once we painted them with shimmer. (yes with vodka but the alcohol evaporated before any kids ate it!)

The middle layer was covered in white fondant and Mandi painted silver shimmer dust all over it. It turned out amazing! We added pink and gold stripes.

The finished product...turned out really cute!! I'll update it with more pictures once I get them but for now here's what I have. It's an iPhone pic but you get the idea! 

Clover we hope you loved your first birthday cake.

Of course NO first birthday is complete with a SMASH CAKE! So here's Clover's (aka Clo Clo) smash cake. I hope they got a shot of her smashing into it. I'll post that if they send it to me too. This is a chocolate cake carved in the shape of a clover and covered in lots of pink buttercream. Clo was written in pearls. YUM!

Happy first birthday Clover! We had fun making your cakes and Mandi I can't wait to make you a BABY SHOWER CAKE!! Congrats girl!! Only a few more days until we know if it'll be blue or pink!!

Note: My mom is now giving me a hard time saying that Tabor's 1st bday cake had better be awesome. Ha, by then I'll probably be tired of baking. Haha! Honestly though I can't come up with a theme! So if anyone has any suggestions send them my way!!!

Cake Baking in Texas

Well Maternity Leave has come to an end. My friend Brandi was throwing a gender reveal party and needed a cake for this special day. Her and her hubby went to the doctor and brought me the sealed envelope! I was so excited to be the first to know!!

Here's what the invitations that Monica made looked like: (I love these!!) AND here's a LINK TO HER SITE if you need invitations for anything let her know! She's pretty amazing!

So I went to Michaels and bought EVERYTHING cake-wise that they sold. (ok not really but it felt like it) Until now I've always used Sarah's supplies AND I've always had Sarah and Marlene by my side during cake making! So I bought 3 cake pans and decided to use the biggest one since I had to feed 25 people.

Well once I went to put it in the oven I realized...it didn't fit!!! I had to turn the oven racks upside down and backwards to get it to fit! Here's a pic of the giant cakes!

That's a sketch of the cake on an 8x10 sheet of paper to give you an idea how big the cakes were!

Here's a pic of the carved cake with the PINK (yep it's a GIRL!) icing! They have a precious little boy and now they're expecting a little girl! YAY! That's so exciting!

After trying to stack the cakes and make it a double decker and after the top one cracking in half and falling OFF I went with a single layer cake instead. (It was still big) I don't know what I was thinking trying to make it so dang big! God had other plans and just when I thought "how the heck am I going to fix this" He made it quite clear that the solution was simple...ONE LAYER!! So after 2 stressful days of baking and decorating (Thank you sooo much to Monica for bringing me coffee, my family for babysitting, my mom for coming home during her lunch break, and my dad for helping me ALL day in any and every way possible- he now hates cake ha!) here's the final product. Sarah and Marlene...I really needed you guys, but in the end I hope I still made you proud!

A close up of the secret onesie cake!

Congrats Brandi and Keith! We are so excited for you guys! We can't wait to meet your precious new baby GIRL!

The Making of Sarah's Baby Cake

After months of planning Sarah's Baby shower the date finally arrived!!

Everything was set and ready to go except for...the cake!

Sarah makes the cakes! Marlene & I are her assistants. Sure we ARE amazing, but without Sarah we are like 2 chickens with our heads cut off. Ha!

So the Thursday before the shower - I started baking. I bake for a living so this was easy enough. Although, it's NOTHING like baking a cake for cakeballs! The cakes have to actually LOOK perfect when they come out of the oven! I can't just crumble them and cover up any lumps or uneven spots!

Luckily Sarah did let me borrow all her cake supplies. The special pans & bake even strips were fun to use!

The White Cake Recipe I used was also delicious! Thank goodness because it needed to be the right texture in order to stack properly and yet taste good! We were able to get both!

I baked 6 cakes on Thursday (plus filled a cakeball order). I should've taken pics of those too but I didn't. I was too concerned with how the cakes were turning out!

Friday I was up by 6am purely out of excitement! I began by making the cakes even and ready to be stacked and dirty iced.

The first challenge was the car. We wanted to put a car on top of the cake because Sarah's theme for Gabriel's nursery is transportation. Trains, planes & cars! We already had a plane planned to hang above the cake, a train painted on the piggy that would sit beside the cake so the only thing missing was the car. (That and the other cake we had picked out would've taken us years to complete) So the cake car won!

I had fun slicing the tops off the cakes! Especially because this was how we were able to sample it to see if it was tasty or not!

After dirty icing the bottom and stacking the 2nd layer of cake on top, I carved the cake to look like a little VW Bug car.

Then I dirty iced the entire car. To those non-Cake Boss fans the correct term is "Crumb coat"
Crumb Coat or Dirty Ice: used to describe a thin layer of frosting that keeps crumbs where they belong–on the cake–not the frosting! Allows fondant to lay and stick smoothly against the cake.

Then I covered it in blue fondant. I have NO idea how Sarah would've done this, but I am certain she wouldn't have had folds on the sides. I really had no idea what else to do with the extra fondant fold. At least I made the folds where the wheels were supposed to go. 

About this time Marlene came over to help! Thank goodness! It really took ALL day to get this cake done.

We began by stacking, dirty icing & decorating the bottom layer. This was the largest layer & adding stripes to a round cake can be tricky. So I cut and handed the stripes to Marlene & let her do the hard part!

It turned out great! Perfect actually!

Then we worked on the top layer. We covered it in white fondant and then decorated it with light blue & dark blue dots.

Then we rolled teeny tiny balls of fondant for the borders of each layer. Our fingers were sore after this part!

Finally we decorated the car! This was the fun part! Tim suggested we use Baby Gabriel's initials and due date for the license plate which made it even cuter!

These pics are from my iphone (sorry that the quality isn't great!) It was also getting late and very dark outside!

Yay for our VW Bug! We were so proud of how it turned out!

We stacked the 2 cake layers and added the fondant border. We knew we'd be rushed for time in the morning before the shower so we decided to risk stacking it ahead of time. Luckily (and after LOTS of prayer) the next morning the cake was still standing & looked just as it did the night before!

We did wait and stack the car on top AFTER transporting it to Rachel's house for the shower. This we were not willing to take a risk on!

Finally, after adding Gabriel's name in edible marker on white fondant and stacking it all together.

Here's the finished product!

Sarah we hope you LOVED it as much as we did! Pigachoo (get it - Pig + Choo Choo) even looked cute sitting by the cake! The flowers were done by Rose at Ultimate Affaire. She's AMAZING! They matched the cake perfectly!

Here are a few more pics of the cake!

A close up of the license plate!

YAY for Baby Gabriel! I know it looks like Sharpie, but the letters were definitely written with Edible Markers!

Marlene and I survived our first SOLO Cake Experience. We really missed Sarah though! It was funny because Sarah kept saying we could go to Plan B which I guess she thought was buy a cake, but Plan B for us would've been CALL SARAH! ha! So teacher Sarah I hope your 2 assistants made you proud! We love you and can't wait to meet that precious baby boy in your belly!!