Sunday, November 11, 2007

Where My Creative Energies Have Gone

...or in other words, Why I Didn't Do the Wrapped Emotions Challenge this week...

Those of you who read my blog regularly have seen some of the Wrapped Emotions creativity challenges that I've been doing each week along with Melody and others. Some weeks it's a challenge to get it done, other weeks it just seems to fit in.

This week, however, I've been planning birthday parties. Saturday morning was Sam's 2nd birthday party. A simple low-key brunch with a Blue's Clues theme. And these gorgeous cupcakes, made by yours truly!



And, not to be outdone by myself, David's 6-year-old birthday party is today. Here is the beautiful cake I've created for that party, with a "ninja" theme. It promises to be much less low-key, much noiser, with six seven 6-year-old boys running around the house. (One per year, plus David)



These cakes/cupcakes have kicked my butt this week but they were so much fun! I explored the joy of candy melt.

Things I've learned:
1. It's hard (almost impossible) to change the color of the candy melt after it's melted. (Maybe because I didn't have this)
2. It's really really hard to get true black and true red color. I used gel food color, which is supposed to be better, but I still couldn't get real black. More like silvery gray. Oh well.
3. Food color stains your hands. I'm now a medley of blue, black and red.
4. Spray food color is harder to use than it looks.
5. It's just not as easy as it looks!

The whole thing was a lot of fun though, and my boys were very excited about their treats.

It does beg the question as to why I didn't just buy the cake and cupcakes. After all, I'm a busy mom of 3, with a full-time job, and much of the cake decorating happened during time I could have spent resting, relaxing, or...blogging (grin). For one thing, I enjoyed doing it, knowing that I was making something special for my kids. I also like the opportunity to try out a new craft. Crazy? Maybe.
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Five Places I've Been This Week

A Funny Cake - and making fun of W*lmart too!

Zucchini Muffins with Gumdrops - sounds weird but looks yummy

Bar Mitzvah Behavior

Splashup

Cake Decorating Basics

from my del.icio.us
Where have you been?

5 comments:

Robin said...

Well done mama! Those are fantastic! I love going all out with my kids' cakes. Now that they're old enough to really get it, they each spend weeks poring through my cake books trying to decide what they want.

PS I learned about that gel color the hard way - ALWAYS wear gloves. I did a jungle cake for Itai's 4th birthday that had my hands bright green for weeks!

PPS Pre-dyed rfm (fondant) can make a busy cake decorating mama's life a lot easier.

JenLive! said...

The cupcakes look fabulous!

I'm glad that you were able to put all your creative energy (and so much love) into something for your kids.

Maya said...

I am so impressed by these! Can I hire you to do our birthdays? Ha!

GHD said...

Those are some mad cake decorating skillz, yo!

I'm impressed!Bravo, indeed!

Shawn said...

Wow -- very impressive. My last attempt was ... well, let's just say it wasn't bloggable. Lovely work!

I love cake. Very much.