Bible Cake for Pastor's Birthday

My grandfather's 84th birthday was yesterday. We had a fabulous church service last night in honor of him and took a 50 question quiz on how well you know your pastor. I only missed 9 which isn't bad since he is also my grandfather.

I made this cake last year for his 83rd birthday and found the pictures today when I began making our 2011 year in pictures book. I also realized that I never shared this awesome cake on the blog. And so... today's post was born.

I began by making a large yellow cake in two rectangular pans. I cut the edges so they would form more of a page look and slid them together on my cake stand.

I made some great homemade chocolate icing and put a layer of coconut beneath it. My grandfather loves German sweet chocolate cake so I pulled a little coconut influence from that.

 

I covered the entire thing in white fondant and began painting. I took gel food coloring in ivory and gold and brushed the entire surface. I then created edges to resemble a book and painted a darker tone.

Do you just love how I steal my child's plastic plate as a palette? Me too!

 

I added a good Bible verse my grandfather likes and some leaf and ribbon detailing. I also purchased a plain white gumpaste cross from the local cake supply store and painted it up. Somehow I got so wrapped up that I totally forgot to take pictures of the process.

I covered the entire cake in gold luster dust to give it a little extra sheen. This picture was taken in my fridge after I finished the cake.

Happy Birthday Grandpa! May you have many many more!

Autumn/ Fall Themed Child's Birthday Party

I am tremendously late in posting my youngest child's birthday. Her birthday is October 12th and we had our party the 16th. 3 months late isn't bad right? Thanks, I feel better now.

This was my attempt at taking pictures for her invitation. It didn't work out well and I used an adorable picture of pumpkins instead. She has the worst "fake" smile but she's still cute anyway. At least I think so.

I bought hay bales from our local nursery and used three on my porch and three to tear apart for the hayride.

I made orange/vanilla cupcakes with orange infused butter cream frosting. I got the cupcake wrappers from Michael's. I totally forgot to take a picture of the food table but at least I got the cupcake table. Honestly, isn't it only the desserts that matter anyway? :o) I thought so too!

I purchased a vinyl birthday banner to use year after year for both girls. Here is Eryn's. It is quite large at over 3 feet long.

The handmade blocks were done by my mother. She made the bottom block double sided with my other daughter's name on it so we can just turn them around. She hasn't set up an official shop anywhere yet but if you want to send me an email I can get prices and info. I do know that they are wood and she hand paints, sands and decorates each block.

 

She made these cute blocks for her birthday to sit on her shelf. Eryn just loves princesses and requested these blocks.

The hayride was the trailer pulled by my father in law. My husband and brother rode along as chaperones. The hayride went just around our development which is a private area so all parties involved were totally safe as only one major road goes out into the town and all the rest are just quiet little streets with no exit to the main road.

The kids loved it, especially Eryn.

Her older sister liked the ride as well.

After she opened presents and cards she dressed up in a Disney princess dress just because so she could eat her cupcake.

She had some difficulties using the gloves to eat her cupcake but she eventually just took them off.

All in all her party was a success. She put back on her party dress in the end and took a few pictures with her baby doll on the front porch.

Holiday Craziness and Adorable Holiday Milk Bottles

So in the event of saving tears time, I will explain what happened in the kitchen. I will just direct you to the post HERE about the dishwasher. Lucky for us, I was able to fix it quickly and it is now working very well and beautiful to boot!

Pardon the fingerprints. The 4 year old likes to help "load" the dishwasher now.

We have a Christmas gathering for my husband's side of the family each year at Christmas Eve. For the last five years it has been at our house. We got off at 12 on Friday from work and hurried like crazy busy bees to finish everything. Saturday we had two other places to go before our party that night so we were totally wiped excited by the time ours came.

In the middle of it all, I also decided to make all of our Christmas gifts for adults. I made cake balls, coconut/dark chocolate cookies, peppermint bark, peanut butter cups, and peppermint patties. Here is what my peppermint bark looked like but I didn't think like a blogger a head because I didn't take pictures of anything else.

We also didn't put up a large tree this year because well, we didn't have one! Our fake one died last year and we never found one after Christmas shopping. I found this adorable 4 foot one and we were going to put it on the porch until we realized we didn't have one this year and it became our tree inside. We gagged  refused when we saw that Michael's wanted $229 for a 6 1/2 foot fake one.

I showed them though. I bought it at 80% off after Christmas for next year. It has colored lights which seems so retro to me but the girls thought it was awesome. We left it up for a few days just so we could saw we had a tree up.

I made some adorable milk bottles from Starbucks frappuccino glass bottles using some great printables from HERE . It is from Shindig Parties on Etsy! I love Etsy!

Step 1: Drink Frappuccino :o)

Step 2: Wash out bottle

Step 3: Soak bottle in soapy water for about 20 minutes to loosen up the labels.

Step 4: Peel off the labels (there are 2) and use Goof Off or Goo Be Gone on any residue that remains.

Step 5: Wash again in hot, soapy water or your dishwasher.

Step 6: Cut out adorable labels from Etsy and tape around bottle

Step 7: Put coordinating straw in and enjoy!

They were also good Christmas morning with apple juice while Daddy made pancakes!

Measure Your Eco Footprint

Click HERE to go to Conservation.org and take the quiz to measure your Eco Footprint. It is a very eyeopening experience.


Don't forget about the January Shaklee special. Purchase $70 MN (member price) of ANY items until January 31st and get the Shaklee Cinch Sampler Kit (a $100 value) FREE!

Organizing: Day 1- the Kitchen Junk Drawer

Well, well day 1 of the 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was the junk drawer. We actually have 4.  Both drawers in the kitchen island, the drawer in the computer desk and the actual "junk" drawer in the kitchen. I chose our true "junk" drawer which has been labeled as such since we moved in.

I actually had an organizer in there when we first moved in but as we had people over for the holidays and have been remodeling the living/dining room things just got shoved in there.

As you can see there is a white organizer WAY down there.

I took everything out and wiped down the drawer. Then I wiped down the organizer as best as you can (it is 5 years old and cheap plastic).  I plan on a nicer one later when I do my "organizing container" shopping later this month.

After throwing out a ton of old pens/pencils and just junk, my oldest daughter got the spare change and I put everything neatly back into the organizer.

See my strange obsession with binder clips? I am a 2nd grade teacher and married to a high school social studies teacher so that might have something to do with it!