​I am in love with the simplicity of the beautiful baptism cake. The simple white fondant layers with only a few important details made the mother gasp with excitement and was shaking when she hugged me. I love great reactions to the cakes I make!

On the bottom of each tier was a small rope wrapped around twice, with a few faux succulent stems. Lastly, on the top of the cake was a beautiful white keepsake wooden cross and another succulent stem.

​The understated beauty of this cake puts a smile on my face and reminds me how beautiful and precious baptism are.

Who didn’t cry when Rafiki smeared his hands over his drawing of baby Simba? I talked about how nostalgic I got when I made these Lion King cakes in my last post, but I rewatched the movie since that post with Andrew and Jack (who had never seen it) and both of them loved it, and I still cried during that scene. Sigh.

​To create this individual birthday boy cake, I did the same dry brush technique, but instead of creating an ombre look I was trying to make the cake look like the branch from Rafiki's tree. I kept with the tan tones and added some bark details. I found an outline image of Simba and printed out on regular paper to trace onto the cake. I used a paintbrush with food colors mixed with a little water, that I lightly dried off with a paper towel to give it the chalky appearance as in the movie. I used a small detail paintbrush to make Simba’s face and a round paintbrush with a little red food coloring that was padded dry for the mark across the forehead. Lastly, I used a leaf piping tip to create some buttercream leaves along the bottom of the cake for a little more texture and color.

​The cake came out so awesome and looks like it was taken out of the scene in the movie!

This cake brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. I was obsessed with the Lion King or was it more with Johnathon Taylor Thomas who played young Simba, either way, I loved the Lion King. I knew all of the songs and happily sung them all the time, despite not being able to carry a tune to save my life. With the new live animation moving coming to theaters a later this month it doesn’t surprise me that there is has been a flourish of nostalgia for the original Lion King, heck even Target as jumped on the bandwagon with toys and shirts in sizes from newborn to adult.
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As amazingly awesome as this cake turned out it was surprisingly easy. Each tier was covered in white fondant, then I hand brushed on the sunrise and dusk ombre using food coloring, a little water, and a dry paintbrush. The technique came out so much better than I thought it would and looked like I airbrushed the layers. I added tan and green grass using a grass piping tip to hold the plastic figurines in place. To create the vines, I used a #3 piping tip and then a leaf tip to give it a little more detail. That’s it. Not much to this amazing cake, but the special birthday boy’s cake, now that is a different story…

​This fun cake is why I love making cakes! I love trying to figure out new things and reusing some classic tricks. The rather simple cake is covered in white fondant with a red ribbon fondant on the bottom. Next, I cut out a large circle using the same red fondant and tacked it in place with sugar water.

To create the ghost I printed out the logo using regular printer paper. I cut out white fondant under the printed image using a detail knife. I then cut the center out for the cross out and glued in place with the sugar water. I completed the logo by using black food coloring and a little white writing icing to black out the background and adding the details to the face. The cake was finished by adding some of Slimmer’s green slime that I made by boiling corn syrup with a little leaf green food coloring for a few minutes. By boiling the syrup it made the slime dry harder instead of just staying syrupy and making a mess.

The cake came out so awesome and I love doing things that let my geeky side shine!

​I love making sesame street cakes with bold colors and fun characters! The bottom of the two-tiered cake features fondant cut-outs of the shows main characters along with ABC letters. The top tier had the child’s name and their age in the style of the street logo with different sizes circles. To finish the cake, I added fondant stars on dowels and red and yellow fondant ribbons along the bottom of each tier.
 
To make the adorable smash cake I started by cutting a half oval in black fondant and placing it on the top of the cake where the mouth would be. Next, I colored buttercream red and slowly piped out the fur texture using a grass piping tip. Once the cake was completely covered in the red buttercream, I completed Elmo by making eyes out of white fondant and adding small black circles on each one. Lastly, I made his nose out of orange fondant rolled into an egg shape.
 
Both cakes were so perfect and I loved how adorable they were and seeing how excited the birthday boy was when he saw his Elmo Cake!

May the Fourth be with you! I love that I got to make a Stormtrooper cake for this day! The best part was I had to make a quick stop at Party City and there was a dad in line dressed fully at a Stormtrooper buying a lightsaber for his daughter who was dressed as Ray! I loved this so much and can not wait to get Andrew into things like this!
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Anyways back to this awesome cake! To create the general shape of the Stormtrooper helmet I used a Darth Vader cake pan that I had bought years ago. I cut down the shape to make it a little more round as they are compared to Vader’s helmet. I also created the curves of the helmet by shaping the cake and adding thicker pieces of fondant. To create the lines of the helmet I used smaller pieces of fondant instead of one large piece. Once all the white pieces were in place, I began adding small pieces of the blank fondant to finish the details of the helmet.
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I am super excited how this cake turned out and I was able to adapt an old cake pan to make it come out so perfectly!

I am a Barbie Girl in a Barbie world…Anyone else grow up in the '90s and is having flashbacks singing that song, or is just me? It's been in my head since I was asked to make this cake weeks ago! I loved Barbie as a kid and this cake took me right back to all of my favorite memories of playing with them. I'm pretty sure I even had a Barbie cake one birthday, but it was no way this pretty!
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The top layer has a hand painted vintage Barbie silhouette on white fondant then sprinkled with some black pearl nonpareils. I traced out a cutout of the silhouette using a detail knife and painted with black food coloring mixed with white writing icing, the same way I did on the cakes last month. To finish the layer I just added a black and white striped ribbon to the base. For the bottom tier, I pipped on rosettes using a large cupcake star piping tip and thick buttercream. I filled in any space between the rosettes with a little more buttercream before piping on a border on the top next to the ribbon. To complete this sweet little girl's cake I added a matching black and white striped bow with a little sparkly rhinestone in the center. This cake is perfect for a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World!

​My mother’s birthday was yesterday and I wanted to have Andrew make her something special for her. Since he is still too little to make much I needed to get creative. Last year he made her handprint flowers out of paper and I framed. I searched through Pinterest and saw a couple of flower pots that had kid’s footprints in the shape of a butterfly and thought that it was perfect. We picked out a terracotta flower pot and a can of clear spray paint, along with a plant. I already had the paints and the cute little feet.
 
Jack had to help me with this since it was a one-shot type of thing; we put Andrew in his highchair along with some snacks and turned on his favorite cartoon. I painted one of his feet with the colors and pattern that I wanted, Jack then helped me press his foot onto the flower pot. We gave it a few minutes to dry to prevent the paint from dripping. We repeated with the second foot, making sure to place it in the right spot to create the butterflies wings. We completed the flower pot with a fingerprint caterpillar on the other side. I set the flower pot in the sun to dry and once it was fully dried I used a Sharpie marker to create the body and antenna. Next, I sealed the pot using the clear matte spray paint and put it back in the sun to dry. Lastly, I planted the beautiful plant in it and wrapped a bow around it.
 
My mom totally loved it and even took her a moment to realize the butterfly was made by his feet! Andrew even drew her a special birthday card!

I’m totally in love with my new garden gate! I’ve thought it would be so cool to have this section of the yard gated off and plant a garden there. I also thought it would help keep Andrew out of the orange tree with its thorns and keep him in the line of sight while we sat on the patio. The other side yard got fenced off when we finished the replacing the fence last March. However, Jack wasn’t as excited as I was when I asked him to do this “quick” project. I then quickly realized my little project wasn’t going to be so easy or cheap as I originally thought. Jack being the ever perfectionist and doing it right mortality made me realizes it was going to be a lot more work than first anticipated. I just thought we would buy some premade fence panels, add a couple of wooden posts and be done. Nope, but I am glad we took the time to do it right. We first purchased two fence panels that were eight feet long each, then measured out the post locations. Jack was wanting to rent an auger as we had done in the past, but I decided to at least see what I could do with the post shovel. Much to my surprise, I was quickly able to dig three out of the four holes (the fourth one we needed to wait on). Jack was shocked to see that they were done and was able to cut the metal posts and set them in concrete that night. The next day we anchored the panels to the post and I dug up the fourth post to finish off the main portion of the fence. Jack built the gate by using part of one of the premade panels and framed it with 2 x 2 for additional support. We chose black hardware for the latches, handle and hinges. To finish off the new beautiful garden gate we bought an arbor for the entrance and much to my dismay I had to dig two more holes to set the arbor into place. Jack attached the other side of the arbor to the metal posts.
 
The gate is so pretty and I can’t wait to have a garden inside of it one day!

A few months ago my husband saw the Godfather for the first time and has been quoting it ever since. Annoyingly I might add. So when I got asked to make this cake I laughed out loud. 

This sheet cake seems difficult but surprising was simple, just time consuming to get all of the iconic details perfect. The cake was covered all in white fondant and I added a white fondant stripe to create the area for the buttons and then two triangles to create the shirt collar. Next, I cut out two large pieces of black fondant to create the shape of the tuxedo jacket, and then two more pieces were cut into the shape of the jacket's collar. Black fondant buttons were made using a size 10 piping tip with the holes made from a fondant tool. The bow tie was also made from the same fondant. To complete the iconic tuxedo, I added a red fondant rose. The fedora was made from a jumbo marshmallow covered in fondant and placed on another oval-shaped piece to create the brim. 

The movie title was created by printing out an image of it, and then traced on the white fondant using a details knife, and then hand painted using black food coloring mixed with white writing icing. I used it also to write on the red banner on top of the cake.

In the end, the cake came out so awesome and my husband was even super impressed with it. I love the new technique I learned and can't wait to use it again! 

This baby blue and light green baby shower cake is just too cute! The cake is so simple and adorable.
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The bottom tier was covered in the light green fondant, and then I placed six 1” thick ribbons of the blue fondant. To finish the tier, I added two ½ thick ribbons between the 1” ribbons.
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The top tier was covered in the baby blue fondant, and then I placed different sized circles all over the cake. Last I added a large plaque welcoming the new baby and finished it off with another ribbon of the 1” thick green fondant.
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It is such a sweet cake to welcome a sweet new little boy!

It’s hard to believe that this was my first opportunity to make a marble cake! This cake is so beautiful, simple and elegant and the best party was the colorful surprise inside!

​The cake consisted of six thin layers of French vanilla cake; each colored a different color of the rainbow. The six layers of cake made each tier abnormally taller than no normal, so next time I think I am going to make the cake layers even thinner. The taller tiers did give the cake a really regal look.

Although the cake decoration was simple I struggled with creating the marble look. I ended up having to put two layers of fondant on the tiers! ​

As I have done the last few holidays, I decorated every room in our house. However, I didn’t go overboard like those. I just put a few small decorations and some new pillows in all the rooms.
 
I started by making a simple red velvet pillow for the chair in the living room, using my go-to quick fold and sew method. For a few pillows, I cut out letters or hearts and used iron-on applique and sewed in place before doing the folded method.
 
I even purchased a few of the pillows at Target for $5 which I loved that price and how cute they were. One of the pillows said “Love you” then on the other side said, “love you more”. This is something Jack and I say all the time so I had to get it, but I wanted to be able to see both phrases. I cut the two panels apart and added light pink fabric to make the fold. The last pillow I did for Andrew’s room I used St. Valentine’s Day ribbon and tied a felt hear on it.
 
They came out so cute and I keep adding to my holiday pillow collection! I love it!

At the beginning of this month, I started a Pray Like Mary, Clean Like Martha Facebook Challenge. I had over 300 women participate and help keep each other accountable. It was a great experience and not only does my house look better, but my prayer life has also greatly improved! The challenge was based on the book with the same name written by Sarah Mae. Each day in the book she would give us a story to read, a bible reading, questions to answer, as well as, a cleaning/organizing challenges.

It was a lot of fun, but after a week it got harder to keep up on a daily bases. I will also say the author doesn’t suggest doing it for 31 days straight, but we chose to as part of the New Year’s challenge. Next time I might break it down doing it over two months that way it doesn’t feel as overwhelming at times.

Now I Challenge you to pick up the book and start your own women’s group challenge.

Part of my New Year Goals (I don’t like resolutions, they always seem to be gone before the Christmas decorations are put up) I wanted to add more reading into my life. On Black Friday I bought tons of books and can’t wait to get to read them all. The first one I picked to read was Weightless Making Peace with Your Body by Kate Wicker. As most women at New Year’s I wanted to work on my weight and my health, so I figured this could be a great book to start with.
 
Overall I enjoyed the book; however, the author and I have different problems with our weight. While I am bigger, she suffered from anorexia. Hers was because she wanted to fit in and be seen as pretty during her teenage and college years because she was a bigger girl when she was younger. And well, mine is because I eat my emotions and hide behind my weight.
 
The core point of her book though is what I loved about the book. It Is God made you and He loves you and if you can’t grasp that then nothing will ever change. You can’t love yourself until you accept that God made you and gave you your body. It is a temple to help worship Him. Mistreating it only hurts your relationship with God. This thought wasn’t a new idea to me, but how she specifically broke it down really opened my eyes.
 
What’s also great about the book is that included what she calls soul food which includes inspiring quotes, tools, and tips. There’s also a meditation to think about and each chapter ends with a prayer.
 
I’ve read similar Christian weightless books with the same concept. I think this one reached me a little deeper was because of the authors also being Catholic and you can see that in her writing.
 
If you are struggling with your body, be it weight, wrinkles, or scars you should give this book a try. Oh and its only 83 pages perfect length for busy moms! I have a few other books by this author that I am looking forward to reading soon!

Last night I found out one of my cousin that lives out of state would be coming to another cousin’s 30th birthday party that was tonight. I haven’t seen this cousin since they have had their second child and part of my tradition is to make a blanket for all of my second cousins. Their first son got this really cute western quilt, but I was in serious time and budget crunch this time around! I figured the best option would be to do a quick applique blanket. I looked through my tubs of fabric and found some really cute green striped flannel fabric and I just happened to have a soft baby blanket in my future project bin. I always love to pick up these blankets from Ross for quick DIY baby gifts for things just like this. 

I decided to keep the blanket simple and just go with a capital “W” for his first and last name. I printed out a few “W” using different sizes to choose from and went to work. I used Heat N Bond Iron-on Adhesive to glue the cut out “W” to the baby blanket before using my sewing machine to sew it in place. I know I didn’t need to sew the letter in place with the iron-on adhesive, but I like the little extra detail the stitches give the blanket. In under an hour, I had a perfectly adorable blanket to give to Wyatt! 

One of my favorite Christmas Day treats for as long as I can remember is good old fashion fudge. There was always a platter with this homemade sweet treat and I always managed to take a few extra pieces when packing up leftovers. I would look forward to sneaking a piece here and there usually all the way up to New Year’s Eve. Sadly however our Christmas gatherings have gotten smaller over the last few years and that means no delicious homemade fudge.

This year I decided to change that and make my own and I could not believe how easy it was! Don’t believe me? Its only two ingredients and only took five minutes…try it. I bet you will impress everyone on Christmas!

Ingredients:
     14 oz can Sweetened Condensed Milk
     2 Cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Directions:

1. Combine the milk and chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minutes.
2. Remove and stir, if not smooth microwave for another 15 seconds, Repeat until completely smooth.
3. Pour the fudge into an 8x8 pan lined with parchment paper.
4. Spread it evenly and let it set in the fridge for at least an hour. 
5. Pick up the parchment paper from the dish and place on a cutting a board and cut into 1 inch squares.
6. Enjoy!

* If desired you can add 1/2 cup of walnuts by mixing in before spreading into pan.