Our ornament for the year! We decided on a pinecone this year and I found this beautiful vintage metal one on eBay. I like that it is silver since it goes nicely with the gold acorn we added to our Christmas tree in 2016. The pinecone represents Andrew’s first trip to Bass Lake, one of our favorite places. Like our gold acorn, it represent​s a little of how nuts (pine nuts) this year have been for us. Lots of soul searching has happened this year, lots of tears and many laughs and even more restless nights. But in the end, we are truly blessed with an amazing life, and this vintage metal pinecone sparkles on our Christmas tree!

How cool is this cake!? I wish I could take credit for the patrol car, badge, and the walkie talk, but those were all purchased. The cake itself was pretty easy to decorate; the one challenging part was the cake had more layers than a normal cake I make. The cake needed to be taller than normal and the easiest way to do this was to add an extra layer of cake, but because of the extra layer of cake, I didn’t want the pieces to be too large. To prevent that I made two, two-layer of cakes stacked on top of each other with a piece of cake board wrapped in plastic wrap. This allowed the pieces to be smaller and serve more people.
​
Next, I covered the cakes in blue fondant and made a belt out of a ribbon of black fondant. I added belt loops and a silver buckle. I added another strip of blue fondant to make the button fold and added black fondant buttons. The pockets were blue fondant rectangles with black fondant details. I curled a small thin ribbon of black fondant to make the walkie-talkie cord. The last thing I made was the name tag with a strip of black fondant and white fondant letters that I cut out using my alphabet cutters. I use a little blue or black fondant to hold the plastic pieces in place and that’s it! Such an awesome cake and I love that it’s two cake in one!

To go along with Andrew’s tree stump cake, I made mud cupcakes. They were the same marble flavor and had the same dark chocolate frosting. Instead of piping on the frosting, I dipped each cupcake in the warm frosting. Warming it up for just 5-8 seconds make it so much easier to dip and have a smooth finish, but warming it up too much can make it runny. After I dipped each cupcake in the frosting, I then dipped them in a bow of the leftover marble cake crumbs. This creates the perfect look of mud and was super fun to eat!

How is Andrew two already? For his second birthday cake, I made an adorable tree stump cake. The cake was marble with chocolate frosting. On top of the cake, I made lighter to make it look like the inside of the log. The bark was darker chocolate. I used a toothpick and created the rinds of log and added bark details. I even added a 2 on top and Andy in the bark. I added leftover crumbs along the bottom of the cake to make it look more like a tree stump in the dirt.
​
The cake came out so cute and Andrew enjoyed destroying it and devouring it!