Oh Tell Me Where You've Been ......

I don't know about your household, but ours has been crazy busy the past two months. It was as though someone hijacked my day timer and just crammed every day as full as they could get it. There are lots of problems that can cause and I'm thankful that it looks like the schedule is back in my hands - now I'll just have to work extra hard to keep it there.

September
 Thoroughly enjoyed the boys' last flower pickings of summer.

Homeschooling is going well though it's had some very unique challenges this year. I've never before had a child who knows sounds of letters before he knows names of letters. Each year holds it own distinctive flavors and the mix this year is interesting. 

 I think the boys are trying to send the message that they're cold - right after this picture was taken Stephen went to get his blanket too.

Chickens are still continuing to do well - laying 11-13 eggs a day. Egg size and color vary significantly. The boys have just done such a good job of taking good care of them. There really isn't anything that I have to do other than check in 1-2 times a week and turn their bedding. 

Since Stephen gets done with his studies early, he comes up with the most unique ways to amuse himself. A recent trend has been developing costumes strictly out of paper, crayons, and lots and lots of staples and tape. The top two is a crab (complete with eyes and pincers). The bottom is a "Fang of Dang" from the Wingfeather Saga which is the book series we read together over last winter. They LOVED this series! 

We celebrated Daniel's 8th birthday. 

We also had a visit from my dad - but I have no pictures of that. 

October

Stephen marked turning 6 years old. 

One of the special things we do in our house to celebrate turning 6 is going out with daddy for breakfast. Philip woke him up the day of his birthday and said, "Are you ready to go out for our special breakfast?" He pulled the covers closer and said, "I don't want to go anywhere in the middle of the night" and it was evident that he wasn't going anywhere. Unfortunately, when he did wake up, he realized that going for breakfast did indeed mean getting up before his brothers and it would still be dark out. The next morning he was more prepared! 

Then fall arrived in all its glory. 

We had one staple job (Daniel's first - he's broken his winning streak) and Stephen had a stress fracture in his foot. 

One wedding cake for a friend - only because the bottom two layers are made of Styrofoam and it wasn't as stressful as a normal cake. 

We went to the Kentucky Wool festival.

Had a visit from cousins (actually both sides of the family but we only got pictures with one). 

And typical days involve some type of conflict - in this case, land mines with all of the pillows in the house. 

Busy, busy days. And they must slow down for in busyness one misses out on so many of the simple joys of just living. Now on to November! 

Answers

I've gotten many questions concerning "how do you make a cake like that?" after I post pictures of what I've done. So here are some answers to some of the questions.
1. How do you make wedding cakes with three boys? It does require some juggling. All three of my boys nap take naps in the afternoon spanning from 1:30 - 4:30. Allan and Daniel go down at 1:30 and while they're working on going to sleep Stephen gets a bottle and goes down at 2:00. Allan is allowed out of bed at 3:30 (He usually doesn't sleep but has a quiet rest time), Daniel sleeps until 3:30 or 4:00 and Stephen wakes up at 4:30. As soon as Stephen goes down I get to work. Mondays are spent gathering the last of the supplies if needed and I get all of the pans, mixes, decorating paraphernalia moved into the kitchen. Tuesday I make the icing. Wednesday and Thursday I bake (I usually start the cakes that require over an hour of baking time in the morning that way they can be in the oven while we're in school). Thursday I also start the initial icing. Friday is the final icing and decorating and (usually) Saturday is set up. So...I work while they sleep. If the time ever comes where cake decorating encroaches on my ability to be a wife and mother then my cake decorating days will end. The second thing that is probably the most important is that I have a husband who supports me. The week a wedding cake is due means that the house will not be in pristine condition and shirts may not be ironed but there are no complaints from him. In fact last week I ran into some time crunches and so Friday evening he took all three boys out to his mom's for 5 hours while I worked. If he didn't help, I wouldn't be able to do this. He's also responsible for keeping the boys while I do setups on Saturdays.

2. How do you keep your boys out of your cakes? I sometimes don't and pretty much every cake has their "mark" on it somewhere. The first thing we ever trained our boys to learn was what "no touch" meant and that applies to cakes. So as far as them deliberately messing with them - they don't (usually) but sometimes accidents happen. For example: This last wedding cake was sitting (unassembled) on my kitchen counter and Daniel was "helping" me by sweeping the kitchen. The problem was as he lifted the broom to move the dustpan the handle smacked into the side of the cake effectively de-icing the one side. That's no big deal...just slap some new icing on it. I use the leftover batter to make cupcakes and they know that those belong to them.

3. How did you make the snowflakes? Not difficult at all...the week before the wedding I took three afternoons and made them. I use a royal icing made of 10x sugar, meringue powder and water. This is made thick enough to pipe out of a decorating bag and then dries hard. This time I googled "snowflake clip art" and found some patterns that I thought would work. Then I place a piece of waxed paper over the pattern and trace it onto the waxed paper. After they dry I peel them off and prepare to use them. By peeling them off the waxed paper you break about 50% of them but even broken ones can be used. This time there was one pattern that I lost all of the ones that I'd made. Every time I do snowflakes I promise myself I'll never do another one!

Other pictures of this particular cake are posted at David and Sarah Fry's blog and on Regina Ekert's Facebook page .

4. What is the hardest part of decorating a cake? 1. getting it perfectly level 2. getting the icing smooth. Once those two are accomplished it takes very little time to decorate. Once I ice a cake it sits for just a few moments until the icing starts to crust. I then use a paint roller with a dense foam brush and actually "roll" the icing smooth. I used to use hot water but this left the surface tacky and if too much water is used it can cause the icing to get too thin and causes all kinds of problems. It takes several hours to get everything iced and smoothed. Usually only an hour or two is spent actually decorating. But if you don't have a smooth icing then the entire cake looks messy.

Hope this helps for those of you who are interested.

Playing Catch up

Now that things are "slowing down" I'll try to catch up on what happened over the past month. First of all, back in November I did a baby shower cake for a young lady in our Sunday School class who was expecting her first little one. It was a fun cake but Daniel was a little distressed to see his truck in use! As a side note about our recent church growth: I had a baby in October, one of my best friends (Linda Schaub) had a baby in October, Jackie Bishop had her baby, then Rachael Easley had hers in December, Jenny Flores had hers in December also and Kelly Stamper was to be induced today! :o) Now that's one way to have a church grow!

Doings

Last Friday and Saturday I completed an order for wedding mints. If I kept proper count there were over 420 that came out of the 7 lbs of chocolate. Part of the order was for white chocolate and the other was for milk chocolate.

Another Cake

Today was Mike Mater and Michelle Miller's wedding. My pictures didn't turn out the best. The cake was not yellow but ivory. Thankfully everything went smoothly and the only thing I had to worry about was someone shaking the table. It turned out well and Michelle liked it - that' really all that counts anyhow.

Now...for the Rest of the Story

For those of you who would like an explanation of why last week's wedding cake was so challenging:
Short version: The icing for the wedding cake had to be ordered from a local bakery but "all's well that ends well."
Blow-by-blow version: Tuesday of last week I made 7 batches of icing but every one of them had a slightly odd taste. If you can imagine eating something that tastes the way that gasoline fumes smell that would have been the best way to explain what it was like. The longer it sat the worse it became until it tasted like axle grease. I thought on Tuesday that I had solved the problem. Three weeks earlier I had purchased the powdered sugar and Crisco shortening and placed them in the trunk of our car. Having no place to store the ingredients in my kitchen I left them in the trunk. But in our trunk was also a gas powered weed eater and blower. I thought that the heat of the trunk had caused the gasoline fumes to get into my powered sugar. Wednesday I purchased all new Crisco and powered sugar to take care of the problem.

Thursday morning I began making icing with the new sugar and Crisco - same "fumey" taste! I was stumped! So I methodically began replacing all ingredients to find the problem. New salt, new flour, filtered water instead of tap water, special trip to get a new batch of clear vanilla. Same bad taste! It was getting very stressful. Just the week previous I had made icing and it was fine. Perhaps it was my mixer somehow dripping grease into the batch but inspection of the mixer showed no problems. So last shot - try a new mixer - same bad taste. At this moment I did not know if I should laugh or cry. When something like this happens I wonder, "Is God trying to tell me that I shouldn't make the icing?" Perhaps my icing is not stable enough to withstand the heat/drive and so to save me some heartache I'd better go a different route. So that's what I did. For a "small" fee a was able to order icing from a local bakery that was ready for pickup at 10:30 on Friday.

Bakery icing is so "sicky" sweet that I can hardly stomach it but there wasn't much choice. So even though the cake looked okay it wasn't as tasty as I would have liked. But I am so glad that Clarissa and Joe got a wedding cake. For awhile I wasn't sure how it was going to all work out.

Back to my dilemma: What could have happened? I've used this recipe with these ingredients for years and never had a problem. Then it hit me late Thursday afternoon. The lids of the cans of Crisco that I had purchased said, "0 Trans Fat - Same great taste." Hmmmmmm...did they change their recipe? I looked at the nutrition information and compared it to the half used can that I had used the week before and sure enough - the fat contents were all different. So, I mixed up another batch (this was batch 12!) using the old Crisco and WALA! Same great taste! Okay, so trans fat is bad for you but it tastes far better than axle grease! Sighhhh...now another challenge - find another recipe that can be used for decorating without compromising the taste and ease of preparation and use. Since my next wedding isn't until August I have some time to experiment. I'm also going to contact Crisco and make sure that this new "fume" taste is normal.
So there it is folks. More than you ever wanted to know.

Another interesting side note: all of my cakes are prayed over for multiple reasons. One of those reasons is that almost every cake decorator has a "horror story" and someone ends up with a wedding cake disaster or no wedding cake at all. When I finished icing the cakes at 11:00 Friday night I felt very impressed that the Lord was telling me not to decorate until after I had transported the cakes to Shelbyville. Hint: when God says something - His idea is always best. When I opened the trunk of the car after arriving at my destination all of the cakes had shifted and settled enough that there was a band of icing sticking out on every last cake between the layers. So all of them had to be resmoothed. Had I decorated them it would have been next to impossible to fix the problem. It was still difficult as it was because the icing was very crusty. My heart was very thankful that God had whispered a few instructions to me because he knew what was going to happen.

Something like this happened to my husband (who is feverishly working to meet his deadline for Zondervan next month!) not long ago. God impressed him to do something that looked like it was going to be a mistake but turned out that it saved him work in the end. I said to him, "Isn't it good to be in "cahoots" (if I can use that term) with a God who knows everything?!" He sure saves me from a lot of hurts and heartache (if I am listening for His voice and obey). That sure is encouraging to a person who feels so inadequate of facing the challenges of being a wife, mother, and teacher. The God who created this universe is interested enough in my life that he tells me, "Go to bed, decorate tomorrow when you get there!" So I got the rest I needed and Joe and Clarissa got a wedding cake. WAAAHOOOOOO!!!!

The Rest of the Story....

The finished product......whew......! Every cake decorator has a "Disaster Story" and I think this cake about takes the title but in the end it was redeemable.

Adventures of a Cake Decorator Continued

They're all baked! I'm so thankful that the Lord helped me to get really organized so that when one batch was coming out of the oven another was going in. The one layer that took 65 minutes to bake went into the oven right before lunch so that wasn't inturupted. Today was as much of a success as yesterday was a failure. That was an answer to prayer.

Now I have all day tomorrow to remake the icing. I ran to Sam's Club before church this evening and bought all new ingredients so we're good to go. Friday I'll spend putting the initial icing on (this takes the longest time of the whole process...ever tried to get a perfectly smooth finish?!) and decorating everything that I can before it's transported. Thanks to those of you who left comments to the last post that you'd be praying for the trip. All it takes is one person not paying attention to the fact you're stopped at a red light and it's all over. Some bride's dream will be one blob of confection. I also had the thought...what if I got a flat tire? The spare is under the floor of my trunk. That would not be cool!

Sighhhhh.....ummmmmm....I have a confession to make. Those gum past calla lilies were not made by me. When I have this many gum paste flowers on a cake (I believe a little something over 100) there is no way that I could take the time to make them myself and still make a profit. Let's face it, if you charged by the hour for a wedding cake - you wouldn't have any business! So when I have a wedding cake with special icing flowers (like gum paste) then I order in bulk from Pfeil and Holing. When I have a small cake where there are only 5-20 then I do them myself (Like the Hawaiian themed cake). The only large scale flowers that I do myself are the buttercream roses. Any gum paste roses are ordered. Sometimes you'll see a cake that I post where I order the complicated pieces and then do my own fillers. I would love to say that I do all of the flowers myself and I may go back to that once the boys are older. Right now it's more important to me that my hobby doesn't interfere with my ability to be a mommy. So there it is! The truth is out.

BTW: On Nancy Lambeth's birthday cake I used some of the overstock from this wedding.

I'll post pictures on Saturday...if I remember to take my camera!

Adventures of a Cake Decorator

Today I spent the day making icing for a wedding cake I'm doing this weekend. A whole day? Yes, a whole day. It takes that long to make seven (7) batches, get drinks, change diapers, take toddlers to the bathroom, change wet jeans on little boys who play with the water hose, put socks and shoes on (numerous times), read stories, cook meals, grind babyfood, rock fussy babies, well....you get the picture.

To make a very long story short...it was all for naught and seven (7) batches of icing have to be pitched! It hurts. That's 12 lbs of Crisco, 25 lbs of powdered sugar, and a lot of work for nothing. I think even my little mixer cried.

Tomorrow I start baking: the cake has eleven (11) different cakes which means twenty-two (22) different layers and many hours of baking. I should be able to finish baking on Thursday and then remake the icing so that I can decorate Friday. This cake has to travel two hours in my trunk to Shelbyville, IN on Saturday morning. The cake is to be white with pink calla lilies and iridescent butterflies. I've included a picture of the flowers before I "painted" them pink. It's going to be a really nifty cake but right now I don't want to think about it so I'm going to bed.



I love decorating cakes but there are days that I think I'm crazy. Last week I had a birthday cake for Michael Lambeth (dinosaur picture). I went to the store that morning to pick up the last minute ingredients and came home to preheat the oven and get started. The first glitch was...I could find no chocolate cake mix! Nowhere in my stock of cake mixes was there a chocolate one. I was not going to run back to the store so I decided to improvise. There was a 1/2 of a chocolate mix that was left over from graduation cake week (BTW: I forgot to take pictures of my graduation cakes this year except for the Hawaiian themed one), and I had a French vanilla white cake mix that I though could have some baking cocoa added to it and it would be fine. Mixed everything together, reached for the baking cocoa and WHAT!!!! none to be found! Somehow I managed to allow my home to be depleted of its chocolate stash. The only thing I had was...hot chocolate mix. Hey, it worked! Tasted a little odd/different but it did in a pinch.

Deanna's Wedding Cake

We woke up on Saturday morning to SNOW! It was Deanna Wolf's wedding day and also Allan's birthday. The cake was both chocolate and white filled with raspberry filling. The only decorations that were used were ribbon, edible pearls and her cake topper.

Vacation in TN

Over the late winter break Philip and I were able to go to Tuckaleechee, TN for two days for a nice relaxing vacation while my mother-in-law kept the boys. We had a wonderful time. These are some pictures of the cabin where we stayed. Also included is the picture of Nancy Lambeth's Birthday cake...and yes, the "Birthday" really is as crooked as it looks in the picture! Sorry Nancy!

Wedding Cakes

Here are some of the wedding cakes that I had the privilege of doing this summer. I'm not taking any more cakes now until the baby is here and things settle down a little bit! The top one was for Mandy Mimier now Buckland, Dorcas Byer Hallam, Beth Clemmens Avery and Jessica Hartkopf. So much fun and each with a story 

!