Where did this blog come from, exactly? I have to give credit where it's due: First, Baskin Robbins and Mrs. A in Woodstock, IL. That's where I learned to make my first cakes by watching and being instructed by some of my co-workers over the course of 3 summers. When we weren't dipping ice-cream cones for customers, we were often making and decorating ice-cream cakes to fill the display case or to fill orders. Jamie, Sara, and a few other girls, most of them college students at home for the summer, were the ones who showed me how to make some flowers, do shell borders, and otherwise decorate an ice-cream cake (which is a lot different than making your own cake at home as I found out the first time I tried to do so when I made my husband's Lord of the Rings birthday cake the next February). Here are a few of my first cakes that I took pictures of from Baskin Robbins.
The next step toward this blog would have to be having my girl friend Kelsey move back into our area. She helped me make my little daughter's 2nd birthday cake, and I discovered I could, and really liked, making cool cakes. I managed to make a few birthday cakes for my daughters, but it's only now that I'm really getting into it. After the first disastrous attempt at making my own frosting for the Lord of the Ring's cake I had kind of given up on the idea that I could figure out serious home cake decorating by myself, until Kelsey helped me with my daughter's Safari Cake. (I was so spoiled at the ice-cream shop--working with frozen cakes, and having all my frosting ready-made.) We have plans to make an awesome cake for the Relief Society birthday in a couple of weeks, and we are making some cool cakes to auction off at the Scout camp desert auction fundraiser.
Third is Jon and Cyndia. They asked me to make their wedding cake this June. I won't be doing so even though I think it would be awesome to be able to contribute to their wedding in that way, and to be able to say I've made a wedding cake would just be so cool! But I really don't think I'm proficient enough to not stress way too much about it. However, it got me thinking that I would love to take some classes to learn to be proficent enough, and so because of Jon and Cyndia, I looked into the Wilton classes at Michael's.
And that's the final reason this blog got started. I'm going to be learning to do some cool things, and I'm so excited to be creative and see what I can come up with. So this blog is meant to be a place to journal about, and share what I come up with. Enjoy!
The Toadstool Cake was for my daughter's friend party. Then we traveled west to attend the wedding of my husband's brother, and it just so happens that his fiance (now wife) and my daughter share a birthday. Their birthday was just a day or so before the wedding, so we had a big party that day. I used my 10 inch and 6 inch pans to bake the cake, and unfortunately I forgot that there are special instructions for baking cakes at high altitudes, so I had to make an extra grocery store run and attempt the actual baking twice since my first cakes fell. Oh well, at least I learned something. I decorated this cake with cream cheese frosting, fresh berries, and white chocolate drizzled over the berries.
In trying to decide the perfect cake for my daughter's 5th birthday party, we decided on doing a bug themed cake since she is always catching bugs. She loves to be outside and exploring. We did a bug cake for her when she turned 2, so we wanted this to turn out a little differently. After a bit of exploring ideas on the web, we decided to turn the cake into a big toadstool. The top is made from a three layer 9 inch round cake (we even experimented with our new checkerboard cake thing--which was actually a little bit tricky to pour the batter into and we made a huge mess). We cut around the top egde to give it a dome shape, then put it on a 9 inch cake circle and frosted it in red and added the white spots. The base of the mushroom was made out of my 6 x 4 inch cake pan, covered in white fondant. 
Finally, we used some of the cake we cut from the edge to build up around the base of the mushroom, then covered it with chocolate frosting and added some grass.
All that was left was adding some little critters. My husband figured out how to make a few of the butterflies and dragonflies "fly" around the cake.