Happy Birthday Viking John!

Today is my dad's birthday. My dad loves vikings. Loves them. He is very proud of his viking heritage. So of course, he needed a viking cake. This cake was another one that turned out very differently than I'd planned, but he was happy with it. I love making my dad happy. :) So...success!

New Tradition.

What a wonderful, full, beautiful day today has been. The best part about Thanksgiving for me isn't the meal, but getting to spend time with my family. One thing I love about my family is that we are all about our traditions-especially on holidays. This year my mom and I started a new tradition. After the extended family had gone home and things quieted down, we decorated a gingerbread house together. Actually, it was my moms first time EVER decorating a gingerbread house. (Crazy, right???) We had so much fun and we're pretty proud of our little house. Can't wait to do it again next year!

I know it's not a cake, but I just wanted to share because we had so much fun making it. (And because it's cute!!)

I especially love the little garden in the back yard. :)

      

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you had a wonderful day with your families, enjoying all of your blessings.

To Everything There is a Season...

I was so excited to have the opportunity to decorate a cake for a youth group etiquette dinner this week. I wanted to do something kind of fall themed, so I decided to make fondant leaves. I've never had so much fun! It was like playing with play dough! The process of rolling out the leaves, shaping them, distressing them; it was therapeutic! I was pretty happy with how it turned out. 

                     Happy fall everyone :)

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

I have been having fun experimenting with cupcakes lately, so some of my neighbors and family got a yummy surprise. :) These are dark chocolate raspberry cupcakes with raspberry frosting. I topped it with a little ganache drizzle (love that stuff!!) and a fresh raspberry.

                                                               

Vanilla Orange Cupcakes

These are some super yummy cupcakes I made for fun yesterday. I wanted to try this easy recipe I found for candied oranges (Thank you Martha Stewart), and I thought they'd be delicious on some vanilla orange cupcakes. I loved them!!

  Even Sam really liked these...and he's a tough critic. :)

Ice Cream Pies

With the holidays coming, I get to decorate a lot of fun, themed treats. These ice cream pies are for my work (The Fix). I love these because I'm not a huge regular pie fan. These are SO much better. They can be custom ordered with any flavor of ice cream and different crust/topping combinations.

Here are some I've done so far. . . .

For traditional pumpkin pie lovers: Pumpkin pie ice cream on a graham cracker crust, topped with cinnamon.

My favorite: Chocolate ice cream on an Oreo crust, topped with crushed Oreos and ganache. mmm...

SPIDERMAN!

My bosses nephew had his seventh birthday party this week. He loves Spiderman, so I got to decorate this awesome Spiderman cake for him!!  She said he loved it. :)