Week 43: Duke basketball and Night time driving

This past week I felt like a traitor. As a Carolina fan it's hard to admit I went to a Duke basketball game and enjoyed myself. Justin's brother has been working at Duke for a while and this past week was the last game he was working as he is moving to Charlotte. As he was working the game and it was the first game of the season he got free tickets to the game. We got to sit 4 rows behind press row right at center court. Duke played Pffifer, or should I say murdered them. The final score was like 128-70. So, it was a fun night and the tickets were free so I don't feel too bad about it.

My other experience this week was starting to drive at night by my self. I am now driving to and from class by my self which may not seem like a big deal but I feel like it is. In the past couple weeks I have been running errands while Justin is at work, going out to get things as I needed them. At first I figured I would miss running errands with Justin. But, honestly I have found that if I can get errands done while Justin is at work I have more quality time to spend with him. And, there is always the weekends to run errands together.

Baking experience of the week: Double chocolate peanut butter cookies.
While in Portland I bought a cookie cook book and this was the first time I used it.
I didn't try the cookies as I am not a fan of peanut butter but everyone else really enjoyed them.

Thanks for reading!

Week: 42 Karen and Mike's wedding cake !!

Typically I have been trying to have one new experience as well as a baking experience. But this week my baking experiment was more important to me than most of the experiences I have had so far this year. This past week I had the honor of making Karen and Mike's cake! Karen has been one of my favorite people since I meet her at UNCG. When her and Mike got engaged and were looking for someone to make their cake I couldn't wait to offer my services.
They were excited to have a friend do their cake. We had a couple meetings to figure out exactly what they wanted.
Karen is not your typical girly girl so I knew this was going to be a fun cake to make. They ended up deciding on a 4 tiered cake: Vanilla cake, dyed green, chocolate butter cream filling and covered in chocolate fondant. The details were of course Karen's favorite color: Green!
This was the first time I made a 4 tier cake. It took a good bit of work, lots of time but it was worth it. The chocolate fondant was harder to work with then regular fondant. But it tasted really much yummier than store bought regular fondant.
Karen and Mike really liked the cake which is the biggest compliment I could have!

Here's a me putting the flowers on the cake

And the cake from up top


Here's the happy couple !!

Justin and I with the happy couple :)

Thanks for reading!!

Week 41: Driving, Kristen Hersh, bowling treats and more...

This week was a big week! Tuesday afternoon Justin found out he didn't have to work Wednesday. So, we decided it was time to head back to the DMV for me to take my driving test! As I am 24 and have had my car for over an year now it was long over due for me to get my license. But I can proudly say now that I have my license! I haven't done much driving on my own yet but I felt comfortable when I did. I've also been driving pretty much every where we go, still no highway driving but I am driving in the dark now. I don't have a picture to post yet as NC now mails you your license so in 10-20 days when I get it in the mail I'll post a picture.

My other experience this week was going to a small private concert. Susanne's birthday was earlier this week and for her birthday party her brother got her favorite artist, Kristen Hersh, to come play a small concert for her friends. There were maybe 20-25 of us there. I didn't know Kristen Hersh's music before last night, but it was a lot of fun. Justin was on call last night so I went with Margie and Christine.

To the baking experiences this week:
I had quite a few new baking experiences this week, the first was a cake for Bible Jump off. Bible jump off is a bible study a group of people from church do with kids from the neighborhood around our church. I'll be doing a cake a month so they can celebrate the kids birthdays.

The next on was Susanne's cake. I got the idea for this cake after watching a wedding cake show a couple months ago. I immediately decided this was the cake I would do for Susanne, even though she didn't know she was getting a cake. The circles are made of royal icing. It was pretty time consuming but I really enjoyed making this cake. I am hoping to have an excuse to making a multi tiered one using circles. I also made cupcakes with the same color scheme and circles for the party but forgot to take pictures of those.


After both of those cakes were done I had another cake other to make.
This time it was a bowling themed party. The mom requested a bowling cake and bowling ball cookies with each of the girls names for party favors. This was fun to make as this was the first time I got to use my bowling pin pan. I also realized decorated sugar cookies take much more work than I expected, so I'll be readjusting my prices. I still can't believe I get paid to bake and decorate!


Thanks for reading!

Week 40: Corn Maze and Tea Party

I've been looking for fun, random, new experiences this year. When Justin's grandma mentioned wanting to go to a corn maze I knew I couldn't turn it down. So, this past weekend we decided to go. This is what the layout of the maze looks like.

Justin's grandma didn't think she could go through all of the USA so we went through parts of it.
We had a really good time and would do it again. Next time I may also want to do one without a map.

(Justin with his grandma and aunt Zana)

This weeks baking experiments was a new order.
The mom was looking for several things for a tea party. The first thing she wanted was 15 petit fours to match the colors of the paper flower lanterns they got for the tea party.

The second thing she wanted were Flower cookie pops to give out as part of the goody bags and to make center pieces for the tea.

The last thing she wanted was a cake for Fleming to celebrate with her family. Fleming wanted a white cake with hot pink and red stars as well we purple daisies.
I have a lot of fun trying out new things. The petit fours were really challenging as it took me 3 different recipes to find a coating icing that would work well for what I needed (Thanks Katie for helping me find an icing that worked well). But, at the end of the day I now know how to make cookie pops and petit fours.

Thanks for reading!

Week 39: SDU and halloween cupcakes

After watching 16 instructional videos and passing all my quizzes I am finally certified to teach SDU classes. SDU: Scrapbooking, Design and you is a program by EKSuccess. I'll be teaching the courses starting in November and will run four weeks just like the Wilton classes.
I've learned tons of new things from the videos and am really looking forward to start teaching classes soon.

This week's baking experiment were Halloween cupcakes. I had a demo at Michaels and these are a couple of the ones I made.
Thanks for reading!