Amelia's Cake

This was one of my harder cakes to design, even though the end result was pretty simple.

This cake was for the January family birthday party.  All of the January birthdays were boys - well, men actually.  My two brothers and one brother in law.  So my original plan was a minimalist, masculine design.  Then came little Amelia.  


She was born on my brother's birthday and lived only 7 hours.  The funeral ended up being on the day we had already planned for the birthday party, so the cake design needed to change.  We needed to celebrate her, too, and a masculine cake just wouldn't do.

I agonized for a few days, spent hours searching online for ideas for a child's funeral cake. But it wasn't a funeral cake, so nothing I found felt right.  It was tough.

I finally settled on this. Basic chocolate ganache (first time I'd tried it), with simple pink fondant stripes and buttercream flowers.  I must say it's one of my favourites.  I should have put a border around the bottom, though.

I think the lettering was genius!  I have a pretty unsteady hand with a piping bag, and I've never liked my own writing.  So I typed the words in PowerPoint with a font I liked, bent them to the right diameter with the 'WordArt' tool, and then printed.  I taped the paper to the cake board and then covered the whole thing with parchment.  I was then able to trace over the lettering with icing, and it looked (almost) like I'd done it freehand.  I would do it on every cake, except tape doesn't stick well to parchment, so I had a hard time getting it to stay put.  Any ideas of what sticks to parchment?

Cake, glorious cake!

I can't believe I haven't posted a cake for almost a year and a half.  What a slacker!  It's not that I haven't made any cakes, not by a long shot.  I just haven't shared any of them with you.  Shame on me.

So over the next few days (ok, it might turn into a few weeks), I'll be posting the cakes that I've made since the Train Cake.

Let's start with...

The other train cake!

I actually made this one first - I have no idea why I didn't blog it.  I made it for the baby shower of an adorable little baby boy - one of the handsomest kids I know!  It was fun to do it in baby colours, and to play with different icing tips to get dots, squiggles, and little flowers.

Like the rainbow train cake, it was one of the hardest cakes I've made.  The little pieces made it hard to ice, but it turned out so cute, it was pretty worth it!

Keeping House

My sister-in-law Laura just posted her housekeeping confessions.  I have to admit, I've never once stepped into her house and thought "This woman needs to clean her house!"  But I get it.  I get through each day, kids alive, but house a mess.  It's not that I don't have time or energy, I just never think about those little things I can do each day to keep the house tidy.  So, following Laura's lead, I've put together a cleaning list to help me remember.

 

Using her list as a template, I made up my own list.  I hate doing the same cleaning task for a long period of time, like more than 10 minutes, so I broke tasks down into little things.  You'll notice I do bathroom mirrors on one day, and toilets on another.  That's the kind of cleaning that works for me.  I used Excel and Publisher to put a pretty graphic behind the list, then mounted it in a dollar store frame.  I can then use a dry erase marker to check off what I've done.  I'd love to take credit for all that, but Laura's the genius.

Bryn loved it so much that she kept asking me what tasks she could do so she could check them off.  So, while she napped this afternoon, I made a list just for her and put it in a 5x7 frame I had already..  I included the stuff she fights me on every morning, like getting dressed and eating breakfast.  Cute, eh?