Mackenzie's cake

Every year my girlfriend from work gets involved with a fundraiser at the campground in Rockford, IL where they have a trailer. This year she asked me if I would be willing to donate some pops for the fundraiser and of course I say YES!  So on Tuesday and Wednesday I made 227 pops for her to sell to help raise money for Mackenzie. I think I was off my rocker when I was making them as that was the most pops I had ever made at one time! Finally tally to go to my girlfriend was 225 since I dropped one and my new puppy dog Marla helped herself to one!! Once I got all of the pops done I started to work on the cake. I knew that she wasn't going to have all 225 pops on the cake at one time so I made a regularly sized cake, this way everyone at the campground could see what my cakes look like in person since I also gave her a certificate for a cake & thirty pops to be auctioned off! Here is the cake I made for her!

I decided I wanted something fun and eye catching so I decided to try something different with the layers! I look at this and it makes me think of Dr Suess!!

I decided to not write anything on the cake but instead decided to add some sparkle and bling! Since the whole fundraiser was for Mackenzie, a 16 year old girl, who is waiting on a heart transplant, I had to use hearts in my decorations!

Even from the top the cake is beautiful! I really enjoyed making this cake knowing that any proceeds from it were going to help someone who really needs it! I am waiting to hear from my girlfriend so she can tell me how it all went today and I will update to let you know!

Kayla's Cake

I have to start this by saying I love my neighbors! When I was asked to make a cake for her daughters 16th birthday party for the family there is no way I would ever say no! Her color requests for the cake were hot pink and black - my favorites! She asked for 60 pops so instead of just making three tiers I decided to go for four! I actually took my daughter with me to make sure the ribbons I used were teenager approved and she actually loved all of the ones I had picked out on my own so I knew I was going to be ok. I will have to get some pictures of the cake with what I wrote around it as I must have been in a brain fog because I forgot to take some - but since she is right across the street I won't have far to go to take some to post - but here are pictures of the cake on it's own!  Love it!

My next purchase is going to be a plain white sheet so I can start taking pictures so you CAN'T see the bed spread! Yes - I am using the spare room as my crafting room! You do what you have to do and the bed is the perfect height for me to work at!!

Jeff & Esther

A friend from work had asked me to make a cake for her son and her soon to be daughter in law's shower. She wanted thirty pops and the colors were tentatively hot pink and black - YAY! Wait, what? Tentative? She would let me know. Oh no - what if I get this cake in my head with the pink and black and she decides she wants brown and yellow? ACK! Ok, breathe, relax, those colors don't look bad together at all but I still did my happy dance in my head when she said it was a go for the pink and black! Yes, I know, I know - I can't focus so much on two colors - but they really do look beautiful together!  S o I started to work on the cake and the original ribbon that I had picked out was nice and sparkly but just wasn't what I had in mind for the cake - so off to Michael's I go in search for the perfect ones - BINGO! I found them along with the flower I want to try as the topper instead of just the ribbon. So as I am putting my cake together I am trying to also think of a saying that can go around the cake - do I want it to be about love? Romance? The wedding? I have plenty of time to do an online search for quotes.

A few days later, I am still trying to find that special quote - HOLY COW! I didn't realize how hard it would be to find a quote suitable for two people whom I have never really met! I caught a glimpse of the newly engaged son one day when he came in the office to see his mother,  and got to meet the bride to be when she came in to see her future mother in law and I happened to be covering the reception desk 

 So here I am at 7 am this morning with a hot cup of joe, sitting at the kitchen table with a huge book of quotes that my husband handed off last night around 11 pm, my  laptop is open with about six different tabs open - all searching Google for the ever elusive quote. I even went so far as to pull out all my Love Is.. clippings trying to get some sort of spark out of any of them. Nope, that didn't work, and I didn't think my friend would like it so much if I called her at that early of an hour just to ask her if she had any suggestions, so I kept searching. One quote kept coming up in just about every search I did, and each time I read it I thought to myself that, that just might be the quote I am looking for! It was! It was perfect! 

But there was something missing!

The heart! :) I also made Heart Poppers for this cake - I have a few changes I am going make the next time I make them - but for a first time try at making them I think they came out pretty darned good and I know my friend was happy and promised pictures of the cake with pops tomorrow for me!

Pink & Yellow

Another bachelorette cake - requested in hot pink and yellow. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this one because I don't think these two colors look that good together - but you have to make the customer happy right! So the first "draft" of the cake I was not happy with. Every time I looked at the cake I cringed!

I loved the bottom row - but the other two ribbons just didn't flow with the cake. They had to go. So I changed the middle ribbon and added the ribbon - I still wasn't happy with the cake.

Better - but still not perfect. So off come the top ribbons - it's the black ones in there that I don't like - so back to the drawing board! Also, that top row needs something..... I have it!  Ribbons in pink, yellow and white - check! A thin ribbon over the zebra print - YES! NOW I love this cake!!

And just so you know - the saying around the cake was requested! :)  Here are the pops that went with this cake - Fudge Poppers!

Second Clubhouse Cake!

So instead of trying to fashion the hand and shoe out of styrofoam (which was a royal pain in my arse the first time around) I made them out of clay!  Much nicer looking! I was working on this cake until 11:30 pm last night and just as I was getting ready to text my neighbor to see if she was still awake she texted me! I immediately grabbed the cake and ran next door to show it to her - she was thrilled! So I start asking her about where the party was going to be and she tells me Randall Oaks...... wait a minute....... do you mean to tell me it's going to be outside? It's supposed to be freaking 95+ outside! Oh no, oh no , oh no. My pops do not hold up so well in hot weather - they have a tendency to melt into a puddle of chocolate and stick! Oh no, oh no, oh no. Now what do I do? GOT IT! I have treat bags that I will wrap each one into and they can go in a cooler! So back home I trudge at midnight and of course I don't wrap them that night, that would have made too much sense! I wait until I wake up at 10:45 am this morning to do this! So my neighbor comes over with one of those little cooler lunch bags and we bag up some ice and pack the pops in there and off we go to the birthday party! The mother was happy, the guest were happy! The birthday girl seemed to like the cake but she was only 1!!  SUCCESS!!! I'm not sure what I love more - making the cake and pops or seeing the people's faces and how much they like the cake and pops! :)

Here are some pictures of the clubhouse cake!

Lester's Graduation Cake

Here are the pops I made for his graduation cake - they reminded me of little balls of sunshine! For this cake I decided to try something different and stacked the layers to look like a stage. I guess in a bizarre sort of way it was a stage - a pop stage! I made fudge and mint pops for him. He's my neighbors son and he had sampled some of my mint pops not more than a week earlier, and from what she told me he was drooling while eating them so she asked if I could make some more for him! OF COURSE! (This seems to be my mantra!) When I brought the cake in people were coming up and telling me how delicious they were, so I hustled my butt over to where Lester was and told him that if he wanted any of the mint pops he should go pilfer them from the cake now or else they were going  to be all gone by the time his party was over! By the end of the night I think they had a handful left over and between the three of them next door they were quartering them to share just to make them last!

What did I agree to do?

So after the Bachelorette Cake another one of her co-workers asked me if I would want to make a cake for her twin boys 2nd birthday. OF COURSE! She asked me if I could make it look like Mikey's Club House...... OF COURSE......... but I'll have to do some research since I have a 20 year old and a 16 year old and haven't seen kids shows in forever! So after much searching and finally finding a picture that I think I can at least work off of I start to work on the cake. It's funny how quickly the colors come to me when I am in the store and have an idea of what I want the cake to look like! Making the house part was easy - it was the shoe and hand that were the challenge for me! I have another girl who wants me to make another cake just like this one and the thoughts on how I can improve it are already flowing though my brain!

Annie's 50th Birthday!

For another co-worker that I absolutely love! It was her 50th birthday and just as she always asks me what I want her to make for my birthday (her chocolate chip cookies of course!) I asked her what she wanted me to make her - she tells me she wants some of my fudge pops! Little did she know that I was already planning on making her a cake and pops! Her favorite colors are black, red and white - so making a black and white cake was perfect! I didn't want the normal doom and gloom feeling for this milestone birthday - so I picked patterns that reflected her personality perfectly! This is one of the few cakes that I actually got to take a picture of with the pops in it! Now that I have my Crackberry I will be making sure I get pictures of ALL my cakes with pops from now on!!

The Wedding Cake

Simple, elegant and beautiful! I love this cake as well!

The Bachelorette Cake

So when I take my daughter to her haircut appointment the following Monday after my appointment, I go with more pops and the cake from the co-workers daughters 15th birthday. I have to show her the cakes I am talking about. Of course after the oooh's and aaah's she tells me she definitely wants me to make a cake for her wedding party with 60 pops! Even better is that one of the girls next door comes over to see what we are talking about and my hairdresser gives her one of the pops to try - she sees the cake and she loves the pop and wants to know if two weeks notice is too short for her to order a cake for a bachelorette party she is throwing. Oh heck no! I ask her what colors she wants and she tells me hot pink and black. I don't think that there are any colors that go together better than these colors! So this cake is my absolute favorite to date and I even tried making some "special" pops for her! I had those pops in the box with the regular ones and needless to say she got a kick out of them!