Cake Decorating round Two

I forget to mention, my daughter and I signed up for Cake Decorating classes again at Micheals. New store and new teacher this time. The Weymouth store where I am teaching. Their Wilton's teacher is great, her name is Kim and we signed up just because of her. The first class was just basics. We watched as Kim made frosting, and gave us tips about baking and frosting and then we did basic star on plain sugar cookies. This past weekend was class 2. This time we had to bring in our own homemade frosting and a cake to frost and decorate. We also had to level out cake, put in a filling, I used strawberry jam, while Kelly used a layer of frosting, we learned how to dam the filling so it would not leak out. And then how to make it look all nice and smooth like they do at the stores when you buy cakes. I would have never guessed what the secret for this is. Sorry, you will have to take Kim's class to learn her secret tip on this one. As far as the design for the top, Kim said we could copy a design in our books or bring in a coloring book photo to copy. Kelly decided to make Dori from "Finding Nemo". Here is her cake. Didn't it come out awesome?!!

And for Halloween, I decided to try a Spiderweb with a Spider sitting on top made from a rice crispie treat, some frosting and black licorice legs. I copied the idea from a cake decorating blog "My Cake School". I should have used a different gel pen (I used pink and the pink shows under the black webbing) Oh well, this is how we learn.

This weekend is class 3. We are to bring 6 cupcakes and whatever filling we want to put inside of them. Kelly wants to bring chocolate pudding. I am not sure how this will hold up, but she will give it a try. I was not planning on going due to my surgery recovery but I am feeling pretty good today and class is still 2 more days away, so I may try to go after all if Dad is willing to be our driver for the day.

Post-Surgery

It has been three days now since my surgery and I have to admit, I am feeling better then I thought I would be. I do have trouble getting up and down but once I am up and moving I feel like myself. Unfortunately, It doesn't last too long before I have to sit and rest but all signs are good that this will be a speedy recovery. It is killing me that I can't go sit in my scraproom and play. I just handle handle sitting in my desk chair, yet. I did go downstairs today to see how much of a mess my room was in. I was on a Halloween Frenzy before my surgery. I was making goodies for everyone, my co-workers, the office staff, my Michaels' students, the nurses at the hospital, etc.... when I get on a creative frenzy my workspace tends to pay the price. I seem to work best in disaster areas. The room wasn't as bad as expected. There is clutter everywhere but not too much that i can't start working on projects again as soon as I am up to it.

This is my room all sparkly clean.

This is what it looked like this morning.

This is the clean version, again

this is all the clutter i have to deal with on the floor and countertops.

This is the other side of my room with everything put away in its proper place.

Here is the disaster area with everything piled high on the counters and bags all over the floor. I can push the clutter to the side for a while, I guess. It will get cleaned up at some point.

More halloween treats

These are little tissue packages for the girls in the office at the school i work at. The front and back are decorated for halloween. The little travel size packs of tissues fit in perfectly.

Halloween Treats

I have that nervous enery going. My surgery is 9 days away. So I am getting into "Busy-mode" to try not to think about it.

Today I played with some more of the Halloween goodies I have been picking up at Michaels.

I made some Gum package treats for my co-workers.



These were made using K and Company Halloween embellishments and Halloween mat pad, DCWV Midnight Spell cardstock, and some of the $1 Michaels's halloween stamps and Martha Stewart tape ribbon.



This is a close up of one with a Michaels $1 stamp. I added some shadowing around the skeleton using Copics W1 and BV01




Showing how the package of gum slides out.




And all four with the different packages of gum you can use.

Hope you like these. I am going to start working on some Christmas treats soon.

Pre-op today.

Well, I had my pre-op appointment today. I got a lot of questions answered and feel much better about my upcoming surgery.

The big day is Monday, October 24. I have to be at Brigham & Womans by 6 am and surgery should last 3 1/2 hours. But, if all goes well I will be home the same day and back to my normal routine in 2 to 3 weeks.

I feel bad that this is interferring with so many other things going on right now. We will be in the middle of my son's football season so I will be missing 2 - 3 games. I have to reschedule classes I was planning on teaching at Michaels. Luckily no one had signed up for these classes so this was not a bad thing. I just moved some classes up to before my surgery.

I will have to have a sub fill in for me at my pre-school job. Hopefully, how ever is filling my role for this time will get along with my one-on-one student.

On a brighter note. My wieght loss is going better then expected. I am up to 20 lbs lost now. Yes!!! Still have a long way to go but this is a great start.

This past weekend I was hired to put together wedding favors and other items for an upcoming wedding. I was a little stressed over this. I had 5 days to make 105 favor tags, 70 hand-written place cards, 30 hand stamped and inked menu cards. But due to a cold I had yesterday and no ambition to leave the house, I got everything done in one day and the Bride-To-Be was thrilled with everything!!! She even asked if I could do a few more things, but considering her last day of work in the day after tomorrow and I have classes between now and then, I gracefully declined.

I have been playing with halloween and christmas stuff. If I could figure it out I would love to put a video on here of the little treat bags I have been making. I have no idea what I am going to do with them, but I think they are so darn cute.