So I Bought A New House!

I've been consumed with being a first time homeowner.  I have four colors of paint in various places on my body and my fingers are still sticky from epoxy from my nightly task - one hour gluing pennies to the floor in our Jack and Jill bathroom.  I'm maybe 1/20th of the way there and it's been well over a week.
Here are the few cakes I've done since we last met:
Karate cake for 8th birthday!

Toy Story cake, fondant with plastic figures on top.

Ombre petals cake with gumpaste medallion.  I really need to use a better camera than the one on my iPod, which used to seem so awesome but now it just seems to be lacking in the resolution department.

I feel like I should be posting pictures of my amazing home makeover, but perhaps waiting for more to be accomplished first is better.  Brief summary for those who care:

New pot rack is up on the vaulted ceiling!

Dearest hubby installed the best ceiling fan evar in the kitchen!

The bearded dragon has a new 75 gallon terrarium!

The walls in the den are Intense Teal, the kitchen is called Tango, but it's really a bright warm orange, the living room is a light sage green, and our bedroom is on its way to having dark gray walls!

I decided on a steampunk bathroom, hence the penny floor you've probably seen on Pinterest.  I still need ideas on this!

Front porch got stained to match the shutters before it started raining again!

There's a hammock in the back!

I bought a new throw pillow.  It really ties the room together, as the den has a few Moroccan accents.

Stinkie's little room off the den (little means LITTLE, it was a storage space) is becoming more of a fort with a few installations.

Hubby mounted the flat screen to the wall with a full motion mount and ran the wires through the wall so there's no unsightly mess!

We have plans on so much more as time and finances allow.  This is really the coolest thing I've ever done.

Stinkie is going to be starting school this September.  I'm excited and scared and nervous and proud all at once.  We did school shopping at Target and it was the most interesting experience, participating in the rush instead of just grinning at it.  I ordered a (hopefully) really cool backpack off Amazon for him with spikes all over it.  Oh and I made his little clipboard awesome with some scrapbook paper and DIY modpodge-ing Calvin and Hobbes.

I suppose that's it for now!  Till next time!

Pregnant Mamma Silhouette Cake

I saw this technique online and so badly wanted to try it out.
Thankfully, I got an opportunity!  The cake itself is just yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The dark pink medallions are fondant leftover from a previous cake I made.  Fondant can stay good for up to 3 months in the refrigerator if stored properly.
In making a cake that is tall and thin, you need to have an ample support system.  I use wooden dowels for this support system in a thin cake like this one.  The cake is 4-6" round layers sitting atop one 8" square layer.  It is basically two 2-layer cakes on top of one another.  I use wax paper on the bottom of each cake board for (hopefully) easier removal of the layer without damage to the underlying frosting.
Getting a violet is touchy.  It is very easy to go from white to purple without using much color.  I use a very small amount of color, mix it in, then a little more as needed.

The silhouette I printed off the computer and cut out carefully, then rolled gumpaste very thinly and painstakingly removed the main section using a decorator's wheel, a razor blade, and a few other gumpaste instruments.  After the silhouette was cut out to my satisfaction, I marbled a piece of white gumpaste with light pink and rolled it thinly, then "glued" the silhouette to it with gumpaste glue (basically, gumpaste glue is a small piece of gumpaste dissolved in very little water until it's easy to paint on).  I laid the malleable gumpaste silhouette onto a sugar canister to give it a 6" curvature, and let it dry for a few days.
The daisies were pretty easy to do.  I let them dry on an egg crate I reserve just for that purpose to give them shape.
Overall, I am pleased with this cake and I learned a few new techniques along the way.