Whoops! It's New Years Eve!

Already, and I almost didn't get this post in!  Things have been so hectic lately! In a good way though! We just had my mother-in-law and sister-in-law out, and it was great. Then my Step-Dad surprised me, my mom, and my sisters by buying them tickets to come see me! I'm so excited! This was such an unexpected and generous gift! My sisters haven't been able to come out and see me since I left home, and now! They'll be here this week! Theeeen in a couple of weeks my father-in-law and my other Sister-in-Law will be out to see us. So much family!! Is there anything greater?

The reason I went on so long about all of that is, well, it's awesome... and this post is about the gift I made my father-in-law for Christmas! I know that no one gets to see us as often as they'd like, and I also know how proud we all are of my husband. So, for Christmas, since my husband had no idea what to do for a gift, I made my FIL a wallet out of my husband's first set of uniforms.  It was a little rough, I didn't have a pattern for it, and I think I'll tweak it a bit in the future... but here it is!!

This was the scary part, especially since I didn't have a pattern!

 But it worked out perfectly!

 There is a full length button pocket that runs across the outsite.

 Three card slots and one larger pocket on both sides.

The cash part. I'm so happy with how this turned out!

The finished product! 

     So, that's it for 2013! I have several fun projects coming up in January and so much to look forward to! I hope that you all have a Happy New Year and a very happy 2014! 

A Quick Holiday Update!

While I am not taking any orders until after the new year, I have been very very busy lately! I'm taking this break in the day to show you what me and my girls have been into! (I only have this break because they are determined to wait for Santa, even though they've been told countless times that he only comes when they're asleep... Chloe really wants to pet a reindeer though.)

Normally when I have several projects I like to take a whole post for each, as everything I do is very precious to me. This time, however, I simply don't have the time, and so I'm consoling myself by remembering that they're all Christmas themed, and by remembering the true meaning of the season and the looks of unbridled joy on my girls faces. All to soon they will be older and will have lost that sense of wonder, so for now, I will cherish every moment that I am blessed to experience with them.

Now I know that's a little more long-winded than what I normally post, so I'll get to the first of the pictures, what we just finished doing outside! We were blessed to have a friend give us some reindeer food (I had fully intended to make it and had the pinterest pins all up and everything, time just got away from me.) So, before the girls were too tired, we went out and sprinkled it all around. 

Look at those faces! So beautiful!

The girls also helped with the holiday baking! Almost everything was baked from scratch, with the exception of the Christmas tree sugar cookies... because how do you tell a preschooler no to "Santa's cookies!".  Also, they were a lot less messier for her to help with.

Vanilla Chai and Cinnamon scones!

 Santa's Cookies, Snickerdoodles, and Mint chocolate Chip!

My new favorite, Peppermint Meringues!

This post is already longer than I expected, so I bid you farewell as I still have Santa duties for tonight, and will show you the rest of what I've been up to after Christmas!  

Wishing Everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year!

It's Important...

To eat your fruits and vegetables.. especially when they're as cute as these!!

I had a lot of fun making these, and the girls LOVED them.. as in tried to steal them and sneak them back to their supermarket and kitchen they have set up in their toy room. I can't blame them! This marshmallow fondant is as fun as it is tasty!

I also got to try a new recipe for these, they're carrot cake with a swiss buttercream. I was leery of it at first... so much butter... but it is delicious and super light and fluffy!  It doesn't pipe as smoothly as I would like, so I went with fondant lettering on the main cake... but they are going to be SO adorable when they're set up! I'm excited, and it's not even my party!

The cupcakes and the cake are all carrot cake, with swiss buttercream, and fondant. Very fitting as they are to celebrate a graduation with a degree in dietetics! 

Enough of me blabbing, here are the rest of the pics!!

And then!...

     She was finally caught up!

     So not exactly, but close enough for now! I have a cake order coming up that I am super excited for (Ok so I tend to be super excited over all of them, but they're so much fun and for such super occasions!) but that's enough of that!

     I actually finished this pillow back in October, but have been waiting to post it until after it was picked up, so that bag, in the cake post last month, this is what was in it!

 The little hearts are so cute! This is such a unique and personal way to commemorate a wedding!

It took a lot longer than I had thought, simply because it's been a while since I've done any kind of real needlework by hand, but I love the finished project! It was well worth the time!

This is more the true color of the piece, it's a very warm shade of light brown. It's made of burlap over white cotton, to give it a more rustic look which compliments the type of needlework it is. The finished piece was so cute, I had to fight the urge to change the date :) .

Thanksgiving Experiment!

So, unfortunately we were unable to be with either of our actual families for Thanksgiving this year. We were super bummed, but we did get to have Thanksgiving with our friends here, which is a blessing in and of itself.

Normally, I don't do any of the cooking for Thanksgiving, my Mom or my Aunts do it all. This is why up until this year, though I was allowed to help with the cole slaw while younger, I had never even attempted a pie. I can't believe I had been so intimidated by them when they are so easy!

Ok so maybe not exactly easy, I can see how if you hadn't worked with pastries before the crust could be a problem.. and man.. is it work using that pastry blender! This was also my first time dealing with Meringue which I believe I overcooked slightly due to the littles "helping" and my fear of undercooking it since it is an egg product. Those facts aside, this turned out GREAT and I will be more than happy to make them for anyone who needs a dessert for any of the holiday potlucks. Actually, I may make another one this week just because how fun it turned out to be and the fact that my kids LOVED them.

The details! This pie was entirely made from scratch, and as it was my first pie I decided to photograph the whole thing, thus documenting my success or failure for future review. Thank goodness it was a success! So here they are! Fun pics of my pre-Thanksgiving experiment!

 This was the first step.. that crumb like texture takes a LOT of work to accomplish, especially as you don't want to overwork the butter. 

After all that work, it finally comes together into the dough!

For some reason I didn't take any pictures of making the filling, probably because it was all super orange and messy, it smelled so good baking though!

Making the Meringue, thank goodness I have my KitchenAid, I can't imagine whisking this by hand!

The finished product! It's a little browner than what I would have liked, but Oh! So good!

The complete and utter delicousness that has me wanting to make it again right now. (Yes, Deliciousness is a word, my word!)

Keep your eyes out! I still have another post to go until I'm caught up, and by then.. I should be onto making my Christmas stuff! Such a fun time of year!

Whoops!

This post has been a long time coming, and for that I apologize! It's been a very hectic time for us with the holidays. (Family in and out, unexpected work trips... ) but enough for excuses! I was blessed with the opportunity to do a very lovely cake a few weeks ago. (Eek! I am so behind!). It's a spongebob cake, and yes while girls do watch spongebob as well as boys.. mine don't, they are fully princessified (except for Zoey, she's my rebel). So I was very glad to have an opportunity to revisit this character and do a more elaborate cake.

This cake was for a first birthday (So special!) and needed a smash cake to go with the main cake (a 3D shaped spongebob) I tossed around a few ideas in my head,  the two main ideas I had were a jellyfish or a crabby patty... the crabby patty won and turned out absolutely adorable!

Enough jabbering away (especially since even with this post I'm still behind :D) here are the pics!

6" round, 3 layer smash cake, white cake with butter cream icing. It came out so adorable that my Chloe wanted it as her cheeseburger for dinner!

A close up of the face, the nose turned out so cute! And the texturing of the fondant for the sponge, way cuter than I had thought it would be!

This is as close of a full size shot that I have (for some reason). He also had fondant legs, with socks and shoes. Honest!, They were there!  He turned out so  adorable!

dun dun dun...

Another one bits the dust!

Another busy weekend to put behind me! I had a lot of fun with these cakes though! Three! Three cakes!
Two of which were adorable martians (I guess from sesame street?) and the other was a very cute ladybug cake.

Going into these cakes I had pictures to base the martian cakes off of and a vague Idea (see, the power of Capitalization is in Play!) of what I wanted the ladybug cake to look like!

Since I didn't take a lot of in process pictures (I was working my hiney off and didn't have time to be honest).. here are the finished products!

 The eyes on these guys are fondant, and the sticks are sweet biscuit sticks! Since the smaller one is the smash cake for a 1 year old I wanted the whole thing to be edible so there would be one less worry at the party. 

 This one was a lot of fun, iced it with red buttercream then airbrushed it and added fondant eyes, it looked so soulful peering up out of the box!

And the bag? Well, it's yet to be picked up so until I know whether or not it's safe to post, you'll just have to keep on guessing.

Yo!

So I also had the opportunity to make a SUPER cute Yo Gabba Gabba cake and cupcake set for an ADORABLE little girl's second birthday. I do mean adorable.

In and of itself they were rather simple to make, the biggest concerns were getting the fondant modelling dry enough to stand. I think I finally cracked the code on that though, because it turned out AWESOME!

 These cupcakes turned out adorable, Seriously. 

 This guy has a spiky tail, you can't see it.. but it's there. 

This number 2 had me so worried, but it turned out beautifully, it's a real "stand up" piece (see what I did there :D) 

This was a very fun cake for me, and my girls didn't want to let it go.

More exciting things to come!

B2 Birthday!

So a very lucky man turned 21 a little while ago and his wife wanted to get him a very special cake. What she chose was adapted from an army cake that she had seen and liked.

It has been rainy and humid down here, a lot more humid than what I'm used to and it has been giving me difficulties with my fondant, specifically calculating the drying time for figures and the gum paste to fondant ratio to make the models dry in a timely manner while still being "fresh".  The B2 was made with a 50/50 ratio and the rest of the fondant decorations on the cake were simply that, fondant.. since they did not need to be rigid at all.

But enough boring details! Here's the pics!

The model B2 was so much fun to make! It took several tries before my husband was pleased enough with the accuracy of the wing angles to let me finally put it on the cake.  

 These dog tags were so CUTE!

Unfortunately there wasn't room for happy birthday on the top of the cake, without crowding everything else. However, there's always somewhere you can squeeze it in!

Sewing havoc..

So, I've been crazy busy and as such haven't had time to post much. There will be several posts within the next few days over what has been keeping me so busy.. but for the first reveal!

One of the ladies in my book club wanted a custom messenger bag that had the main components of the messenger bags we know and love, but without all of the bulk. Measurements were taken, were given... messages exchanged on facebook.. and a plan was formed.

I knocked this bag out pretty quickly once I got started (It had to wait on some baking and the tiger costume before I could attack it.. that and the unfortunate bout of illness that hit my girls... but that's another story!) I cut the pieces based on measurements after allowing for a seam allowance and this is what I came up with!

These pictures really don't do it justice, due to the unmentionable, though already mentioned, sick time my girls had I was scattered and took these with my phone as I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had put the camera.

It really does look so much cuter in person, especially with all the flair she has on it!

Stay tuned! Same bat channel, Same bat time.. Different adventure!  And, as always, thanks for reading!

It's Grrrreeaaaat!

Ok, so the costume I just finished wasn't actually Tony, but he's the only famous tiger I know. That being said, this turned out way cuter than poor ol' Tony ever was!  This costume was made out of an extremely luxurious fabric that Taren picked up for it. There was no pattern involved, everything was done by hand.. by me. Velcro closure running up the back, in the front of the hood, and down the backs of the booties. Padded belly, ears, and extremely stuffed tail. (Which seemed to be his favorite part).

In the beginning I thought it would only take 4 hours, boy was I wrong.. I put over 11 hours into this sucker! Lesson learned!  Maybe I shouldn't have tried re-inventing the wheel with the pattern, but it was so much fun! Chloe loved being my stand in dress dummy (as I've not yet found one at what my husband would consider a reasonable price). Enough talking! Here are the pics!

Loving the tail!

Full velcro closure runs the length of the back ,assuring no gapes, and making it cozy for trick or treat!

I would call that a happy customer :)

Look for more projects coming soon!

 Remember, you can find me on www.facebook.com/sewsweetconfectionaryandcrafts or www.sewsweetconfectionaryandcrafts.weebly.com

Through the Looking Glass

I was blessed this last week to do a very adorably cake for a very special birthday. Some lucky (and I'm sure very sweet little girl) is going to be very excited when she sees this cake. (That could just be because it's cake.. and except for my husband.. who doesn't like cake?)

I was asked to do a tiered topsy turvy cake in the theme of Alice in wonderland. This is what we got!

A cute little bow, pink though Alice's was blue. 

 You can't be late for this very important date, someone is turning 1!

 It's been rainy and humid here lately, so to deal with that I did a 50/50 fondant and gumpaste mix for these, they turned out so sweet!

 An edible teapot for the party! Why yes! I think I will! 

The finished cake. So sweet! Or as Chloe said, "Wow, mom! It's AMAZING"! She then tried steal the teapot for her own tea party though.. so her judgement may be biased.