Yellow Cake with Fudge Frosting

No really, this frosting isn't "sugary" chocolate, it's that really good "cocoa" tasting chocolate that just melts in your mouth. I made this cake for a meeting at our church...the ladies liked it. Hey, it was chocolate, how could you NOT like it?

I really like using fresh flowers on cakes. Flowers make a cake with the simplest borders look beautiful and finished. And...they're extremely easy.

Valentine's Day Jello Cake

Yum. That's all there is to say about a jello cake! Start with a white cake mix, and bake it according to directions. Let the cake cool a few minutes and then poke it all over with a fork. Mix up your favorite flavor/color of jello, and then pour it over the cake. Don't worry! It WON'T make the cake soggy. Put the cake into the fridge and let it set. Then, just before you're ready to serve it, place cake pan for just a few seconds into a sink of hot water, and then you can put it onto your serving platter. The hot water releases the jello so the cake comes clean out of the pan. I "frost" my jello cakes with cool whip, and then add fun things like flowers, sprinkles, or sugar glitter to make it pretty.

For Valentine's Day this year, I made a white cake with strawberry jello. For a little added fun, the filling is cool whip mixed with sliced fresh strawberries. Yummmm....so good. I used one of my Valentine's Day roses to make it beautiful and tada! Cake!

Caution: There will NOT be any leftovers.

Lainah's 1st Birthday Cake

Here is a picture of Lainah's 1st Birthday Cake.
Lainah's personal cake is the one with the candle on it...the other one is for her guests to eat.

She demolished it...it didn't stay pretty for long! On these cakes I used silk flowers, but I prefer real ones for the nice scent they add. A little lace along the bottom of the cake is an easy way to dress up a cake border too...we're all about easy here!

Rachel's Baptism Dress

I decided even before we were blessed with our first baby girl, that I wanted to make their blessing dresses and their baptism dresses. These are such significant events in their lives, I wanted to make it a little more special by making them something with my own hands, rather than going and buying something from the store. So, although I'm sure I could have found dresses that were more elaborately and more professionally made, I hope that my girls will look at their dresses and know that their mother made them with her own hands out of her great love for them.

For Rachey's dress, I wanted to make it "girly cute," meaning that I wanted it fancy and a little more formal than a regular church dress, but I also didn't want it to look like a little white prom dress. I still wanted to capture her cute little 8 year old personality and let her stay a little girl. So that was my objective with this one, make it beautiful, and white, and special, but keep it simple and little-girly cute.

On the bodice, I added little ribbon embellishments and flowers to dress up the simple design. The fabric I chose, was a nice simple white that has a little sheen to it, but not a lot. The fabric is machine washable, which I had to look very hard to find, but I wanted her to be able to wear it to church afterwards, and not just on her baptism day!

I dressed up the waistband by adding two rows of ribbon, and a satin rose which is simply pinned on so that it can be taken off when laundering. Here she is wearing her baptism necklace and beaming on her special day.
The back was just a simple ribbon bow. To add to the fullness of the skirt, I added two layers of gathered tulle. Then, to dress up the skirt a little, and to add that playfulness of a little girl, I added a slightly gathered ruffle. She loved it...that night she spinned around and around to watch the full skirt ruffle around her. Too cute. Here she is trying it on for the first time! She was so excited, because it was the night before, and she had no idea that I had made it. I did all my sewing in the middle of the night in order to surprise her. It was worth all of those hours of lost sleep.

Rachel's Baptism Jewelry

December 2009 brought Rachel's 8th birthday which meant baptism time! I wanted to make her something special to wear and to help her remember her special day, so I made her a matching necklace and bracelet set.

Because baptism symbolizes a washing and making clean and perfect, I wanted her jewelry to also reflect purity, and so I chose to use clear glass beads and pearls to reflect that.

I started with jewelry wire so that it would be strong and be able to withstand 8 year old treatment. And then I just played around with different patterns until I found the one I liked the best, and thought Rachey would like the best.

I also made a center dangle for the necklace, as well as a clasp dangle for the necklace and bracelet. It just made it a little extra fancy, and I knew that Rachel would like that. The top is the finished dangle, and at the bottom of the picture shows the materials I used to make it.

This isn't a great picture, but here are the finished products! They looked beautiful with her white baptism dress.

Lainah's Blessing Dress--A Personal Masterpiece

I have so much to learn when it comes to sewing. Sometimes, I get so frustrated because what I envision and what actually gets made are usually two different things. My knowledge and skills don't match up to my expectations I suppose. But, this time, with Lainah's blessing dress, it all just sort of clicked. It isn't perfect, but I think it's as close as I've ever come to designing something beautiful in my mind and then making it come to life in my hands.

Lainah is our third daughter, and each of their blessing dresses have been different. Different patterns, different fabrics, and just different designs. With each, I tried to make something that I felt would reflect a little bit of their sweet, fresh from heaven personality. With Lainah's I really wanted something to show how special our 5th baby was to us. I wanted her to know that mommy spent just as much time and effort on her dress as I did the first. I wanted it to be intricate, but also delicate.

I couldn't possibly go through the directions here on the blog, it was too complicated, but basically, I found a dress pattern that fit as closely to what I had envisioned in my mind as possible and that's where I started. Then I had to add layers, or improvise in order to stick to my own design for her.

These little flowers and ribbon made the front so cute, and they also went really well with the skirt fabric, which was an organza with flower embroidery. So beautiful.
On the back, I put the little white satin buttons, and brought the ribbon around her waist to tie in the back, leaving long ribbon tails going down the length of the dress. I also kept the sleeves unlined, so that you could see her cute little baby arms underneath. I didn't want the dress to overpower the baby, I wanted it to be delicate like she was. Here is the back view of the dress. I added a strip of ribbon around the bottom of the skirt to match the ribbon on her waistband. And the front view. And here is our beautiful little girl modeling the dress herself. So perfect.

Baby Blessing Headband

For Lainah's baby blessing, I wanted to make her a little headband that matched the dress I was making her, but couldn't find one in the stores. They were all made of satins, or just too glitzy for what I wanted, so I had to make one!

I started with a little pair of white tights. The soft nylon doesn't scratch baby's head, and it automatically rolls on the edges so you don't have to worry about edging it at all, it's wonderful. Then I just found some silk flowers that were simple and small so that they wouldn't overpower my little one's cute newborn head. With silk flowers, you just pull the middle stem out of them so that you get the loose petals, and then you can rebuild them into whatever color scheme you choose. This way they also lay flat when you glue them back together and then you can attach them to whatever you want: magnets, barrettes, clips, headbands, bobby pins, etc. It's great. You simply glue them back together with a hot glue gun. Very simple.

Here is the finished headband.

While I was at it, I made a little flower clip for my bigger girls. This project took maybe 30 minutes total, it was so fast, and very fun!