I thought it might be fun to make a Christmas cake today. I did a vanilla cake with strawberry filling. You can never go wrong with Holly. ~wink~ I tried something new and for the first time on this one, I used a small paint brush to stroke in the frosting on the leaves for a tole paint look. It was kind of fun!

It’s that time again! This year the kids decided to do a Santa’s Village for our annual gingerbread creation. My daughter requested that we do it when her grandma and grandpa were in town so they could do it with us. Here’s how it turned out:

The recipe and other years of gingerbread creations can be found here.

Here’s how it went down this year:

Wednesday afternoon I sat down to work out a pattern for the village. I’d decided to try a Santa’s Workshop, candy shoppe, sled and big Christmas tree for the village. I started with a blank piece of paper and some basic image ideas I scratched out.

Then I moved into creating a pattern and taping it together for testing.

I made the dough on Wednesday night but couldn’t get to it to roll and bake until Thursday. The good news is that it required very little flour for the rolling process. The bad news is that it was really stiff and I had to work it a bit before I cold successfully roll it. Therefore, my *note to self* is to not leave it refrigerated in the future for more than the suggested hour.

Thursday was rolling, cutting and baking:

If working with straight edges is important, you’ll want to take a moment to trim the baked pattern pieces when they’re fresh out of the oven while they’re warm and pliable. I personally like the rounded edges and know they’re all going to be covered with frosting anyway so do all my cutting before baking.

Friday morning I glued the houses together with royal frosting and later that afternoon we went to decorating:

Here’s a few more pictures of the finished results:

It’s always a fun thing to do, but I’m glad it only comes around once a year. I’m ‘gingerbreaded’ out!

About this time of year interest is renewed in lessons and information on Jesus Christ for Christmas events, lessons, etc. It’s about this time that I start getting more requests for my slide show I did several years ago on the Savior, and I always run into snags with music copyrights. It’s hard for people who download the slide show to understand why I can’t just send them the music files I used. So I decided this year I’d find a way to fix that.

Thanks to an amazing new iMac and its accompanying software, I’m happy to share a new slide show and a revised copy of the original that includes music that can be shared legally. Both shows run around 20 minutes and combine artwork, scripture and music in a powerful presentation on Christ. I have a new Slide Show Page with all the details and various download formats for anyone interested.

I’m excited to have found some solutions and hope it can help others enjoy the Spirit of the season.

So my hubby spent a great deal of time talking to me last night about things he sees me doing. I wish I could borrow his glasses! *snort*

It reminded me of the way he was talking to me 4 years ago about blogging and how much I would enjoy it and how sure he was I’d be good at it. I was really resistant, not sure why just couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it I guess. In my defense, this was just before the big blogging boom. To his credit, he was absolutely right.

The cool thing is that some of what he said struck a chord with me. I’m a talent nomad. I do so many things, dabble in so many, enjoy so many that it’s impossible for me to focus on just one thing and I love to share. In the past I’ve not been sure that’s such a good thing, but since I began blogging I’m seeing it a new light and I’m loving it. So the more I think on it I think he might be on to something, and he is a smart guy who has proven he’s been right about things like this before.

In short, he says he sees me making money with my sharing things online from my personality to my knowledge and talents. As it’s already stuff I’m doing anyway and he’s there to help support and direct me I think I’ll take the plunge. I’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain according to him so I guess we’ll see what comes of it.

I’m wondering why it’s so easy to pigeon hole yourself into an “I can’t do that” box? Why we so easily discredit ourselves before trying something because clearly we don’t have enough credentials or whatever the magic requirement is to do something? My entire focus of my blog has been the motto of making my life a masterpiece and sharing what I learn along the way. It might be time to take it up a notch.

I got an e-mail this morning with a link to an artist’s website. I’m only sad that I’ve not known this artist before this morning. His work is exquisite to me. I was so moved by his new painting “One Nation Under God” that I wanted to share it here. I have only captured a small section of this picture in hopes others will click on it and visit the artist’s site to see the full work and read of his thoughts on it.

I am so amazed by the talents of others and their willingness to share them. I really think Jon captured the heart and essence of all the wonderful elements of this great nation in his painting. I could feel a shared love for American History and the sacrifices of so many wonderful people since it’s birth.

Making cakes was just some of the fun I had while in Idaho.

The Macbook cake was my first fondant cake. The second was my first formal cake made for a wedding.

I made this fondant cake for my niece’s wedding last summer.

I have a niece getting married next week. I offered to help her with her invitations and cake. I have more confidence in the graphic design of her invitation than her cake but I’m willing to take a stab at it.

Here’s the invitation:

And here’s the first ‘test’ cake.

I’m excited now that I’ve done a test cake at what the real one will be like. Especially knowing I’ll have access to real cake materials and not homemade cardboard frames.

However, it just goes to prove that where there’s a will there’s a way. *snort* I wish you could see the disaster under the top layer of this test cake. It was a cake baked with the cardboard frame on a cookie sheet, and made without eggs because I didn’t realize I only had one when the recipe called for 3 until I was knee deep into the process. It was already crumbling before I attempting to put it on top of a patchwork of rice krispy treats to get it to a 4″ height. I’m still amazed I could make it look anything like a hexagon at all. Blake said it tasted great though and he enjoyed digging into it moments after the test rounds were complete. Their purpose of learning were served and now I think I know what we want to do for real thing.

For my own purposes, I’ll share some of the details that I know today I think I’ll remember but when the time comes it will all be muddled in my memory:

wedding cakes are HUGE. You can’t really downsize if you want a tiered cake because you need at least 3″ between each layer to look right and allow decorating. You have to start deleting layers and spacing them with some sort of separation.

typical wedding pan measurements are 2″ high, they need to be doubled to make 4″ layers both to look right and to allow decorating space on the sides.

rice krispy treats work great as the base, but it takes a ton of them to make the right sized tiers. It took 6 1/2 batches to do the two layers I have a picture of which are only one 2″ base 15″ across and one 2″ base 12″ across. That means it would take 13 batches to do complete two layer bottoms.

ganache tends to remain a little chunky even if you melt the chocolate before adding the cream. However, you can remelt the mixture after it’s cooled and it will become perfectly smooth. That can then be re-chilled and whipped into a smooth frosting. Letting it cool for a few minutes after remelting makes a better drizzle as it’s slightly thicker.

fruit garnish like lemon or orange rine ribbons can sit for a day in the fridge before decorating. They will harden slightly in whatever shape formed in and hold color without drying for several hours in the open air.

doing test runs are wonderful for so many reasons!

A few more test cake photos can be found at: Lindsay’s Wedding

I’m doing some learning this week and I’m so excited with today’s results I have to blog it! Today’s sweet success was learning all about chocolate ganache. I’ll share more details later about the reason for the lessons, for now I’ll share how fun and easy the stuff is!

A friend suggested that I try the ganache for all my needs on a single cake. She was right! It’s not only easy, it’s extremely versatile and tasty! It’s nothing more than equal parts of heavy cream and chocolate mixed together. You boil the cream and pour it over the chocolate, then mix it well. The possibilities are endless as you can use any kind of chocolate. For my test run I used what I had which was a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I was a little impatient (me to a “T”) in letting it set so my first stab using it as a drizzle and fruit dip was really runny. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a couple days. She told me if I let it chill, I could whip it and use it as a frosting too. Today I gave that a stab and was so tickled with the results!

Here’s my first test of the ganache minutes after mixing as a fruit dip and drizzle:

It was tasty but much to thin to make drizzle tips.

Today I wanted to see if I could make it work for frosting as well. I pulled the bowl from the fridge and stirred a small section. I dropped it over the side of some rice crispy treats to see if it would make a pretty drizzle formation and it worked! Better yet is that now a few hours later it looks exactly the same, it hasn’t melted nor gotten a hard shell on it. Next, I put some in my mixer and whipped it for a few minutes watching the change. There’s a point where it goes from creamy frosting to a thick, sponge like frosting texture. So I put the thick on first to see if I could make some defined corners. That worked great but I wasn’t happy with the lack of smooth finish. So I took a little more and didn’t let it whip quite as long, put that over the thick edge one and it was perfect! Three solutions with one simple mixture!

Now that I know how easy it is to have the ganache do the frosting, details and dip/drizzle I’m ready to tackle the full sized test run. Wish me luck!

My husband nicknamed me the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Queen this morning. It’s true, I’ve got a habit of taking on all types of projects on a purely “learn as you go” system. From finishing my garage, putting down a new wood floor and building furniture to crocheting blankets, creating recipes and everything in between, I’ve been known to tackle a wide variety of DIY projects. I blame Grandma Luthy. I’ve heard stories and have many things crafted by her able hands. She was the kind of woman that simply made what she wanted if it weren’t available for one reason or another. My motivation isn’t as admirable as hers; my primary motivation is simply that I’m cheap. I don’t like spending money, especially on things that I know I could do myself for a fraction of the cost. Today’s share - patio furniture covers.

I have two chairs and 60″ swing that needed done. But I was sick looking around at replacement cushions. It was easily going to cost a couple hundred dollars just for replacements. Knowing their purpose, abuse and lack of use I just can’t justify that. So I googled outdoor fabric and found a discount website. I was still dismayed to see that some of the fabrics ran an average of $12 per yard, but still $50-70 is a great deal over 4-5 times that much. Then I found their clearance section and I found some durable and heavier fabric for only $2 per yard. Score! Okay, it’s straight from the early 90’s and not what I’d choose if I were going purely on what I liked, but it was okay, and I’m learning so I ordered $20 worth. It arrived yesterday afternoon.

I cut out the old batting and used plain tissue paper (from the gift wrap bag) to trace out a basic pattern. The hardest part was sewing the closing seams after the padding was in place as I don’t have a heavy duty machine, but I made it work!

And here are the results:

I’m pretty happy with my $20 purchase. Now that I’ve done it I’d even consider paying more in the future for a pattern I really like! But for now, I’m happy knowing that’s another 5 years away. *smile*

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No wonder this has been one of my most favorite recent messages:

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