Saturday, October 29, 2016

Our Halloween Gathering of 2016


 A Nightmare Before Christmas party

This year we opted for a fun Nightmare Before Christmas Party :) We immediately began to look for props and look for ideas. We found a cute printable banner and wreath ideas on Pinterest. I created the invitations using clip art and the free Nightmare Before Christmas font that I found here
We decided to have guests bring their flashlights and after creepy crafts we watched the movie and then headed outside for a themed scavenger hunt and flashlight tag!

I made a cute little Zero ghost out of pipe cleaners, cheap white fabric, cheesecloth, stuffing, and felt and small imitation pumpkins. Here he is! I love him. there are various tutorials out there but I just looked at a picture and "winged" it. (No pun intended). 
The printable banner was found here. Sally's recipe book tutorial was found here. This woman has so many great ideas and tutorials! She even has things for sale! Be sure to check her out! Her stuff is amazing! She also has free printable labels for Sally's potion jars. I bought glass and plastic jars and sprayed them a matte black then glued the labels to them. 
I was sure to get plenty of gummy worms (Oogie Boogie's Bugs), Twizzlers for Sally's hair, chocolate Chex mix with white chocolate chips for Zero's Kibble, and made little Zero cupcake toppers from fondant. I also made a great cake with jack's face and bowtie. I scanned cyberspace for ideas and settled on combining a bunch of different ideas. 

I used a black tablecloth that I cut into strips and put it across our sliding door as a curtain. I used white foam to cut out 3 skulls and used a sharpie marker to draw Jack's face and placed them in the center and sides of the curtains to hold them open. Zero was put by our slider to the backyard and I hung various purple lights and decor outside.  I got black spiderweb plates, napkins, and orange cups. Purple flatware was placed in black containers and I got a cheap black plastic cauldron and two plastic web bowls for three dollars each at stop and shop that completed the look.

The scavenger hunt cards I created and have shared them with you! Please remember to give me credit for them! Also, I have included the invitation card covers that I used. I got black cards and envelopes and glued on the inner portions and using white gel pens, wrote the guest's names and addresses on them. 
Savenger Hunt Printables
Invite Cover

The invites came out so great!!! 

For food, I made a Jack Skellington cake and used an idea found on Pinterest (I LOVE that site!) that used melted marshmallows strung around the cake to look like spiderwebs! So cute! Twizzlers were "Sally's Hair", and we had "Boo Cheese", pumpkin dip served with apples and graham crackers, little clementine oranges, Oogie's Bugs which were sour gummy worms, pizza, salad, a veggie platter, witch's hat cupcakes, and pulled pork and meatball sandwiches. We also had monster donuts (I took vampire teeth and put them in the center of them) and Caramel Apple Sangria for the adults. The table came out amazing and because I ran out of time, I realized I never took a picture of it set up! I am so disappointed, but it looked amazing- trust me. I do have pictures of the rest of the decorations though and the cake and cupcakes- at least I have those.

The kids arrived and we set them up to do a craft downstairs. 

After that, we had pizza and watched the movie, "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Since it was raining that day, I was unsure if we could do the scavenger hunt, but after the movie, we were able to do it. I hid the items during the movie and then gave 6 cards to the kids and as each item was found, the next child read their card. We then played "Pin the nose on Zero" and used the mayor's pumpkin tie as a blindfold. The kids loved it. We did have plans to do a pumpkin ring toss with glow stick rings and a pumpkin but the kids opted for a double feature instead and "Hotel Transylvania" was shown instead. Finally, flashlight tag was played outside when it got dark and they had a blast! Overall, they were amazing and everyone had fun!

Enjoy!!





















Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Lego Cake!

So my neighbor's sweet little boy turned 5 and I had a request to make a Lego theme cake. I knew exactly what would be perfect. This is my second attempt at this cake, I didn't like the way the first one came out so I made another and it was so much better! I think that the fondant was the hard part. I found a much better fondant recipe here. Scroll down to the bottom and the recipe is there. It tastes great and you also get great recipes for cakes and buttercream!

This cake was egg free chocolate cake and it tasted like fudge. No frosting needed but you can't have a chocolate Lego head when classic yellow is what I was going for! So crumb coat with chocolate butter cream and the four 8 inch round layers were ready to go!

Fondant was used to make the face and Lego blocks. Picky me didn't like the cracks but after 12 hours of making the cake start to finish, my eyes were glazing over....






The birthday boy loved his cake and said it was yummy!

Five Nights at Freddy's Cake

So this cake was by far the most challenging and also one of the most fun. While I don't watch the show, it was interesting to challenge my fondant skills to take it to the next level.

The cake was an 8 inch square vanilla cake, with three layers, and chocolate buttercream. The toppers were made from modeling chocolate and marshmallow fondant. I have since tried out another fondant recipe made with glycerin and gelatin and it works so much better. Marshmallow fondant has always been, well, sticky, but maybe I need to use Crisco instead of more powdered sugar. Sigh- my kitchen will never be clean.... anyway. Here are the pictures:




Such a fun cake! Happy Birthday Ben!



Sunday, July 31, 2016

A Perfectly Pleasant Purple 40th Birthday Party!

One of my best friends turned 40 and to celebrate we had a cookout with many friends. I made the cakes and as she loves purple, light houses and the beach, an ocean theme with purple was definitely on the menu. Did I mention she loves Donald Duck too? 

I made a 6 inch round cake with an awesome vanilla cake and I made a larger 8 inch chocolate cake. I decorate both with vanilla buttercream, brown sugar sand, shimmer purple candy rocks, and molded chocolate shells. I sell the 6 inch for $60 and the 8 inch for $90 decorated as is. This includes the homemade cake, frosting, seashell decorations and packaging. Each cake has three layers of cake and two layers of luscious buttercream.













Donald Duck cupcakes were also on the menu! These sell for $4 each (minimum of 12)! They feature delicious marshmallow fondant beaks, hats, and eyes, and candy hearts, vanilla buttercream and white cake.




Donald Duck fondant topper is $5 and is made of marshmallow fondant.





Here are photos of the display at her party!!! Happy Birthday Sarah!







My favorite was this guy! So cute! I told Sarah she couldn't eat him but we needed to keep him because he was so cute! Tsum Tsum fondant creations may be my new thing!

Enjoy all!

~Ariane 



Saturday, July 30, 2016

Boston Terrier Hot Tub Cake

Here is a cute hot tub cake that was made with fondant Boston Terrier toppers, Kit Kats, blue white chocolate ganache, chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream! Came out really cute!





Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Hello Little Piggie! (Piggy in a Hot Tub Cake)

Here is another cute little cake that I made for a pig roast! I used chocolate cake, Kit Kats (yum) and made little fondant piggies! I made chocolate ganache and although it took some time to set up, it was very delicious and worked perfectly! The cake was a hit!






Oink Oink! Enjoy!

Ariane :)