Saturday, May 15, 2010

Small Stump + Studio Choo: Terrarium Take 2

Awhile ago, I made a succulent terrarium. The main reason I chose to build one is because they’re supposed to be pretty self sustaining, and they require minimal maintenance…if any! Considering that I have a pretty brown thumb, I thought this project would be perfect for me!!


Here’s a picture of what it looked like when I first built it. (Most of it is alive!)



















And here’s picture of it now. (Most of it is dead)











Considering, I haven’t watered it in about 3 months…it’s not doing too bad!

I got my idea to build one after reading the Small Stump and Studio Choo blog. They’re a small flower shop owned by best friends in the San Francisco area.

The reason I love them so much is because they make flower arrangements that look like this…














And they have a dog that looks that that…







Now, you must know that I’m partial to anyone who owns a Chihuahua. Everyone knows that they are the most superior dog breed in all of existence!!! Also, don't you love how natural and crafty their arrangements look?

Sometime in the near future, I plan to give my terrarium some TLC and will post pictures later of its mini makeover and the grand reveal!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

How about that?!

My eyes perked up this morning when I saw How About Orange's blog post...how about that?! Hmmm...I wonder how she came across that calliope cake? :)

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Blog struck

Hello loyal readers! :)
If you’ve read my past posts, you know that I’ve been pretty obsessed with cakes as of late.
I was doing a google image search, looking for cute cake ideas when I came across this cake:















Cute huh?!?

Well, this particular cake caught my eye b/c of the pattern of the bottom cake. It’s a calliope print designed by Jessica Jones. Jessica has a blog called howaboutorange.blogspot.com and it’s the FIRST blog that I subscribed to! Yes…my blogging obsession started with her cute design blog. Naturally, I emailed her as soon as I saw it and I was pleasantly surprised when she emailed me back. Ha…actually…I was ecstatic, seriously shocked, and jumping for joy! I know…I’m weird and I’m totally blog struck to the max!

I've pasted our email exchange below:
I wrote:

Hi Jessica.
I’ve been a long time subscriber and fan of your blog! :)
You may have already seen this, but I came across this really cute cake that used your calliope print!!
http://www.sugarcoatitstudio.com/ - Look under cakes -> geometrical!

Jessica replied:

EEEEK! Janice, that is so awesome! Haven't seen it before. Holy schmoly. I love it. Thank you!!!
Jess

Holy schmoly right back at ya Jess!

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mothers Day Cakes Part II

I’m soooo caked out! I think it’s safe to say that no father out there will be getting a cake from me when father’s day rolls around.


After making 3½ cakes in one week (I’ll explain the ½ part later)…I think I’ve got the basics of cake making down!

A few tips I learned along the way:

Tip #1: The freezer is your friend
Freezing makes cutting and frosting so much easier.

Tip #2: Room temperature butter and eggs are a MUST
I was in a rush and made frosting with almost room temperature eggs and butter and came out with lumpy frosting. I learned from this blog that if you have lumpy frosting, it’s because your butter is probably cold, to fix it wrap a steaming hot towel around your bowl to slowly melt the better. That was great advice…until my frosting got too warm and started to separate! Then according to the same blog, I gave my bowl a nice ice bath to cool the frosting! That worked too…until my butter starting getting lumpy again. After repeating a few more times, I gave up and decided I’d make my frosting look organic (according to Chef Julie … organic looking = not perfect looking...which I was willing to accept by this point)!

Tip #3: Making 3½ cakes in one week will give you major cake burnout
Take it easy or you will hate making cakes! I’m done with cakes for next month or two!! My next project using my stand mixer will be bread…yummm…nothing like freshly baked bread to ruin my svelte figure!!

Enough talking…ONTO the pictures!

Cake #1:











Cake #2:















Cake #3:











Cake #4:
I have 2 unfrosted cakes in the fridge...trust me...they're there.

I went to 2 stores in my neighborhood and they were both out of unsalted butter and confectioners’ sugar (2 very important ingredients for making frosting)!  Someone in Tustin Ranch is out on a baking frenzy…I think they went to all the stores in the neighborhood and cleaned them out! Anywho…this final cake was for my own mother!!! I told her a cake was on its way…but I’m tempted to buy canned frosting! Good thing she doesn’t know how to use the internet and can’t read my blog. HA!


After waiting patiently all week, they were very upset to learn that dog’s cannot eat cake.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Mother's Day Cakes

As our family continues to grow (a special thanks and shout out to baby Megan)…we’ve been having more and more reasons to celebrate! Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, babies, and of course the usual holidays where gifts are likely given (i.e. mothers day, fathers day, Christmas, etc.). While I’m not complaining, it has been quite a strain on our wallets.

In a valiant effort to be a little more budget conscious, I decided to bake mother’s day cakes! Unfortunately, these cakes actually turned out to be pretty dang expensive. If you add up the cost of the supplies I had to buy (tools and groceries), the fact that I made 2 cakes as practice and need to make 2 more cakes as a final...ugh…I don’t even want to talk about how much I ended up spending.

Anywho, thanks to my main squeeze, Min, I am now a proud owner of a kitchenaid stand mixer. Luckily, my handy dandy mixer made making cakes from scratch so easy even though the first two cakes i made resulted in utter disaster. As the saying goes ‘third time’s a charm’ and hopefully this saying will bode well in my favor!!!

I got ideas/recipes for the cakes from the following:

Iambaker
Wilton.com


I’ll post pictures and results later.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Howdy!

If you know me well, you know that I’m obsessed with blogs! I often start my sentences with…’there’s this one blog I read…’ or ‘I read on a blog today that…’.

I figure I might as well start one too and be a contributing member (albeit a lackluster one) of the blogging community!

Blog world here I come!!

Enjoy.