Peppa Pig Cake

It's cake time! Oh sweet mercy! I honestly look forward to making these cakes so much!! They are just so much fun and Mom and I have gotten pretty good at them. Mom's morning was spent baking cakes, and making several batches of rice krispies. Here are all of the parts and pieces. (*Note to self: Pre-bake the cakes and krispies, it just breaks up the process a bit. Mom spent a total of 14 hours baking, making fondant, frosting, and creating. It was a LONG day for her! THANK YOU MOM!)

Peppa's face. 

E really wanted to help and it's hard to say no when it's her birthday, so she whipped the frosting!

This time around we decided to use rice krispie treats as the base layer. We always end up with SO much cake left over and this was a much cheaper and sturdier route.

The inspiration. (Click here.)

Dirty ice the base.

 Drape with fondant. We put it on too thin and it really bothered us.

 

Dirty ice the next layer.

Drape the fondant.

This cake was pretty forgiving. We knew we wanted to add some grass and a border around the base so we didn't have to be very "exact." which was really nice! 

Putting on the house.

Because the base was so lumpy and we had so much green fondant left over, we decided to add and wrap around it like the second layer which really cleaned it up! Once the tree and house were positioned, we added a boarder.

At this point E was begging to help again. Poor girl! Fondant cakes are just so precise. Grammy and E decided to make a flower together. 

She was so cute!

Then it was time to add the flowers. We couldn't figure out a way to make the circles even so we decided to punch them out of fondant with a frosting tip. It was decided that the tree needed apples too!

Three layers complete, now to assemble and create Peppa!

 Peppa was a lot of trial and error. I should have taken pictures of all of the renditions. We tried big cheeks and big eyes, then bright cheeks, eye placement on the sides of her head, mouth, no mouth, it was a gong show! After at least 4 different looks, we found something that we were happy with!

Tada!

I just love this cake! It is clean, simple and colorful! Our only complaint was that Peppa was just a bit too big in proportion to the cake, but gosh darn it she was darling! 

E was pretty excited when she came out of her room and saw the finished product for the first time! 

She was especially proud of her little flower and I really loved that she had something to do with the cake too. I'm sure as she gets older she will become more and more involved.

Another masterpiece done! Thank you so much Mom Tobler! I love our creations and I can't wait until our next adventure together! (Next time we will break up the baking into a few days!)

Making Cookies

I just love how festive making cookies it! Warm stove, happy smells and who doesn't love licking the frosting off of the spoon! E just loves to be a helper and she couldn't wait to help make cookies!

E was Grammy's little shadow, she would follow her around the house and whatever Grammy was doing, E had to be doing too. It was just the cutest.

Time to cute them out!

Waiting for them to bake!

And DECORATE!!!

E did sucha  good job frosting her cookies, she was very careful and so focused! 

This little guy just wanted to eat the candy's off of the cookies. Mmmm so yummy!!

Duke's Birthday

Duke's birthday was on a Sunday so it was pretty low key. He was pretty excited to open up some presents. 

Legos!!!

Ethnie was super excited to make a cake for Duke. She asked me why it was so small and I told her that for family we go simple and then I told her that she could help with sprinkles and she was satisfied. 

I'm totally into orange right now, it just seems like a Duke color and E picked blue sprinkles. I figured Chad, Janet, Jeff & Amy would be proud. Go Gators. 

Happy Birthday to You!

I can't believe you're two!!

Mmmmm cake!

Then I got to give Duke his busy board that my Daddy and I made for him. It was so bitter sweet and I could feel my Dad there with us and I could almost hear his laugh as Duke played with his board. He loved the light switch that Opa worked so hard on and I could almost hear him say "See Duke! Totally worth it! I knew you'd love it!"

It was a Happy Birthday. I fall more and more in love with this boy every single day and while he is busy as can be I wish that I could just bottle up this stage of his life. He is such a good boy with a tender heart. Just last night we told him that it was bed time and he raced to his crib, grabbed his toys and shoved them in his bed and sat and waited for up to put him in. Words cannot do my live for him justice. Happy Birthday Duke Manfred! You will forever ne my little man!