Cake Show Part 1

Here's just a few cakes from this weekend. More info. on the cake show will be posted after my kids go to bed but I'm breaking up the posts since there are so many pictures. These are not pictures of my cakes and I do not know who did them but they are all great!!

Squirrel!

Great details! Beginner cake

one of my absolute favorites... also a beginner cake

We loved these cookies

This looks so real!

my #1 favorite cake of the entire weekend. The details and stringwork was amazing.

Austin people

We are back from Austin.

It was a great weekend and I feel like a true, authentic Austonian now, or at least that is what I like to tell myself.

I did place third at the cake show in one of my divisions. I will share more about that and lots of pictures later this week.

Tonight we are really tired so I'm not going to share pictures tonight.

I'll just tell you that Saturday we hit up all the local Austin hot spots and so I am a true Austonian. I was never taken for a tourist, even with the mom jeans and huge camera around my neck. Everyone probably thought I was just another cool college kid.... Young hip college kids have three kids hanging around their necks at all times right?

I have a busy week planned that starts tomorrow with crawling out from under the piles of suitcases, laundry, cakes, and empty goldfish boxes. It's so busy this week that I even have to turn a year older. I better get to sleep. My young hip days are ending soon, really soon,.... on tuesday.

Cakes and things

You thought I had fallen off the face of the earth, didn't you?

Well the good news is that I did not fall off the face of the earth because the earth is round. Kinda like my bottom half.

It's that time of year again, cake time! I'm once again preparing for the sugar arts show in Austin and I am busy! busy.. busy.. busy... I am 75% of the way done with my first cake and have at least two more to go. I might throw one more in there when I get closer to the show. Who knows. I don't.

I always have these perfect cakes in my mind, planned and ready to be made. However I always change my mind on the design at the last minute and come up with something totally different. I don't try to do funny kitchsy cakes because I can do that anytime. I love the older more formal styles that you don't see that much anymore and so I challenge myself to learn those techniques for the show. They say you shouldn't use new techniques on a show cake but apparently they don't know me.

Princess Newbie has also been up a lot the past few nights. She has a doctor's appointment in the morning so we can get her ears checked for an ear infection. Princess Goofy also has a doctor's appointment because she keeps telling us that her ears are talking to her. The other day I asked her what her ears say to her and she replied, "iiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnggggggg."  Then I asked what it sounded like and she told me it sounded like a mommy, not like a daddy. Since I speak Princess Goofy's natural language of Goof Troop-ology, I will interpret. Basically her ears are making high pitched ringing noises.  We're going to discuss this with the doctor in the morning.

Since I got around 3 hours of sleep last night, please ignore all spelling mistakes. I could not even find spell check right now if I wanted too. As soon as the Super Bowl is over and His Royal Highness stops hooting and hollering like a barn owl, I am going to bed.

If you have any snazzy cake ideas, post a comment below! If you just want to say hi, post a comment. If you want a million dollars, post a comment. Not saying I can provide that money, just saying let me know. haha. I'm delirious from sleep deprivation.

Here's the Post that I wrote last year showing the cakes from the Sugar Arts Show:  Cake Show 2009
Go take a look!

My last post was january 13th. eek! I stopped posting then so I could start working on my cakes for the cake show and had planned on casually posting personal updates between now and then. However, 1st trimester tiredness followed by both girls being sick with strep and the flu, then followed by them giving me the flu, prevented all of this from happening. So... Here I am! Back from Austin and the Sugar Arts Cake show. Life can finally get back to normal if I even know what that means. The last week before the show was crazy! I was up until wee hours of the morning every night working on the cakes. Every cake at the show gets a critique sheet afterwards with things that the judges like or what they would have liked you to have done better. The last cake had a critique sheet that mentioned several times that I needed more detail. The bad thing was that I didn't have any time to do anymore detail! I was up until 3 am thursday night working on then worked on it all day friday up until the second we left for Austin. Hopefully if I am able to go next year with a 5 month old, then I will not have the flu the week before and will have more time to get things done!

So today I'm just going to post a ton of pictures! First I'll show you my cakes that I took to the show.

This is the Peacock wedding cake. I did not place with this one and the critique sheet said that my fondant feathers were too thick, I totally agree. The judges also like to see decorations all around the cake for wedding cakes. I personally don't like that look so I do what I'm happy with. I love this cake except for the fat feathers.

This is the Yellow Rose of Texas Cake. I placed second in the adult intermediate division. The bandanna is hand piped and the plaque on top is hand painted. I really enjoyed this cake. All the fondant is hand painted as well. I need an airbrush!

These are my Ruby Red Slippers. You can't see it but they have individual sequins made from fondant covering the entire cake. This is the cake that the judges wanted to see more detail on. They wanted me to shade the bricks on the yellow brick road and add textural grass. This is the only cake that I really feel like it should have won but didn't. Each shoe took 6 hours to place the sequins on. Oh well, I tried my hardest.

Apparently I forgot to take a picture of my last entry. I'll try to get that up in a day or so.

Now I'll show you some pictures from the show. I did not do these cakes and I do not have the names of the people that did. Again, the following cakes are not my work. This pig was in my category with the shoes. It didn't win either but it should have!

This dog won the category that the Ruby Red Slippers were in.

This was a beautiful cake that didn't win anything but it should have! The fishes were all hand painted! This was one of my favorites.

Done by Ruth Rickey, one of my cake heroes. She place either second or third with this in the masters division.
Placed first in adult advanced

This cake placed but I don't remember what place or what division. It is one of my favorites from the show.

The rat cake above is one of my favorites! It is so cute and has so much detail.

The goose only won second place in adult advanced sculpted cake. It was amazing!

The Geisha won first in Adult Inter. special techniques. It was beautiful and the kimono was hand painted. This horrible picture does not do it justice!

This horse head won First in Adult Masters Sculpted cake and also Best of Show! That means she got a huge silver punch bowl and some cash. It was amazing with such detail! Definitely deserved that honor! Below is the silver platters that went to the Best of the Division and Show cake winners. Next year I plan on bringing a few of these home.