Selina's cupcakes

Today I met up with some lovely Melbourne friends for a catch up, my friend Selina gave birth to her daughter Pepper about 10 weeks ago and I wanted to give her a little gift as celebration. Selina has mentioned on several occasions that Pepper can be quite "grumpy", so I thought the crying cupcakes would be appropriate. If anyone has the Planet cake book (by Paris Cutler) then you would have seen these cupcakes before, I love the different expressions and wanted to make a batch. Here is my efforts, I am quite happy with how they turned out.

Last minute cheesecake

Just popping in to share this lovely cake I whipped up yesterday for a 24th birthday. I was asked for a plain New york baked cheescake but just could not help myself in decorating it. I've made this type of cake before (Nicholas's Holy Communion cake last month) and the person who requested this cake loved the colour combo and taste so I made a similar design. The chocolate collar is made from white Nestle chocolate and flavoured Jafa, the blossoms are just fondant. The cheesecake was topped with sour cream and orange zest topping, yummmm!

Ofcourse I had a fair bit of leftovers so I whipped up a batch of Orange and lemon zesty cupcakes with orange zest buttercream and used up the leftover blossoms.

Before I go, please visit Tasha at A little sweetness and wish her a happy birthday for your chance to win some lovely goodies (have a peek, its really lovely items).

Now I must be off to finish that wedding canvas I've been meaning to complete this week!

Have a fab weekend.

xxx
Leoni

Oh my goodness!!!

Well blow me down with a feather! I've just found out that Anya's birthday dessert table was featured by Amy Atlas, squeeeeeeeeeeeel! I LOVE Amy Atlas's work so needless to say I cried when I saw the spread on her blog. Thank you Amy, you are the best xxxx

Dora birthday cake

Look what I completed today, this lovely Dora cake for a 3yr old girl called Rebecca. Its a double stacked Butter sponge cake filled with strawberry buttercream (yum!!) and covered in white chocolate fondant (flavoured strawberry). I have to say I love this cake, it was so much fun to make.

That doesn't mean there weren't a few hiccups on the way, no-sir-ee I had a heck of a time sculpting good-ole Dora. After 3 attempts I finally managed to get her right, you won't realise till you actually make her that she's got a BIG head, with funny shaped eyes and a funny mouth. In the end I started with her feet and made her legs then shorts then waist then neck before lastly making her head. Boots wasn't too bad to make, just his tail gave me grief (kept breaking).

This is the back of Dora, see, I even made her backpack lol

Anya and Liandra's bedroom makeover

Finally a bit of sunshine meant I could take some photo's of the bedroom makeover, so here it is, ta-da....... Six months of collecting, buying and making items and this is the final result (please note that I rent, so I couldn't change any of the wall colours or make any structural changes) In the above photo you can see Liandra's bed (my youngest daughter), the quilt was made from various aqua and red fabrics from the fabulous Kerri at Sew Deerly Loved, while the quilt was handmade with love by fantastic Marcie at Got scraps (Marcie does the most AMAZING quilts, every detail is perfect, please visit her shop to see for yourself) The red polka dot canvas is just a white canvas with polka dot fabric stappled around the frame. The print on the back wall is from Belle and Boo, I LOVE their paintings.

Marcie also did matching/contrasting quilt for Anya's (my eldest) bed (seen above), isn't it beautiful? Both Anya and I love it to bits. The aqua and red crochet blankets and cusshions are from thecomfortsofhome, I love the colours and the homemade feel, they are also super warm and cosy, a must have here in winter. The fabric bunting, ribbon mobile, fabric letter A and felt birdies (ontop of the cupboard) was handmade by me. Wooden tree and cupboard were bought from Ebay.

This corner isn't finished yet as I am looking for a vintage drawer unit or perhaps a storage seat, but for now I've stolen a drawer set from my room. Print in the aqua frame is from the fabulously talented Tasha at a little sweetness, I've bought several items in the favourite dress range but alas its for another project (boo-hoo) The big print in the red frame is from The little Humbugs and I covered an old hatbox in spotty fabric to match.

The above photo is another angle of Liandra's bed, she LOVES the red birdie decals (removable) on her wall and every day runs inside her room to show them to me ;-)

Anya's 10th birthday polka dot party

Phew, my very 1st lolly/dessert table is complete! I can finally kick back and appreciate all the hard work that went into Anya's polkadot party today. Six months of planning, collecting and crafting has paid off and the day was a huge success, its not every day my daughter bursts into tears because she's so happy ;-) Seeing her happy face made it all worth it. My inspiration as always, came from the fabulous AMY ATLAS (I LOVE her work!!) and Sharnel Dollar (amazingly talented lady!) Hats off to both these ladies for always pulling off the perfect party because it sure is hard work.

Most of the goodies were made by me with a lot of help from my girls, so its not perfect but I like it this way, we had fun doing those projects together.

The birthday cake was a 2 tier caramel fudge mudcake with caramel fudge buttercream icing.

My 1st macarons, don't think I'll be makng these again in a hurry, I found it very fidly lol My eldest wrote out all the label tags since my handwriting is BAD ;-)

These were made by Anya, we melted some white chocolate, coloured some blue and red and Anya piped the red and blue into a baking dish, then poured over the white chocolate and used a kebab stick to make some swirls. She then popped some smarties, peanut M&M's and sprinkles ontop to set. Once set we broke the chocolate into pieces.

We used some leftover fabric (sew deerly loved)to make these lolly bag tags, the girls then filled the bags with lollies and stapled the tag into place.

Another project I did with the girls, they piped blue chocolate into picnic spoons and then used various smarties and sprinkles to decorate the spoons. It went well with our polkadot theme.

These lovely vanilla cupcakes were entirely baked and decorated by my 10yr old daughter, I only helped mix the icing for her and she then piped it on the cupcakes and popped on the toppers. Cupcake wrappers are by The cupcake wrapper co, aren't they cute? They can be wiped clean and best of all they don't get greasy from icing mixtures. It was very hard work to pull together but everyone had a fab day.

Holy Communion cupcakes and cake set

The weekend of the 24th July was very busy for me, not only was it my eldest daughters birthday (think 24 cupcakes for the whole class) but I also had two Communion projects to complete. One was for a lovely girl called Bronte, I made her the set of cupcakes above in pink, yellow and blue, while the other set was for a boy called Nicholas.

Please excuse the terrible photo's, I had one of my chocolate panels break at the eleventh hour and went into a mad panic rush to make another one before delivery time. So instead of getting lovely clear and unhuried pics at 4pm I got these done in a rush at 6pm on my kitchen bench. The cake was a 2 tier baked New York cheesecake surrounded by chocolate panels, the cupcakes were plain vanilla with vanilla buttercream.

Here is a close up of the figurine I made, I am very happy of how he turned out, he's my very 1st "suited" figurine, and very 1st standing figurine.