Birthday Pinwheel Cake!

I married into an awesome family. However, this awesome family has 3 June birthdays, all within about 5 days of each other (the birthdays are my MIL's, her sons,and my Sister in law who married into the family, in case you were wondering how they managed all those close birthdays). Really, who does that? It's like Christmas in June- people to buy for, lists to get, etc. Actually, it's kind of fun celebrating thing the all birthdays all at once. Thankfully, they are all willing to share, so we just do one birthday bash for all 3.

I knew I wanted to make a cake, but what to make for 3 people??? I had elaborate grand visions in my head, but thankfully reality intervened before I committed to anything in my mind. SO....I just picked a fun, summery cake that I'd been wanting to make for a while. Pinwheels and polkadots!

I got the idea for this cake from this blog here.

Happy June Birthdays!

A Spring Cake

A couple of week ago, I had a baking fail. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate that. Especially when it is something relatively simple that I've tried (and failed) at before. ugg! Maybe one day I'll tell that story. However, this post isn't about that, it's about the cake I made the day after that to make myself feel better. To be fair, I had been wanting to practice my buttercream frosting techniques and had been itching to make a cake anyways. The previous days failure just neccesitated the need to bake something and have it actually turn out. I'm certainly still learning the ins an outs of cake decorating (there's a ton to learn), but it was fun to practice.

So without further ado, here's my cake-

Mother's Day Cookies

These cookies were fun to do for a number of reasons, 1) Yhey were for my mom and Mother-in-law 2) They were the first cookies that I've mailed to my mom (and by extension my dad, brother, and Sister-in-law) in Florida, so they finally got to try some of my cookies and see them in person! [Ang-I have no idea when, but you're family is definitely getting cookies one of these days too!] 3) I got to try 3 different cookie ideas that I've been wanting to try 4) I got my first experience at making a cookie basket!

Whew! Basically, these were awesome cookies to do! And thank goodness all my ideas lived up to expectations and turned out relatively as anticipated. Trust me, that's rare. There are many ideas in my head for cookies, that once I actually start decorating, just don't happen! I try to make them happen, but my cookies yell back at me and say they aren't gonna do it. Then I yell them, walk away and we have a stand-off for about 20 minutes, until I concede and do what they want. (parts of that may or may not be true).

To start with, I've done some brush embroidery before, but not on a lot of cookies at once and the flowers looked a little different. You may notice that there is only 1 or 2 cookies with the 2 flowers on them instead of one. I had intentions to do more, but just got in such a groove with the single flower ones that completely forgot to stop and do more of the other kind!
I also was able to really try to paint them with pearl dust (aka, the stuff the makes them glittery). I've dry brushed pearl dust on, but had yet to (successfully) paint it on. You can see it best in the 3rd pic here-it photographs a but funky, buts it like tiny silver glittery specks all over the flower! (I like sparkly things...).

I saw this cookie idea on Cookie Crazie's blog here. I thought it was adorable and knew I wanted to recreate it for my own Mom and MIL.

Here's what the cookies for my mom looked like before they got  put in little boxes and then in a bigger box with lots of padding so they'd make it across the country safely. They are packaged 2 to a bag (back to back). I love these toppers-so pretty and elegant, perfect for my mom.

I made the cookies for my MIL into a cookie bouquet. I had some trouble getting them to stand up properly, but it was a good learning experience for cookie bouquets.

More cookies!

Remember those spring cupcakes I posted earlier this week? Well, we made those for younglife leadership night. At this particular meeting, we met a new awesome young life leader. Well, she saw the cupcakes we made and asked if we'd like to bake something for a bake sale that was going to raise money for a young mom with breast cancer. Of COURSE we said YES! [I should stop for a moment and say how awesome and courageous it was to ask us when she had just met us!]. What a great reason to bake!

My friend, L, made salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bars. They were pretty darn good. The recipe is on my pinterest board, sweets, if you are interested.

I made cookies (like that was a surprise to anyone). I got cancer ribbon cookie cutter and did a bunch of ribbon cookies and then also did some fun summery sunglasses, sandals, and margarita glasses (all new cookie cutters given to me! so fun to put them to use!). I found myself thinking of a few women I had known of who have struggled with breast cancer as I was making them.