Happy Graduation!

As some of you may know, I work at a small private school here in griffin called Grace Academy. As of yet, it is my favorite teaching job. I have small classes, and I work with great teachers and students (what more could you ask for, right?) Last night was graduation at first Methodist here in town. And below are some of the flowers I did for the celebration.

All of the girls carried in little arrangements. Above was the salutatorian's, I added some blue to it. Below, is an example of the rest of the girls.

Corsage for Ms. Terri.

And here is me with several of my seniors. Up until this year, I have always had the lower grades and not had much contact with the actual seniors that were graduating. So it was neat for me to get to know the actual graduates.

A Bride and a Birthday

The cake above was for a bridesmaid luncheon. This was the first charm cake that I have done. Attached to the ribbons hanging out of the cake are charms that each have different meanings, and whichever one a person pulls tells their future. The bride and her friends have made this old Victorian tradition a tradition at each of their bridesmaid luncheons.

This "Wii" cake was a birthday cake for the son of one of the women who works with Brian. This family loves to play Wii together, and the parents wanted me to incorporate the Wii Sports logo on the cake. Once I delivered it, the parents added a wiimote to complete the design.

Happy Graduation!

May is always such a busy month, especially if there is a graduation involved. I don't think that the graduates necessarily realize how busy it all is, they are just looking forward to getting done! Next week, I get to be part of graduation, but on the non student side as Grace Academy graduates next week. Thankfully, it is not this weekend because I still have 2 cakes to get done :) This cake/cupcakes were for a kindergarten graduation. The foil makes it hard to see, but I used my new cricut to do the lettering on the bottom. It is such a cool toy. I had done a lot of research into whether it not to get the cricut cake, and I am still trying to modify so that I can use the one i got for fondant and gum paste. I think all I am missing is the deep blade housing and I will be all set to decorate some cakes!

Wedding Part Two

Here are a few more pictures. Above, is another one of the table decorations.
Here is a birdcage that Mandie wanted to collect gift cards on the gift table. We jazzed it up with a silver runner, some boxwood, and callas.

Here is one of the rectangular tables at the reception.

Below are the pictures of the cake. It was chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. The bride loves birds, so she chose the topper based on that. I thought they were cute.

Both the Elizabeths had the vision for the greenery around the cake stand. I thought it turned out pretty cool! Below is where we hid the toss bouquet in the greenery arrangement around the cake.

Shackleford-Harwell Wedding.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am obsessed with weddings. I still read brides magazines (even though I am coming up on my 3rd wedding anniversary) and watch anything on television that relates to weddings. I also spend a fair amount of time talking about weddings with several of my friends (who are equally interested, or at the least they tolerate it!). Speaking of friends, this weekend would not have been possible without my two best Elizabeths. Crouch flew in from Tulsa, and Pool came down from Atlanta. They are both talented, as you will see from the photos below.


I have been working on this wedding since January, the tasting cakes I did for Mandie and Stephen were actually one of my first blog posts when I started this little project. Mandie was a delight to work with, and I was so happy to be able to help her and Stephen with their big day. Here are some examples of what we did. We used shades of green, white, purple, and silver to create the arrangements for their wedding.












Here is the guest book arrangement.

Altar arrangments at the church. Crouch did such a great job with these!

Groom's men boutineers- purple cala, rosemary and hypericum

Groom's boutineer (white calla) father of the bride boutineer (purple and white calla)

Brides Bouquet (white hydrangea, green hypericum, and chite cala) surrounded by the bride's maid bouquets (purple hydrangea).

Kissing balls for the flower girls and some of the corsages.

close up of the altar arrangement from above. I tried forever to get these pics lined up, but alas...





table centerpiece for the round tables @reception. Earlier, I said what a big help the Elizabeth's were, the reception centerpieces were no exception. Brian also pitched in BIG time. We also had help from one of the kids from the youth group. Alex was a big help as well!

Rectangular tables w/ centerpieces and runners.

This was the centerpiece for the bride and groom table.

Cabaret/ cupcake FAIL

My friend Adam, who I have known for almost 20 years, started a run in Cabaret this past weekend. He is paying the Master of Ceremonies role, and after watching him on Friday night, I am pretty sure it was one of the many things he was born to do. The show was over in Newnan, check out the theater's website for more information- http://www.newnantheater.org/.
Since I started my blog, Adam has told me that I need to put my failures on my blog as well as the successes. So wouldn't you know, my first big failure (worth a whole blog post) would be on something I did for him. I made some cabaret themed cupcakes for the cast on opening night. They were so cute! I made feathered headbands, lingerie sets, and even copied the lettering off a movie poster I found on Internet. I was so excited to get them into the box to take over to him. My excitement faded very quickly as I picked the board up and it proceeded to form a cardboard cabaret cupcake sandwich. So the pictures below are actually version 2.0 of these cupcakes. Thankfully, after taking a minute to calm down, I was able to fix the problem.





Here are the cupcakes. I guess I should have taken a picture of the disaster. Next time, I will try and be clear headed enough to get the camera!
Here are the little headbands with feathers

And a closeup of the lingerie!

Utility Club Past President's Tea

As some of you may know, I am the current Utility Club president. We are a local women's group that dates back to 1927. We do community service with several organizations around Griffin, donate money, give scholarships to local students, and publish a cook book The Stuffed Griffin. I have a been a member since I moved back to Griffin in 2005. Every other year, the current president hosts a tea for all the past presidents. The oldest past president had her 96th birthday on Saturday, so it was neat to get to celebrate that in addition to the past presidents. Mimi Johnson was kind enough to offer to host this even at her house. Here are some pictures

Here are the invitations. I made little tea envelopes for the invitation.


Here is the cake. It was chocolate with cream cheese icing. I tried a new brush technique to do the flowers.

Below are some of the flower arrangements I did for the tables. I picked up most of the flowers at Sam's club. It was a great weekend to buy pretty spring flowers because of mother's day.Thankfully, my roses were going crazy so I was able to use some of those as well.

Week 18

Here is a Buzz Brithday cake for a friend of mine from church's son. This is another minority family, like my own, that roots for the other team from Georgia. So naturally, Brian especially liked this cake.

Caramel Cake

I was introduced to caramel cake when I started dating Brian a few years back. I did a little research, and this southern treat is traced back to the late 19th Century. The recipe was first published in a cook book in Atlanta about that time. I am of the opinion that it is one of the unsung heros of Southern cooking. Maybe its just people are scared of trying to make it or Paul Deen and Alton Brown haven't featured it on a tv show, who knows? His mom, as I have mentioned before, is an excelent baker (many of the recipes I make, I have begged off of her). She makes a caramel cake for special occasions, and after having it a few times I decided that I needed to learn how to make one. Thankfully, Sally, my mother in law, is also a great teacher. The most challenging part, in my opinion, was learning how to brown the sugar.

Charleston Birthday Trip

On Saturday, my parents took me to Charleston, S.C. for my birthday (check out my family name on the street sign above). This was my first visit over there, and I was blown away; it is such a beautiful place. We walked around the market, looked at some other shops, and took a tour. We went with a company called About Charleston. The man who was our tour guide has a background in restoration architecture, and he knew so much all the houses and such. If you feel like being a tourist in Charleston, I would suggest going with them. Side note, the guy who owned the company look a lot like Jerry Garcia, so it was weird hearing someone who looked like that lecturing us on formal gardens and Tiffany glass. I picked up a few ideas while on the trip. The first is that I want to turn the patch in the back yard that has trouble holding onto grass into a more formal type garden. I will post pictures on my progress very soon. I also saw some cute things that I will put my twist on :)

I am thinking that creeping fig and jasmine might be a nice cover for my retaining wall

I was totally nosy when I snapped this pic over someones back fence, but I fell in love with this chandelier hanging outdoors.

This was on a bed and breakfast, the windows are hand blown, and the curve underneath was hand carved.

A curved balcony for your hoop skirt!

A replica of the Arc D' Triomph, same house as the hand blown windows.
I always thought that texas had the market cornered on stars, guess I was wrong.

more from last week

I did the cupcakes above for a baby shower. They were Brian's mom's strawberry cake with monogrammed sugar cookies.

Two weeks ago, the church had a fundraiser for the Belize trip we are going on this summer. We had a silent auction as part of the dinner, and I donated a cake. The lady who bought the cake asked me to make one for the birthday party. I made the adult cake in chocolate with pink buttercream, and the smash cake was strawberry. I used the invitation design as inspiration for the piping.