Coral Colored Henna Cake

Here's my most recent cake I just finished this Saturday for a dear friend of mine, Joslyn. Her sweet little sister is getting married (which I must add is just crazy to me, because I remember when she was just a teeny little middle-schooler - where has all the time gone!?!), and so for her bridal shower I was asked to make this cake. They wanted a henna style cake with white and coral colors and this two-tiered design is what I came up with. The cake itself was made of lemon with lemon frosting on the bottom, and yellow cake with buttercream and strawberry filling on the top. I got the recipe for the strawberry filling from Wilton's website, and oh man, does it ever taste amazing! Super easy to make, too. We used the leftover filling as an ice-cream topping, and it tasted just like the stuff from Dairy Queen. Oh yum-yum! =D

Peach Colored Ruffle Cake & a Vintage Storybook Shower

Back in June, my friends Jaime, Angie and I had the pleasure of throwing a baby shower for a dear friend of ours, Jessica. I can't believe her little girl is already here! Little Winnie was born just this last week, on Wednesday in fact, and she is absolutely perfect! I seriously can't wait to meet her in person!

When I first found out what the theme of her nursery was going to be, I absolutely fell in love with it and just had to base the shower off of it. "Vintage storybook" is what she called it, and it was just such a sweet idea. I had sooo much help from my friends Jaime and Angie, from my own momma Cindi, and of course Jessica's momma Julie, who catered it with the most amazing food from Piazza Catering. My mother-in-law Karla and even my sister and my other mother-in-law Deolinda (or rather my sister's mother-in-law who I've kinda adopted as my own too) helped with the decorations as well. I seriously could not have done it without any of them! Thank you all so, sooo much!

I had thrown around the idea of making a literal storybook cake for the shower, and was going to paint a picture on it with food coloring, but realized that this was WAY too ambitious considering everything else I needed to get done, so about a week before the shower I decided to change it up and make a ruffle cake instead. I felt that a stacked cake would be more elegant than a single layered cake would have been, and though I'd never made one like that before, I decided to try it out. I figured if it didn't work I could just do two cakes or something anyways. But for the most part it worked great, though there definitely was a good side to the cake! And I learned I really need to buy some supports if I'm going to be doing that again, just so it is a little stronger when it's moved and so the top layer doesn't crush the layer below it. It was quite yummy, though, and fit what I wanted perfectly, so I am really quite proud of how it turned out. Here's my peach colored vintage ruffle cake, made of devil's food and buttercream on the bottom and strawberry with strawberry and buttercream icings on top:

As for the rest of the shower, here are some of the other little details that we put together:

So Jaime came up with the idea of having bookmarks as our favors, which I loved because it was both practical and made perfect sense for our theme. And they turned out amazing! Jaime, you did such a great job on them! I really loved the fabric backing and am going to have to steal that idea for sure! We played a "Guess the Price" game which I found an idea for on Pinterest, though ours looked entirely different. We also made a bunch of toothpick "flags" using vintage storybook images and I borrowed as many authentic vintage items as I could, to complete the feel. Oh, and my personal favorite thing to make - the Vintage Storybook Lanterns! I found the idea on Pottery Barn Kids and just had to make them. And with my mom's circle cutter they were a cinch! I'm thinking of printing off a bunch of Seahawks logos and finding some blue and green gingham paper to make some for the boys room... I really wish I had gotten some pictures of the amazing garland Julie made with a string of lights and scraps of vintage fabrics. It was just beautiful! That is most definitely going on my to-do list for Christmas decorations, let me tell ya!

We had such a blast putting this shower together, and I have to be honest, I've really missed my late night crafting moments with Angie and Jaime! Congratulations again, miss Jessica, your little girl is beautiful! Well, I'm sure I've babbled on for far too long now, so I'll let you go. Have a blessed day!