50 Sucks Lollipop Bouquet

50 is a milestone year wouldn't you agree?

A dear friend of ours turned 50 this year. My friend Isabel has planned a "surprise" family evening of disco bowling! She has requested that the guests assist with the decor, balloons, etc. I like the idea of a candy bouquet!

The supplies list for this fun craft is as follows:

1. 50 Lollipops

2. Styrofoam Ball

3. Glass Container

4. White Ribbon

5. Skewer

6. 50 Sucks Print

7. Sheet Tissue Paper

8. Clear Cellophane 

The instructions/construction is straight forward:

1. Insert 50 lollipops randomly into the styrofoam ball.

2. Pierce the completed ball through the centre with a ribbon wrapped skewer.

3. Affix the 50 sucks print below.

(I wasn't happy with the overall look of glass container and expressed my concerns to my spouse. He brilliantly suggested adding tissue paper! I LOVED this idea!)

4. Fill the glass container with tissue paper. 

5. Add curled ribbon between the visible gaps of lollipop and styrofoam.

6. Wrap with clear cellophane.

In addition to this frivolously fun candy bouquet, we gifted him a monogrammed baseball style cap with his birth year and initials.

Happy 50th Birthday FL!

Creatures 101 by Lauren Kitchens

Registration for Cake Love 2011 began this time last year but I didn't actually register for any classes until early this summer. There was one class that suddenly peaked my interest and luckily I registered in time to Creatures 101 (which sold out) with Lauren Kitchens from the Food Network Challenge. I was super excited to sculpt with rice cereal treats and to finally work with modeling chocolate. I felt the day couldn't come soon enough...

September 24th finally rolled around and the wait was over. It was a 4-hr class which started early at 6 am. I learned that Lauren is extremely creative, informative, and most of all, an awesome instructor. Our class was filled with talent - Just have a look at our sea of Muppets!

As I mentioned on yesterdays blog, it was recently my daughter's birthday so she really put me to the test by having me create another Muppet cake for her. It was a lengthy process that took a good week to complete. I found that modeling chocolate is extremely difficult to make from scratch. And, at one point, I thought that the entire batch was unusable. Thankfully it just required a TON of kneading. 

Another surprise was my use of homemade fondant. The arms were simple enough to attach in class with Satin Ice, but I found my version to be finicky because if I attached them too soon the fondant would sag down. Then after I decided to let them sit out before attaching, the raised arm cracked almost immediately after I had attached the head. Oh well, I ran out of time to fix the arm problem so I left it cracked.

In the entire rush of things I didn't even get a great photograph of the cake in its entirety. The good news after all this was that my daughter insisted on a strawberry shortcake cake (recipe courtesy of Pioneer Woman) and it was sure outstanding! 

I'll have another Muppet experience in a few short weeks for my son's birthday. Hopefully, the second time around will be less stressful... but probably not!

There you have it, mum inspired by Lauren Kitchens.