I love the 80s...it's all in the details!

Where, oh, where do I begin to explain how much preparation went into Brett's birthday party? Wait...that's not what I meant to say...where do I begin to explain how much FUN I had helping plan Brett's birthday party?!

It was such a freaking blast! Gen made all of these amazing plans and I am so honored that I got to help her execute it all...that's why they call me "the executor." Not the most flattering nickname, but whatever. It works.

Anyway, we had so much fun! We made tablecloths and photo booth backdrops by spray painting "gnarly," "rad" 80s words on drop cloths and then splattering paint all over the place. At one point in time, it looked like I had been splatter painted myself.

Richard Simmons!

Look at these awesome costumes! :)
The photo booth was a hit!!

We also made "Brett Says Relax" floppy disc coasters by gluing cork board to the back of rainbow colored floppy discs. By the way, do you know how expensive floppy discs are these days? I think they might be more expensive than they were when they originally came out. Shocker! But we found them for a pretty good price!

Next we decided some beautiful signs were necessary. We made a whole bunch of them...my favorite is the cocktail sign. :)

Pretty sure that Evan and I were the only ones who played this game...
but with all the couples (and the few singles) it might have been awkward
if more people had played...

Throw in some antique store finds and some super creativity on Gen's part (she did the poster collages all by herself!) and you've got some fun!

Then we come to the chalkboard signs. I found a bunch of metal platters at Goodwill and we covered them in chalkboard paint. Gen found these awesome chalk paint markers. Doesn't it look AWESOME?!

Note that there is only one thing on the scavenger hunt list...

Yes...that's an original Hulk Hogan doll!

Now we come to the part you've all been waiting for: The inside of the cake...

It's NEON TIE-DYE! How oh how did I do that? Simple, I divided the batter up into 4 parts and used neon food coloring to make it super vibrant. Then I poured in about 3/4 of a cup in each pan of alternating colors. That's it. That's all there is to it. :) Here are some additional pics of the cake taken by Rachel and Lauren. Thanks for remembering your cameras, ladies! I can't believe I forgot mine!!

Beer me, Baby!!

So. I'm pretty much the best girlfriend in the world at this point. Evan and his twin brother had their birthday this weekend and I have been planning an epic birthday cake for months now. Evan and Cam both really like beer. And I really like challenging myself. So I decided to make a "beeramid" cake.

As much as I would like to go into great detail here, I'm not feeling super hot today and I've got to work (7 days off and I've forgotten how cute these kids are!) so it's gonna be a short post with lots of pictures.

Here's the short-hand how-to...

Cut off the end of a can: 

Spray it with PAM and stuff it with rice krispie treats that you JUST made (don't let them cool down and harden!)

After you've made as many as you want (one batch of rice krispies will make about 4 cans), let them harden over night. 

Cali badly wanted to eat them. Mercedes did too, but she
was trying to be stealthy about it and was hiding
from the camera. Smart cat...

Mock-up of how they'd stack...looking good I think...

Put a ring of fondant around the top and use some fondant to fill in any weird holes or gaps in the treats. 

Then cover the whole thing with grey fondant. I also used a little darker grey to make the hole and the same light grey to make the pop top. :)

Make sure you are using cornstarch to keep the fondant from sticking to your rolling surface or itself. Please avoid getting cornstarch on your dog. She will not like it. 

Now you've got to figure out what you need to do for the labels. I talked to one of Evan and Cam's best friends, Andy, who just happens to know everything there is to know about craft beer. I asked him to send me a few pics of craft beers in cans that the twins liked. He recommended Brew Free or Die, Gordon, Dale's Pale Ale, Surly Furious and then I added in Yuengling because I know Cam likes it. 

I rolled out white fondant in the right size for a label and used edible markers to decorate. The lovely ladies at Cake Art also suggested this white edible food coloring that I used much like acrylic paint. It worked some of the time, but not all of the time. Might have been user error on that one. 

Anyway, I can't tell you how I made the labels look so awesome because I'm just talented like that...ok, I'm just really good at copying things. But I still can't help you get better at that. You have to do that for yourself. Anyway, I finished up the beer cans and decided to do some playing cards as well. Reason for this: anytime there ends up being a "beeramid" on the table, there has usually been a drinking game of some sort that involves playing cards. Simple enough. 

Anyway, the next day, Cam's girlfriend, Allie came over to help me do the grunt work. We made the cake (1/2 sheet red velvet...exciting, right?) and covered it in icing and fondant. She also had the great idea to make a playstation remote for the cake as well. Since I am lousy at sculpting on my own, I was glad she was there to do that part. She sculpted the remote and I made the buttons. Then we decided it was time to add everything to the cake. 

We used skewers to make sure the cans stayed where we wanted. That was harder than it looks.

Remote close-up

Crushed can: I carved some of the sides out and made it
look all crushed like that before I added the label.

The cake with all the candles.
There is a napkin in front of it for a reason.
Someone decided to put their finger in it. :(

Anyway, that's all she wrote. Hopefully y'all liked the cake. I sure enjoyed making it! :) Thanks for the help, Allie! Happy Birthday, boys! :) 

Chow down!!

Welcome to the Greatest Show!

What a week it has been! I am so blessed to have been able to celebrate two very important little boys in my life! This weekend, Mr. Evan and I made the trip down to Augusta for my ADORABLE nephews' joint birthday party! First of all, I have to say, my sister is AMAZING! She threw together a really beautiful, classy, FUN circus-themed party for my nephews. She thought of everything! There was so much amazing stuff that I can't even begin to describe it all! Hopefully I can add some pictures later to show you all exactly how amazingly talented she is as an event coordinator.

Until then, I guess I can talk about how awesome I am. Ha...just kidding. But I do want to share the fun cupcakes I made for the boys.
When you think of the circus, the first things that come to mind are clowns, elephants, lions and popcorn. Or at least that's how it is for me. So I decided to start there. Brooke had also wanted to have a "big top" cupcake on the very top of the stand, so that's where I'll begin to explain.

Obviously I made the cupcakes (Kroger brand cake mix- I got cheap and lazy with this) and iced them (Kroger brand vanilla icing) and got started on the fondant.

Have you ever bought fondant? It's expensive. And it tastes like crap. So I wanted to know if there was some way I could make my own and make it tasty. I found the best recipe on Wilton.com for marshmallow fondant. This stuff is so freaking easy! And YUMMY!

What you need:

• 16 oz mini marshmallows 
• 2 lbs of confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar)
• water
• a microwave-safe bowl
• a microwave
• crisco
• food coloring

Pour those marshmallows into the bowl and put about 2 tbsp of water in there. Nuke 'em! 30 second intervals and stir in between until it's all creamy. Next you're going to want to dump about 3/4 of the bag of sugar into the mix and stir in a bit. When it's got a good enough consistency that you can pull it out, grease down your counter-top and your hands and pull that lump of lovely sugary goodness out and knead it til you think your arms are going to fall off, adding powdered sugar in there to make it a little firmer.

Once you have it fondant-y feeling, you can separate it into balls for each color you need and get to work coloring it. Knead it to death while mixing those colors in. I needed yellow, red, orange, green, blue, grey and white. Guess which one was easiest to make? :)

I had a whole bunch of cookie cutters that I got from Ikea and let me tell you, they saved my life this week! To make the big top, I cut a circle out of both red and yellow then used my mini pizza cutter to make the triangles. Then I put them on top of a third red circle with yellow and red alternating. Note: put a little water on the bottom red one before placing the colored triangles on top and then put a little cornstarch on top and roll out a little bit. You want to mesh them together by doing this. Before you put this on top of the cupcake, make a little icing pyramid and stick it in the freezer for a few to firm it up. Place the "big top" on the cupcake and then make a tiny orange ball for the very very top.

For the lion, you need to roll the orange fondant pretty thick and cut out as many circles as you want (I did 8). I used an exacto knife to cut tiny triangles out of the edge to make the lion's mane. Then you need to roll it out a little bit so it overflows the cupcake liner. Then cut a yellow circle out for his head and tiny half circles for his ears. Roll a little orange ball for his nose.

Elephants! I just free-handed this one. You can figure this one out...

Clowns. This was a hard one for me since I HATE clowns. Terrified of them, really. But anyway, I used a heart cupcake for his hair and free-handed the rest. I had some little eye sprinkles handy that I used for the eyes. Easy-peazy.

For the popcorn, I had to mix some white and yellow together but not mix them up very well. Then I just free-handed some shapes and scrunched them up and attached them to a colored background. Then I cut some white stripes (really thin) and placed them on red fondant and rolled it out. Then I cut some popcorn buckets and attached them on top of the "popcorn" to make these cute little things.

For the stars, polka dots and stripes, I cut out the tiny shapes and placed them on colored bagrounds, rolled them out and cut circles out.

Got it? Good. Now make  100 of those little suckers and You're done! :)