Music Mondays - The March 2014 edition!

So last year I wanted to start being more consistent. We all see how well that turned out...haha. Well, last year I shared a musician I really love on a Monday. I thought it would be fun to share someone I like to listen to every Monday or every other thereabout.. So since I'm getting back into this whole blogging thing and seeing how it is once again a Monday, I am going to share with you another band I have come to love.

Nothing fancy but I hope you enjoy it! :)

 Monster by Skillet (Lyric Video)

 Hero by Skillet (Official Music Video)

 

Creative Cake Baking + Glad to be Back!

My goodness it's been so long. Almost a year...I really should hire someone to stand over me and smack me with a ruler whenever I neglect my blog!

Well I hope everyone is coming out of winter on a good note. I am getting back to my shop at long last and it's been wonderful. :) I've had a busy week and the weekend wasn't an exception. Before I get down to the real reason for this post I just want to let you all know I'm having a sale to celebrate my Etsy shop's grand re-opening! Just use the coupon code WELCOMEBACK when you check out and you'll get 10% off anything in my shop including made to order and custom items and anything else listed. :)

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. I took it upon myself to make him a cake. But not just any old cake. Oh no..this one was going to be themed! Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not that great of a chef and I'm so-so at baking. Visually my food may not look spectacular or noteworthy but I pride myself on at least making sure it tastes great. When it comes to baking I like doing creative things. The last few years I have done special Easter themed brownies (seen below).

I thought that since I have so much fun doing these brownies I could try my hand at doing a fancy sort of cake. A shaped one. An epic one!

My family, as you know, is big on Halloween. All of us have a nickname those on the Halloween forums we belong to know us by. My dad's just so happens to be Vlad. He's made props before using the bat logo associated with that name and Vampires so I though it would be awesome to make him a bat shaped cake.

The original idea stemmed around having a two layer cake but shaping the top layer into the bat. Simple right? Yeah. Sure. We'll go with that!

So here we go. A short little step by step (with photos) on how to make a bat shaped cake. Just remember: I don't claim to be an expert cake designer!

How to Make a Bat Shaped Cake Mini Tutorial

Step one: Choose your poison. For my cake I decided on a butter cake. Just a store brand, off the shelf, box of mix that required the added stick of butter, three eggs, and 2/3s cup of water. Mix on medium or 450 strokes by hand and viola! You can pick any sort of cake flavor you would like though. :)

Step two: Evenly distribute the cake mix into two round cake pans, 8 or 9 inch in size. I think mine were 9 inches. Then pop them in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Mine baked for about 25 minutes to a half hour.

Step Three: Allow your cake to cool in the pans until they are able to be handled by hand. Then remove the two layers and place them on SEPARATE plates. Pop the plates into the refridgerator for about an hour or so. This is supposed to help reduce the amount of crumbs and whatnot when cutting your cake and spreading the icing on exposed parts of the cake that will be showing after you've cut your shapes.

Step Four: Pick our your icing. For my bat cake I used whipped white icing and regular chocolate. Make sure you stir the icing in the cans before applying. It helps with spreadability!

Step Five: Once your cake layers have sat in the fridge for about an hour or so pull them out and grab a sharp edged knife. This will help make cutting your cake shape easier. I used a serated steak knife. Next I just traced a very light outline of my bat's body on one of my cake layers. I did NOT cut the cake yet!

Since I am terrible at evenly distributing cake batter into pans I chose the thinner, smaller layer to make my bat shape out of. Think of the body shape as being a snowman with only two sections. Make sure to include two pointed ears on top!

Step Six: Once you have a tentative outline on the top of the cake you're ready to start cutting. Try and follow your outlines as best as possible! Mine looked like this when I finished cutting it:

I removed the little top piece between the ears so you could better see my body shape and the head.

You should now have three parts for your bat: two wing sections and the body. The wings will be too large for the cake so you will need to cut them down further. You can just wing it on the one wing by freehand cutting it. Then to get a matching opposite wing place the two wing pieces together (with the top golden parts touching) and cut off the extra pieces of the other wing by following the edges of the first one. Keep cutting until you've made the wing parts small enough to fit on top of your cake and so they don't stick off too far (no more than a quarter of an inch).

Step Seven: Ice the bottom layer of your cake. For this I used my white whipped icing. Once done this is what it should look like:

Step Eight: Time to place your bat pieces on top of your iced bottom layer. Place the body on top first and make sure to center it as best you can. Make sure to try not to have the ears stick off the top of the cake too much. DO NOT PUT THE WINGS ON YET. I did this and had to pull them off the very sticky icing so I could properly ice the body of the bat. You need to ice ALL the sides and edges of the body and the wings would get in the way.

So ice the body of your bat first! Be careful when icing the ears. The tips are going to be thin and prone to crumbling off. It took me awhile but I was able to slowly ice them with little, tiny dollops of icing until none of the cake was showing from underneath it. Try also not to press to hard or you could risk breaking the ears off completely.

My cake looked like this before I had to pull the wings off and ice the bat's body. Make sure you DON'T DO THIS:

I used chocolate icing for my bat so he would be "black" or in this case brown.

Step Nine: Now it's time to add your wings and ice them. You may find it helpful to hold one side of the wing as you ice the edges to keep from pushing it around on the white icing or from sliding. It shouldn't slide too much, if at all, but it helps get the icing to spread better by stabilizing the wing as you go with your fingers.

Make sure to ice in along the sides of the wing closest to the body so none of the underlying cake parts are showing! I went the extra step and iced under the parts of the wings that jutted off the edge of the cake as well.

My cake looked like this once I was finished icing the bat:

 Step Ten: Time to add a face and any other details you would like. I choose to just use plain white icing that was leftover to do my detailing. I used a small plastic zip lock baggy with one of the bottom corners snipped off to use as a piping bag. You could also use an actual icing piper if you have them.



Two little dots for the eyes and a sad attempt at a mouth later....:

Now you should have what looks like the ghost of a dead cartoon cat with a mustache! Darn....Might as well as one final flourish:

A bow-tie with a dried cranberry cluster for the center.



Now just place your cake in a cool place (I put mine in the fridge) because there is no way this is going to fit under a cake plate until people have eaten the extremities off. Haha. :D

Anyway, that is my attempt at making a bat cake. Thankfully my dad loved it. You can't get something like that at the store!

I hope you all have a fabulous rest of your weekend and enjoyed reading. Feel free to comment if you've got questions. I didn't do a very good job at taking more photos. Next time....

Music Mondays and Craft Show Woes

My post is a day late but better late than never! :)

Let me start this blog post off with something I think that could be fun to do. I'm a very open minded person and I have an addictive personality. I don't often get to share my personal life with my fans and followers and I'd like to change that a little bit.

I'm always striving to be more open. So to kick start this Monday morning I'm going to share with you one of my favorite musicians. I like a lot of music ranging from opera all the way to metal bands and Irish pub songs. I like to give everything a try at least once. This artist was introduced to me on a forum a few years ago and I was so blown away by this man's work that it inspired me in some of my story writing endeavors.

His name is Ed Alleyne-Johnson. He has a very unique instrument and it was one I had never heard of until I saw a video that was linked in the forum I belong to. I think his work is so haunting and beautiful. If you have an ear for classical pieces you may just like this musician and composer. Here is a video I found just searching for his name on Youtube. I happen to love the song he is covering!



Here he is playing live doing a song from his own CD called Ultraviolet.
I would love to see him playing live someday. I'm certain it's a life changing experience! What sort of music do you like to listen to? What music really inspires you?

Craft Shows from May

I've had two craft shows this month. Unfortunately unlike my first show back in March neither of these two worked out very well. I think the first show I attended on the 4th was just not advertised enough sign wise. There weren't any signs out on the main road leading to the venue. I also feel the crowd was just not right for what I was selling. I had more people wanting to buy my mannequin (Beverely) and her wig than I had interested in my jewelry or Vintage wares. They plan to have another show this September. I'm not certain if I'll attend again. There was very little structure to the show and it seemed a bit too much like a free-for-all. While I met some wonderful people I think a lot more planning needs to happen if future shows are to be successful. It just didn't feel like a vendor-friendly show.


My second show, on the 11th, didn't turn out well either. Unfortunately although this was the 8th year for this particular show the weather was forecast to have downpours and thunder storms for the entire day. Even though it didn't rain until the last half hour of the show I believe the potential for bad weather kept many from coming out. I am hopeful that next year will be better and I do look forward to giving this venue another chance. My only wish would be that they have a rain date for this show as it is unfair to their outdoor vendors that don't have the luxury of being located inside the main building. There was also a pet adoption held along with the craft show.

I had a lot of fun meeting all the dogs and cats looking for their forever homes. I was a little disappointed however that many of the handlers didn't seem to care where their dogs were dragging them around to or what the dogs were doing whenever they stopped to meet someone. One of the dogs happened to pee on one of the table skirts of the vendor selling across from me. Most of the handlers also would stop right in front of the vendor tents to talk with people walking by which I believe was a large deterrent to anyone who might have otherwise stopped by the vendor booths. It is difficult for people trying to shop while there are dogs jumping up their legs.

I am hoping that next year the weather is nicer and that perhaps the venue re-think where they place the pet adoption tables. While I support adopting shelter animals I think a lot more thought needs to go into keeping the dogs away from vendor booths. I certainly don't mind them walking by (I don't expect them all to be forced to sit still all day) but it certainly didn't help with sales for mine or any of the other vendors who were set up next to or between the pet adoption booths.

I did get the opportunity to snap some photos for both shows. I suppose that is the plus side to not having many shoppers coming by! lol

Here are just a handful:

These two are from my Lionshead Lake show on the 4th.

Pictured right is the jewelry half of my booth. We had it facing out toward the entrance to the parking lot where people would walk in.

 Pictured left is a front view of my booth. We had two racks of vintage clothing to each side as well as crates filled with vintage fabric. The table to the inside left of the booth had all of our other vintage items such as shoes, sewing patterns, and miscellaneous accessories like gloves and scarves.



And lastly here are two photos from my Skyline Lakes Fire Department Craft show on the 11th.

Pictured right is a front view of my table set up on Saturday May 11th. I had invested in some plastic table clothes and skirts (because of the predicted rain fall). I also acquired some green shower curtains to hang around the back and sides of the canopy. These did an excellent job of keeping the wind from knocking my displays over. I will be investing in some actual canopy curtains so that my set up looks more professional. I also plan to obtain some real table clothes and skirts as well.

Here you can see my best friend Michelle who spent the day with me. She was a huge help with setting up. You can also see that I've ditched all of my hang tags for my items. There was no tangled mess to sort through when it was time to pack up and leave. I also plan to update my little price signs that were placed with some of my items.


If you would like to see more photos from these and other craft shows I attend, please check out my facebook photo albums or my flickr gallery.

Facebook
Flickr


I have a ton of work to catch up on this week. Also I will be looking for more craft shows to attend. Hopefully I can get more lined up very soon!

Have a great week everyone. :)