HERE COMES FEBRUARY

AND THERE WENT JANUARY

Well, my thoughts started with Bikini Girl's waist and naturally has turned into "weight" LOL

I DID address the issue in one of my earlier posts (the first one, as a matter of fact) that I had always hoped for a better body. Maybe I expressed that on Bikini Girl? LMAO In any case, based on the feedback I have gotten, next time I do bikini girl, she will have a more realistic waistline.

Now onto MY waistline. As nearly everyone does, we set New Year's Resolutions. I had set out with one of three paths, they all ended, of course, with me losing weight. One path said lose three pounds, then four pounds, then three pounds per month. The other was four-three-four, the other was after I read one of those "super-pump-you-up-you-can-do-anything-you-want-in-life" books (which I know is in my house still, but I haven't finished it and it's exact location in unknown...) that said I should have or could have lost seven.

Well, I lost three pounds, which was fine, as long as I lost something. After I read the aforementioned book, I had it that in the end (by the beginning of June) I would weight what I weighed in high school. We're even talking "freshman year of high school weight". LOL Ummmm, I don't care what the book says I can achieve, I think I should aim for something a little more doable. Maybe pre-first-baby weight?

And hell, if I reach THAT by June, and I'm extremely bored with nothing else better to do, I can wow the world and go to my freshman year of high school weight. Sounds like a plan to me...

Bikini Cake Pics

BIKINI GIRL

OK, so I've been told (advised???) that this girl has one skinny waist and huge honkers. Hubby thinks next time I should give her a thicker waist.

Well, anyway... we'll start with "my canvas". Most artists use canvas board. I use cakes.

MY CANVAS

Here it is! I have always used Pillsbury cake mixes. Everyone has always commented that they're so good they thought I had some homemade secret recipe of some sort. Nope. ;-)

MY CAKEBOARD

I make my own buttercream frosting and dye it with paste colors. For this bikini girl cake, it was my first time playing with fondant icing, so I did not make that frosting, although I will teach myself how. For starters, I thought it best to start with ready made. The white frosting here is NOT made with any butter. To get the "whitest" white frosting you should not use butter OR brown vanilla, you should use clear vanilla. The recipe is NOT a secret either: I use Wilton's recipe. Watch out for crumbs!!! They are a cake decorator's worst nightmare, especially with a brown cake.

SKY AND SAND

Brown sugar is "sand" and is very fun for any beach-themed cake. You can also take a pile of cookies and attach them together with frosting to make sand castles. No sand castles here. I did not have enough of blue fondant to cover the whole sky but that is OK because I planned on adding green trees. I thought of this cake while laying in my tanning bed and couldn't wait to get home to do it. LOL

BIKINIS NEED BOOBS

And here we have them. I have a "boob cake pan" bought from a local naughty store. I recently did a boob cake for a girl's boyfriend and I had used for the first time a butter cake recipe that called for "real butter" instead of vegetable oil. She reported back to me that it was out of this world, so I decided to try it (eat it) myself. The "waist" is from a second boob cake I had done (cut in half). The boob cake pans makes two cakes and I was planning to do something else with the second one but then when I suddenly thought of this cake while tanning, I figured the gal would need a midsection and this would be the best way of providing it.

FROSTED BOOBS

Now here is where I made a little mistake and is one of the reasons for my rant on "PLANNING" and "PERFECTION". I am a perfectionist. The problem with this cake here is that I frosted the boobs without realizing they were too far off to the right. They were not centered. I did TRY and pick them up and moving them but it wasn't going to work. TOO LATE. So, what to do?

As much as I try to make it seem like this is new to me, those who know me know better! I have been doing cakes since my kids were babies. My kids are now 17, 20, and 23.

EVERY CAKE CAN BE RESCUED WITH FROSTING! I call it "cake surgery" and I am awesome with it. I had already planned to do trees. So now one of those huge tall trees would now run alongside to the left. The brown frosting is not homemade. Darker colors are very hard to create. The brown tree trunk frosting is ready made. I piped it out using the reverse side of the basket weave tip which is flat.

Now, the green frosting...LOL Remember, I mentioned that I had ready made fondant frosting? The package came with the four primary colors: red, yellow, blue, and green. I had envisioned red and yellow: bikini, blue: sky/water, green: trees. I opened up the package of fondant and each color was wrapped in silver foil with a sticker on each one indicating what color it was except for the fourth package. The others were stickered with "yellow", "red", and "blue", so I assumed the unstickered one would be the assumed "green" (what a way to save money on labels? Let them deduce that its gotta be the green one...)

NOOOOOOOOOO, I opened it and it was YELLOW! So, naturally I opened up the package marked "yellow" thinking "Maybe its really green?" NOOOOOOOO so I now had two yellows and no green and I'm about to provide tree leaves to my already piped tree trunks!!!!!

WHO has green frosting in their possession at any given moment?

ha ha

ME!

Yes, I just happened to have a bit left over from a recent cake I did. I am a pack rat and I hate throwing things away and this is one of those instances that keep me holding onto things I have no idea how I'm ever going to use. I had put that green frosting in the fridge with no clear idea on how I would ever have any use for it and here was my answer: I needed trees (and grass!)

The only thing I would have done differently is pipe the grass with the hair/grass tip. I just frosted it on flat at the bottom.

BIKINI FINISHED

So, if you're an experienced food blog reader, you're going between the above picture and the one above it going, "WTH, she's missing pics!!!"

LOL

Yes, I was so thrown off with my fondant package not including green and recovering from it that when I laid out the yellow and red fondant I forgot to take pics!

It was kind of good that I had two packages of the yellow because I would have had to roll it really thin to get enough for both sides. I made the circles using the opposite end of a cake tip. So I cut the yellow circles out with the cake tip then replaced it with a red circle.

CLOSE UPS

Also added some "cumulus clouds" and some sun...

Hopefully we get some nice hot days this upcoming summer. This was just my way of taking a little break from winter!

GETTING OUR MIND RIGHT

A FEW WORDS ON PLANNING

Do things accidentally happen to people? Or, do they set out to do things?

Accidents? They happen, of course. But surely not everything in life is an accident.

We have "planning abilities" and surely no one would plan to fail unless they had a meaningful reason for doing so. Why am I asking these questions?

I was sitting in my school's cafeteria the other day when an advisor-type looking guy asked a student (whom he seemed to know) how she did last semester. She replied, "I only failed one class." ??? Was that her version of "success"? Has she normally failed MORE than one class where ONLY ONE was great?

To me, and maybe I'm just a bit too picky, if I get a "B" I am not a happy person. I am most likely feeling defeated and resentful wondering what I could have done better or different. An "F"???? That would be nervous breakdown worthy. "D"? same "C"? LOL probably the same.

"C's and D's get degrees?" Not in my world.

Welcome to it :-)

In my world (and I'm not saying that I'm right and all knowing!), nothing is worth doing unless you plan to do it to the best of your ability.

That is why I am PLANNING my path to make SURE I have everything I need in place before proceeding.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for people diving into doing things. Notice I said "people", not "me". I will DIVE in when I'm good and ready. I am giving myself until May to finish school before embarking on my next project.

If I can't give it my full attention and the best of my ability, I don't think I should undertake it at all. In the meantime, I will be developing this blog, taking pictures, practicing posting the pictures, developing my website, having business cards made up, etc. I am practicing "perfection". I do NOT mind criticism.

My hubby (Bless his big heart!) knows this and WILL criticize what I do. He is also good at art (way better than me, in fact), he knows I am a perfectionist, and will be my perfect partner at this.

I will perfect my techniques THEN charge people for my work. And it will be the BEST :-)

POWER

THE POWER LIES IN little ole' me!

And the game is on!

I hesitated starting this blog NOW, because REALLY, in a few months, this will be ALL food, cakes, desserts, etc.

What I guess I care to share now is how it all arrives at that. You just don't wake up one morning and say, "Hmmm....I guess I'll start a blog!" I have a few months here where I can maybe empower some people to start THEIR dreams as I plan to start mine. Not that it has always been my DREAM to do what I endeavor to accomplish but a means to an end (paying off my student loans) that will also afford me a means of play and much learning. I LOVE playing with food! Nothing can be more fun to me.

So, from now until roughly April/May? We'll be toying with thoughts on how this can be successful. I have many pics for people to comment on...LOL And plan on taking many more. I do not mind criticism, I appreciate it. If you see something that can be improved upon or have a creative idea, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Some people (maybe family?) will go OMG and think I'm nuts...money is money...its not like I'm a stripper! Just a little ole cake decorator....

Fear

FEAR

Hmmmm....what is it about it that keeps us from progressing?

I felt myself absolutely GRIPPED by it this weekend. I am in the midst of completing several things that are important to me: graduating in May, starting a business, freeing myself from school and (hopefully) able to work out some more (which I was VERY successful at in summer of 2009!) and suddenly I am faced with a wall of OH MY GOD!!!!

Can I REALLY do it???

Oh my...can I REALLY be successful?

Yes, I guess...???

There is just a part of me, that no matter how much I have accomplished and no matter how many hurdles I have overcome (MANY!) that I just don't feel like I can:

1) Get my Bachelor's Degree in Business this May
2) Start up a secondary business as a cake decorator (in an untapped market) to pay off my student loans
3) Have an excellent body

I am so scared of accomplishing anything worthy that when it came to my first homework assignment in International Finance being completed tonight, I was looking for help anywhere...PLEASE!!! someone...Only to look at it and get it done myself in less than an hour.

I guess I am learning that "help" helps but without it, I'm doing fine on my own. Scary feeling, but eventually good. I did not get to where I am today by relying on other people. I have a 3.9 GPA and I have been the one to dig my group members out of holes we have found ourselves in. I CAN do and will continue to do so.

Its just a little scary sometimes!