Making and Baking

KITTY CAKE:  We were due to make another donation cake for Birthday Dreams, so a few days ago, we checked out their website to see what requests were out there. The kids spied one for a 16 year old girl who loves art and cats. 

We bandied about a few ideas, and almost immediately struck upon the idea of having an artist cat atop the cake. He would be wearing a beret, of course, and painting a self portrait. 

Annabelle sculpted the cat out of modeling chocolate. I made the easel out of gingerbread first (a fail - too clunky), and then decided on black modeling chocolate. MUCH better. Annabelle painted the cat's canvas, and placed a paintbrush in his hand. Cake topper done (at a little after midnight on the day the cake was due).

The cake itself had two tiers. The bottom tier, which CJ baked and filled, was chocolate brownie with mini chocolate chip filling. It was iced in vanilla buttercream and Annabelle air brushed it with blue, the birthday girl's favorite color. 

The top tier, shaped to look like a paint can, was actually a giant Rice Krispies treat, covered in buttercream and then wrapped in marshmallow fondant. 

The bottom tier featured some 'fine art' cat portraits. Meowna Lisa, The Cat with the Pearl Earring and American Gothic, feline style. Annabelle hand painted each of those, food coloring on fondant.

 Here's a photo of the finished project. We hope the birthday girl liked it. 

DOOR DECORATION: On Tuesday afternoon, we stopped by the kids' former learning center on Queen Anne to do a little decorating. 

The school was having a door decorating contest with a wintry theme. We ran a few ideas by the office staff, and settled on some cutesy birds and an education theme.

The focal point was a bluebird atop a signpost.

The signs are foam board covered in woodgrain Contact paper. Annabelle cut the letters and the snowflakes with her Cricut machine.  

The other side of the door featured a birdie conducting a science experiment.

We added a couple extra touches to a window adjacent to the door. (Apologies - I'm not sure why the photo is blurry.)

JUST SO YOU KNOW: We haven't complete forgone things like, oh, math and science. In fact, a couple of days this week, our soundtrack while making and baking was NASA TV. It's really great background 'music.' We heard updates about the International Space Station, ongoing interplanetary missions, fighting forest fires on Earth with NASA technology and more. So thanks for that, NASA.