I know, I know. I haven't posted on here forever! I started this blog thinking it would be a good way to keep people informed of what we are up to and to have a journal type thing to look back on of our experiences, but honestly I can't seem to find time to post everything about our busy lives. Good thing I'm not getting paid for doing this! Why is it that our life is so busy in this bush town? It is Galena and the people that live here are not slouches! There is something going on almost every weekend as well as stuff during the week. It is mostly fun stuff, educational stuff, sports related stuff, or ministry related stuff! So being a small town with lots going on, naturally we are asked to help put on things or participate at least. There is a great sense of community in Galena, but honestly it is a small group of people that do most of the work to put everything on and we are part of that group. This town is filled with really cool people that are wonderful to hang out with. Just wish I had more time to get to know all of them on a more personal level.
Mackenzie helped us with that this weekend! It was Mackenzie's birthday on Sunday so we had a big party. We had the most people that we have ever had in our house at one time on Sunday. This was due to Mackenzie inviting everyone! I don't know what happened to our shy little girl, but she would have invited the entire town if we would have allowed it! She had been looking forward to her Birthday since... oh probably last January! I had people coming up to me all throughout the school year last year and this year, saying "When is Mackenzie's Birthday? She just invited me to her Birthday party." I had to tell them it was almost an entire year away and I had no idea what I was doing for her birthday. Well the time finally arrived and I felt all this pressure of living up to her expectations of the much awaited birthday party! Oh and yes, most of the people she invited came to the party so she was so excited! Mom and Dad were a little overwhelmed but had a great time as well! :)
She decided she wanted a carousel cake. Not just a flat sheet cake, but a 3D one! Most of the time when we are down south and go through Missoula, MT, we go to the carousel park. The girls love it! In fact last summer we met their cousins there and the girls rode it six times in a row. They would have kept going, but we had to leave to get back to my sisters. I actually love it as well. As some of you know, I am horse crazy and I love looking at all the beautifully carved horses as well as how it makes me feel like a kid again when I ride it! I still remember to this day the first carousel music box I got as a birthday gift from my parents. Decorating this cake brought back lots of fun memories for me!
We had a carousel themed party to go along with the carousel cake. Here are the invitations I made up. The top of the invitation says, "The carousel of life spins so fast, it's hard to believe a year has passed."
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My Handy Husband came up with a great idea for the center pole. I didn't know how I was going to support a carousel cake and I didn't order the carousel kit from Wilton for it to get here in time like most people probably would have done. Actually they probably would have gone to Michaels and picked one up! We also didn't have dowels so this is what Ross came up with. The entire top of the cake was supported by that's right a "Starbucks Hot Cocoa" container. I also didn't have any round plates for the cake topper to sit on so Ross cut out a round piece from lexan. He then screwed it down to the lid of the cocoa container so the cake wouldn't slip off the top. Can I say again how handy my husband is!
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I wanted this cake to be about celebrating Mackenzie as well as the carousel so I had the idea of putting pictures of her on the center pole so that as one turned around the cake they could see the pictures of her. These are pictures I took of Mackenzie while I did a photo shoot of the girls as well as my sister and her family at The Daly Mansion in Hamilton, MT this summer. Ross and I just printed them off and taped them onto the Starbucks container.
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Here is the topper of the cake. First I cut out and colored a circular piece of card stock to place on the lexan, then a circular piece of parchment paper. In future pictures you will be able to see the circular piece as you look up at the roof above the horses. I used a bundt pan but it wasn't big enough so I had to add a lot of frosting to make it come out to the outside of the circle of lexan it was sitting on. I used two cupcakes to place in the middle hole of the bundt cake so it would stand up more in the middle. This is the first frosting crumb coat. Mackenzie wanted a pink cake with strawberry flavor so that's what the topper cake is.
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I am showing Mackenzie her cake before the party. Mom is looking a little tired from staying up till 2:00 in the morning decorating the cake!
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She loved the pictures on the center pole and kept pointing at them with a smile.
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The Birthday Girl, pleased as punch and ready for her party!
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This is a full view of the cake with the horses running free on the sides. Sorry, I didn't have very good lighting for these pictures. It is hard to get good pictures when we only have one light bulb per room and we are approaching the darkest time of our year. We currently have approximately 4 hours of daylight. I tried to do the best I could with the lighting I had.
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The topper all done. I used Wilton tip number 18 to decorate the stripes and top cupcake. Then Wilton tip number 352 for the blue border. It was my first time using that tip so I didn't quite know what I was doing.
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The bottom cake or floor of the carousel was an apple spice cake with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I would have liked the frosting to be white but I wanted to do the cinnamon frosting to bring out the flavors in the cake. I made this cake and frosting because it had ingredients I could have with the migraine diet I am on. The adults really seemed to like the taste of it. At first I didn't like the brown color of the frosting but then decided it looked like a wood floor of a real carousel. On the sides, it had "Happy Birthday Mackenzie!" with sixes in between. The border of this cake was done with Wilton cake tip 224 which again I hadn't ever used. I am learning and I am not even sure I used them in the correct way! I haven't ever taken a cake decorating class so I just kind of make things up as I go. I made the bottom cake in a flatter type bundt pan so all I had to do is cut out a little bigger hole for the Starbucks center pole to sit down in and be surrounded by the cake up to the picture line. I especially liked the fact that I was able to find a lazy susan for the bottom cake to sit on so the carousel actually would spin around!
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Underneath the topper cake was the parchment paper and then card stock, which I colored as you can see through the lexan.
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The outside poles are pencils that I stuck into the lower cake (I taped the ends of the pencil that were stuck into the cake) and then hot glued to the top lexan piece after I set the lexan piece on. This was hard to keep the pencils up and get the top cake on all by myself. I then hot glued each horse to the pencil pole and prayed they didn't fall off and mess up the bottom cake, but they were on thre pretty securely and were actually hard to pull off when we took the cake apart.
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I wanted to show you each horse that Mackenzie chose for her carousel. These are Schleck horses that we got or grandparents have gotten for the girls' farm set. They play with them all the time and they are good quality toys. Here is the black colt and the Appaloosa.
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Another view of the Appaloosa.
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And here is the Buckskin colt and Paint.
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Here are some views from each side of the cake. Sorry for all the millions of pictures. I couldn't decide which ones to omit, so I thought I would just put them on here.
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This cake was a lot of work. It took me longer to make this cake than any other cake I have made. The decorating wasn't that hard, but it was hard to figure out how to construct everything with limited resources and pans that were to small. Frosting does wonders! Here are the sites I got the recipes from for the apple spice cake and frosting I used. The top cake was a box mix since I could not find a good recipe for strawberry cake. Do any of you have a good strawberry cake recipe? My daughters ask me for that flavor often but the last one I tried did not taste very good. I am new at making cakes from scratch. In the past I would just use a boxed cake mix but of course their are ingredients in there I can't have. So if any of you have some great cake recipes from scratch, I would love them!
Wilton's Buttercream Frosting
This is what I used for all the colored frosting as well as the crumb coat on the topper cake.
Never Fail Applesauce Spice Cake
I omitted the walnuts from the cake since we have a peanut allergy in the family and I don't like to take chances with other nuts.
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Most of the adults commented on how good the frosting was. Not any of my doing! I just followed the recipe! :)
This post is getting kind of long, so in the next post I will talk about the party!
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Mackenzie helped us with that this weekend! It was Mackenzie's birthday on Sunday so we had a big party. We had the most people that we have ever had in our house at one time on Sunday. This was due to Mackenzie inviting everyone! I don't know what happened to our shy little girl, but she would have invited the entire town if we would have allowed it! She had been looking forward to her Birthday since... oh probably last January! I had people coming up to me all throughout the school year last year and this year, saying "When is Mackenzie's Birthday? She just invited me to her Birthday party." I had to tell them it was almost an entire year away and I had no idea what I was doing for her birthday. Well the time finally arrived and I felt all this pressure of living up to her expectations of the much awaited birthday party! Oh and yes, most of the people she invited came to the party so she was so excited! Mom and Dad were a little overwhelmed but had a great time as well! :)
She decided she wanted a carousel cake. Not just a flat sheet cake, but a 3D one! Most of the time when we are down south and go through Missoula, MT, we go to the carousel park. The girls love it! In fact last summer we met their cousins there and the girls rode it six times in a row. They would have kept going, but we had to leave to get back to my sisters. I actually love it as well. As some of you know, I am horse crazy and I love looking at all the beautifully carved horses as well as how it makes me feel like a kid again when I ride it! I still remember to this day the first carousel music box I got as a birthday gift from my parents. Decorating this cake brought back lots of fun memories for me!
We had a carousel themed party to go along with the carousel cake. Here are the invitations I made up. The top of the invitation says, "The carousel of life spins so fast, it's hard to believe a year has passed."
My Handy Husband came up with a great idea for the center pole. I didn't know how I was going to support a carousel cake and I didn't order the carousel kit from Wilton for it to get here in time like most people probably would have done. Actually they probably would have gone to Michaels and picked one up! We also didn't have dowels so this is what Ross came up with. The entire top of the cake was supported by that's right a "Starbucks Hot Cocoa" container. I also didn't have any round plates for the cake topper to sit on so Ross cut out a round piece from lexan. He then screwed it down to the lid of the cocoa container so the cake wouldn't slip off the top. Can I say again how handy my husband is!
I wanted this cake to be about celebrating Mackenzie as well as the carousel so I had the idea of putting pictures of her on the center pole so that as one turned around the cake they could see the pictures of her. These are pictures I took of Mackenzie while I did a photo shoot of the girls as well as my sister and her family at The Daly Mansion in Hamilton, MT this summer. Ross and I just printed them off and taped them onto the Starbucks container.
Here is the topper of the cake. First I cut out and colored a circular piece of card stock to place on the lexan, then a circular piece of parchment paper. In future pictures you will be able to see the circular piece as you look up at the roof above the horses. I used a bundt pan but it wasn't big enough so I had to add a lot of frosting to make it come out to the outside of the circle of lexan it was sitting on. I used two cupcakes to place in the middle hole of the bundt cake so it would stand up more in the middle. This is the first frosting crumb coat. Mackenzie wanted a pink cake with strawberry flavor so that's what the topper cake is.
I am showing Mackenzie her cake before the party. Mom is looking a little tired from staying up till 2:00 in the morning decorating the cake!
This is a full view of the cake with the horses running free on the sides. Sorry, I didn't have very good lighting for these pictures. It is hard to get good pictures when we only have one light bulb per room and we are approaching the darkest time of our year. We currently have approximately 4 hours of daylight. I tried to do the best I could with the lighting I had.
The topper all done. I used Wilton tip number 18 to decorate the stripes and top cupcake. Then Wilton tip number 352 for the blue border. It was my first time using that tip so I didn't quite know what I was doing.
The bottom cake or floor of the carousel was an apple spice cake with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I would have liked the frosting to be white but I wanted to do the cinnamon frosting to bring out the flavors in the cake. I made this cake and frosting because it had ingredients I could have with the migraine diet I am on. The adults really seemed to like the taste of it. At first I didn't like the brown color of the frosting but then decided it looked like a wood floor of a real carousel. On the sides, it had "Happy Birthday Mackenzie!" with sixes in between. The border of this cake was done with Wilton cake tip 224 which again I hadn't ever used. I am learning and I am not even sure I used them in the correct way! I haven't ever taken a cake decorating class so I just kind of make things up as I go. I made the bottom cake in a flatter type bundt pan so all I had to do is cut out a little bigger hole for the Starbucks center pole to sit down in and be surrounded by the cake up to the picture line. I especially liked the fact that I was able to find a lazy susan for the bottom cake to sit on so the carousel actually would spin around!
Underneath the topper cake was the parchment paper and then card stock, which I colored as you can see through the lexan.
The outside poles are pencils that I stuck into the lower cake (I taped the ends of the pencil that were stuck into the cake) and then hot glued to the top lexan piece after I set the lexan piece on. This was hard to keep the pencils up and get the top cake on all by myself. I then hot glued each horse to the pencil pole and prayed they didn't fall off and mess up the bottom cake, but they were on thre pretty securely and were actually hard to pull off when we took the cake apart.
I wanted to show you each horse that Mackenzie chose for her carousel. These are Schleck horses that we got or grandparents have gotten for the girls' farm set. They play with them all the time and they are good quality toys. Here is the black colt and the Appaloosa.
Here are some views from each side of the cake. Sorry for all the millions of pictures. I couldn't decide which ones to omit, so I thought I would just put them on here.
This cake was a lot of work. It took me longer to make this cake than any other cake I have made. The decorating wasn't that hard, but it was hard to figure out how to construct everything with limited resources and pans that were to small. Frosting does wonders! Here are the sites I got the recipes from for the apple spice cake and frosting I used. The top cake was a box mix since I could not find a good recipe for strawberry cake. Do any of you have a good strawberry cake recipe? My daughters ask me for that flavor often but the last one I tried did not taste very good. I am new at making cakes from scratch. In the past I would just use a boxed cake mix but of course their are ingredients in there I can't have. So if any of you have some great cake recipes from scratch, I would love them!
Wilton's Buttercream Frosting
This is what I used for all the colored frosting as well as the crumb coat on the topper cake.
Never Fail Applesauce Spice Cake
I omitted the walnuts from the cake since we have a peanut allergy in the family and I don't like to take chances with other nuts.
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Most of the adults commented on how good the frosting was. Not any of my doing! I just followed the recipe! :)
This post is getting kind of long, so in the next post I will talk about the party!
