birthday cakes

Since I am on the planning committee I was asked to decorate some birthday cakes for the RS birthday dinner which would be the center pieces of each table. I actually missed the planning meeting where they decided that to help me out they would all make the cakes and bring them over to me if I was able to decorate them in a green, yellow, and purple color scheme. Turns out that is actually more difficult for me since the cakes were not level and even but I was able to make them work with a little carving and patchwork. I was asked to do it about a week before we needed them and got the frosting stuff on Sat so after the girls went to bed I stayed up REALLY late to make all of the gumpaste pieces so that they would harden in time. On Monday everyone brought their cakes over and I had to adjust the designs a little to fit the sizes and shapes but thankfully they all still worked. Since I have 2 little ones 1 of which is curious and have little grabby hands I decided it would be better to get up early on Tuesday and work all day to hopefully finish in time. I did have someone come help watch the girls for the better part of the day and Elliette actually slept in and took a nap (neither of which happen very often) and I had 2 ladies that came and helped which was great but was also a challenge for me to let someone else try to create the vision I had for the cakes and try to teach them how to use fondant in the first place. It was also hard to not go back and straighten some pieces out and fix a few things but overall I think they did a fantastic job, I was pretty happy with the end result and it only took me 12 hours to do all 7 cakes (yeah I am slow)
*** to give some credit: I did get 2 ideas from Collette Peters Cakes to Dream On Book which is a great book if you don't have it and also one from a book called Celebrate with Cake by Lindy Smith.

** I made the bow loops early and didnt match the greens very well so it looks a little off so dont judge to much.