Home Renos 3.1

John's been working on the cabinets all this week and weekend to try and get the cabinets fixed and finished.  He ended up taking all the framing down Tuesday evening and cutting all the pieces to the proper length.  Unfortunately it took him the whole night to redo what he had done on Saturday, but at least it looks better and I think he is a lot happier in the end with the result.  Here's some pictures of the new depth.

Wednesday night John began putting the plywood over the frame to start filling in the cabinets.  This was a bit more fitly to get the pieces in around the frame tight, so while he didn't get too much done Wednesday night, it still started taking shape!

 

Thursday he ended up working late, so he didn't get a chance to work on it then.  He was able to get some work in on Friday night.  He continued on getting the plywood pieces cut and put up.  He got the bottom completely finished. 

On Saturday, John spent the late morning/early afternoon finishing the "cover up".  He got all the plywood cut and attached, along with the shelves in place.  It's starting to really come together now!

That's it for this week!  Thanks for reading.

Cake Decorating Class #3

Tuesday night was my 3rd cake decorating class.  This week we decorated cupcakes and learned out to do some flowers.  We had to have at least 3 colours mixed along with some white and then fill at least 4 bags and have extra tips out to switch on the bags.  It was the most intense class in that respect.  Fortunately I had coloured icing left over form last week, so I didn't really have to mix up any colours other than green for leaves.  Of course that meant I was finished before everyone else and just waiting to get started so maybe not that fortunate....

We started off practicing making flowers and different shells which are used for borders.  I found them all fairly easy except for the last shell.  I just could not figure out how to do it properly.  I think I'm just going to have to keep practicing at it.  Here are pictures of my practice boards.

I had a lot of difficulty with this one, I was starting to
figure it out at the end once the teacher came over
and gave me some tips.

Next we started on our first big flower which we used the flower stand for.  After getting the templates on and the tips all figured out (which was harder than it sounds as we had them on the bags and had to figure out which tip was on what bag!), the teacher showed us how to do it and we got started.  I found that they were that difficult to make at all!  Although my icing was fairly soft, which made it a little easier to get the desired affect, but it did pose a bit of a problem once we had to transfer them to the cupcakes!

The base and center of the flower completed.

First completed flower.  You can't really tell in the picture, but the center is teal and the rest
is blue.

My friend was having issues with her icing being too stiff,
this is her pile of messed up icing.

Two completed flowers!  The one on the right started looking
more like a sun than a flower.

My friend's flowers...her icing would not co-operate with her.

Next we moved onto learning and practicing making leaves.  My green icing was a little too stiff, so it was not really giving the desired affect, as it would not end in a point but just end, although part of that may have just been me...

Next we moved onto learning to fill the cupcakes!!  I was very excited for this.  It was really cool.  We have a very long tip this you put on the bag and just stick it in the cupcake and push until you start to feel it expand, then left go and lift out.  The teacher was talking about the need to be careful when doing this because she's had cupcakes explode on her and then I asked her if someone in her class always makes a cupcake explode, which she said usually yes  The class was real "happy" that I asked that, since we were all only about half way through filling our cupcakes :) Luckily no one made their cupcakes explode!  

mmmm lemon filled cupcakes, with one chocolate one for my
sister :)

Next we moved on to decorating the cupcakes!  First she showed us how to make the nice swirl on top which you see on professional cupcakes.  My icing was too stiff so it wasn't really turning out well.  I would be able to get it start out alright, but then it would just start to clump.   At least know I know how to do it now.  After this the teacher showed us how to make a pom-pom flower.  By far, the easiest flower to make, you just make 3 leaves and then use this tip that makes the icing look like spaghetti noodles and layer it on.  They turned out pretty well!

The pom-pom flowers and the swirl cupcakes on
the right.

After this, she let us decorate our cupcakes however we wanted, showing us how to use some what we had learned this class to decorate the cupcakes nicely.  Here is my final products...

Used the shell shape to make it looks like flowers all around the cupcakes.

This is the chocolate filled one for Keren.

I was able to transfer the flowers I made earlier to the cupcakes by using these little plastic scissors that go underneath the flowers and then you close the scissors and pick up the flower. My icing was a little soft so I smushed it a bit, but I was able to just fill in around it and fix it up.

The hard icing that turn out well and the extra icing I used
to try and fix it out...I think it's just made them more sweet in the end!

Home Renos 2.11 / 3.0

*My husband was corrected me this morning that this is really a new project, so going forward I'm going to consider this home reno 3.0 :)

This home reno seems to be taking just as long as the basement!  Ok, maybe not that long, but it seems like it is taking a long time since I am on blog post #11 for this renovation which was only suppose to take a month to do...so clearly we like to extend our renovations as long as we can!

Ok, to the actual renovation progress :)

This weekend we got started on the closet.  Saturday morning I woke up to John talking to himself while measuring the closet after finding a design online which he wanted to use.  Once I got up and changed, I went and helped him out, then after breakfast, we were out to Home Depot for our first trip of the day.  We bought all the wood for the frame of the cabinet and screws to put it together.  Once we got home, we started taking down the existing shelves and clothes rod.

John bought new safety goggles for the job, something he learned
was important from his dad :)

John started building the frame as I was taking parts of the closet down.

John working away on his new workbench that he built
himself.

I was going to help John put the frame together, but when we went to get started, John realized he didn't have enough screws, so I had to make another trip to Home Depot to pick up the screws.  Just when I was going to do the fun part of the building process! (Although ripping the shelves down was fun.)

Frame for the ceiling all done.

The construction of the frame got a little away from John and the cabinets are now a little bigger than we were anticipating...as they come out past where the original door was.  We were planning on them being 24" deep, he made them 27.5".  Tonight he rebuilt the frame after going back and forth all day Sunday and Monday about whether it was worth rebuilding it.  All along I knew he would rebuild it...it's scary how quickly I've learned how he thinks!

More pictures to come as he is going to work on the cabinets all week!

Cake Decorating Class #2

I had my second cake decorating class this week.  Unfortunately we were away on Tuesday (the normal night of my class), but the teacher has a class on Thursdays which I was able to join to make up for missing my Tuesday night class. This was great, because I was a little sad when I thought that I was going to miss out on the class.

We were back in town by Thursday, so I spent part of the afternoon getting my icing ready and packing my bag.  This week we needed a lot more things to take with us, so I had to upgrade from a Loblaws reusable bag to a Sobey's reusable bag.  I feel like there is so much to take, but in the end I use almost all of it!

Bag filled to the (almost) brim.

Bird's eye view.

This week's lesson was very different from the first week's lesson.  This week's lesson was completely hands on and the only time we looked at our course book was when someone wanted to see how cake was decorated in the book.  This was more of what I was expecting!

This lesson was learning how to ice and decorate a cake by doing a 3D picture. First, for those who needed to level their cakes or were going to fill their cakes, the teacher let them use her cake leveler.  I did not need to level mine, nor was I filling it this week, so I was able to get started on icing my cake right away.  With the tips I remembered from the previous week, I barely had any cake bits in my icing, which was great!

After I was done icing my cake, I started on mixing colours for the design.  I decided to do a fish and picked out some colours that I knew John would like (teal and blue), and ones that I liked (purple).  They ended up being a great combination, which everyone in the class kept commenting on.

I learned how to mix colours from a Pro (that means
you Mom ;) )

Before we started decorating our cakes, we practiced using a couple of the tips on our practice boards. 

These seem fairly easy to do, the hardest part is keeping your hand steady and the pressure consistent.  I'm assuming that will come with time.

After this, we started decorating our cakes.  The teacher taught us this technique that involves taking a picture and placing wax paper over top of it then tracing it using clear piping gel (she had her's tinted blue).  Then you flip the wax paper onto your cake and press the gel down to get the outline of the design, in my case a fish, on the cake.  Then as you start filling it in, you just cover over the gel and no one is the wiser :)

I decided to do the body of the fish in the star shapes, but the fins, eye and mouth are in a bubbley shape, which I do not ever remember seeing before.  It looks really cool and, I think, gives it a more 3D effect.

Once the fish was done, I did a boarder around the bottom, I decided to go with the up and down one from the practice board because I wanted to test it out.  I ended up putting some purple dots around the side of the cake too to give it some more colour.  Here is the final product, which I am quite pleased with!

Next week we get to do cupcakes, which we will be filling!  I'm really excited to do this! Tune in next week to see how they turn out!