Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Dreidel Cake

This is the Dreidel Cake I made for the family Chanukah party last weekend. I made it in the shape of a dreidel and put a gimmel on it. Dreidels are four-sided tops. Each side has a Hebrew letter on it and each letter means you have to do something. Gimmel is the best one because it means you get all the gelt in the pot. Nun means you get none, Shin you have to put one in and Hay you get half. Dreidel is really just how we teach our young to gamble at an early age. You can check out the high stakes driedel room if we ever open our Jewish gaming casino "The Ch'ai Life" on the strip.



Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Stained Glass Cake

My (oldest) brother is finally admitting that he has a birthday and as that he allowed to do something besides, dig fence posts (which was his original plan for the day), I have made a cake to celebrate. I had some trouble coming up with an idea for this cake, but since it was going to be the first one made in my new place with my new Kitchenaid mix master, I thought it should be something good. I decided to go with a stained glass kind of idea. It didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked, but the colors are vibrant and I think the idea pretty much gets across.
It is a yellow cake with a maple butter cream filling.




Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Ketubah

OK, so I didn't have anything to do with the Ketubah, but it turned out so amazingly that I wanted to give it credit. The Ketubah is the Jewish marriage contract. They are traditionally written in Aramaic, which is one of those dead languages, and nobody really know what they say (but it is easier for the wife to get the husband to do the dishes by saying it says they have to in the Ketubah when nobody can read it to disagree). Anyway, my brother and his fiancee asked a close family friend of our's, who is a painter, to design and paint the Ketubah for them. Becca was delighted, though somewhat less so when they asked her to put on things like Kermit the Frog. She (luckily) ignored them, thinking their opinion of what is appropriate and desired on Ketubah might change over a few years of marriage. Below are the result of what she came up with, which I guess are designs copied from texts and images from the 13th and 14th centuries. I thought it was pretty cool, so I decided to post it up here with all my crafty stuff.


Becca, the artist (her name is really Rebecca Gray and I have a link to her website around here somewhere, I'll get it up when I can find it)


Unframed

Framed

The bride signing the Ketubah.




Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Chupah

It's been a while since the last post, sorry about that. Mostly it's been because of the move and starting the new job, well that and not having done anything the least bit creative.

So, the Chupah... For those of you who don't know, a chupah is what people get married under in a traditional Jewish wedding. It is usually white and plain and provided by the synagogue or venue, but it can be whatever you want it to be really, as long as it has 4 poles and is completely covered (I think). So, my brother got engaged a bunch of months ago and asked me (or I might have volunteered) to make the chupah cover part since I'm handy with a needle. I, of course, agreed. Then about six months went by. Then it was about three weeks to the wedding and my dad had a weird fit involving lots of yelling and threatening if I didn't actually come over and sew. So, I went over and sewed. When they originally asked for this quilted chupah masterpiece, I asked what colors they wanted and they said blues, so they could use it in the bedroom apres la wedding. The wedding was in October though and with fall colors (i.e. my dress was orange), so I decided they were wrong and made it autumn-y instead. My mother (who is also has the curse of creativity) got a little chupah-feisty and chopped down pine saplings (they were going to go anyway, don't worry) and got my dad to pour cement into apple buckets (my poor father has actually be touched with the gift of being able to create the weird stuff my mother and I dream up) which she then filled with flowers. Then she stuck a stripped pine sapling into each one and we suspended the quilt from it. The following pictures are the visual aid for the potentially unclear description above...


I meant to take pictures during the sewing process, but forgot. Here is the setting up of the frame and poles.

Putting the quilt on the frame. (this involved flipping the frame upside down onto the quilt and me bossing people around a lot)


It's up!

Close up

With the bride and groom, rabbis and chupah-holders beneath it.
The whole shebang!

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Cookie Cake

This cake was for Meg's birthday. I really didn't want to bake, so I went to the Cookies By Design store and bought a pre-baked pan cookie. Then I took it home and decorated it. The guy at the store really wanted to decorate it for me, but I put my foot down and held my ground. I chose pink and purple because Meg reminds me of the 80's and so do pink and purple. There are shoes and purses cause Meg's a purse and shoe kind of girl.










Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Crochet Hook Holder

I made this crochet hook holder thing as a birthday present for my friend Anne. She just started crocheting, so it seemed appropriate. I made it out of two fat quarters and some ribbon. It wasn't very expensive and is a good project for leftover fabric.





Sunday, July 1, 2007

The Cupcake Cones

It turns out you can bake cakes in ice cream cones and they grow into little cupcake cones in the over. We did these for the Fourth of July party and then used a 1M tip to make them look like soft serve cones. Check out the beautiful models in the last picture.





The Eyeball Cake

Here's the story on this one: Every year my mother has a party on the Fourth of July at my parents' house on Cape Cod. It turns out that one of their friend's birthday is on the Fourth, so we wanted to make him a cake. He's an optometrist, which explains the clever eyeball theme, we're not just weird.




The Inflatable Walker

OK, well quite evidently I did not make this amusing inflatable walker, but it is funny enough that I decided to put the pictures up anyway. My father, who complains almost constantly of being old and decrepid, recently turned 63 and this was my gift to him. I got it online at one of these websites. It was quite a hit.






Sorry about the lopsided picture, my computer and I are having a disagreement. Hopefully I'll have it straightned out soon.

Friday, May 11, 2007

The Scrabble Tray (also not a cake)

OK, so this is the tray that goes with the cake that goes with the mother's 60th birthday. I bought an unfinished wooden tray at one of those craft store places where the lights are too bright and there are way too many brides-to-be buying bell-shaped votive thingies. Then I ordered 300 spare Scrabble pieces from Amazon (after many ebay attempts failed miserably). Then I glued the Scrabble tiles to the tray. I glued a few of them down too quickly and to pry them off with scissors, which explains the odd scar forming on my finger and the blood on the handle.

Anyway... after some wood glue, and about five coats of water-based varnish, it's shiny and pretty and wonderful and stuff. I spelled out
Happy Birthday Mom
May Twelfth Two Thousand Two
Also the words Queen, Wonderful, Family, Always and maybe some other things inadvertently as well.




The Baby Blanket (not a cake)

So, not a cake, but...

I made this baby blanket for my friend Sirena's baby. I have no idea if they ever used it, but it was a nice gift nonetheless (in my personal opinion). I gave it to them in the hospital where they made me hold the baby, which was somewhat frightening as that it was small and potentially breakable. It's pink, blue and yellow machine-washable baby wool. I can't remember what brand. I mentioned the colors for those of you who are just confused in general.




Thursday, May 10, 2007

The Scrabble Cake

This cake is for my mother's surprise 60th birthday party. It's a square lemon sheet cake with buttercream frosting. My mom's a bit of a Scrabble junkie and for her present we bought her a bunch of Scrabble-oriented stuff, so the cake, of course, had to match.




The Kermit Cake

OK, this is probably the best cake I've made so far (except for maybe the Scrabble cake). I made it for my brother and his fiancee. They have a bit of a Muppet obsession, so it seemed appropriate for their engagement party. There were Muppet themed drinks to match (of course). It was a yellow cake with chocolate mousse filling and buttercream frosting. Kermit is on the top there (in case you don't know what a muppet is) and there are reeds and dragonflies on the sides to give it a swamp-y feel.