There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the best ever invented stress reliever is laughter! And whenever I need some chuckle therapy the first place I head to is Cake Wrecks.  The pics of  professional cakes gone horribly, hilariously wrong combined with the amazingly witty commentary by Jen Yates is a brilliant combination that brings giggles, full on belly laughs, tears of  hysterical-icity, and, on at least one occasion, unconsciousness!

I remember when the first Cake Wrecks book came out, and there was a book tour, thinking how cool it would be for them to show up in Pittsburgh.  What a blast it must be to get a bookstore full of people laughing over wrecks and thanking Jen and John for all the smiles.  Well, luckily they wrote a second book just so they could pay us a visit and we could do just that.  It was only made better by finding out my way of thanking them would be to create the cakes for the event. Yeah, baby!

Thursday night (11/3/11) Jen and John Yates hit up the Barnes and Noble at the waterfront for a book-signing of Wreck the Halls, complete with a slide show, funny emails, back-stories, a cupcake ‘wreckplica’ contest, and the obvious, signed books and CAKE!

First the crowd gathered!  Ooooooh . . .

Then Jen and John presented their so bad it’s good slide show.  Ahhhh . . .  ’I'm fuzzy on the whole “good/bad” thing. What do you mean, “bad”?’ (Yes, yes, I did just quote Ghostbusters for Jen)

Later there was a very intense competition where Jen, John and I chose finalists for the cupcake wreckplica contest!! Call me braggin’, but, yep, by majority vote of the masses the cupcake I, underlined, chose took home top prize!! I know a good wreckplica when I see one!

I was really stumped on my approach for a while, to go completely wreckie or more Sunday Sweets.  In the end, once I bought the book, it became clear, I had to duplicate some of these wrecks, and also maybe do something hopefully not so wreck-ified as well.

I decided to have some fun with a crazy turkey, I felt he needed something so I added ‘Gobble Gooble Underlined’ to him as well as a turkey foot, which are toppers on some cupcakes in the book.  Knowing I just HAD to represent with the Steelers, I decided the perfect match would be a wreckplica of the Super Bowel cake! Only I went more wreckified making it a cupcake cake (which Jen classifies as always wrecktastic), messing with some punctuation (Go! Go? Go.), icing the football part of the cake in a ‘certain manner’, and bringing out the classics with some misspelling and the infamous running out of space technique!  Lastly I couldn’t resist recreating the alien ribcage “Chanikka” cake, adding my own personal pet peeve… Curling ribbon on cake!! (WHY people, why?!??!?)

Once I had my little wrecks ready to rock, I moved on to something a little more ‘Festive’ for the occasion!  Happy HoleDay’s!!!! And once again using inspiration from the book (there’s just SO much inspiration. LOL) I added the no-armed gingerbread man, the ‘Down there’ snowman, the possessed Grinch face, the puny-faced santa, and my personal favorite, the, yes, those are real lightbulbs, decorated Christmas tree! (Had a few ask me if they really light up.  Ugh, I should’ve thought of that, LOL)

Thanks Jen and John for spreading  joy across the land and relieving stress around the world!  Don’t be strangers to the Burgh!

PS: Hey guys, if you’ve gotten this far you could be handsomely rewarded!  Jen and John were very cool enough to sign a book for me to give to one my clients, fans, likers, followers, what have you!  If you’d like to win this book they signed with a little ‘something funny’ just comment on this post!! I’ll assign everyone a number and on Monday afternoon, November 7th, 2011, I’ll have random.org select a number for me.  Whoever’s number comes up wins an autographed copy of Wreck the Halls!! (One entry per person, pulleese and make sure to leave your email so I can contact you if you’re the winnah!)

Could you use some laughs and some free cake???

Cake Wrecks, the best blog evah, is coming to Pittsburgh!!

Thurs, November 3rd at 7:00, check out their new book, Wreck the Halls, enter their “wreckplica’ cupcake contest, meet Jen and John, and enjoy some cake, made by ME, at Barnes and Noble at the waterfront! (100 West Bridge St. Homestead, PA 15120)

So looking forward to creating a fun Cake Wrecks worthy cake… not sure if it’ll be wreckified or a Sunday sweets yet

Here’s the info http://cakewrecks.squarespace.com/home/2011/9/8/the-cake-wrecks-winter-underlined-tour.html and the invite to RSVP to http://tinyurl.com/3ou87t2 .

See you there

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Icing Smiles Inc is a non-profit organization that matches up volunteer bakers with families who have been impacted by the critical illness of a child. Or in other words, they are spreading love and cheer all over the land.   I follow their facebook page and it brings instant happiness every time I read about a cake and the story of the child and family behind it. Though of course the main wish would be that an organization like this wouldn’t have to exist, as it would mean no children would ever have to endure what these kids go through, it is a comfort to know that these families are being taken care of in this aspect and that the ‘power of cake’ is alive and well.

Meet little Lilly! Lilly has a CHD, congenital heart disease, and as her mom has said, ‘Each and every CDH’er has a very special heart’.  In Lilly’s case she has tetralogy of fallot with pulmonary atresia (Believe me, I tried everything to look this up and explain it in simple terms and I couldn’t even begin to wrap my brain around it. Makes me think about her family and trying to grasp all of it, especially at first. So, so much to struggle to understand I am sure!).  Anyway, she has had two open-heart surgeries and will be having a third, but more importantly look at what a cutie she is, and so incredibly sweet! You can read her mom’s blog here.

Lilly is turning 2 and was having a hula monkey theme.  I decided nothing less than 3 tiers would be acceptable and luckily having 3 girls myself, pink and girly comes pretty natural to me. Of course we had to include some hearts on there as well.  Here she is pointing to the monkey on her cake.

One of the main themes I notice whenever a story is posted about an Icing Smiles cake is the joy that comes over the baker who supplied the cake.  Having now done this myself, I really have to wonder which way the joy swings the most, on the families or on the bakers who have been blessed to be asked to be a part of any kind of celebration or milestone in these families lives. It truly is an honor to know you are hopefully helping create a beautiful memory for them.

I cannot thank Icing Smiles enough for sending me my ‘call to action’ and I can only hope to receive another in the future.  If you would like to help the cause in your own way definitely check out their website or facebook page and donate!

Here is her cake’s official portrait.

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY LILLY!

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http://robinson.macaronikid.com/article/123678/faithfully-cakes-review

MacKid Robinson also did a feature article on the business here:

http://robinson.macaronikid.com/article/105278/faithfully-cakes-one-of-a-kind

AND here’s a Mario Brothers cake that was reviewed by Macaroni Kid Beaver Valley back in December.

http://beavervalley.macaronikid.com/article/67582/faithfully-cakes

There are several local Macaroni Kid newsletters in the area and they are a WONDERFUL resource for families on all of the goings on in our area, as well as giveaways and reviews on businesses like these. Thanks MacKid for all the support you’ve shown to Faithfully Cakes!

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The stories that came in were just remarkable. These babes and their families had just been through SOO much.

In the end, I decided to create two cakes for two special little ones this year.  The first being Ava’s on April 30th.

Ava was born 11 weeks too soon after her mom suffered from severe preeclampsia.  She was at one time just 1 pound 4 ounces!!! Think about that for a second, just wow.  She spent her first 3 months in the hospital, 9 weeks of which were on oxygen. She has had to overcome many, many obstacles. You can see more of her story by clicking her name above her picture.

Ava had a princess themed 1st birthday and I wanted to make it girly, whimsical, and grand, using some inspiration from a cake photo her mom had wanted to have for her shower as well.  Having 3 girls myself I figured I did okay by the way my daughters gazed at it when it was completed. It must have been the tiara.

Ava’s cake!

And here is Little Miss Ava digging into her matching buttercream smash cake!

Happy Birthday, Ava! I hope your second year is WONDERFUL and a little less eventful than your first!

I look forward to sharing Jameson’s cake with you in September!

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One of the new and exciting additions is this blog. I look forward to sharing all of the happenings and updates going on at Faithfully Cakes right here, in addition to the facebook and twitter pages.

Even though I am all about one-of-a-kind and catering each cake to its event, I also understand that having a visual of design ideas and getting inspiration from photos is a large part of the creation process. That said:

If you have ever had a conversation with me, and there have been many, that included ‘I’m looking at this cake in the celebrations folder, count 4 rows over and 8 rows down . . .’ well, those will be NO more! All of the cakes have now been assigned a number for easy reference. It will be as easy as calling or emailing with the number you see under each cake’s photo to let me know of any cake design elements you’d like to discuss.

Even better . . . the site now has a SEARCH function! This was number one on my ‘want list’ for the longest time and I knew whenever the time came to revamp the site it had to happen. Yep, you will now be able to search out cakes the way you’d like to browse them. Want to see fondant cakes? Just search fondant. Want to see 5th birthday cakes? Just type that phrase into the search. I hope you will have fun seeking out cakes that are more specific to the event you are currently planning. You will see a search box on the right side of each screen of the site. And on the gallery pages you’ll also see a Tagcloud, where searching is as simple as clicking one of the tag words on the list. I am beyond thrilled to have this vision come to fruition. I expect to have all of the tagging complete within the next 10 days, for full searching capabilities.

I owe big thanks to Craig at http://pro21design.com for bringing this site to life. He nailed my vision for both the functions and the design, and even added many little
touches that never occurred to me, right down to hidden butterflies. He put in an incredible amount of time, thought, and effort, and covered bases I didn’t even know needed to be covered.  Thanks Craig!

Thanks as well to Nicole at http://creativedelivery.net for getting things kick-started with my logo and print elements. She was right-on with the whimsical, elegant, and personal look I was going for, especially the butterfly elements, which are a symbol of our angel daughter Faith, whom the business is named after.

Thanks so much for checking out the new place, and I hope you make use of and enjoy all the new features!

Tammy

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