A Taste of Summer

My mother-in-law recently celebrated her birthday.

One of her very favorite things in the beach, and as a person who shares my child-like love of all things sappy and cute, I endeavored to create a cake as colorful and fun as her joie de vivre.

To decorate, I used vanilla wafers to create sand and some colored frosting to shape the waves with the help of a few Swedish Fish. The beach chair and palm trees were purchased at Create-a-Cake and and the beach towels are fashioned out of some Air Heads candy. George also created a sun (not pictured here) out of some melted yellow decorators sugar.


The inside was a little more tricky. I split a white cake mix into four parts and died each a different color (The most fun part for me besides the decorating was how fun the batter looked in the bowls - like something out of the feasts in the movie Hook). I then poured these into 9 inch cake rounds and baked them according to the box directions.
This was my first attempt and I haven't yet perfected getting the colors perfectly even, but it was still a fun surprise. I think this technique would be easier on a smaller scale like cupcakes where each layer could be smoothed out with less difficulty.
I also chose to use chocolate frosting between the layers and should have stuck with some white or cream cheese frosting dyed a fun rainbow color to add to the fun of the inside.

Have you baked anything fun lately?

Share with me in the comments below!

Stars and (Zebra) Stripes

Happy 4th of July, friends!

What better way to celebrate our great nation then with a patriotic manicure? None, say I.

Pretend I cleaned up the edges of my manicure before I took this picture.

This was done with a base of Avon's Nailwear Pro in French Tip White followed by the fishnet print done with Wet and Wild Fast Dry in Silvivor.
On my ring fingers I used Konad's special polish in blue and red to do zebra stripes for a punny play on stars and stripes and then did the stars in the same colors on all the other nails.

If you'd like to try it yourself, the fishnet and the zebra stripes are both from Konad plate m57. There are several plates that have stars on them, but these particular stars are from m3.
(If you're a real USA nut, check out m14. After all, we Americans love us some cupcakes and diamonds.)

Now, go have fun!
And be sure not to blow off any fingers with illegal fireworks... it'd be a shame to waste all that hard work!

What summer treat does Avon's Powerful Pink remind me of?