Girls (and a boy) Beach Trip

April 12, 2011

Girls (and a boy) Beach Trip

Last week my mom, Isabelle, and I had the pleasure of joining our dear friends, Anna Blair, her son, William, and her mom, Blair (Mimi) at their beach house in Litchfield. It was such a wonderful and relaxing vacation and exactly what I needed after a very busy weekend. One of the many cakes produced that weekend was this wedding cake that I decorated with gumpaste flowers made by the mother of the bride! It was the first time that the person ordering the cake put more work into it than I did! I carefully placed all of her beautiful handmade peonies, roses and leaves (which I know took many many long hours to make) onto the cake and I must say that it was lovely.

Isabelle usually joins us for deliveries to Charlotte Country Club.

Gumpaste flowers made by Fay Sullivan

Springtime cascade of pink flowers

And one of my favorite 1st birthday cakes is below. It was made for twins (boy and girl) with the nursery rhyme theme - sugar and spice and everything nice and snips and snails and puppy dog tails! A puppy dog smash cake for Tripp and the giant cupcake for Eloise!

After all of the cakes were complete (and probably eaten up!) we headed down to the beach. Isabelle was so excited about her first beach experience with her little buddy, William! They were both obssessed with this adorable dog book.

When she wasn't chatting up a storm to William, Isabelle was exploring the house. She is into climbing over things and pulling up onto everything. Something new...stairs!

Is this sweet baby of mine starting to look like a little girl, or what?

The babies had SO much fun together! William is like a beautiful little porcelain doll with that perma-grin and rosy cheeks!

"I see London, I see France..." Not so fast, little guy!

Look at that cute little smirk.

On the beach...a little windy, but BEAUTIFUL!

Beach baby!

Mmmm, first taste of sand...yum.

Have I mentioned that Isabelle is a vampire child? Yup, the fangs have come in first.

Mommies and babies

Grannies and babies

Cici and Izzie in front of the house.

Naked babies! William is 3 1/2 months younger, but about the same size!

It was really hard when it came time to head home, especially since I had to get straight to work on one of my most challenging cakes, a VOLVO (to serve 140)! And it was a real bummer when I got home and realized that I told Jen to bake the WRONG flavor!!! Had to rebake the whole thing.

Here's the Volvo cake in it's first stages of sculpting.

I was crossing my fingers that this shape would eventually look like that of the groom's first car (a '99 Volvo). I've learned that a car is one of the hardest shapes to recreate out of cake, especially without a model in front of me to look at. It is perfectly symmetrical and each and every angle is important in making it look like a specific car.

Here is the final result. I'm sure the mother of the groom laughed when she remembered how many times I asked her for the year and make of the car (as if it mattered!). Not so sure it looks like a volvo, but hopefully everyone got a kick out of it anyway!

Some personalized bumper stickers to make it fun...and the license plate was my favorite detail.

Up, up, up! That's all Isabelle wants to do. She is pulling up on everything she can find and loves standing. No walking around things yet, but she's pretty steady on her feet so walking is surely in the near future! Cute story about the overalls...my dad had been talking about how he'd like to see her in some osh kosh b'goshes just like we grew up wearing. Low and behold, on his way home from a business trip to Raleigh he spotted an Osh Kosh outlet and stopped to get Isabelle 2 pairs of her first overalls! Thanks Granddaddy Norfleet!