Dogsitting at the Judges'

We love puppies. Puppies of all size, shape, and age. Every dog is a puppy in my book.

Here's our puppy:

Ain't she precious?

She's a little sweetheart. Wouldn't hurt a fly. But...she's also a scared-y cat. A few weeks ago, we were dogsitting my friend Shannon's puppy, Tobi. Tobi is a 60-pound beast, but he's also a real sweetheart. He just wanted to play with Nani, but Nani was so scared. She climbed up to the highest point on the couch to stay away from him. Poor, Tobi.


Tobi also ate 2 of Nani's squeaking toys that night so he wasn't feeling so hot. Big, dumb, sweet puppy.

Earlier this week, we dogsat another friend's puppy, Bella. She's a 6-pound pipsqueak of a dog. Very sweet and very high strung.


Nani and Bella love to play together. They chase each other around, nip at each others' legs, and spin in crazy, tight circles.

Nani rarely lets Bella out of her sight. Except that somehow while I was taking these photos, she sneaked into the other room and devoured all of Bella's food. The little sneak.


So what kind of person owns a dog like Bella? A young female socialite? A sweet old lady? A teenage girl?

Nope! Bella's owner is a middle-aged man who talks baby-talk to her, owns like a bazillion cats, and poses willingly with the Chick-Fil-A cow.*


*David was offended that I had never mentioned him in the blog. So here ya go, David. Does anyone else feel left out? I'm sure I can dig up some embarrassing photos of you if so...

2010 Disney Princess Half Marathon

Wow! Is it really over?! Did we really just run the Disney Princess Half Marathon last weekend?! It doesn't seem that long ago when Elise asked me to run it with her and we started our training.

To be honest, I was really worried that I've have trouble finishing the race. I've been going to physical therapy for 5 weeks for knee pain, and I haven't been able to run more than 5 miles at a time. So how could I expect to run 13.1 during the race?!

Well, we'd already paid for the race (it wasn't cheap!), and we were so excited so I just decided to run as much as I can.

We arrived at the runner's expo at Disney's Wide World of Sports on Saturday after lunch. There was a red carpet leading us in the front doors and two handsome doormen! The princess treatment had officially begun.


The expo was crowded with anxious runners and a lot of vendors with all the latest running gear and apparel. It goes without saying that we made a few key purchases.

After the expo, we went for an early dinner and were in bed by 9pm! The three runners, Nikki, Elise, and I, roomed together and we put Adam, James (Elise's hubby), and Lorelei (their kiddo) in another room so they could get a little more sleep. Nikki was soon snoozing...but Elise and I suffered from race-induced insomnia until after midnight. It was miserable! Let's just say, your mind goes a lot of places while you lie in the dark for 3 hours. I pondered the genetics behind sleeping patterns, tried singing slow, relaxing songs in my head, etc. Our wake-up call came WAY too early - 2:50am. The race didn't start until 6am but we had to be there by about 4am. Yikes!


As soon as we got off the bus at 3:30am, we saw Spaceship Earth at Epcot! We were so excited!


It was cold...In the mid 40s...and dark...I don't know if I was shivering from the cold or the anticipation, but it was probably a combination of both. After walking 20 minutes to the starting line, I took this photo of the 3 of us with our tiaras. When we registered for the race, we were each asked which Disney Princess was our favorite. I chose Belle because she has gorgeous hair and ball gowns! Elise chose Ariel because of the red hair, and Nikki chose Aurora. Our bib numbers were all color-coded to match our princess of choice, and Nikki found these adorable tiaras at Walmart for us to wear.


There were 13,000 registered runners so they divided us into 5 starting corrals depending on our predicted race pace. Here's our view from Corral B! We thought we couldn't get any more excited to start...and then they set off fireworks when each corral crossed the start line! Wow!


These are our "game faces" right before we started the race! Oh yea! Let's go!


We ran from the Epcot parking lot to Magic Kingdom. That was definitely the most exciting part of the race! We had to stop and take a quick photo in front of the castle.


And then another photo with Chip and Dale in Tomorrow Land between miles 5 and 6.


Then, we ran through Cinderella's castle while trumpets announced our arrival! Talk about royal treatment!


This was between miles 9 and 10. Nikki loves Pirates so we forced her to stop for a photo. And I think the lack of sleep was starting to get to Elise - she looks a little giddy in this photo. Uh oh, James! Watch out! She may have a thing for pirates!

And here we are at the finish with our medals! The results?
Elise: 02:32:20 (11:37/mi)
Melanie: 02:34:14 (11:45/mi)
Nikki: 02:34:21 (11:46/mi)

We all ran together until the last mile - then Elise took off and finished strong. I did my best to sprint during the last 0.1 mile but I don't think I was really moving much faster. By then, my knee pain was almost unbearable. As soon as the race was over, I couldn't bend my knee anymore...but...

We did it!

And we have these awesome, heavy-duty medals to show for it. I'm so proud of us. Actually, I'm proud of all of the runners! Over 11,000 finished the race - that's awesome!

I get pretty emotional about things like this. When we passed the marker for Mile 10, I started to tear up. I was thinking, "Holy cow, I'm going to actually finish this thing!" I told Elise I was getting emotional and she turned to me and yelled, "What?! Man up!" That's why I keep her around - for moments like that.

So I sucked it up, and started balling as soon as I crossed the finish line. Luckily, I had sunglasses on so no one could tell. Sneaky, huh?

The 5 of us had all participated in the Disney Give a Day, Get a Day program so we had vouchers for FREE TICKETS to a Disney park of our choice after the race! We all went to Magic Kingdom and had a blast. Because I couldn't bend my knee, Adam pushed me around in a wheel chair all day. I'm sorry, ladies, but I think I've already snagged the best guy out there!

*Sigh* Well, it's all over. It was an expensive weekend, but I'm already looking forward to next year's race! I'm trying to talk Adam into doing the Expedition Everest with me, and the new Wine & Dine run sounds fun too!

Wanna see some more photos? Check out Elise's blog here and the official race photos here. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Daniel for letting us use his camera for all these photos!

Free Fonts For Everyone & A Great Giveaway!!

I just had to share these with all of you!

1. Check out this giveaway for either a NEW Cannon 5D Mark digital camera OR a $2500 Gift Card to Southwest Airlines! Did someone say Christmas in March?! Wait, my birthday is in March! Go enter the giveaway. If you win, leave a comment about it - it would totally make my day if one of my readers won this giveaway! So go! Enter the giveaway, and then come back to check out my #2 below.

2. I have recently discovered this amazing website where you can download all kinds of cool fonts for your computer. When I say recently, I mean like 15 minutes ago...and I've already downloaded 30+ fonts!

I just started scrapbooking digitally using the Creative Memories software (which I love!), and you can use any font you have on your computer. I'm super excited to start using all my new fonts now. Here are a few I like:

David's Bridal Display Cake

This post is LONG overdue because this is a cake I made back in January, but with all the competitions going on lately, there's been so many other cakes to post! So I'm finally getting around to posting this one.

Anyway, one of my first jobs for Ms Debbie's Sugar Art was to work with the managers at David's Bridal in Gainesville, FL to create a show cake for the store. After a quick visit to the store, we decided to use really fresh, Spring-like shades of pink and green on the cake.


This was such a tricky cake to design because every bride likes something different on her wedding cake! I finally decided to use some really popular techniques (like the quilting on the top and 3rd tiers) while keeping the cake very clean and uncluttered.


As a side note, I apologize for the photos on this post. I tried to use a white background, and I really hate how the photos came out. Too bad I'm not skilled with Photoshop to fix them! Well, you can see the cake, and that's what matters, right?


For the cake topper, I made pink gum paste roses and dusted them with a slightly darker shade of pink for accents. To make the quilting pattern, I used a quilting tool. This was my first time using a tool for this! I usually just use a ruler or straight edge, but it was SO much easier to use the quilting tool!

On the second tier, I created fondant drapes and allowed the green fondant-covered cake to show through - a nice burst of color!


On the third tier, I repeated the quilting pattern. And I gently draped fondant lace over the top of the last tier.

I'm curious to see how long the cake holds up in David's Bridal. The cake isn't protected behind glass or anything like that so I'm sure plenty of people will be touching it. It'll probably be ready for a make-over by the end of the season. Awesome! That means I get to design another cake!

What kind of designs and/or colors would you like to see on the next show cake?

2010 Central Florida Fair

Last year, I had such a great experience participating in the Central Florida Fair Confectionery Arts Competition so I had to enter again this year. For a recap on last year's fair, check here and here. This time, though, I entered 7 different categories in the professional division!

My "holiday cake" entry was 4 tiers, with the top 3 tiers being round and the bottom tier being square. I decorated the top 3 tiers with damask piping. First, I drew the pattern I wanted to use on paper. Then, I used graphite paper (it's non-toxic) to transfer the pattern onto the sides of my fondant-covered cakes. And the piping was all done with brown royal icing. The bottom tier was decorated with simple brown fondant stripes. And the big green bow was created out of a fondant/gum paste mix.


UPDATE: This cake won 3rd Place in the Professional Adult Holiday/Special Occasion Cakes category.

My second entry was in the "miscellaneous cakes" category. It was a 3-tier cake covered in teal and brown fondant. The top tier was decorated with really simple royal icing Swiss dots. The second tier was decorated with white polka dots (cut using the back of a decorating tip) and a blue ribbon. And the last tier was decorated with brown and teal stripes. I really enjoyed making this one because it's so playful! In fact, on the fair entry form, I described this cake as "fun & flirty."


UPDATE: This cake won 1st place in the Adult Professional Misc. Cakes category.

Here is my entry for the "3-tier wedding cakes":

It's supposed to resemble a bride's dress and it was decorated only using ivory fondant! This cake was so easy to make so I'll do a tutorial of it for you soon. You'd be surprised at how few tools are needed to complete it!


UPDATE: This cake won 1st Place in the Professional Adult 3-Tier Wedding Cakes category.

I also brought the Shrek cake from last weekend's Panhandle Cake C.R.U.M.B.S. Fairy Tale Cake Decorating Competition and entered it into the "4 tiers or more wedding cake" category!


UPDATE: This cake won 2nd Place in the Professional Adult 4+ Tier Wedding Cakes category.

And remember the gum paste flower bouquet I brought to the 2009 ICES Convention in Illinois? Well, I brought those along too.

UPDATE: No ribbons for this entry in the Professional Adult Specimen Flower category.

When I registered for the fair competition, I had great ambitions for creating some adorable decorated sugar cookies. But time just got away from me so I created this to go along with the fair's theme this year of "Lights, Camera, Action!" It's nothing special...but who knows, it may still win a ribbon!


UPDATE: This cake won 1st Place in the Professional Adult Decorated Cookies category.

And my last entry was homemade chocolate chip cookies. I don't have much hopes for getting a ribbon for those after seeing the other cookies that were entered into the competition. Yes, chocolate chip cookies are a classic, but can they really stand up to snickerdoodles, peanut butter drops, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, etc? We'll see!

UPDATE: This cake won 3rd Place in the Chocolate Chip Cookies category.

So my car was packed to the roof with the fair entries. I have a little car...a Toyota Celica like this one:


Of course, this one isn't mine...mine needs a new paint job and window tinting...but it's a cool photo, isn't it?

The great thing about the Celica is that the back seats fold down and make a GIANT trunk! I was able to fit all of these entries AND an entry for a student of mine. She created an all-buttercream cake for the fair's theme. Look how great it turned out:


UPDATE: Jessica's cake won 2nd Place in the Adult Amateur Theme Cake category.

In early March, I'm heading back to the fair to pick up the entries. Then I'll post some winners and my favorite cakes here for you all to see!

2010 Panhandle Cake C.R.U.M.B.S. Competition

As I promised, here are a lot more photos from this past weekend's 2010 Panhandle Cake C.R.U.M.B.S. Cake Decorating Competition. The theme this year was fairy tales so it was fun seeing all the stories represented in sugar!


In addition to the cake decorating competition, they had:

• a bake sale to benefit the Ronald McDonald House
• a kid's cookie decorating table (see photo below)
• a one-tip decorating contest
• various demonstrations
• a cake tasting competition
• and a demonstration by Linda McClure on how to use the Cricut machine to decorate cakes!

Oh yea, now that's a fun, yummy-looking cookie!

To get this photo, I sneaked up behind 3 of the judges as they began to inspect the first cake in the Adult Professional Division.

And now on to the main event! Here are the winners of each category:

Children's Division:
1st place - Kendal Motley; Tinkerbell
2nd place - Natalya Bragg; Cinderella
3rd place - Michael Posey; The Little Mermaid

Youth Division:
1st place - Ashley Woods; Rapunzel
2nd place - Bailey Motley; The Little Mermaid
3rd place - Megan Crooke; The Princess & the Pea
4th place - Roselynn Mack; Sleeping Beauty

Adult Novice Division:
1st place - Debra Fallo; Cinderella
2nd place - Christine Gaston; Rapunzel
3rd place - Lydia Farmer; The Three Little Pigs

Adult Advanced Division:
1st place - Kathy Spalding; The Old Woman in the Shoe*
2nd place - Rhonda Pulley; The Princess & the Pea

Adult Professional Division:
1st place - Melanie Judge; Shrek**
2nd place - Shanon Motley; A Fisherman's Fairytale***
3rd place - Michele Swann; The Bee & the Orange Tree

This Sleeping Beauty was one of my favorites! Perhaps it's because Aurora is my favorite Disney Princess...but most likely it's because Sharon did such an amazing job on the cake!

And here's another of my favorites from the show. Margaret Stutsman made this gorgeous Alice in Wonderland cake. The color was absolutely perfect, don't you think?! But it was the small details, like the ornate key, the cupcakes, and the teapots, that really won me over.

The amazing members of the Panhandle Cake C.R.U.M.B.S. are already planning next year's competition. And the theme? The 60s!


To see more photos, check the following sites:

• Fabulous Wedding Cake Stands on Facebook
• Pensacola News Journal
  
• Panhandle Cake C.R.U.M.B.S (photos coming soon)

*Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a photo of the front of Kathy's Shoe cake. However, don't you love the little buttocks showing in the top window?! Too cute!
**Hey, that's me! I also won People's Choice and Best of Show!
***And Shanon also won Decorator's Favorite!