Some craftiness over the past few weeks...

Kensi's Baby Naming was last Saturday.  I wanted to do a few things (including make the cake for the party) and found a few other ideas along the way. 

A few months ago, while having lunch with my Mom in Newport Beach, we stumbled across a cute little bakery that made sugar cookies with pictures on them.  (Their claim to fame was having made the cookies for the President's inauguration party.)  Of course, with that kind of publicity and a Newport Beach address, you can imagine what their prices were like!  After some well-spent time on Google, I found a bakery in Canoga Park that could put pictures on cookies for a much better price.  I finally picked out the photos that I wanted to use and sent them off.  When the cookies arrived, I was trying to figure out a way to display the cookies and make sure that people took them after the party.  This is what I came up with.

 I put sticks on the back of each cookie, and then using my candy molds, made some candy flowers and Stars of David to round out the box.  I used styrofoam and tissue paper to fill up the bottom of the box and keep everything raised up and went from there.  You can't really tell, but I also had white tulle wound around some of the sticks.  The flower cookies are big sister Brooklyn and the squares are Kensi.  More than a few people told me that they would not be able to eat those little faces, and I have yet to try them, so someone who was able to bite into B will have to tell me if the cookies were any good.  :)

For my next project, I borrowed an idea that a friend had posted on her website.  Generally speaking, no decorations are needed for a baby naming party and people were just gathering at Ray and Ronnye's for food and to hang out.  There was no question who was the guest of honor, but I decided to put a few more pictures of her around, in case there was any doubt.  Using Erin's idea, I put a picture of Kensi inside of a jar with some pink tulle and wrapped some ribbon around the jar.  I tried putting a little light in the jar too, but it didn't really work well.  Maybe if the party was at night it would have added something, but since it didn't, I took them out.  Here's how one of the jars turned out.

And then there's the cake.  I decided to do the cake myself, but also didn't really have the time to bake it.  So I ordered the cake plain from the grocery store and took it home to decorate.  I finally got to use my Cricut Cake for the first time (bought it on Black Friday last November) and it worked o.k.  I got mixed reviews from the ladies at the cake store where I bought my supplies, and did have some minor hiccups, but I supposed it worked out.

As you can tell, pink was the color of the day (of course! what else for our princess?)  I think I was cutting the border for the top part of the cake in this one.  The fondant was a bit soft for the cricut.  It worked well for the rest of what I was doing, but I think for the borders and designs I was cutting, I could have used something a little more stiff.  I also found out the hard way that the grocery store put WAY too much frosting on the cakes.  I was able to scrape some off of the bottom layer, but not the top layer, so the fondant slid just a bit overnight.  I also ended up baking another cake to put on top of the 1/2 sheet from the grocery store, so that the proportions of the top tier and bottom tier worked a little better.  The cake tasted good and from what everyone has said, it looked o.k.   I think I need some practice on my Cricut, but otherwise, the day and all of Kensi's decorations turned out very nice.