It's so reassuring to see people who are still in love with each other after being married for so long! I can only hope that we will be just as happy in 39 years and 7.5 months!
My boss and I scoured Pinterest for some amazing ideas and then put our own spin on things. I helped her create a wreath for their front door, a chalkboard sign and a fantastic cake. I won't go into much detail about the wreath and sign, but I'll explain the cake a bit more below. Enjoy these pictures in the meantime!
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| I have to say, I had SO much fun making this cake! |
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| The boss didn't want anyone to bump into it, so she put it in the corner. |
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| It's not perfect, but I did it pretty quickly...on my lunch break. |
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| This actually turned out WAY cuter than I thought it would! |
Ok, so this cake was a first for me. I had never worked with gumpaste before. It was SO much fun!!! I had such a ball! Oh, and the silly puppy did too. In fact, she decided to eat some of the leftovers...that was a fun digestive experience for her.
I digress. I tinted the gumpaste, rolled it out, used a handy dandy cookie cutter and used these marvelous flower forming cups.
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| You can find these at Michaels. They are super helpful! |
Sounds easy enough, right? Well, I didn't have quite enough of the cups, so we improvised...with wine glasses. Wish I had a picture of this, but I was too busy to remember to document the process.
The centers of the flowers were crystal beads we found at Michaels. I threaded wire through the holes and twisted until I had little sticks. Obviously, these weren't edible. No word on whether anyone tried them, though.
I alternated between pink and white layers, different sizes and let them "set up" a little differently for each layer. Once they were kinda set up, I assembled them and stuck my crystal/wire stem through them. I wanted them all to hang naturally, but I hadn't thought to purchase one of these:
So I had to improvise. I twisted the head of a wire hanger (Mommy Dearest flashbacks, anyone?) and let them hang from the fireplace overnight. Clearly I closed the door to the bedroom so no curious kitties or precocious pups would try to taste them.
As for the cake itself, I basically doctored up a vanilla cake mix by adding a box of vanilla instant pudding and changing the liquid measurements a tad. Don't remember exactly what I did though so will try to find that recipe later. Promise! Scout's Honor! (Haha...but I wasn't a scout so you can't hold me to it!)
As with all icing emergencies, I defer to the person I consider to be the baking guru...Whisk Kid. I followed her directions for Italian Meringue Buttercream. Almost perfectly. Except I'm not perfect and I'm very impatient and this lack of patience and perfection caused me to have to wait a while for things to look as good as hers. Don't be like me. Follow the directions. And don't use boxed egg whites. They just don't work as well.
Oh, and I also decided to flavor my icing with a little Amaretto. Just to make it interesting. Icing it was a royal pain. I wanted to make it as smooth as possible, so I kept sticking it back in the freezer and then smoothing it out with a paper towel. I know this sounds silly, but it really helped a lot!
Anywho...after everything was said and done and perfect enough, I stuck the flowers in and, well, you see the final result...and apparently it tasted pretty good too! Success!!
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| Happy 40th Anniversary to the Jones'. And yes, that's actually their name, not some pseudonym! |
