Sewing...

I had a night to myself tonight. I went to a new store called, A Spool of Thread, for a sewing class. We made a tote bag and it was a lot of fun.





In the beginning, I thought I was in over my head as they seem to speak a different language and they were going faster than I could keep up with, and my needle was dull, and my spool of thread wouldn't load correctly...but once we got this all sorted out, it was really fun and nice to focus so intensely on something new and creative. I ventured down to Dressew a few weekends ago to choose my fabric, couldn't decide on one so I bought two (story of my life!), and then almost forgot about the class tonight. The store is a big open warehouse type space, bright, new everything, awesome fabrics, cool patterns, and really nice staff. I was so smitten with it all that I signed up for another class next week (making fabric banners), and will go and make another tote bag (or two, I might make two little ones for Zack & Maggie) so I don't forget how to sew it. My Grandma Young gave me her sewing machine, it is waiting for me in Highgate. I wanted to learn how to use a machine, how to make simple items, and just be a little more handy in that department. I've wanted to take a sewing class for years and am so happy that A Spool of Thread just opened up (grand opening was June 5). Watch for photos from next week's sewing adventure. Now I just have to figure out how to combine the iBakery treats with sewing...hmmmmm :-)

Dr.Seuss, Halo Wars, and little farm animals...

I love baking in general, but these new little iced sugar cookies are starting to become my favourite item to make. They perhaps allow new creativity to flow, even though on many I am using a printable image, or maybe it is just due to the fact that it is a new thing to try...anyway, I love the cookies I have made lately, and hope you do too.

Halo Wars, which I now know is an X-Box game (I am SO old!), were for a 10 year old's birthday party. He was in charge of choosing 3 images to send to me, choosing the font of his party tag, as well as choosing the background colour to the tag and the ribbon colour. I think Chris did a fantastic job as the end result was cool, masculine, and original. He told me, via FB, that the cookies looked good and tasted good too, so I am happy that it was a success!



The Dr.Seuss cookies were for our friends Claire & Georgia. Their last day of school is tomorrow and they wanted to bring something special to the party. I baked, flooded, imaged and bordered 3/4 of the cookies and then left a bunch for them to do when they came over. I wish I had photographed these little (well, not little, they are 10!) girls icing the cookies. They took their job very seriously and did a fantastic job. I sure hope their class enjoys the work they put into these :-)


The little animal cookies were for our Music Together teacher, Anna. This woman is incredible, totally born to bring music into children's lives. I feel so lucky that we came across her music program and that she has been in our life for almost 2 years. Her son's teacher was leaving the school to go back and do her Masters. They had a party for her on the last day of school to celebrate how wonderful she is and what a great year they had. I made a cake for this occasion and had heard that the class had a wonderful excursion to Maplewood Farm, so I thought I would make some little cookies to tag along. I didn't get a chance to bag these up with ribbon, but at music class yesterday, Anna told me that she went to the dollar store and got some baggies and wrapped them all up for each kid. What a hoot!

Zoe turns two

I run a home daycare as well as the iBakery. Since January, I have had two little girls join us Monday - Friday, two wonderful, friendly, happy little girls. Sadly, one of them (Zoe) got into UBC daycare starting June 1. Her parents both work up at UBC, and they had been on the wait list for almost two years, so it made sense that they took the spot. I was so sad they day they told me, as our little 'gang' really got along well and we all had a lot of fun together. My other little girl is with us for two more weeks, and then she gets to spend the summer with her Mommy & Daddy full time, as her mom is a teacher and has the summer off. My little gang will be down to two.

Zoe turned two on the weekend and her mom asked if I could help out with the party treats. Of course I said yes!! 30 vanilla cupcakes with cookie toppers were ordered, turtles and butterflies to match with Zoe's birthday invitation. I also had her mom email me the exact turtle and butterfly image so that I could make a few toppers to tie it all together.

I tried a new flooding technique with these cookies, and I think the outcome was fantastic. The flooding was not as 'clean' on the back of the cookie as I would have liked, but it was the first attempt so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself ;-) This new technique gave the base of the cookie a smooth look, and then I did the pattern of the animal on top of this. Looked great and tasted really great (2 layers of icing...how can that be bad!?!)

We were invited to Zoe's Birthday party as well. It was so nice to see her (our little "Zub Zub" as Zack & Maggie would say) and to enjoy the beautiful sunshine in their backyard (a rarity in Vancouver). The party was from 10:30-noon and Zoe's mom made the most delicious french toast with fruit as one of the dishes to enjoy...I have to get this recipe. The party ended with the Birthday song and cupcakes, and the promise of at least one summer picnic together. Happy Birthday, Zoe!

Nighttime PJ Adventure

Night time PJ Adventures started this week. It is light out longer and Zack & Maggie are really excited about feeding the ducks and bunnies. Since I can’t make it down to Jericho during the day with 4 kids, and Mike is not around at that time to enjoy it as well, we decided we would head out after bath. They each had a small bag of carrots and weren’t too nervous to go right up to the bunnies to feed them. There was one crazy bunny who hopped right up to Maggie and startled her, but other than that it was a very positive experience. ((This crazy bunny had a bulging eye and was WAY too friendly, it kinda freaked me out too)) We traveled all the way around the raspberry bushes at Jericho to feed the bunnies, quite a hike for little legs. We weren’t the only ones with this idea, but definitely the cutest ;-) We were lucky enough to see ducklings, baby bunnies AND a beaver! There is always evidence of a beaver at Jericho, but we've never seen him before. It was so quiet out that we could hear him munching his food. The 'cool' factor of the beaver didn't matter to Maggie, she had grand plans for feeding those bunnies and got bored quite quickly by the beaver.
Cheers to many more nighttime PJ adventures this summer!

Portabello West Show - May 2010

I have gone to Portabello West (PW) twice - once with my friend Jessica, and once on my own. It is a great market, full of local vendors who are fantastically creative. The type of items at this fair range from jewelery to makeup to clothing and everything is beautiful. I wondered a couple of weeks ago how to get more business for the iBakery, as I love updating my blog and my facebook, but I am just not getting a lot of traffic this way and relying solely on word of mouth via the parties I have been doing is not enough. I emailed the coordinator of PW and attached a few photos of my work, outlining that it can be considered 'edible art.' I chose this angle since the market doesn't really have food vendors so I thought that might be purposeful. I wanted them to know my work was not 'just' baking, that it was more than that. I heard back withing 1/2 hour with an acceptance to the show. I was SO EXCITED! Then I was nervous as I wasn't sure I could pull off something this big. I immediately made a sketch of what I would want my table to look like, emailed Mike, and then figured out where in our schedule would allow a trip to Costco (yuck, I know) as this is the cheapest place for icing sugar and butter...which I used a TON of for the show. The table rental for the show was just over $100. I figured that this was an ok cost as there is a lot of traffic through the show and thus, hopefully, a lot of new business. In preparation, other than Costco, I punched out paper, cut out circles, got change from the bank, bought a tablecloth and fancy dish, bought flowers, and baked my little heart out. Our friends Michael, Jemaica and their daughter Ryleh were in town this past weekend and thank goodness Jemaica loves to bake! The boys took all 3kids out to the park (in the drizzling rain!) so that we could have some concentrated time and we baked, and iced, 200 cupcakes - all before 6pm at night! Halfway through our Agricola game last night I iced the "I am a bunny" cake and then just packed everything up. My good friend Jessica came over at 10am this morning to help me transport all the goods to the show, and then she stayed with me the entire day - what a trooper!! We had to arrive on site by 10:30am, had until 11:30am to set up our table, show was from 12-6pm and you weren't allowed to pack up early, and it didn't take long to pack up our table and head home.





We sold the cupcakes, had cookies wrapped in cellophane bags with ribbon on display, showed pictures of past treats in a beautiful photo album (thanks, Mom!), and had a give-away for a free custom cake. We had a lot of interest at our table.




People loved signing up for the opportunity to win a free cake, enjoyed looking at the photos, loved my little business cards for their unique shape and size, and in general were quite happy about what we were doing. At the end of the day, I had a lot of leftover cupcakes. At 5pm I walked around to the vendors in our section and offered them a free cupcake. I thought everyone needed a little boost to get to the end of the show and I had a lot of cupcakes leftover. This was a great way to chat with some of the vendors who were all quite supportive and friendly.

I ended up with enough profit to cover the cost of the table, and thus only incurred costs of what I brought, and I am super happy about the entire event. I learned a few things to make it better for next time – I think people thought our business name was ‘edible art,’ so I will change that and because we didn’t have a sign in front of the cupcakes showing their cost, people thought they were just display and thus we didn’t sell as many as we might have. Finally, I think some people thought the free custom cake they were entering the draw for was the “I am a bunny” display cake we had on the table. Easy fixes for next time. I sent Jess home with about 100 cupcakes to try and sell at her work tomorrow, so perhaps we will see a bit more money from the event. PW occurs on the last Sunday of every month so I will be back for June for sure. I think I'll change my theme colour to pink just to make it a bit different for everyone. Today was so much fun! I feel so lucky to have friends and family who helped me prepare, both mentally and physically, for the event and I am excited to be a part of a new creative community who understands the work required when doing a business like this on the side.

Thomas the Train

Surprisingly, this famous little train is tough to freehand on a cake. My friend Grace's son Ryan wanted a Thomas cake for his second birthday. We have known Ryan since he was brand new, and I was so happy to make his cake. I prepped my icing colours ahead of time and thought I could 'bang' out this cake. Turns out Thomas is quite symmetrical and thus it took longer than expected to create him, but I was very happy with the end result. I still am a little dissapointed with my writing in icing, but it is getting better. The cake was chocolate with vanilla buttercream, and we were able to have a piece of cake as we were invited to the party. It was hosted at a local gymnastics studio and it was in the 'toddler' zone. Zack & Maggie had a ton of fun bouncing on the little trampoline, walking on the balance beam, throwing foam squares out of the 'hot tub' and swinging from the rings. Grace and her husband Jasper put out a great spread of food to fill the bellies of the active kids, and then cake was enjoyed by all. It is so special to get to watch your friend's kids grow up!

Stella's Tinkerbell Birthday Party

My friend Shannon has a daughter named Stella. She is one week younger than Zack & Maggie and had her birthday party this past Sunday. Shannon asked if I would make the cake and cookie favours and of course, I said yes!! Shannon gave me creative control over the cake, so I did some research online and found a beautiful cake design that I thought would be perfect on a hot pink cake.

I added the tinkerbell image that was on the cookie favours to the cake and a few non-pareils and it was complete. The inside was a white cake with a layer of the pink buttercream inside. I also made cupcakes for the party, chocolate cake with pink buttercream, as we thought it might be easier for people to eat these instead of cake juggled on plates.

Turns out everyone wanted cake at the party and I think took a cupcake or two home for later. Shannon has a beautiful cake stand which displayed the cupcakes perfectly. A cake stand is something I really need to invest in. I think I'll start scouring the antique shops for one as I would like a vintage glass cake stand. Anyway, the cookie favours for the party were inspired by the cookies in the TomKat Studio's "Kate's Fairy Garden Party." This blog has been a great resource for me lately as I modeled some of the treats and party toppers for Z&M's birthday party from this as well. I asked Shannon if I could make these for her, and I kept a few extra to showcase at Portabello West this weekend, where I have a booth this coming Sunday! The party was a ton of fun and was full of wonderful food, face painting, ballon animals, and great people. Thanks, Shannon!