I got a Goat for my Birthday!

Okay - seriously. One of the most awesomest gifts EVER! I seriously was so excited for like 3 hours, around 4 pm, I felt like I needed a serious nap!

So yesterday at our Holiday Team Potluck, my awesome team & bible study & a couple other friends at work... surprised me with a cake for my birthday and a gift! It was the sweetest thing ever!!! Total surprise since they had already taken me out the day before!

But then when they said.. "for your birthday, we got you a goat!" I was like... WHAT?! And then they handed me the certificate that said that I now had a goat...

"a dairy goat for children in countries like Haiti and Kenya. A goat nourishes a family with protein-rich milk, cheese, and yogurt, and can offer a much-needed income boost by providing offspring and extra dairy products for sale at the market. It even provides fertilizer that can dramatically increase crop yields!"

FREAKING AWESOME!!!! I could not be happier with any other gift! It was seriously!! Sooooo awesome! And I loved that they had come together to do this!! And not just that.. they had more money to purchase a couple other gifts, that I get to choose from (such as clean water, education or health)... Seriously... I could not explain how thrilled I was for this goat... Am I odd? hahahah :)

You want one? Or a duck, a pair of chickens, or even better ... a COW?! www.worldvision.org

Land of the Lost Cake

Soooo... :) Land of the Lost.. yeah... I had definitely never heard of that before this cake. hahah :) So Ray requested this cake for his friend's birthday and it was definitely a chance for me to do the whole volcano thing... which I've been itching to do.. Which, I have to say, I was bummed I didn't have the time to make actually move, bubble or have smoke come out.. but next time!



Anyways! So here is the cake! We've got the jewel things, whatever they used to travel around, with Jolly Ranchers, there's Grumpy the dinosaur in front of their cave, the Gold & Green Sleestacks, the family and then the Cha-Ka in the corner. haha :) The space in the middle was for where the Happy Birthday message went in but I took this picture, obviously, before I did that... ;)

The cave and volcano and floor are all cake & frosting & covered in fondant.. and all the figures (including Grumpy =P who was a pain to keep together) and rocks and trees are all made out of Gumpaste and the leaves out of Royal icing.. and the lava is red (white) chocolate...

Here is a comparison from the show to how they came out.. hahahahah :)

The Sleestacks:



The family that find themselves in this land after falling down a waterfall:



The Cha-Ka:



Grumpy, the T-Rex:




Definitely an interesting cake... even watched a few episodes... keke :) Very... interesting... hahah :)

Oh! And apparently they're doing a remake w/ Will Ferrell coming out next year! Crazy how things come back!

My mom's Bday Cake & Sophie's Grad Cake

Sooooo - these cakes are kinda from a while ago, I just didn't have time to post... sooo.. here ya go! :)



Here is my mom's cake that I made for her birthday last year... it's just a from scratch carrot cake with cream cheese icing! Ummm... Basketweave and white chocolate lollipop flowers :) Chocolate is so easy to work with! :) So many different molds.. I should probably use them more often :)

This one is Sophie's Graduation cake from this past summer... :) The wine bottle is made all out of rice krispies & fondant & paint & a photo transfer of her puppy, Chloe! haha :) So yah - she graduated in Economics... Accountingish.. haha :) Her graduation date is on the calculator... It was definitely lotsa fun cuz this is the first 3D cake I had to transfer a long distance before putting together! :)



I believe the upper cake was a yellow cake w/ strawberries & whipped cream and the bottom cake was a chocolate cake w/ an attempted kahlua chocolate filling.. hehe :) Oh! And those things sticking out on the side were sparkler candles.. hahaha :)

Taco & Burrito Cupcakes for Scott

Sooo... Scott had requested burrito cupcakes... and I thought it was definitely a different request... so here they are! hahah :) I don't think the burritos turned out as well as the tacos... but oh well!! :) They were a lot o' fun to make.. and Keith got to help out this time... =P haha :)



It's a yellow boxed-mix cake and canned frosting =P (again... I know... Shame on me for not baking from scratch =P I think it's just hard when I don't know where my cupcakes are going to be sitting during the day)

So, the taco shells were made out of yellow chocolate (tastes pretty much like white chocolate), and I just cut them into half circles.. and then Tomatoes - Cherry Dots, Lettuce - Green Apple Airheads, Cheese - Orange Airheads, Meat - Brownies and Olives - Black Licorice and then cake and the frosting sitting underneath the goodness taking up most of the room...



And then the burritos were made out of Tortilla - Marshmallow Fondant, Meat - Brownies, Beans - Brown m&ms (wish I had used the mini ones... =p), Lettuce & Cheese & Tomatoes (same as tacos), and Rice - Grated coconut and cake and frosting pretty much sitting in the bulk of the burrito..

Salsa was strawberries, kiwi, lemon & sugar... smashed all together. hahah :)

I think that was it! One difficult thing was finding Airheads now-a-days... for some reason a lot of stores just want to sell the Airhead sprays or this smash of all of the colors in one candy roll. =P

Anyways! Yay! :) Happy Birthday Scott!

Sushi Cupcakes for Jeff

SOooooo!! I made some cupcakes that look like sushi for Jeff's Birthday... man... stayed up SOoooo late.. *yawn* Anyways... not too bad.. made them in like 5 hours or so... I cheated tho - used mix cakes & pre-made frosting... but man... i had to cut up so much different candies... but definitely fun...


Pretty much vanilla and lemon cupcakes and vanilla frosting... then black/green fondant for seaweed... and coconut or white sprinkles for "rice"..



As for the toppings..
Jellybeans for the "eggs" (upper right)
a piece of lemon cake for the Tamago (Egg) Roll (lower Right),
A mini marshmallow, a few sour straws, and pieces of gummy worms for the California Roll, (upper middle),
A cut berry gummy for the Tuna Roll (lower middle),
Cut-up orange gummy slices for the Salmon (upper left)
Cut-up peach gummies for Tuna (middle left)
And Food-color-spray-painted marshmallows for the Shrimp (lower left)...



Anyways... that's about it! It was pretty cool... definitely a first.... lots of shaping for each sushi cupcake... Makes me want to get an airbrush though, cuz I loved making those shrimp things... :)

Now that i look at it... my shrimp look like salmon... dagnabit. Oh well! :)

Erhan's Groom's Cake

Here's my first Groom's Cake! Wooooot :) It was for Erhan & Shrin's wedding! It was kind of a rush since I wasn't completely sure I would be making this cake until 2 days before the wedding. haha :) But here it is... It's a triathlon cake since Erhan does tons of them... haha :) We usually see him running either during lunch or after work... in the rain.. in the sun... crazy guy. Anyways... so there's his water bottle for the bike, running shoes and his goggles and speedo for the swim.. haw :)



Just some stacked cakes for the gym bag and then rice krispies for the water bottle, goggles and shoes... hah :) and then fondant all over.. It was a pretty quick cake! Way fun to do... this one was pretty simple since I had to make sure I could finish it in time...



Anyways.. his wedding reception was definitely a first for me! Tons of dancing... non-stop! Pretty awesome and very beautiful :) There was even a lady dancing with a sabre! haha :) Congrats Erhan & Shirin! :)

Counter-Strike Cake

Soooo - here's the cake for my bro's 17th birthday. He plays CS like days at a time... which really isn't that great... but he's pretty good at it. haha :) I enjoy to play sometimes... but I tend to rush instead of strategically play... haha :) But it was easy for me to make the cake since I actually knew what was going on... haha ;)



So, this is the map: Dust, and Bomb Site B, and 4 terrorists, and 4 CTs. The lil guys are all made out of fondant - It took me a few hours to do those guys and then the boxes are just wood squares covered in fondant and then the there's more fondant for the wall and floor and graham cracker crumbs everywhere. :)



I tried to do a "spray" for his happy Birthday sign - but I don't have an air brush so it just looked like a sign ... hahah :) Oh well...



It was cool - after i gave him the cake, and he ooo-ed at it, he took it apart and placed the lil guys in new places and took some new pictures. hahah :)

Anyways - this cake was pretty easy. Much faster than my 3-D cakes.. but still fun :)

Here's a picture of the lil guys before they got smushed through the luggage:


Several pictures above were taken by Eddie "Double-A" Liu. :) Thanks onii! :) And for the use of your kitchen!

Vegas! Anniversary #2!

Hurray for Vegas! We went for our second year anniversary - We got to stay at the Luxor - which was alright. It was just a couple hotels from the Monorail which made it a lil inconvenient - BUT it was better than walking everywhere :) Hurray for Monorail!

Sooo... we went to the Star Trek Bar and did the Backstage Tour which was AWESOME. And we went on both rides. At the bar - I had my fav - Deanna Troy's Chocolate Obsession and 3 Phaser Shots - Tulaberrry Wine (my fav), The Royale and the Borg Queen.

And that's Keith w/ a polished off Mini Borg Sphere and Mini Warp Core Breach.

We saw Blue Man Group - which I loved sosososoosossoososoSOSOOSOSosooososososos much!!! I wanted to take them home with me!! it was AWESOMEEE!!! I didn't want them to stop! Ack! =)

Then we saw Cirque de Soleil's O - which was pretty awesome with really awesome music but Keith was not very impressed by the clowns and kept falling asleep =P

Then we had Champagne Brunches - where I tried to try as many desserts as I could and Keith had as much champagne as much as he could haw ;)
We also went to the wax museum and took pictures with Johnny Depp, Frank Sinatra, Ben Affleck, Patrick Stewart and stuff... they were kinda creepy. haha :)



Other than that - not too much gambling since we didnt want to do too much moneys - we were busy spending it on food and fun. haha :) Plus getting carded a lot sucked. =P haha :) And found that Circus Circus has gotten a bit run-down since I was last there (when I was like 10).

Keith's Bday Cake

Sooooo - this one took me a while! It had so many lil pieces I had to like create! =P But it was really fun! Compared to the dragon cake - this one was WAY more intricate - like I actually had to draw this one out before I started making it because the web has all these pictures of r2d2 - but like almost all at the same angle. From the front! haha ;) Plus this one had different colors - where the dragon cake was just green.

But yah =) Way fun! I used silver dust (edible) for his head and fondant all over. He's pineapple & yellow cake on the inside with buttercream. :) He turned out taller than I expected... But yah - I had to rush towards the end since Keith was almost home. haha ;) So please don't look at the lumpy arms and squiggly royal icing lines. =P

(r2 from the back) So yah - r2 was Mmm... 5 layers of cake - 6'' rounds and the top of his head I used a bowl to form his head using some homemade rice krispies :) Good thing I had the right sized bowl! :)





Anyways - Keith liked it! So I'm happy. :) Happy Birthday!! =)