What I have been up to!

Thought I had better post something on my poor neglected blog, so all of my followers know that I am still here :)

I seem to have lost the drive to blog at the moment :( I have been having a break from my cake making which has been nice and relaxing, therefore the lack of cake related posts here on my blog.

So what have I been up to? I am enjoying photography at the moment. I participated in an online photography workshop a little while ago, with the very talented Sheye Rosemeyer - Eye Candy Workshops. I formed many great friendships through this workshop and this has continued, supporting each other with our photography.

{ Image taken by me! }

 During June we took part in a 30 day photography challenge, a different topic for each day. I enjoyed this so much, as it forced me to pick up the camera every day and to do things I wouldn't normally do! The above photo of some of my beautiful cake stands was day 8 - bad habit!!

Here are a few of my favourite photo's from the challenge.

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 4 - Something Green.

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 7 -Fruit

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 11 - Something Blue.

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 20 - Bokeh.

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 23 - Sunflare.

{ Image taken by me! }

Day 25 - Something Pink.

I am participating in a challenge for July, with a new set of topics. Another month of fun photo taking!! I have another online photography workshop booked for the end of the month too. So my photography journey is continuing....

My niece Maggie is turning 5 at the weekend, so I am in party planning mode for the next few days. She is having a "Pink Princess" themed party, which involves crowns and a castle cake. Please come back next week to see what I create for her special day.

Enjoy the weekend :)

What a week!

Wow, what a week I have had. 6 cake orders, photography work, running a household and life in general. Today is my first chance to sit and catch up on reading my favourite blogs and post some photo's of my cakes.

As there are lots of photo's I will keep the words to a minimum today!

The first cake was Linda and Craig's wedding cake. The top and bottom tiers were dark chocolate mudcake and the middle tier was a styrofoam dummy cake. The butterflies were acetate.

 

 

Next was a 70th birthday cake. The cake was pumpkin fruitcake and was made by the birthday girl's daughter, I decorated it to look like a giant slice of cake.

 

Dark chocolate mudcakes were the most popular choice this week. Mallory was turning 23 and had a simple cake to celebrate.

The local family history society were celebrating their 25th anniversary, so a special silver and white exploding present cake it was.

A chocolate overload cake was requested for Luke who was turning 30. Dark chocolate mudcake with ferrero rocher ganache filling, dark chocolate ganache coating, kit kat border and malteser and rocher topping!

 

The last cake was an unusual request. A skull cake! It relates to a text that Aimee is studying at school and was for an after school study session. It was cherry ripe mudcake. 

 

So I am all caked out now! About 6kg of chocolate and 5kg of fondant later. This week I have no cakes to do, which will see the ironing finally get done and the housework completed :)


Lastly, I will share a couple of photo's from my week 3 task for my photography workshop. The shoot had to revolve around 4 words that were given to me by the course coordinator. My words were sentimental, retro, giving and string. I used my baby girl, Claire as my model, and being 17 months old, proved challenging. The end results were very pleasing.

Sentimental - Claire is wearing the pearls I wore on our wedding day.
Retro - the dress she has on is a little retro.

Giving - the gift.
String - the twine tied around the gift.

I hope you are still reading after that very long post, thankyou.


Enjoy your week.

Photography Workshop - Week Two - Milk & Cookies!

It is hard to believe that week two of my photography workshop (read about week one here ) has finished and we are part way through week three! Life is super busy at the moment so getting time with my camera has been limited.

Yesterday I decided to take time out and practice using my camera indoors. This is proving to be the most difficult place to take photo's. They all seem to come out dark or blurry. My children are getting a little tired of posing for me, so the next best thing was some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. I took about 50 photo's!! I don't have Photoshop yet, so used Picnik to play around with the best image. This is the end result.

 
I am rather pleased with this image, which I am sure could be improved with better editing, maybe a darker background. Week four will provide more information on this.

This week is a busy one with five cakes to do over three days, so be sure to come back in a few days to see what I create.

Enjoy your week.

Photography Workshop - Week One

This week saw the start of my online photography workshop. My lovely friend Leanne recommended Eye Candy Actions to me after she completed their Explore workshop last year. I have had my camera for a couple of months now and only ever shoot in auto mode. This week I have moved that dial to AV mode and the results have been fabulous.

Here are a couple of photo's I have captured this week.

{ A lone rosebud in my garden - my first photo taken in AV mode }

{ 3 cupcakes from a batch I baked early yesterday morning }

 { My big boy and a single cupcake }

The workshop has been wonderful so far and I am eager to learn more about my camera. Hopefully my photo's will improve and I will have many more to share with you.

On another note, my gorgeous custom made camera strap arrived from the US yesterday. Ruthanne from Eclectic Wotnot was lovely to work with. I selected the fabric and she worked her magic. It looks very stylish and coordinates with my camera bag nicely.

My weekend will be all about rabbit's! My niece is turning 7 and she has requested a rabbit cake along with rabbit cookies and cake pops, so I will be busy bringing that to life, please come back tomorrow to see the results.


Have a wonderful weekend :)