Paxton's Baby Shower cake (2009)

This is one the cakes I made when I first started cake decorating, as well as my first babyshower cake. I made this for my sister, Carrie, when she was pregnant with her first baby, Paxton.

This was also my first 3D character cake. I mixed a pound cake mix with a regular cake mix to make a heavier cake so it wouldn't fall apart.

I covered plastic blocks with fondant to make the divider. I had some trouble with the buttercream border falling off in places. Now a little more experienced with cake decorating, I realize that I should have made the cake boards a little larger to prevent this. At least I was able to "doctor" it up before the party started.

I also added some quilting and fondant buttons for a nice "blankie" effect. Overall I think it turned out well considering my limited experience with fondant at the time. My sister loved it an that's all that mattered.

Deacon's Army Man Birthday Cake (2010)

Admittedly, this is not one of my better cakes. This was one of those "my brain is dead, I have no good ideas, and I'm broke so what can I make cheap?" cakes.

My youngest son Deacon wanted an army cake for his 8th birthday. He like little army men and guns so we took a trip to the dollar store--one of the "everything's a dollar" cheapy stores and found some army-ish stuff to decorate a cake with.

Surprisingly, the things we found weren't too bad. And the best thing about them is that they were cheap! I think I spent about $3 on little decorations.

Although the colors aren't really attractive per se, I wanted some earthy colors to complete the look. I just happened to have some left over buttercream from another project and was able to repurpose the left overs by adding some food color.

Overall, the cake was easy, he was happy, and I was thrilled to be done with cakes for a week or two.