A new camera! and Christmas projects...

I got a new camera (a little point-and-shoot) from Mike for Christmas! Add to that a table-top photo studio for my birthday (just 2 weeks earlier), and voila! I can set up and take my own photos now... and get my etsy site going... So here are a few more pictures (with more to follow).

1) The Candy Cane Marshmallow "pops". These are 2 standard marshmallows on a candy cane, dipped in chocolate, then drizzled with red and white candies. Available as singles ($2.50) or in a 2-pack with two packs of hot cocoa mix ($5.00)

2) I made several chocolate/vanilla lollipops. The "christmas tree" and "snowman with lights" are pictured here ($0.50 each). I think the other photos ended up on the other camera. Will upload those photos when I get the memory card reader working... Anyway, each lollipop is individually hand-painted, then wrapped and tied with a bow.

3) Some chocolate/vanilla covered pretzel sticks ($1.00 each). Here are two shots of the "Present" pretzels. These were done in "Christmas" colors, but could be made in any color scheme and would be great for Birthday parties, baby showers, etc. Other designs are also available, and images will be posted (hopefully) in the near future.

4) Peppermint Patty packs ($1.00 each). These are a 4-pack of Peppermint patties, decorated to any theme. In this case, Christmas (obviously). Each hand-assembled and packaged.

The one item I didn't get photos of are my chocolate-covered Oreos. For Christmas, I had 4 designs (snowman's face, santa's face, christmas tree, snowflake). I may make a few more just so I can take some photos. If not, there'll be some chocolate-covered Oreos for Valentine's Day!

Thanks for looking!

Kactus Kapers 2009

Kactus Kapers is the annual 3-day long, member-guest golf tournament that the ladies at Picacho Hills Country club host. In an earlier post I have photos from last year's KK. Below are some from this year.

1st: some shots of the cupcake tower and individual treats I made for Tuesday evening's dinner:
(need to get these off of the camera's memory card... which this laptop won't read... argh... will have to post later)

2nd: This is the "dummy" cake I made for the raffle:

The winner of the raffle was Lynn Z., who happened to be the tournament organizer... needed a cake for the post-tournament thank-you luncheon to all who helped. Her request was a cake for ~20 people - a chocolate cake with mocha buttercream. This is the result: (and btw Lynn, you still have more to your raffle winning to claim!)

The first update of many... Butterflies and weddings!

Here are some of the pictures that I was trying to get off of flickr... until I realized that they were indeed in a folder on my desktop... go figure.

So first up are the chocolates:
Butterflies

30 (thirty) 3-D, freehanded chocolate butterflies. They were made for a caterer (A Catered Affair, Las Cruces, NM) who needed a party favor for a 90 year-old lady's birthday party. Each butterfly and pedestal were individual packaged in a plastic cup and wrapped and tied.

Below is an image of the chocolate-covered (vanilla, actually) Oreo that I made and packaged as wedding favors for Kim & Mike O. With their wedding colors being pale yellow and pale blue, the hearts were shaded accordingly.

And next: their wedding cake! White & chocolate sour cream cake with Raspberry filling and Lemon Buttercream.

Lastly, since the blog title reads "Butterflies and weddings"... it would only be appropriate to include the following pictures. This cake was made for a ladies' member-guest tournament at Picacho Hills Country Club in June, with the theme... "Wedding Bells". Same cake as the wedding cake above (actually, the above wedding was in Aug., so they actually had the same cake as the one below, but anyway...) - white and chocolate sour cream cake with raspberry filling and lemon buttercream. The butterflies and tees around the bottom layer were made of candy as well.

Catching up...

Or, trying to, at least... So pictures are on the memory card, still in the camera. I will upload those later. I'm still trying to figure out how to link images from flickr to this blog, and am not getting anywhere. I tried to link to the chocolate butterflies I made, but after 5 attempts, I am taking a break.

So in the meantime, here is what's been going on:
1) Made a "wedding cake" for the Ladies Golf Association (LGA) at Picacho for the member-guest tournament back in June... That was followed by over 300 cupcakes (standard and minis) in 3 flavors (Mocha, Pumpkin and Vanilla filled with either raspberry or apricot filling) for this year's Kactus Kapers (remember last year's cake with the prickly pear cactus on it?)
2) Made a batch of chocolate-covered Oreo cookies to hand out as Halloween treats to kids of friends... and only one family came by the house tonight... so took the rest to the Bitton's annual Halloween open house. These oreos were made in the Wilton skull/crossbones cookie mold that just came out this fall. Packaged each individually, and tied them closed with a ribbon, then attached a handmade tag that read "Happy halloween" on the front, and " the Rupps" on the back.
3) Working on trying to put together some Etsy listings and trying my hand at that. The official site will be http://www.crucescreations.etsy.com, but I have not listed anything yet. I want to make sure everything is "just right" before launching. I will update here when it is ready to go. Hopefully, in time to sell some christmas cards and tags and such. I also think this might be the right venue to sell my molded candies and chocolate covered oreos... for now...
4) I think I have decided to "officially" spend some quality time on this business venture as of January. There's just too much to get done before then, but as of January, I would like to devote at least 1 Saturday and 1 Wednesday per month (if not more) at the Farmers & Crafts Market here in town, as well as keeping up with this blog on a weekly (if not week-daily ) basis. I see all these other awesome blogged sites with daily updates and challenges and such, and know what can be accomplished!

I know there are other things I want to post about here, but can't think of them at this point. So I will leave this post as it is, and will work on uploading photos at a future time... maybe Monday. :-) Hope you had a great Halloween, and as it is after midnight here... "Happy November"!

It has been a while since my last post, so here I am trying to catch up on pictures... I will post just a few for now, and then try to catch up some more later tonight or this week.

I think I will focus on my cards for today. I made a few (and found a few that I'd made previously) to enter into Paper Craft Magazine's Gallery Idol contest (there were over a 1000 entries and they picked 20 to compete... none of mine were chosen this year...)

umm... okay, this is going to take more time than I have right now, as I am trying to figure out how to take my images from Flickr and upload them to the blog - can anyone help? In the meantime, you can see ALL of my most recent photos (albeit all via my camera phone... still...) on my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23659598@N07/

I've tried to group pictures by "cards", "candies", "cakes", etc. Hope you enjoy the pics - and I'll work on getting them on here!

Thanks for Looking!

A cake-filled weekend

This past weekend kept me busy with several cakes... (again, apologies for poor picture quality)

First was Friday: A friend from church took and passed her citizenship test last fall and the swearing in ceremony was Friday morning. Her family followed that with an "American Desserts" party that night. This was my contribution:
(idea from the "Hello, Cupcake" book)
As a "gift", I also made her the following candies:

Then on Saturday, a friend from theater had a birthday party thrown for her by her husband and son. She requested Cherry Chip cake - so I baked it, made some buttercream frosting tinted pink by Maraschino cherry juice (which also added a little more cherry flavor), and decorated as you see here:

And finally, today (Sunday) was Maryn's birthday. Last year's cake was one of my first blog entries (the butterfly cake). She asked again to be surprised, but wanted chocolate, so this was her cake:

This was a double-chocolate cake with chocolate and cherry chips baked in. Upon placing the cake on the cake board, I then covered the top in chocolate chips and allowed them to melt. That was spread across the top and sides of the cake and allowed to cool and set to give the cake a crunchy "crust" (notice the dark brown band around the star). I was able to use up the rest of the frosting from Janet's cake, and topped off the decoration with some maraschino cherries.

A few recent cards

While these are by no means "all" the cards (not even close...), here are a few most recent cards. Photo quality is poor because they're taken from my cell phone, since our "good" camera got stolen over the holidays on our way home from LA... It will hopefully be replaced soon...

1) Birthday card in lime green and purple

2) Valentine card with a spinner fuzzy (possible video link to be uploaded. We will see.)

3) A generic "hello"-type card. The quote states "kind thoughts". The butterfly was stamped and cut-out, then raised off the page using dimensional foam.

Valentine's and Baptism candies

These were made for friends and Mike's co-workers for Valentine's Day. They are chocolate (or vanilla)-covered Oreos with heart designs. Each individually packaged, with hand-made bag toppers.

For the weekend following Valentine's Day, a friend was helping her friend with plans for a baptism for the friend's daughter (did that make sense?). She asked if I could make some lollipops to use as centerpieces. These are what I made:

50 crosses (25 of each) and 50 baby carriages with hearts on the wheels and a cross on the bassinet

This is what 50 baby carriage lollipops look like...

New item: Purse notes

These "purse notes" are 3"x5" note pads (plain white, unlined) that have been decoratively covered and include a monogrammed closure. The first picture below shows 4 with the logo "Charity Never Faileth" for a small Relief Society order and 1 that was for a young girl's birthday (M).

This picture (left, "J") shows a close-up of the logo. This logo/decorative touch doubles as the closure. There is a magnet behind the flower-shaped piece that helps to keep the purse note closed when not in use.

... and a close-up of a single purse note:

Key Lime "Pie" cupcakes!!!

These are officially my new "favorite" cupcakes. The cake was a little dense and I am working on fine-tuning it... but each cupcake, once baked, is filled with a home-made key lime "custard" then topped with a meringue and baked to finish the meringue.

The first batch were regular sized cupcakes as a trial run. This was later followed by a batch of mini cupcakes in both "Key Lime Pie" and "Lemon Meringue Pie" that were then taken to a Super Bowl party

Another birthday cake or three...

These were images taken on my former phone, and without the ability to transfer it to a memory card until recently, they were stuck there. Anyhow, all three cakes were from at least a year ago, if not more.

This was for a group of friends celebrating their birthdays in the same month.
This cake was a 2-layer cake with more of the fruits you see on top layered in the middle.
Layered and finished with a whipped topping. (October, 2007)

These were for my niece's 1st birthday. (September, 2007)
The round one on the right was her "personal" birthday cake.

Christmas Boutique

A friend of mine from Picacho Hills Country Club (golf) held a Christmas boutique (yes, this is a very much delayed post) back in December. She sells designer handbags and jewelry, and invited me to bring some of my creations to sell. I set out a table with the following Christmas cards:

The 3 above are Christmas-specific. The one below says "Happy Holidays".

You can also see in this picture a small Christmas tree lollipop to the left that was also available for sale.

I also created small "nugget boxes" to hold Hershey's Nugget chocolates in. The ones pictured held 6 per box. I also had some that held 3 chocolates. I received quite a few orders for these after they sold out!

... and then there was this "Thank-You" card... (as well as many others)