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Mr. WhiMSy love brought home this All American Chocolate Cake from Costco.

It weighs 7 pounds.

It is the most delicious chocolate cake I have ever eaten.

It's for my sister's birthday party this evening.

She's 40. I remember being a kid

& thinking that 40 was soooooo old. Now that I'm not too far from that age myself, I have reassessed my thoughts on that matter.

Happy Birthday Stacie!

(She reads my blog, so you can leave her a birthday message too!)

Tiny Sponge Cake Tutorial

This is about the cutest thing I've seen in a long time. I learned how to make them from one of my favorite crafty shows, Creative Juice. The girls & I had a lovely time "baking" up some tiny faux treats--perfect for their Barbies!

Here are the supplies you'll need:
2 sponges in different colors: a cake color & a filling color
marker
scissors
acrylic paint in "frosting" colors
paintbrush
glue
assorted ribbons, trims, beads, sequins & jewels for decorating

The directions on the website said to use "flat" sponges. Mine were a little thick. So you can see in the picture how I sliced them right down the middle with a sharp serrated knife. (The top two on the stack were sliced.)

Trace a circle onto the sponge you'll use for the "filling". Trace two circles onto the sponge you'll use for the "cake". For the white frosted cake, I traced the bottom of a glue bottle. For the blue frosted cake, I traced the bottom of a small paint bottle.

I had some black marker still left on the sponge, so I cut those extra bits off.

Spread glue in between each layer...

...& softly squeeze them all together. You'll have to wait for the glue to dry--maybe a couple hours-- before you complete the next steps.

Oh Barbie! So impatient. Although, using the hairdryer to speed things up ain't such a bad idea...

...especially when you have these sweet crafty kidlets waiting t00!

When your "sponge" cake is dry, you'll want to cut a small wedge out of it. If you cut out a nice enough slice, you can save it, paint it & decorate it too. My slices of cake didn't come out so pretty, so we tossed them into the crafty scrap pile.

At this point you can take your scissors & fix any edges that are bumpy or uneven.

Now choose your frosting color & paint the sides, top & bottom--but DON'T paint the inside of the wedge! While you're waiting for the paint to dry you can make the wee pies from yesterday's tutorial. (And maybe you can ask Barbie to pull out her hair dryer again.)

Use your ribbons, beads, baubles & doo-dads to decorate your cake! And that's it! I was thinking these would make perfect Christmas stocking stuffers for my girls but I was too eager & had to show them how to make 'em! The sponge cake & bottlecap pies are shown with the teeny tiny cupcakes from WhiMSy love.

Bon appetit!

Party at the O.K. Corral!!

My oldest daughter is about to turn 6. I'm in the midst of planning her party. I stumbled across an older camera I had packed away (while cleaning my art studio this weekend), & it had some pictures on it of when she turned 4! (YIKES! That totally gives you a hint about how well my photos are organized.)

She had a cowgirl/horse party & it was one of the most fun parties I've ever planned for my girls! Being in September, I have the option of having her party outdoors. So, we invited guests to a park by the river & it was perfect! The wee western guests were greeted with their very own stick horses (the party girl got one that made horsey noises!), cowgirl hats (purchased at dollar stores & thrift stores), & bandannas (made from fabric I purchased at Walmart).

The table was set up with different colored checkered tablecloths. I purchased some red cowgirl boots at the thrift store & filled them with red & white carnations. Put the flowers in a heavy glass or vase first, & then place the glass/vase inside the boots. There was also a thermos full of hot chocolate, a crock pot full of little hotdogs & other yummy foods & drinks!

We had extra cowboy hats for guests to wear & bales of hay set around (blankets laid on top) for guests to rest their bums. Even great-grandma got into the action!! (That's my youngest with her cockeyed cowgirl hat!)

For games, we had a horse pinata. (I bought it. This party took a lot of planning so I did buy a lot of stuff instead of making them. I even bought the invitations, which makes me cringe. HAHA!)

My favorite part of the party were the next two games. First, I took a bale of hay & spread it around. (The hay was sitting on top of a tarp for easy cleanup after the party.) Inside the hay I hid all sorts of tiny little prizes & treats with a horse theme. On cue, the kids scurried to scoop up the goodies inside their hats.

Then, everyone was given some "silly string" for a Silly String Shoot-out! It was a fun mess & all the adults got involved too! Silly string was purchased at the dollar store, so I was able to get quite a few bottles.

I made the horse cake, following some instructions given at the Family Fun website. I used a chocolate chip frosting for some fun texture. Of course there were horse plates & horse cups. Also, not pictured, were all the plastic utensils wrapped in their own napkins & tied with a piece of natural twine.

The kids went home with all their collected goodies from the hay hunt game, their hats, their stick horses, bandannas AND a real pony horse shoe with their name engraved on it. The engraving was simply done with metal letters that were hammered onto each horseshoe. (Unfortunately I don't have pics of the personalized shoes.)

Because there were just a few children invited, I was able to do a lot more for the kids. My favorite part of any party are the favors & prizes, so I go "all out" there.


The birthday cowgirl had a blast! She even got to ride off into the sunset on her very first bike!

Check out this fun website with western slang.

GIANT cookie tutorial

My grandmother loved the giant chocolate chip cookie cake I made for her birthday yesterday. I've never baked such a monstrous cookie before, so I thought you could come along on this journey with me...

I was lucky enough to score some cookie dough on sale. No baking from scratch on the agenda today. I purchased 4 Jumbo packages of Nestle Toll House cookies. (I later found out that three would have been better.)

I looked around for giant mixing bowls, giant spatulas, giant cookie sheets... but I couldn't find any. It seems the regular sized baking supplies work just fine when baking giant cookies. That's a relief!

I pulled out my large round pizza pan which had a slight lip around the edge & placed all the cookie squares side by side.
They were the "Jumbo" kind, so I took a spoon & sorta smooshed them all down a bit so the dough wouldn't be so thick & take forevers to bake.

You'll end up with this.


This is where you need to pause for the "dough stealers" & "spoon lickers" to take their appointed places. I baked the massive cookie in my cute little oven at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Then I watched as the dough creeped to the edge of the pan & started dripping over. Ugh.

SO, I removed the cookie from the oven & cute about 1 1/4" off the entire edge. I just sliced & scooped all the crumbly bits into a bowl. These leftovers will make great toppings for ice cream! The cookie was still quite goopy in the center, so I cooked it at 325 degrees for another 10 minutes.

It came out perfect! And this handy little tool was very useful to slide between the cookie & the pan--to loosen it up a bit & prevent "stickage". I think this tool is used for icing cakes? I don't even know where it came from. My pan is so ugly & very used. How embarrassing.

I surrounded the edge of the pan with small doilies to make it look not-so-ugly.

I found this cool icing at the grocery store. After having bad luck on another baking project with the cheaper squeeze tube, I spent the extra couple bucks to get this pink can of icing. It comes with 4 tips & look how easy the tips just screw onto the top. Simply press your finger on the tip, & icing comes oozing out. The small box of "Writing Icing" was for lettering you'll see later on.

The edges of the cake weren't so nifty looking from where I had to remove excess cookie parts dribbling over the edge. Little pink dollops (I love that word!) of frosting were the perfect remedy.


My wee 5-year old helped me decorate the rest of the cake. We put all the names of the birthday girl on the cake: "Glenys, grandmother (that's what I call her), grandma, mom, G.G." There was no room for "Happy Birthday" after all that.

Grandmother loved her cake & it was yummy served with ice cream. My brother was looking around for the giant glass of milk to dip the giant cookie into. Dork.