Yay!

Today I have a little announcement to make that I've been holding off on for a while until everything was a little more sure...

I have a JOB!

In a society where your worth is measured by material wealth, it has been SO hard for me to be jobless. When we first got married, I thought I'd surely get a job quickly at Fleet & Family or find some job that would give me a chance in the Psychological field and be on my way to a Master's degree sometime. When I heard nothing back from my numerous attempts for months, I felt really discouraged. I became even more discouraged when I took a job at Walmart and was completely miserable for about four months as I took two buses to work the hectic-crazy holiday season. After that I was limited by what I could walk to or work around getting to because we have only one car. 

I have struggled with feeling worthless, pointless, and completely stuck without a job and nothing to look forward to doing. I'm lucky to have such a great husband to support me and help me to not feel like a loser. 

But yeah, back to the JOB! I'm going to be a part-time bakery clerk at a major grocery store chain here. I'm really excited because I will be doing cake decorating and other baking- really psyched!

I haven't been doing my internship this past week because, and here's another great thing about this week, Russ came home from a two-month underway! So yeah, we've been spending a lot of time together and he's been adjusting to home and getting caught up on all the things he missed in two months. 

But, here's the couple of cakes that I did last week that I didn't get a chance to share yet:

Cake Show And Tell

It's time for another cake roundup! I've been really busy at my internship, making cakes and learning techniques and taking pictures of my work. It's been great to get to have one-on-one attention with someone teaching me unlike my cake class of early last year in which I was just one of twenty-five or so students. 

This week was my first venture into airbrushing camouflage. I thought it would turn out rather weird but I think it actually looks pretty good... minus the kid's name. Not sure what that's about and yes, it's spelled correctly. 

I made the next three cakes as extras rather than orders for the refrigerated case. I left the tops rather sparse to make room for last minute writing as requested by the customers. 

And this week was groundbreaking! I finally managed to make a good looking rose after my decorator taught me using a skewer rather than a flower nail. 

I'd been trying forever to master making a rose on a flower nail like I'd seen so many people do before. I don't know, it just wasn't clicking. I could never get it to sit up right or angle my bag the right way. 

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But with the skewer, it just clicked. I got it in like one try and haven't looked back since. It's been nice to finally make a good looking rose!

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Ta da! I'm so proud! :)

This has been the most fun cake I've done! It was just playful and interesting and I love it.  Though I really wanted to make the background black like the actual game and the inspiration picture the client sent but we were worried about the guest's teeth turning black! 

So this week is going to be pretty exciting and busy and I'll have more details later this week! 

Cake Catwalk

I'm now about five days into my internship and I've gotten to practice quite a bit. I've constructed cakes, filled some with filling, iced them (buttercream, whipped, and cream cheese), and airbrushed and decorated them. It's challenging and it tries your patience. 

Finding the right amount of pressure for each different icing can be really frustrating and I end up taking forever just to frost the cake to my liking. Then I feel stuck on what to put on the cakes once they're iced because I don't know what to do and I don't want it to look stupid. I know that my cake decorator has got to be frustrated with my lack of faith in myself when it comes to deciding what to decorate the cakes with but I just don't really know what to do yet. 

And the writing still kinda freaks me out because I don't want it to be off-center and ugly. 

So here they are! 

First coming down the runway is a goofy-trendy cupcake cake who's two-tone whipped frosting will remove once you take away the cupcake! She's covered in Spring flowers and leaves and she's half chocolate/half vanilla!

Our next cake is a part of The Tim Series, as I'd like to call it (during the course of the week there was: Happy Birthday Tim! Good Luck Tim! and now Farewell Tim!). He's covered in navy and blue masculine border dots with a two-tone writing for extra definition! The smiley face waves happily as if both wishing Tim good luck and being happy that he's finally gone so someone can creep in on his wonderful corner office!

Eva won't forget her 10th birthday and her One Direction cake with the off-center 1D logo and airbrushed purple whipped frosting. This cake and the rest of your co-worker's kid's birthday party you don't even care about is coming to a Facebook birthday photo album near you!

And next there's the gender neutral Elle and Wally cake! Who could forget these two and their coordinating birthdays? They may even sport their matching couple's outfits to match the cake! They special requested the nuts along the border because these two are so nutty and thought their cake should reflect it! 

Here comes Mary and her pink-on-the-bottom border and white shelled border on top! She's also sporting purple, pink, and yellow Spring flowers with two-toned yellow and pink icing writing! Mary's also got sprouting and fun flowers creeping up around her cake sides, so fun and flirty!

Then there's Jenny who's not shy about telling the world that she's twenty-nine. No age shame here, folks! She's frosted with whipped icing with fun, grooved sides. And look at those lovely cherries all over! Work it, girl!

*The stories are fictional and are for entertainment purposes only. I'd be mortified if the owners of these cakes were to contact me and complain about how they do not wear matching outfits (I'm looking at you, Elle and Wally) and everyone does, in fact, care about their child's One Direction birthday party. 

Internship Update

My internship is only two days old and I'm already learning a lot. I took a cake decorating class last year which was really fun but now it's like I'm taking a free cake decorating class with even more one-on-one teaching time.

My first day I didn't do too much except be shown around, watch the decorator in action and have her help me practice some writing. Their buttercream was so stiff that I left with my hand nearly cramped and my forearm hurting. It was that day that I thought to myself, "Okay, this is not something I want to do for a career- I want to bake." I don't want to injure myself or live with a painful condition just to decorate cakes but I do want the knowledge for my future business. 

The first day was rather remarkable because I got to learn how completely offensive the owner of the bakery really is. I was not left with a very good impression but I'm deciding to press on. 

The second day was much better as we got to decorate way more cakes than the first day because it was Saturday. I got to airbrush, pipe borders, and frost cakes carefully with buttercream and whipped cream. I'm learning a lot and doing rather well. I was told that I might get some part-time work in June if I keep progressing at the rate I am which is rather exciting. 

Here's a picture of a cake in which I did everything; the icing, airbrushing, and borders; but the writing (the spacing really freaks me out and I didn't want to screw it up). 

And I have no idea what the heck the writing was supposed to mean...