We're off to see the Wizard! A Halloween Preview!

First day of Fall was yesterday! YAY! Still hot, but the weather is supposed to be a bit cooler next week! The weather channel's website is showing the high at 82 on Monday!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

With all the Halloween decorations coming out, this year's costume has been constantly on my mind. And I also had a coupon that expired soon, so I wanted to pick out the costume I wanted quickly! At first I was going to be a bumble bee, but I gave into another idea. Something I have wanted to do since I first got my dog, Jack. You see... my Jack is a Cairn Terrier. You don't see too many of them around, but I think he is one of the CUTEST terriers out there!! Toto from the Wizard of Oz was also a Cairn Terrier. And since I LOVE the Wizard of Oz and the musical Wicked SO much I knew that one year I HAD to be Dorothy! I gave in. This is the year!! :)

Here's a sneak peak of my costume!

So I wasn't going to post this picture because I wanted to save it for around Halloween, but I thought it was too funny not to post! Is Kitti looking up my dress?!? Why is Jack licking his lips?!? I love these two furry guys so much!! I am going to find some shoes to spray paint red and glue red glitter to them!

Now what I am about to say my sound pretty corny... but... I am going to have some professional pictures taken of Jack and I while I am dressed as Dorothy Halloween weekend! I know, I know.... but a very talented photographer and friend of mine is offering a deal I couldn't refuse!!

So... instead of just handing my boyfriend the camera for some quick shots, I am going to have some really nice photos made! :)

If you are interested in this Halloween deal, and would like to see some of Jane's work, you can visit her webpage and blog here:

If you decide you schedule a Halloween session with Jane, tell her I referred you! Maybe I can get myself $5 off!! ;)

I had another cake decorating class last night. This week we decorated cupcakes! We learned how to so some different flowers!

Cupcake and flowers are fun, but I rather a real cake! Next week is our last class, and for it we have to design our own cake. I wonder what I am going to do? hmmm! We'll see! After this class, there are two more Wilton classes I am going to take. So you will be seeing cake on my blog for awhile... so be prepared! I find myself DAYDREAMING about making cakes. It's rather ridiculous! :)

I am still working on my friend's blog graphics project, and I still haven't finished painting my dining room yet! UGH! The cake class takes up a lot of my weeknight time because I have to prepare for the class the night before making cake and icing! I promise to get those projects done and posted soon.  I am debating entering a tshirt contest which ends next Thursday. Not sure if I will have time to have the design done by then since I am going out of town this weekend! We'll see! October, November and December should be full of pretty cool projects though! :) And don't forget, there will be a giveaway coming up very soon! Probably in a week!

Have a great weekend, and COME ON COOLER WEATHER!!!!! :)

-Emily

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Project(s) of the Week: An assortment of things... some not finished yet!

Well, this past week I worked on several things... Some I finished... some I didn't. I will start with a little bit about the ones I didn't finished yet.

I am working on some graphics for my friend Andrea's blog, Out of the Frying Pan... Into the Fiber.  She had a vision for what she wanted for it, and I am attempting to bring it to life for her! I am really close to being done so I should post it next week!

I thought that my main project of the week was going to be my crawfish painting that I wanted to finish for my kitchen, but while I was painting at my brother/sister-in-law's new house, I was inspired by their living room. They painted it the perfect green color called Earthy Sage. SO pretty! I decided that I NEEDED this color for my dining room. My dining room was so white and BORING. So Sunday I bought a can of paint and went to work! And just as I thought, it goes perfectly in my dining room and with the flow of my house! BUT... I need a second coat on the walls, and of course I ran out of paint. :( Here's a little sneak peak. I will post the finished room when it is complete!

Will, Jack and Kitti helped a bit too! :)

I went to my second cake decorating class this week! We decorated our first cake! Last week I wrote a blog about testing out cake recipes. WELL! Last Wednesday night, I decided to make another cake from scratch using the 1-2-3-4 recipe and all the tips I have gathered about baking cakes. I baked two beautiful 8 inch cakes, and with the leftover batter, I baked two cupcakes for Will and I to taste test how I did.  Oh my oh my... It was SOOOOOO GOOD! Exactly what I wanted. Light and fluffy, but still firm enough to hold icing. Lovely taste. Delicious! I was dancing around my kitchen with excitement! Okay... so maybe baking cakes from scratch isn't as hard and/or amazing as I am making it sound, but since I had no idea how to make a cake from scratch, this is a great accomplishment to me! :)

I made a batch of icing for class the same night which didn't turn out that great... because I changed the recipe a little...  learned my lesson. ;) So I saved that one and made another the next day before class. In class, we layered out cakes (I put pineapple filling in mine), and we iced them. Then we learned different techniques with the decorating tips. She let us use what we learned in class that night to decorate our cakes. I barely colored my icing when it was time to pack up! So I left class with an blank, white cake. I got home and finished decorating my cake. Afterward, Will and I cut into it.

YUM! It was so good! I am so proud of the taste. The decorating came out good too, but as I told my friend Andrea, it is just so... round! I want to carve! I want to sculpt! I think I have been watching Ace of Cake too much. Gotta start small. Learn the basics. Then I can create cake masterpieces! :)

Okay. So. This may be really nerdy, but I made a cake baking and decorating binder! I took my book from class, tore out the pages, put them into plastic sheet coverings and put them in the binder. I didn't want the pages to get dirty with icing (which has already happened). I will also put recipes I use, tips I learned, etc in the binder. That way I will have all everything I need in one place!

Of course I had to design a quick cover for it too! ;)

Now I have a REALLY easy recipe for you! Have you ever heard Hungry Girl? She has cookbooks, a website and daily emails all devoted to low cal/low fat cooking! She tries to make fatty foods that we crave into something healthy by substituting some of the ingredients. I have all of her cookbooks!


By far, my FAVORITE recipe is this.

Devil's Food Cake mix + 1 can of pumpkin + Bake  = complete YUMMINESS! 

Yup. That's it. That is all there is to it. It makes 12 muffins. You can find the official recipe here. You will be so surprised how moist these are... with a hint of pumpkin... MMMM. Well since fall is right around the corner, I am finally starting to see cans of pumpkin in the store again. Will has been requesting that I make some soon, so while he was gone to Lafayette last weekend, I decided to surprise him with some when we got home. Remember that icing I told you I messed up earlier in the week? I decided I would use it on these muffins... That didn't make them very low cal, but oh well! I got all cute with them and put them in heart shaped muffin tins. It was a nice surprise for when he got home... not to mention DELICIOUS!

So those are my projects last week. Next week I should have some pictures of my new, green dining room and Andrea's graphics for her blog. Depending on how much time I have this weekend after finishing these two projects, I may work on my crawfish painting OR I may compete in a tshirt design contest. We will see!

I have a lot of neat projects coming up that I am really excited about! Here is a little sneak peak! :)

Crawfish Painting
Mural in my niece Maddie's room (maybe)
Baby Shower invite for Katherine's baby shower
Baby Shower surprises :X
Christmas Eve Party Invite
Christmas Party Favors

And a GIVEAWAY! More details coming at the beginning of October!

I am also happy to say I got my camera back! It's an underwater camera, but it also functions as a regular camera. I LOVE IT! I love how I can get it wet, hot or cold and it won't matter... well I say that... but the reason I haven't had it lately is because it got water in it and died. That may have been my fault though. It is still under warranty so I was able to send it back to Canon, and they sent me a brand new one! Yay!

That's it for this week's post. Everyone have a great week! Can't wait to share my upcoming projects with you!

-Emily

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Project of the Week: Tony's Seafood Wall Art

If you know me, you probably know the answer to this question:

What is my favorite place to get boudin?

TONY'S SEAFOOD (http://www.tonyseafood.com/)

I have been going to this seafood market on Plank Rd. in Baton Rouge as long as I can remember. I use to love looking at the live catfish. Whenever there is a party, I insist there should be a tray of their Cajun boudin balls on the table. If I am in the mood for some boiled crawfish, I will stop by for a few pounds of theirs... with boiled corn and potatoes.... and some boudin balls... plus some crawfish boudin...  Oh man, how I LOVE Tony's!!!

Recently, we had a retirement party at work. Since I was helping plan it, naturally I suggested a tray of Tony's Boudin balls! MMM... 100 boudin balls for a party... Okay, now I am getting hungry! :) So we ordered them, and I went to pick them up. They came in a HUGE Tony's Seafood bag that I have never seen before. I LOVED the bag. It had the coolest cartoon pictures on it! Even a couple of a cartoon boudin balls!! I knew I had to keep the bag and create something out of it! But what?

When Will and I moved into our house back in April, I decided I wanted a Cajun/crawfish kitchen. I am slowly collecting items to decorate the kitchen with. So I thought that maybe I could create some sort of framed collage out of the pictures on the Tony's Seafood bag to hang in my kitchen! And that's how the idea for this week's project was born!

(Forgive me... some of these pictures aren't the best of quality. I sent my good camera to Canon to be fixed. Hopefully it will be back soon! I miss it!)

Here are some pictures of the bag. I love the cartoon pictures on the sides!

Crazy Kitti!

First I measured and cut out all the cartoons I liked on the bag and figured out what size frames I needed. I had to get one large one for the Tony's logo and 7 small ones for the smaller cartoons. (Thank you Dollar Tree for saving me lots of money!)  I played around with them on the floor to figure out what arrangement I liked the best.

I took all the glass out of the frames and spray painted them the same color, a speckled, matte, brown color.
 

As the frames were drying, I trimmed my cartoons and made a background for them: a brown paper, like the kind of a paper bag, which I crushed up and re-flattened to give a nice texture. Why the brown paper bag look? Because it reminds me of the bags I get my crawfish in at Tony's! :)

After they were dry, I assembled the frames with the cartoons and brown paper backgrounds.

Then I got to work putting them on the wall in our kitchen!

I like my new wall art and constant reminder of Tony's boudin balls! I may need to go get me some this week! :)

This will hopefully be another piece of art hanging in my Cajun/Crawfish kitchen soon. I started this back in June. While working on it my back started hurting, ( I have NO idea what I did to it) and I had to stop. I was SO busy over the summer that I didn't have time to get started on it again. So, this may be the project of the week sometime this month or next month!

Congratulations to my brother, Jamie (Jamie to me.... James to everyone else), and my sister-in-law, Katherine, on the purchase of their first home! I am SO excited for them! They needed the room to grow, especially since they have a little one on the way!  Sometime next month I should be going over to paint pictures on my niece Maddie's walls! That should be a fun project!

Also keep a look out in the next few weeks for a GIVEAWAY! Thanks right! One lucky person will be receiving there own little piece of art by me! More details are to come!

Please leave comments! I love hearing from you! If you have any project ideas for me, please email them to createsharerepeat@gmail.com.

To keep up with what I am up to between blog postings, follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/csrepeat.

Everyone have a blessed week, and we will see what I come up with next! :)

-Emily

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Discovering the Art of Cake Decorating and Baking

Last Thursday I started Wilton Cake Decorating classes. How did it go? Just ask my boyfriend, Will... for a few hours after I got home (and all weekend actually) I was SO giddy! I am so excited to be learning how to properly decorate cakes! I don't know why... it's sort of addicting! The first class was dedicated mostly to telling us the supplies we need for the next three classes (a LOT of stuff!) and showing us how to properly make icing and ice a cake. I learned so much and took lots of notes. This weekend I bought my cake decorating supplies. There are cake decorating supply kits made specifically for the class,  but I decided to go ALL out....

I got the Wilton Ultimate Decorating Set!!! Why you ask? Because it's AWESOME! But really... I plan to take all 3 Wilton cake decorating classes. This set includes almost everything I need for the classes plus some extras!! In store this cost $200!!! Yeah... I wasn't going to pay that. So on Sunday Michael's had a 50% coupon in the paper so I got it for $100!! WOO!! I plan to go to Michael's the rest of the week with more 50% coupons to get the rest of my supplies! :D

My new kit!! I don't know what most of the stuff is in it!

What's that in the box?

OH, Kitti! :)

This week for class we will be decorating an 8 inch cake. We have to bake our own cakes and make our own icing to bring to class each week. I think I am good with the icing. I have used the Wilton buttercream icing recipe, and it has worked out great for me. The CAKE part is what I am sort of struggling with. I am attempting to find a few good cake recipes from scratch to use for the cakes I decorate. I had tried to make a couple before out of a cookbook that came with our Kitchen Aid and Wilton's recipe... They were AWFUL! Came out SO dense and dry... and WAY too sweet! So what was I doing wrong?

With some advice from a friend and some internet research, I am starting to figure out the art of making a cake from scratch. It's not easy! I decided to do a test run this weekend to see if I could get it to taste better than the last two I made. I used a recipe out of the Joy of Cooking cookbook which is similar to the popular 1-2-3-4 cake recipe.

So what did I learn about baking a cake that I did different this time around? SIFT SIFT SIFT!! You need to SIFT your flour then measure the amount you need. After that you add your baking powder and salt to the flour then SIFT 3-4 more times! And cream your butter and sugar together at least as long as the recipe says. Don't cut it short. Thank goodness I have a Kitchen Aid to do that work for me! :)

Here is a link I found today on Food Network's website which is a good run down of everything I have found out about cake baking: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/cakes-tips-techniques/index.html

So I used my newly learned tips to make this cake. My kitchen was a WRECK afterward. I got my batter in the pans and used another tip I just learned about in my cake decorating class.

Bake Even Cake strips! These come in a variety of sizes. You wet them with water, then wrap and pin them around the outside of your pan. This allows for your cake to have a flat surface on top, not a bulge or dip.  They worked pretty well for me!

My pans wrapped with the Bake Even Cake strips

They came out pretty flat!

So, now the question is, how did it taste?? Compared to the dense, nasty, sweet, gross cakes I made from scratch before, it was a MAJOR improvement. Is it where I want it to be? No. I found that it was a bit dry, and the taste wasn't quite what I wanted. That being said though, I brought it to work and got nice complements on it! Including that they liked that it was a bit dry! I have to admit though I wasn't crazy about it, it still was a pretty good cake. It grew on me. I used store bought chocolate icing for it because I didn't feel like making the icing from scratch. The chocolate went well with it.

So later this week I plan to make a cake from scratch again, but using the 1-2-3-4 cake recipe. I am going to use the tips I have learned before with a few more I have learned since and see what happens! This one will have Wilton's buttercream icing with a pineapple filling. It will be the first cake I decorate in my class! I can't wait! I will post how it comes out afterward!

-Emily

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Project of the Week: LSU Football Cake

Victory for LSU!! Yeah... They barely won against North Carolina this past weekend. Lucky!

Since this weekend was the start of college football, I decided to make a LSU football cake. I have to confess that I had some difficulty with the cake. Originally, I intended to make two football cakes. One for Will's friends for the LSU game on Saturday night and one for my father's birthday which was on Labor Day.  Well, I decided I would make the cake from scratch using the Wilton yellow cake mix recipe. It was GROSS. Not only did it burn, it didn't taste right. This is the second time I attempted to make a cake from scratch that turned out to be nasty. Can anyone give me some insight on making cakes from scratch? Maybe someone has a good recipe I can borrow??

So I decided to not make the cake for the Saturday football game. I remade it on Sunday instead for my father's birthday the next day. This time around I used a recipe out of one of my favorite cake recipe books.

This ladies' recipe books are great. She takes a cake mix and adds her own twist to them to make delicious cakes! I have all 4 of her books! For the football cake I used the classic yellow cake mix recipe, but I added my own twist! A can of crushed pineapple!

By the way... before I continue... I would like to thank Will's parents for giving us a Kitchen Aid last Christmas. It is a really nice, heavy duty one. I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!

I borrowed a football shaped pan from a friend at work to make the work easier on me. Though, if I had to redo it, I would have craved it myself. The cake took a lot longer to bake in the pan than it should have!

Before I put the batter into the pan, I decided I wanted the inside of the cake to be purple and gold tiger striped. I divided the batter in half and dyed the batter with some Wilton icing color.

After it was done baking, I let it cool then set it on a platter and made grass from some shredded coconut and green food coloring.

I used the Wilton buttercream icing recipe and icing colors to make some purple and gold icing for the cake.

Then I started on the fondant work. I bought some new fondant tools to work with! They proved to be a good investment!

I used my new tools (and a x-acto knife) to create the LSU Eye of the Tiger symbol to put on the cake.

I also used fondant to make all the stripes that are on a football.

I was finally able to ice the cake and put on all the fondant pieces!

Final touch was to add a Happy Birthday for my dad!

Today we went to my father's to bbq for his birthday. I surprised him with the cake after we ate! Everyone was happy with the way it came out and the way it tasted too!

Katherine (my sister-in-law/best friend) is working on a project too... In her belly!

Well, now I am done with my first official project for this blog! I was happy with the results. I start cake decorating classes this Thursday. I am excited to start learning even more about cake decorating! I will update later this week on how my first class went!

I also have to start on a new project to post next week! I have a few project ideas, but I am not sure which once I want to do yet! :)

Thanks for reading! I know it was long! Leave contents if you like!

-Emily

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Shrimp Boots Fundraiser

Check out how neat these are!

http://www.neworleanshomeshows.com/homeanddesignshow/buyyourtickets.html

These celebrity designed and autographed "shrimp boats" are being raffled off to raise money for Catholic Charities Oil Spill Relief Fund.

Raffles tickets are $5. If you know me at all, you know which one I bought a raffle ticket for!

I hope I win it!! But hey... I think I got a really neat project idea out of it... I wonder what I would paint on a shrimp boot? hmmmmm.... :)

 -Emily

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Updates!

I have added some new features to my blog that I would like to share with all of you!

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I even started a Twitter account! I figured I could update throughout the week about that projects I am working on!

http://twitter.com/csrepeat   or check out the updates to the right of my blog posts!

Thanks! I am looking forward to sharing all my creative adventures with everyone!! :)

-Emily

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No Excuses!

In April 2010, my boyfriend, Will, and I moved into a beautiful home he bought in Baton Rouge. It is a 3 bedroom, 2 Bath, 1 office house. Will let me have the office area (pictured above) as my little art studio and took one of the extra bedrooms as his "man room." Thank you so much Will for letting me have this great space to work in! Now I have no excuses. I have the room, so now it's time to work in it!

I had one of the best summers of my life the past few months, but my gosh it was BUSY! We were gone every weekend it seemed! Today is September 1st, and to me it marks the beginning of my favorite time of year! Football season, Halloween, cooler temperatures, Thanksgiving, Renaissance Festivals and Christmas! (And to make this Christmas even MORE special, I will be getting a new niece/nephew sometime during December hopefully!) I already have so many projects in my head for the weeks to come. This is the time of year when I get to be the most creative!

Now that my busy summer is over, I decided to do something I have always wanted to do... sign up for cake decorating classes!  So one phone call and $40 later, I am signed up for the Wilton Decorating Basics 1 class. I am super excited! It's four classes total, and starts next week! (Thanks Andrea for telling me about the classes!)

I am counting this blog as my first weekly project. I will be working on my next project this weekend (hopefully) so keep an eye out next week to see what it is!

Until then, as promised, here are some examples of past projects I have worked on within the last few years. (Sorry if some are dark or have glares)

Paintings

 LSU Tiger Eye painting that I have done several times. 

This one in particular was for a United Way fundraiser at work. Oil on canvas.

 

Elvis painting I did for my brother and Katherine for Christmas 2009. Oil on Canvas.

 

My favorite musical ever, Wicked! I didn't want to spend the money on a poster,

so I decided to paint me one instead! Acrylic on canvas.

My friend, Josh, came home one day to find that
his man cave had this painted on the wall! He loves Thor! Acrylic on wall.



Drawing

Pastel drawing of a picture I took of a man singing in the French Quarter.

Pastel Drawing of my dog, Jack.



Pottery

The following projects were done at Pottery Works in Baton Rouge.
You can go there to paint your pottery, or in my case, I like to pick out my pottery and paints, bring it home to finish to I can spend more time on it, then bring it back to have them finish it off.

A platter I painted my mother for Christmas in 2008.
I wish I had a better picture of it. It's a bayou scene.

LSU Tiger ornament I painted for my friend, Monica, in Christmas 2008.



Graphic Design

I have tons of graphic design samples I can show you,
but I will just stick to the ones I have done that aren't work related.

On Left - Front of shirt, left chest. On Right- Back of shirt

A t-shirt I designed for a fundraiser for Ava.

T-shirt design I did for a Kidney Disease walk.

Katherine and my brother's wedding invitation.
(Thank you Katherine for letting me have fun with this, and not have it be a boring invite! ;) )

Katherine's guest book I made her...
and when I mean made.. I made the entire thing. I bond it and everything!

Katherine's bridal shower invitation

Invitation and banner for Will and Adam's surprise Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party.



Cakes

I always loved to baked, but I think what really started getting me
interested in cake decorating was when I started watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network and when Will got me this as a stocking stuffer last christmas!



Yeah... It didn't really fit in the stocking... but that is what he called it! ;)
Since then I have been playing around with cake decorating. I am just beginning, but so far I love it! I can't wait to start my classes!

I made this from the cupcake pan for a bake sale at work.

Cookie monster from the cupcake pan for Will's birthday this year.
He loves chocolate chip cookies so he reminds me of cookie monster! :)

Toledo Torpedo! (The name of a friend's boat) I made this for him on his birthday. It was my first time carving cake and working with fondant!. I actually molded rice crispies for the arm, eye and propeller!

WOMP WOMP WOOOOMMMMMP!

FAILURE! It was supposed to be a pretty strawberry cupcake.
Instead it looked like someone threw up all over my cupcake. I was trying to do it in a hurry, and something went wrong with the icing...I had to post this. It makes me laugh anytime I see it!
It actually tasted really good though! :)



Other Projects

Before and After

A bulletin board I made for my niece, Maddie, this year for her birthday.
It's for her to hang her artwork on! She's a little artist too!

Cookie bouquet I made for Will for Valentine's Day 2009. I am proud of this one because I had mono at the time, and it was so hard to have the strength to make it... but I did it anyways!

That's all the pictures I have for now of my past projects. I just wanted to give everyone an example of the kind of projects I like to do! If you have any ideas for a project you would like me to try, email it to createsharerepeat@gmail.com.

Keep an eye out for my newest project which will be posted next week! 

-Emily

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