October Recap

Man, October was BUSY. That's why it took me so long to post about September!

Ethan and I went to the Stuttgart Oktoberfest, which is actually called Volksfest here in Stuttgart. 

 Ethan is on that swing!

 Then Ethan and I took a weekend trip to Belgium to see a friend of mine.

We didn't do much sight-seeing because we were only there for the weekend. Ethan said when people ask him what he did in Belgium he will say "went to the grocery store. and then went to the grocery store again. and then went to another grocery store."

 The city of Mons has this little monkey statue on the city hall building. No one really knows why it's there, but they say if you rub its head with your left hand and make a wish it will come true.

 The NATO base is located there in Belgium, and this is me in front of all the flags of the NATO countries. They rotate them so that one country is never always in the center.

 And this really cool quilt was inside the building and has a quilt block for each country in NATO.

 At worked I taught another bag class. Not everyone finished in class, but Pam brought hers back in to show off!

I taught the Kaleidoscope quilt block, which makes a very pretty quilt. See mine here. 

 

I taught the Wilton level 3 course, fondant. Here's the girls with their graduation cakes.

 Felicia made a peacock out of her fondant flowers!

 I baked and decorated a whole bunch of cakes for a quinceanera. Read about it here.

 Our Canvas and Corkscrews instructor is moving. *sad face* This sugar skull was the last one I got to paint with Marta. We're looking for a new instructor, but it will take a little while before we can continue the program.

 Here's my painting! So bright and fun!

 And lastly we had a lot of fun on Halloween! Read all about the costumes here.

Quinceanera

The week before Halloween I took a break from working on costumes to bake and decorate cakes for a Quinceanera. Since we're over here in Germany it was hard for the family to throw a traditional party, but they wanted to have as many of the elements as they could.

These are big parties. Like weddings, but without getting hitched. Apparently one of the traditions is to have 15 dolls dressed in fancy dresses to give to the 15 girls who "stand up" with the birthday girl. We brainstormed options for these dolls and decided rather than talking one of our family members into going to Mexico to buy these dolls we would make doll CAKES instead.

It took a cake decorating army to get this done. Three of us baked the 15 cakes (plus extra layers for the main cake) and then there ended up being six of us who did the decorating. 

We got together at one of our MWR facilities that had a large kitchen and room to decorate. (For those of you who will know, it was the Warrior Zone, which used to be Le Rose's Pizza) 

We worked on decorating these for 12 hours the first day and another three the second day. And they were AWESOME.

These first four are the ones I did. 

 I showed Selena (the birthday girl) what to do on the next one and she decorated the whole thing herself!

 The next 10 were completed by the rest of the cake team. Most of the girls had ZERO cake decorating experience, so before they started each cake I would teach them a technique.

 They NAILED IT!! These cakes were so cool!! I was really proud of them!

 Even though there were 15 doll cakes we still needed the traditional birthday cake. The stipulation was just that it should be white. After looking at a lot of inspiration cakes, many of which you can see pinned on my cake decorating board, this is the cake we ended up with.

So preeeeeetty!! The cake topper was a gift from one of Selena's relatives. An aunt I believe. There are several different flavors inside this cake including lemon, strawberry (with real strawberries), chocolate, butter, and almond. I got the fondant on and then the flowers were put on by one of the members of our cake team, who also didn't have cake decorating experience! She did an amazing job!

And finally, the birthday girl!

I didn't get any photos of the whole family together, but here is mom, brother, and dad lighting the super cool blooming flower candle firecracker thingies.

 Explosive!

 These were pretty cool candles! There was only one tiny scare with something catching on fire... I tried to darken this photo so you can see them better, but they were incredibly bright, even with all the lights off in the room.

 Selena blowing out the candles. 

First dance with Dad.

Dancing with her brother.

Selena is on the dance team at school and they did a little dance routine for the party.

I tried to get a good shot of the whole group, but I brought the wrong lens for that... So this is just the girls. Haven is on the back row, third from the right. Her hair is black again.

I really enjoyed participating in this party and supporting this family. They are really sweet and we had so much fun!