Cake Walk

Do you ever have one of those weekends where it takes you half the week just to process it all?

Yeah, that was mine....

Friday started it all off with 4 boxes of cake mix, a couple lbs of butter and a the biggest bag of powdered sugar that I've ever seen!

At Thanksgiving, my grandma asked if I could make her a baby shower cake for her neighbor. Alex and her family just moved into the house across the alley and my grandma being the insanely sweet person that she is, decided to throw this stranger a shower for her and her adorable 1 month old daughter!

This is what my kitchen looked like Friday afternoon:

I had visions of a 3 layer cake....1st layer of baby blocks, 2nd a pink layer cake and then some cutesie little booties.

For the blocks, I used a Martha tutorial....tweeked a smidge. I filled a 1/2 sheet cake pan with almost 3 boxes of cake mix. The left over I used to make the cupcakes for the booties (ended up making 6 cupcakes....and needed EVERY single one! stupid cake sticking to the stupid pan!!!!)

So, back to the sheet cake....after the cake had cooled, I cut it in half (width-wise). On one half, I put a layer of frosting and then added the second half on top. This leaves you with a crazy thick cake....cut it into 6 blocks. Frost each block (crumb coat and then your regular colored frosting). Pipe and decorate to look like blocks. I also used each one to spell out "baby" but I highly doubt that anyone noticed!

Up next was the round layer cake. My original inspiration came from a Wilton cake from their website, but I decided to skip the whole "ribbon" look and just do some cute little daisies. The wonderful pink shell edging fell halfway to my grandma's house...thank God that I had the sense to grab the bag of icing just in case!!!!!

Ok...almost there....are you sick of cake (I sure am!). So the booties. If you google cupcake booties you get a whole slew of instructions. Basically you take 3 cupcakes, cut one in half and then flip the other 2 upside down so that the top is on bottom. To the upside down cupcake I frosted a half (also upside down..and I trimmed off the "top" to make it more boot shaped). Crumb coated and then piped it to look like crochet...small star tip with a "W" motion...yeah, I know (seriously rolling my eyes at how ridiculous this is!)

Layer it all together, hold on your lap for an hour while traveling in a snowstorm....pray you don't end up with a frosting rainbow smeared all over your wool peacoat!

The cake was a hit, the shower was cute...the baby..oh, the baby! Cutest little girl with a head full of hair and a plaid bubble skirt...seriously made my womb hurt!!!!!!

Alright, lets check the list....Baby, Cake, Snow...now on to the Aussie! First I sweetened you up with talk of cake and babies..now onto the hard stuff----

Last weekend our church was blessed to have Christine Cain speak. She is a pastor from the Hillsong Church. She speaks all over the world and somehow by the grace of God she made it to our little neck of the woods!

Christine's mission is to abolish injustice in the 21st century......the A21 campaign. Their main focus is to stop human sex trafficing. This video tells a little bit more about it all.

She spoke to us about being the light in the darkness. We are called to be in the world, just not of it....boldly proclaiming hope, not trapped in our holy huddles scared by the big bad devil. It was really inspiring. It was like watering a seed deep in my heart...this dream that we have for Las Cruces and its people. I'm not sure what all this entails, but I'm praying and trying to process it all. There will be further posts on this for sure!

If you're so lead, check out the A21 campaign. These stories are heartbreaking....but Christine and her crew are out there one girl at a time saving lives, giving a hope and a future....loving the lost and afraid with a love that only comes from Jesus!