The End of Amber week

 All good things must come to an end, but before it's gone I will pay one last homage to Amber's baby shower.
I decided to tackle my very first diaper cake. I think they are adorable and wanted to make one for Amber.
Since I had zero skills on how to do this I googled diaper cakes, and spent an hour or so on You Tube. I love You Tube! I didn't make this a tutorial because you too can You Tube "diaper cakes" and see the many ways to accomplish it. I must admit it was really easy to do.
Step one: roll the diapers so that the top colored band is inward and all you see is a white rolled diaper.
Step two: rubber band it, repeat like 100 more times!

This is what it looked like when it was all done! I love it! Keeping with the elephant theme, Jana (one of the ladies giving the shower and one of my dearest friends) contributed a sack full of elephant items.

The center support was 2 baby bottles. The cake had baby shampoo, lotions, powder, teething gel, Butt Paste, pacifiers,toys, you name it!

Everything was tucked either beneath ribbons or hot glued to the front of it. You want to make sure the diapers are not damaged since they are part of the gift. All topped off with a stuffed elephant name Peanuts!

These are the water bottles. Seriously cute! We ordered the labels on-line and had these adorable elephants  made with the inscription Amber's Baby Shower.

They are adorned with blue & brown and green & brown ribbons. The top of the bottles had round little stickers with elephants too! Some had little birds.

The nutrition facts were cute too. They said things like " sleepless nights 100%",  A little bit of Amber, a little bit of Steve...Just a bunch of cute sayings.

And of course when you place them all in a tub of ice they look too cute for words!

Kisses with little elephant and bird stickers served as center pieces.

The little bird was actually part of the invitations and water bottle labels too.

Engraved blue pencils (if you haven't noticed by now, it's a boy!) that say "Amber's little peanut". We put peanuts ( in shell) as a  filler to hold up the pencils.

This is Mimi. Amber's Mom who made the most delicious chocolate covered strawberries, two beautiful fruit trays with fruit dip. She also maded Amber about a million baby blankets and burp towels! Good Mama!

That incredibly beautiful punch bowl belongs to Jana. Her Grandmother passed it down to her and it is heavy glass.It has the most beautiful design I have ever seen. It is breath-taking to say the least. Jana also makes the yummiest punch!
Jana also made egg casseroles & a hash brown casserole that I wanted to stick my face into! So good! Amber's sister Loree (who is about to have her fourth baby) brought bagels, cream cheeses, OJ, and other yummy stuff. It was a great day full of family, friends, food, balloons, and laughter!

Jana must have said something really funny to Amber!

I think this sums it up! Lets eat!!!! Congratulations Amber! We can't wait to meet Maxwell!

Amber's Cake

This beautiful lady is one of my dearest friends Amber. Amber is not only beautiful on the outside, but she is beautiful on the inside and has the heart of an angel. When we (Jana another wonderful lady that I am blessed to have in my life) found out Amber was pregnant we immediately started planning her baby shower.

This is the cake I made for her.

It's an animated version of her nursery. The bedding has stripes & circles with this color combination. Except I'm pretty sure I made the green a little too "Kelly green". I was working off a web page, give me a break sista!

Little elephants graced the cake.  Here is a small tutorial on how to make this lil guy. You can see some spare parts in the back ground.

Make a ball (size depends on how big you need your elephant to be), then elongate one end of the ball by rolling your finger over it until your ball now looks like this.

 make some linear creases on this piece. As you can tell this is now the elephants head and trunk.

turn the head on its end and poke 2 holes in the end of the trunk. Now this lil guy can breath!

Make another ball slightly larger than the one you made for the head and poke a broken tooth pick into it. This is now his body, and the tooth pick will support his head. Make sure your tooth pick is not long enough to poke all the way through the head.

Place the head on top of the tooth pick. I like to brush every body part that is being attached with a little water. It helps glue the pieces together.

Now roll out 4 pieces of fondant for arms and legs. Make the legs just a tad bit longer. Using a butter knife crimp the ends to make feet and hands then use the back of a tooth pick and indent little toes & fingers.

I like to make a hole where each arm and leg will attach to the body. Slightly roll the appendage end so that it fits into the hole. Brush the inside of the hole with a little water, and attach the appendage.

Now poke a hole on each side of his head in preparation for his ears

I use the end of a decorating tube but any small circle will do. If you want the inside of the ears to have a different color, repeat this step with the desired color and place it on top of the grey part. Just off set it slightly. Pinch the end of the circle to make an ear.

Attach to the hole in the head with a small amount of water. Attach his tail, cut 2 very small white dots for his eyes. Using a tooth pick dip it into black food coloring (I use Wilton paste found easily at Hobby Lobby or Micheal's) and dot him some eyes.

He's done!

Next I made a little baby boy who feel asleep in his elephant PJ's

 (that I am sure someone like his Aunt Nancy bought for him!)

I love his butt! So cute!

This was the first time I made one of these babies and I didn't take pictures of the whole process because I really expected it would take me several tries, but It came out my first time! So I didn't tempt fate by trying to remake him.

If enough people twist my arms, I will make a tutorial on it.

Here he is sleeping with his pacifier in his mouth on his blanket with toy elephant and his slippers on the side.

Don't you just want to eat him up? Literally !

The cake was white but I tinted it blue with chocolate chips so it looked like brown polka dots.

I didn't get a picture of that! Sorry :(