Humble beginnings

My cake decorating 'career' started like a lot of people - I had kids and my kids had birthdays :)

One advantage I did have was that my mom was an amazing cake decorator and when I was a kid we always had the BEST birthday cakes on the block! My mom even baked, designed and decorated my wedding cake :) I grew up watching her and I had a great example to look up too!

I started making birthday cakes for my own kids after a couple of years of spending WAY too much money for cakes that frankly weren't as good as what my mom had made for me and my brothers and sister.  So I took matters into my own hands - literally!

My first attempts were clumsy, messy, fly by the seat of my pants and though cute - certainly not very professional looking.  Here are some of my early cakes:

And then, SLOWLY, they got better as I gained skill and practice:

 And later Even BETTER:

Pretty soon I was able to make cakes that I was proud of.  Cakes that were good enough that other people wanted them.  I'll be posting photos of those soon- but for now please enjoy these blasts from the past :)