Lets learn together!

Hello!  Welcome to The Ultimate Cakeover. My name is Jamie and I had this idea that when I got my Cricut cake machine it might be fun to do a cake each week and blog about it.  This is my first blog so I plan to have fun with it.  Let me start by telling you a little about myself.  I am 35, I am married to a wonderful man who is 36 and we have 3 children (two boys ages 1 and 8, and a girl who is 4)  My life is very busy even though I am a stay at home mom.  I love to bake and I always decorate a cake at each holiday.  I have done it for so long now that at every holiday or birthday my family almost expects it.  My husband and I each come from large families (4 siblings in my family and 6 siblings in his!) so we have huge holidays and alot of birthdays and that's alot of cakes.  When I saw the cricut cake machine come out I instantly fell in love.  I had the cricut expression so I knew what it does and I have alot of great cartridges so I was so excited about what I can do with fondant now.  I have two cakes to post pictures of. One is a Monkey cake because my 4 year old loves monkeys and begged me to make one.  So I had seen this awesome recipe on the Martha Stewart Show for Chocolate cake and I made her Monkey cake using the Create a Critter Cartridge and some ready made fondant that I purchased from Michael's Crafts and rolled out on my mat.  It was hard getting the layers off the mat without breaking them. My next cake I posted is a dinosaur cake.  I made it for practice and sent it to work with my husband.  The designs are from the Birthday Cakes cartridge and I made each dino at 2 and a half inches.  I wanted to fit everything that the cartridge had to offer for dinosaurs on the cake but I didn't want the dinosaurs to be too small.  I couldn't fit everything so I did three dinos, the phrase that went with them, and a couple of footprints. I also made them and then place each layer on a paper plate this time while I made the others and it hardened the fondant a little so that it was easier to pick up and put together.  I also purchased a few small spatulas from Michael's and they definately helped.  This cake was pretty easy because I only needed two colors.  I didn't cover either cake with fondant and chose to just put the decorations onto buttercream icing because my husband perfers icing over fondant. Fondant usually doesn't taste that good, and also its pretty expensive buying it already made so I might try making my own next time because I saw a recipe for marshmallow fondant and I think it may taste better then the one I bought from Michaels. So, neither cake came out how I envisioned them and I keep thinking I can do better so hopefully each week I will get better. If you follow along with me maybe we can get better together and share ideas. Have a great week!