#52 Stories - I can do it myself.

Before the course

My mother told me that my first full sentence was "I can do it myself".  This week's question asks me to relate something I taught myself to do.  There are a number of crafts, etc. that I have investigated and used books or the internet to teach myself to do them.  I can't in honesty say I am good at many of them but I find joy in the learning process.  When I get inspired by something I dive in.  But I digress.

One of the things I basically learned on my own is how to decorate cakes.  When my children were small I wanted to create wonderful, memorable cakes for their birthdays.  I loved to bake and wanted to create beautiful things.  As I mentioned, when I am inspired by something I tend to dive in.  We lived in Winnemucca, NV. at the time.  For the uninformed about western geography, Winnemucca is a smallish town in the middle of Nevada - a solid 200 miles from any dot on the map most people might have heard of.  We didn't have a Michael's or any other place to take lessons but I did pick up a Wilton cake decorating magazine somewhere.  I don't remember where at this point. The magazine offered a correspondence course in cake decorating!  I had so much fun!  One memorable practice cake I made was for one of our weekly game nights with the Browns.  They came to our house to play cards, or Risk, or something of the kind (awesome memories).  I think the cake looked pretty good but I had experimented with a cooked frosting recipe.  When we went to cut it I actually had to break through the frosting to get to the cake - it was distinctly rocklike! HA!  I've gathered up a few of my early efforts.

Brenda's 5th birthday cake.  This was the "final exam" for the course.

After that I started doing cakes for people who asked me to. When we moved to Utah I worked in a bakery in American Fork, then in a bakery in Smith's decorating cakes.  After moving to Minnesota I was invited to teach Wilton cake decorating at one of the Michael's stores.  It was lots of fun.

Here are a few of my more recent efforts: