Weekend Recap

This last weekend I participated in the craft fair at the Festival of Trees in Billings, Montana.  It went ok.  Not the best show ever, but who am I to say I have only done 2 shows in my entire crafting career, so I am chalking it up to inexperience and just getting to know the venues a little better.  Trying to keep it positive, I will try to do the show again next year and see if it is any better.

Here is what my table looked like. It needs some improvement.

My goal for the next craft fair season is to have more inventory and another line, something flashier and eye catching to bring the customers into my booth.  I would also like to get some card shelving, like you see in the stores, but a smaller tabletop version to start out with.  We shall see what I can find.  Right now those are my ideas for improvement, do you have any suggestions for my table?  I would really appreciate any input from you!

So the craft fair was Saturday, so Friday I spent the evening setting up and making sure I had everything ready to go for the day.  Then Sunday I went Christmas Shopping!  It was really fun.  I spent 4 hours of my day shopping and I got SOOOO much done!  It really should have been IMPOSSIBLE to go to that many stores in 4 hours, but the good news is I made a HUGE dent in my shopping list, so that makes me feel a lot better!

Tomorrow we resume our cake decorating class!  That is super exciting!  I cannot wait for that to start again!  Christmas is coming up so fast I can hardly believe that is December 2011 already, it feels like it should just be getting to the 4^th of July or something!  Here at SkyleRae’s we have big plans for 2012, so stay tuned!

How were your weekends? Any craft fairs or anything exciting? Let me know, I would love to hear from you!

XOXO,

I Suppose I Should...

…Update you on what is going on in the life of SkyleRae.  It has been rather quiet around here lately.  We had the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday, and now I have a craft fair on Saturday that I am trying to prepare for.

I have also recently become addicted to the Twilight Saga.  I am already on book 3: Eclipse.  I held out for so many years and then Roommate #1 asked if I wanted to go to Breaking Dawn Part I.  I went more or less for something to do.  Turns out I really liked it, and now have been feverishly reading the books.  Twilight and New Moon arrived from Netflix this week, so I will have that to watch after I finish reading the books, which from the looks of things will not be very long.

I have to say the books are very well written.  Stephanie Meyer really knows how to invoke emotion of the reader.  So far she has invoked anger, sadness, happiness, pretty much EVERY emotion you can think of.  I really enjoy that the story is told from Bella’s (the human’s) point of view, which I think is what makes it relatable and SO GOOD!  So if you have not partaken in the Twilight Saga, I would recommend that you do.

I had an excellent Thanksgiving.  I had family come from all over to celebrate.  So that was really nice.  Then we did the whole Black Friday thing at Midnight, which I was against at first and then realized it was the only time my aunt could go so we went.  I spent a whopping $60.  I got a luggage set for $50, a set of pans for roommate #2 for $6, and then a coffee for $4.  Yep. That was the extent of my Black Friday shopping.  My aunt and mother went nuts though.  That was good for them I suppose.  I ended up being up for 36 of 38 hours between Thursday and Friday.  Not the smartest thing I ever did.

I decorated this cake for one of my cousins that came over.  That was fun and she really liked it! 

We resume taking cake decorating classes next week.  Our instructor went to Hawaii to celebrate her 30^th wedding anniversary so we took this week off!  HOORAY!  I am excited for Course 2: Flowers and Cake Design.  I guess we make flowers the entire time and then decorate a cake in the final class.  This should be super fun.  I am super excited for this, I want to learn more flowers and how to design a cake.  So I am super excited for class to start again.  

The craft fair on Saturday is the Festival of Trees at The Shrine Auditorium.  It should be a good craft fair to participate in.  I will be selling cards, gift tags, mini cards, flat cards and then some cupcakes that my mom and I have decorated.  So if you are in the Billings, Montana area you should come check it out. 

What else have I been up to?  Well not a whole lot to be honest.  Trying to get Christmas shopping done, preparing for the craft fair and reading, yep that is about it.  Nothing too exciting.  I will try to get pictures up this time of the craft fair setup.  I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! 

XOXO,

CUPCAKES!!!!!!!!!!!

So we had an extra cake decorating class this week and we decorated CUPCAKES!  It was so fun!  We learned different flowers and it was really awesome to have the little cupcakes to practice on before you actually do a cake!  We learned how to do a pompom flower, a shaggy mum, and some drop flowers!  There are so many things that you can do with just icing it is absolutely amazing. 

Here is a picture of my 12 cupcakes from last night:

 

It was so much fun!  I keep bringing my creations to work and having my coworkers eat them.  It is a much better plan than eating them all myself or having my roommates help me eat them!  HAHA!  I would get kicked out for sure!

This weekend is going to be pretty low key.  Mainly creating for the craft show on December 3^rd, and finishing up a few other half finished projects.  It should be nice to have a low key weekend before Thanksgiving.  There is also the big Montana rivalry game this weekend, the infamous Cat Griz Game!  All I have to say about that is GO GRIZ!  Should be a great weekend!

Hope you all have a great weekend! 

XOXO,

Cake Decorating Class #2

We made a rainbow cake!  It was super fun!  I used Betty Crocker’s Rainbow Chip cake mix for the base and filled it with a cream cheese filling from a local cake store here in Billings.  At class we learned how to ice a cake, including smoothing out the icing, how to transfer a pattern, and how to make a border.  It was so much fun!  This class rocks!   

Here is a picture of my rainbow cake:

Tonight we are having an extra class this week, so we do not have to push our classes into December, because the last week our instructor is going to be celebrating her 30^th wedding anniversary in Hawaii!  How impressive is that?! 30 years of marriage and still going strong!  That is awesome!  So tonight we are going to be decorating cupcakes and learning some simple flowers!  I am so excited to learn the flowers and how to fill the cupcakes!  HOORAY!  My cupcakes were made out of the same cake mix that I used for my rainbow cake.  Luckily I had made the extra into cupcakes!  I am really excited for tonight!  It should be tons of fun!  I will try to remember to bring my real camera to class tonight that way I have more than cell phone pictures to share with you and can get a little more detailed in what we are doing! 

I strongly suggest if you have a Michael’s craft store close to you, check in and see if they have Wilton Cake Decorating classes available to you!  It is so worth it to be able to learn all these cool skills that you can use any time you need to bake a cake!  Who knows it could be that hobby you have just been looking for.  

I hope you guys love hearing about my cake decorating experiences!  I also hope that I am inspiring you to try something new!  You never know you may just find something you LOVE!  Are you guys trying anything new?  Let me know! 

XOXO,