308 Maple Street

For several weeks... and the past 120 hours... I have had this view....

Yes that is my desk... and yes i did kinda clean it before I took the photo... and for those of you who may be confused, yes you are looking at three computer screens. I have been working on making a website.. which just went live today which if you have not already looked at 308 Maple Street you really should.... go... now...
You need to check it out HERE

Sorry about that.... :) What is 308 Maple Street? Well it is a new online shop featuring 3 other artists with some of my stuff. {though if you checked it out like i told asked you, you should already know that right?

Anyway my part was to design what you see from what Heather {From http://blackberryrambles.blogspot.com/} and Christina {http://classiccableknits.com/blog/} and Laura {http://laurawinslow.blogspot.com/} have envisioned for years. Which i have got to say is a daunting task... just because you like something does not mean that the "customer" will. But Today was our launch party which I think was a HUGE success.

Heather, Christina and I after opening the website

During this process I have learned several things...

1. I have learned that it is always important to save copies of copies of copies and even in different places so that you have something to go back to
2. I have learned how to make a gluten free cake... will talk more about that later
3. And I have learned that I really really need to learn how to spell.... words like "twitter" and "position" set me back several unnecessary minutes.

But overall I am happy with what I have created and deep down I think I did a pretty good job. I know that the website is not done, there are several issues on/in it... but like author Karl Stolley said, "websites are never DONE, they only have long periods of time where nothing changes."

On to the Party:

Like i said today was the launch party for the website, and of course we had to have a tea party. I kinda consider myself an "intermediate" cake artist because I love creating different designs in the cake. With that in mind I really wanted today's launch to be special so I offered to make the cake. I had never made a gluten free cake before, but a while back during a triple coupon sale I snagged a Betty Crocker Gluten Free Yellow cake mix with the plan of making something for the 308 girls.

The recipe was simple enough, butter, vanilla, water, eggs... and I put it in my mini bunts and voilia cake! As the design started coming together in my head I relized that I was going to have more mini cakes than I wanted for the design.... Also in my head I was wondering what it was going to taste like... So i did some googling and found Gluten Free Diva and her recipe for Gluten Free Cake pops... so i went out to the store and bought some preserves, whip cream and melting chocolate.

Her exact Recipe can be found here. However I found that after you crumble all the cake just ad the preserves until it is slightly gooey and you are able to form balls. Since I did this all "day of"... i put them in the freezer for about an hour and a half and then dipped them in the chocolate, then let them sit until it was time to leave... Diva says they should it over night in the Frig.

Over all the cake pops were a BIG HIT and they are sooo easy... think about how many times you have had a cake fall apart on you... well here you go, use it for a cake pop.

The cake before I left my house...before it melted

The Flower cake was another story... sure it was good... I put a layer of preserves on it, too. But the request for Whipped Cream Icing did not get a long with traveling an hour in our "heat wave" of 75 degree weather today.