Knights in Shining Armor--Icing Smiles Cake

Thank you for the sweet comments and thoughts on my last post. We do still miss Cindi, but I am enjoying getting to know her kids and grand kids through this awesome thing we call social networking. Just wish they would hurry up and invent some kind of teleporter so we could visit each other more often. :o)

I know I've been pretty terrible at posting here, and it's usually because life is pretty busy. Busy with home schooling, making cakes, taking care of the house, making cakes, yard work, more cakes. I think you get the idea. Anyway, we are done with our school year and I have 2 cake-free weeks, so I thought this would be a good time to try and catch up here a bit. 

This cake was done a couple of months ago for Icing Smiles. This is the second time I've been able to do a cake for them. You can see my first one here. This time I was asked to do a cake for the siblings of the sick child and it happened to be for two brothers. They wanted a "knight in shining armor" theme and I was pretty much given free reign to do what I wanted. I only wish I hadn't been so swamped with other cakes that week and would have been able to put more details in.  

My very first, ever castle cake was a disaster. It was in my early, early years as a decorator and I knew absolutely nothing about fondant. I decided to stack cupcakes and skewer them together for the turrets and just cover them with buttercream. Yeah, not such a great idea. I actually had two castles to make for that party...one for a girl and one for a boy. When we arrived, one of the boy's turrets was completely fallen down and ripped right down the middle. There was no saving it. I was nearly in tears when the dad ran back to his kid's room and brought out his toy knights and cannons. He quickly set them up by the cake and pronounced that castle as "under siege". He saved the day and probably my future as a decorator. :o)

This time I made the turrets of rice crispy treats and I am SOOO glad I did. I ended up driving down a horrible dirt road to deliver this and we had another downed turret. :o( Two downed knights as well, but since they were made from gumpaste with wire supports inside, they were fine. We just placed the turret back up and re-positioned the knights and we were good to go. :o) If I ever decide to do one of those amazing multi-tiered, turreted castles like this one, I may just have heart attack getting it delivered.

This story is about more than just cake though. These two brothers have two younger sisters, one of which has been very ill. She has been on dialysis for most of her life and desperately waiting for a new kidney. That prayer was answered yesterday as a complete stranger was willing to donate hers and they have finally been able to have the surgery. I've been so blessed to see how God has taken care of this little one and I pray she will continue to heal well and have no issues with the new kidney they've dubbed "Bruce". I also pray for the sweet lady who was willing to travel thousands of miles and undergo major surgery to give a piece of herself to this little girl. Amazing love there! Simply amazing. I am sure they would covet your prayers as well. You can read more about it and see updates  here.

Well, I'm finding that my two weeks of cake-freeness is quickly slipping away, so I am going to close this and go do some fun crafty stuff (my other hobby :o).

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

In Memory...

Hello there. I'll be honest. I'm having a really hard time with this post. I almost didn't post it at all. I almost went through my computer and deleted all the photos of this cake, hoping maybe if the photos were gone all the bad memories would be too. It doesn't work that way, though, does it?

March 21st I got up a bit early to snap some photos of this cake in the daylight since I was up late the night before finishing it and my hubby was taking it to Cindi, one of his co-workers, on his way to work. She had the day off because her family was coming to visit from out of state and had asked me to make this cake for her Son-in-Law to celebrate his birthday. They never had that celebration. I received a call that afternoon from my heart-broken husband. Cindi had gone to the store after Mike dropped off the cake. She was in an accident on her way home. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

I have to say there was a huge amount of sadness and crying here, but there was a lot of good things too. I guess there really was a celebration, just not the one Cindi had planned for. Instead, we celebrated her. We laughed, we cried, we reminisced, we cried some more. I can't possibly put in words what a wonderfully, amazing woman Cindi was. I had only known her for the past 5 years, but in that time, she had become very special to us as a family. I will always remember her smile, her laugh and her joy.

I finally decided that I needed to blog about this cake because I think there are things Cindi would like everyone to know. The first one, and I'm sure you've heard this many times before, is that you have no idea how much time you have left on this earth. Are you ready for eternity? I'm so glad to know that Cindi was. While I still cry for her at times, (for some reason it seems to always be while I'm washing dishes), I am so excited to know she is up in heaven with our Father, worshiping and praising Him.

What about you? What if it had been you in that car? Where would you be right now? I've blogged about this on my family blog. The Bible teaches that God created us and He loves us. He wants us to love and worship Him, but in order for it to be true love and worship, He had to give us free will. It's not love if isn't our free will. But that means we have choices-to love God, or to sin. Sin simply means not pleasing God and the Bible teaches that we ALL sin (Romans 3:23). While He's a loving God, He is also a just God and His judgement for sin is eternity in hell. Eternity is a long, LONG time. He knew we could never be good enough. We can never work our way into heaven. No matter how much you go to church, or do good things, there will always be sin. We need help, so He provided that help by sending down Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice for us. He was perfect. He never sinned, and He loved us so much He was willing to pay the price for our sin for us and die in our place. Salvation is a free gift, but, like any gift, you have to receive it. It isn't automatic. God wants you to:
Admit you are a sinner and Ask for forgiveness
Believe Jesus is God's Son, He died for you and rose again
Commit your life to Him. Allow Him to be not only Savior, but Lord of your life
and Don't delay...you have no idea how much time you have left.

The second message is for those who know Christ as their Savior. One of Cindi's daughter's made a comment to Mike and I. She said, "I want you two to know how special you were to Mom. You were Jesus to her." I was taken aback by the comment. Mike and I hadn't done anything special. She was our friend. We loved her like we loved our other friends, but we weren't aware of things that had happened to her in the past and what a hard time she had had. We just loved her, and we didn't realize what an impact that love had on her. Her daughter told us of comments she'd made during their phone calls and the change she'd seen in her mom over the last several years. A new joy she'd seen in her. It warms my heart to know that God used us to show love to her. We got to give "God Hugs" and didn't even realize we were doing it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that what you do (or don't do) makes a difference in other's lives. You may not know it (we didn't), but God can use you to help someone through a rough time and bring some joy into their lives. You can give "God Hugs" too. I, for one, plan on asking God to show me where He wants me to be helping and "hugging" others for Him.

Well, now that my keyboard is all wet, I should close this and find a tissue box. I do pray for you that if you're not sure of your salvation, find a good, Bible believing church (and unfortunately there are many out there that do not follow the Bible) and talk with a pastor. Or, better yet, find a Bible, open it up to Romans and read. Ask God to help you and He will.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.