26 Dozen and 39 Weeks

Merry (belated) Christmas! It's been a while since I posted on here and we've been quite busy since then. Back in November, we had a few awesome baby showers hosted by family, friends and even coworkers. Then we visited with both sides of our family over Thanksgiving weekend and celebrated my Grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. The trip to St. Louis for Thanksgiving was our last road trip before the baby gets here which means we didn't get to travel to be with our families over Christmas. However, we've still managed to have a jam packed holiday season. Between Christmas parties, last minute shopping/wrapping/shipping, and visiting with friends we haven't had much time to just sit around! It's been fun though. I hope you all had a nice Christmas are finally relaxing now after what I'm sure has been a very busy season for you as well! Today I went to Target with a friend and scored some half-priced Christmas goods including the cutest little diapers that look like elf pants or something. I can't wait to use those next year!

One other big thing we had in the last few weeks was a GIANT order for wedding cupcakes. I booked this wedding before I was even pregnant and decided to go through with it even though it was dangerously close to my due date. A couple months ago I finally reached out to my friend, Chase, who also has a little side job baking and she agreed to drive in from Wichita on the weekend of the wedding to help me bake. Or possibly bake, ice, and deliver all 26 dozen cupcakes by herself if I ended up in the hospital to have the baby! Obviously, I didn't end up having the baby that weekend, but Chase was still a lifesaver in helping me knock out the order! We baked and iced all the cupcakes on a Saturday, then Chase headed home on Sunday and Joe and I delivered and set them up on Sunday afternoon. Everything went as smoothly as I could hope for and I was very relieved when we got it all done. I told the baby that he could come at any time now but he seems quite content in there. Oh well. Here are a few pictures of the wedding set up:

There were still quite a few cupcakes in a box that didn't fit on the table, but this is the majority of them. 

As for an update on the baby front, as you may have guessed from the title of the post, I'm at 39 weeks and anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little guy. I think we have everything in order around here to bring him home. Our bags are packed and we're just waiting for go time! I've been really bad about taking any sort of consistent "belly" pictures throughout this pregnancy, but I do have picture of Joe and I at my work Christmas party that shows off my enormous belly! Now, this picture was taken a few weeks ago, and I was really sticking my belly out in it, but this might be a more accurate idea of how I look now versus then haha.

I'm surprisingly not miserable yet, but I am looking forward to being able to reach down and put socks and shoes on without struggling! It's nice to know that at SOME point in the next couple weeks he'll be here. Until then, Joe and I are just going to enjoy the last of our quiet time together :)

Oh, and here's one more cake I did for a coworker's retirement that I wanted to share but that didn't really merit it's own post. It's a big cake but was fairly easy for me to make and the man of honor was very surprised and happy with it!

Well I guess that's it for today. Stay tuned in the near future for a baby announcement! Thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year!

Double Wedding Cake Weekend

Hi there! I don't know about you guys but I sure don't like how it gets completely dark at 5:30 after the time change this weekend. When it gets dark outside, I seem to get much less productive inside. Luckily I got a lot of chores done this past Sunday, so I suppose relaxing a bit this week after work won't be so bad. So while I sit here and watch The Voice I might as well write a blog post!

A few weekends ago, right after I got back from my work trip to West Virginia, I had back to back wedding cakes and cupcakes to do. To be honest, it was a mistake on my part to take both these weddings on the same weekend! I agreed to them at different times without double checking what I already had going on that weekend. Luckily, the first wedding was on Friday and it was a cupcake wedding plus a small display cake. Cupcakes are much quicker for me to make and I was actually able to get all 120 of them baked on Thursday night before the wedding. Friday was spent baking and decorating the display cake as well as decorating all of the cupcakes. I took a day off of work on Friday to get all that done. After setting up the cake on Friday night I came home and baked ALL the cakes for the Saturday wedding. But before we get to that, here is the cupcake wedding setup!

In case you can't quite tell, those are supposed to be trees :)

Lots of cupcakes!

The cake for Saturday was more of a traditional wedding cake. The flavor of all the tiers was a copycat recipe of Chantilly Creme cake from Whole Foods Market. The cake itself isn't that special but the icing is! It is a combination of fresh whipped cream, powdered sugar, cream cheese, and mascarpone cheese. The filling of the cake was the same icing mixed with some fresh berries. It is a delicious flavor combination! The bride had lots of cake designs that she liked so I came up with a combination of several of them for the final cake. I think it turned out great and she liked it too! I had to add the flowers at the reception, and needless to say, I am no florist haha. I just tried not to go overboard with them! 

The cake before the flowers.

The toppers are fox salt and pepper shakers. 

Well since the last time I posted, I've gotten a few more updates done in the nursery but I will post about those separately later. The room is really starting to come together now though! Only a few more DIY projects to complete and then we just have to get everything "installed". Unfortunately I don't have much to post about other than baby things, so you probably won't hear from me till next week sometime. Until then, have a great week!

Flower Petal Wedding Cake

Hi there! I'm back with more cakes. I spent the better half of last week and most of the day yesterday working on these cakes. It was a lot of work but I'm happy to say that they worked out mostly as I had planned with very few hiccups. Originally the order was just for a wedding cake, but a couple months ago the groom's parents contacted me to see if it would be possible for me to also make a groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner. I told them, "Of course!", while wondering how exactly I'd pull both cakes off in one weekend haha. Since the rehearsal dinner was on a Friday night, I knew I'd have to have it completely decorated and ready by Thursday night. That meant baking everything on Wednesday.

By the time I went to bed on Wednesday night, our fridge was filled to the brim with all the layers needed for a 2 tier groom's cake, 3 tier wedding cake, and an additional sheet cake for the wedding. After a cake order like this, Joe and I are looking into getting a 2nd refrigerator for the basement :)

The other part of these cakes that I needed to get started on ahead of time was making all of the gum-paste flower petals that were needed to decorate the wedding cake. This was something completely new for me and after watching a few tutorial videos online and some trial and error I was finally able to make a passable flower petal. In the picture below you can see what I rigged up to dry the petals with. Just regular muffin tins with foil pressed into each of the cups. It worked really well and I did the same thing with with a mini-muffin tin for some of the smaller petals. I made all of these petals on Thursday night so that they would have time to dry before using them on Saturday.

Pretty petals :)

On to the groom's cake! The design was simple, but it's is surprisingly difficult for me to make straight lines while piping on the icing. In an effort to make the straightest and most evenly spaced lines as possible around the cake, I first marked off the bottom of the cake into 1" increments then used my bench scraper to mark the lines at each tick mark. It was quick and easy! But as you can see in the final cake, my final vertical icing lines were still a little shaky. For all the little dots between the lines I just eyeballed the spacing.

I also found that making chocolate curls is not as simple as you would think. 

I have to say, getting smooth sides and sharp corners on the hexagon cake was definitely more difficult than on a round cake. But with the help of the edge icing on the cake it turned out looking pretty nice. At least I think so :) I delivered and set up the cake on Friday evening after work then went home and got to work on the wedding cake.

The wedding cake itself was a super simple design. Just smooth white fondant on all the tiers. The slightly more difficult part was figuring out the arrangement and attaching all the flower petals. Since I transport the cake tiers while they're still un-stacked, I couldn't attach all of the flowers ahead of time at home. I did attach a few with the plan to fill in all the gaps once I got the cake set up at the venue.

Here you can see what the seams between the tiers looked like before filling them with icing. The icing definitely makes a big difference!

I used royal icing to "glue" the petals to the cake and it seemed to work well. Since I stuck the majority of the petals on at the venue, most of them were still drying when we left. I was just praying that no one would knock  the table or touch the cake before it was time to cut it. That's pretty much my worst wedding cake nightmare, that something will happen to the cake between the time that I get it set up and when the bride and groom get there and cut the cake. So far so good though!

My final comment about this cake is that I finally "caulked" the seams between the layers with some icing to fill the gap and make it look nicer overall. That was for you, Mary :) Though I have to give Joe credit for it since he's the one who told me I should bring the icing along just in case. So, thanks Joe!

I've got a couple months before another big wedding cake weekend. Between now and then I'm hoping to finish a few little projects I have going on around the house. This weekend, Joe and I made good progress on making over my latest curbside trash find. I found a really cool chair with a wood frame and upholstered seat and back that was really sturdy but just needed some love. Joe is refinishing the frame and I'm doing the upholstery update. So far it's looking really good! Hopefully by next weekend I'll be ready to share it on the blog. That's it for tonight though! Have a good week.

I'm back and I brought cake!

Sorry for the 2 month disappearance! We've been traveling quite a bit since the last time I posted. First I spent Memorial Day weekend in Illinois with my 4 college housemates. As usual we had a great time and relived as many Rolla shenanigans as possible :) The next weekend, Joe and I went to my parents' home in Ohio for a graduation party for Gracie. Which means, GRACE IS GOING TO COLLEGE! When did this happen? She'll be heading to Mississippi State in only a few weeks and I already told her to plan on receiving some fun care packages. Now that I've posted it on the blog, I have to keep my promise :)

Two weekends after Ohio, we headed to St. Louis to celebrate the first birthday of our nephew, Albert. He's running around like a crazy man now and is always entertaining. We had fun playing with him and visiting with Joe's family as well. On the last weekend in June we drove to St. Louis again, and flew from there to San Antonio for the bi-annual Trowbridge Reunion (which I'll probably post about separately later). We spent 4 days hanging out by the Guadalupe River, playing lots of games, swimming, eating and catching up with everyone. It was really fun and relaxing! On the Wednesday before the 4th of July, we flew back to St. Louis from San Antonio, then left the next morning to drive to Wisconsin with Joe's parents. Joe's Grandma had planned a little family reunion up there over the 4th of July weekend, so we didn't want to miss that either! We spent the next few days playing more games, watching the little ones play, eating more good food and catching up again. Lots of good family time that week!

Finally, the Sunday after the 4th of July we drove back to St. Louis and I hopped on a flight to Houston for a week long course on the Basics of Corrosion (don't be too jealous). Now I'm home and happy to be here! Which means it's time to ease back in to blogging. What better to start with than a couple of cakes! These are from back in May. One graduation cake and one birthday cake. I had a couple other graduation cupcake orders but failed to take pictures of those.

First up is the graduation cake I made for our neighbors. Our neighbor gave me a picture of a cake she liked from a local grocery store and I tried my best to copy it exactly. Even down to the plastic graduation cap that I was able to find at the cake supply store. Funny story: I was at the grocery store buying cake supplies and I went through self checkout. The lady running self-check was especially chatty and asked what I was making since she saw I was buying baking ingredients. I picked up the same flyer from the checkout stand that our neighbor had given me with the cake picture on it, pointed to the picture and said, "this one". :) I thought it was funny. Anyway, here's the cake. The yellow writing looks extra shaky and I'm not sure why, I don't think it looked that bad in person, but maybe it did.

Next is a birthday cake that I made for the husband of a friend of a friend. She requested a Wisconsin Badgers football themed cake and after looking at several inspiration pictures she sent, we came up with the following design. The football on top is awful and that's my fault. But I was really happy with the rest of the cake! Especially the Badger mascot that I painted onto some modeling chocolate. I really liked the "vintage" version of the Wisconsin mascot that I'd seen in several inspiration pictures and knew I wanted to incorporate it into the cake somehow. There is a long skewer held between the front part of the badger and an extra piece of modeling chocolate behind it that allows it to stand up on top of the cake. Here it is!

Well, that's it for tonight! As usual, I have plenty of other things to post about, I've just fallen off the wagon I guess. Hopefully posting will be less sporadic after this. We'll be home for the next few weeks as far as I know and I've got several projects in the works. Until next time, have a good night!

Put a Bow On It

Surprise, Surprise. I made more cakes. Also, I'm running out of generic names for cake posts :) One of these is actually from back in January, but I figured I'd wait til there was a 2nd post to go along with it, and they both happened to have bows! Joe and I have been really busy around here lately with a few fun projects. One is an awesome table that Joe built for the deck. As soon as I can get some decent pics, there will be a post about it! The other project is a guest room makeover. Mostly because I was bored with the previous state of the guest room. It's looking pretty good but there is still work to do. This past Sunday we had some AMAZING weather in Kansas City so we took some time to trim up some of the landscaping in front of the house to get it ready for the growing season. When we were adding new mulch to the flower beds, we noticed that there were already some bulbs starting to grow. I'm pretty excited to see those bloom since we planted a bunch of new ones in the fall.

Coming up soon Joe and I have a couple of fun little trips planned. First we'll be heading to good ol' Rolla, MO for St. Pat's. It's been 5 years since we've been there for a St. Pat's celebration so I'm pretty excited about it. But if I'm being honest, the part of the Rolla trip I'm most looking forward to is hitting up a few restaurants. :) Now I know you may not think of Rolla as a foodie destination, but there is Alex's Pizza, Slice-o-Pie, Maid-Rite concrete's and cinnamon rolls at Holday Inn Express! What's not to love?! I guess I'm just easy to please.

The next trip will be to San Francisco near the end of the month and for as much as I'm excited about Rolla, I'm WAY more excited about San Fran. If you've been and you have any suggestions of things to do, places to go, and restaurants, please let us know! You can either comment on this post or shoot me an email. From the little bit of research I've done, it looks as though we won't run out of things to do. And now to the cakes!

The first one was a Hello Kitty birthday cake I made for the daughter of one of my co-workers. This was the 2nd Hello Kitty cake for me (you can see the first one here). This one was done in fondant and modeling chocolate. It wasn't too difficult and I was able to assemble the little Hello Kitty "pop" ahead of time and just stick it in the cake once we delivered it. The birthday girl seemed to love the cake, so that made me happy!

The 2nd cake was one I just delivered this past weekend and it was for a baby shower for a little boy. The theme of the shower was "Southern Baby Boy" which we brought into the cake with the bowtie and the little saddle oxfords on top. The little baby shoes might be my favorite cake topper/accessory I've made so far :) The flavor of the cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting. This was one of those cakes that I definitely wanted to stick around for to get a piece.

I don't have any more cakes planned in the near future, but the blog could probably use a cake break anyway. I'm mostly just looking forward to having more than one day in a row when the weather is nice. These little sneak peeks of spring are just a tease! Plus, warm weather = garage sales. Though I have to complete some current furniture projects before Joe lets me bring anything new home. I better get a move on!

That's about it for tonight. Thanks for reading and have a good night!

Mardi Gras King Cake

This may be the BEST king cake I've ever had, but I didn't want to put that in the post title since those are pretty strong words. Especially to anyone who has tried some of the excellent king cakes you can get in south Louisiana. But really, this cake was awesome! Part of what made it so delicious was that I filled it both cream cheese and pecan praline fillings. But even the dough was excellent and I'm sure would be delicious with a typical cinnamon sugar filling. I made this cake for the Super Bowl party that Joe and I went to and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I did have to explain to several people what exactly a king cake was and why there was a baby hidden inside though. I will definitely be making an other one or two to bring to my office on Mardi Gras.

I know I say this all the time, but this king cake was not difficult to make. The dough and icing recipes come from New Orleans chef John Besh. He has a show on PBS and he's always cooking up something tasty looking. I found the recipe from John Besh on a blog called Fleur Delicious which is probably the 2nd best blog name after Lombardo Lagniappe :) That is also where I found the recipe for the pecan praline filling. The cream cheese filling is simply some cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla. Here's the full recipe:

King Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Praline Filling

For the cake:
1 cup whole milk, warmed to 110-120 degrees
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 envelopes active dry yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and cooled slightly
5 large egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

For the pecan praline filling:
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 to 1 cup pecan pieces, toasted and finely chopped (I didn't toast mine and it turned out fine)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:
10 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 t. lemon zest
1 tsp, lemon

For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. For the cake, mix together the warm milk, yeast, sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour together in a large bowl. Let stand for about 8 minutes until the yeast begins to foam and gets frothy.

I just wanted to give a visual of what the yeast should look like. Below is how it looked after several minutes. 

2. Add the butter, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest and whisk to combine.
3. Add the rest of the flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. At this point, the dough will look really wet and not much like a bread dough.

4. Next, either use the dough hook on a stand mixer, or turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and pliable. If using the stand mixer, the dough should pull away from the sides.

5. Let rise until doubled in size. 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

6. While the dough is rising, make the filling. For the pecan praline filling, stir together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Then stir the melted butter in. Set that aside. For the cream cheese filling, mix all ingredients together with a mixer.
7. Once the dough is risen, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Punch down the risen dough, and let it rest for a few minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface into a long rectangle about 10"-12" wide but a couple feet long.
8. Spread the cream cheese filling on the dough, then "sprinkle" chunks of the praline filling over that.

9. Roll up tightly and form into a ring on a baking sheet. Try and pinch the two ends together.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until the cake is golden brown.

11. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cooled. Before icing the cake, hide the baby inside!
12. Then mix together all your icing ingredients and pour over the cake. While the icing is still wet, sprinkle on the colored sugar.

Enjoy!

I know that's a lot of ingredients and steps, but I promise it's worth it! I'm not sure I can wait till Mardi Gras to make another one. If I were down in Louisiana I could get my king cake fix by just picking one up at the grocery store. Though they do sell king cakes at a few grocery stores in Kansas City, I can tell you they are not very good. I think they bake one batch a year and sell them for a few weeks. They're just dry and gross. Let me know if you decide to try making your own king cake this year, and if you come up with any good filling flavors!

I think that's it for tonight. Thanks for reading and if I don't get back on here before Friday, have a happy Valentine's day with the ones you love!

Cake, Cake and Another Cake

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? We're back home in Kansas now, but we had a great time visiting with my family in Ohio and also with Joe's family on our way through St. Louis. Despite a couple of long days of driving, it was still a fun and relaxing holiday. We did some shopping, ate way too much food and played a bunch of games. But now we're facing a full week of work and I'm not sure how I feel about that haha. Oh well, Christmas break is only a few weeks away :)

I didn't get around to taking pictures of my cranberry pancakes using the brandied cranberry sauce because I forgot my camera's memory card. But I will try again this coming weekend. For tonight I thought I'd share a few cakes I've made in the last few months. Of course, I meant to share these as I made them but that obviously didn't happen. So let's just jump into them now :)

First up is a cake I made for our neighbor's family reunion back in October. Our neighbor's father is one of 12 children and every year the family gets together to visit and catch up. Though all 12 siblings are no longer alive, they all still get a spot on the cake. I had fun decorating this cake since it was all icing work and no fondant. The writing is still a little shaky but I'm getting better. 

Also, I think we should try and bring the name Hershel back. Just sayin'. 

The next cake is actually 2 cakes that I made for our friends' wedding in October. The bride wanted me to make the wedding cake and grooms cake so I happily obliged haha. The groom is a big fan of both the St. Louis Blues and Cardinals so I made a hat for each team to put on top of the cake that was 1/2 baseball 1/2 hockey puck. The Blues hat is dirty looking to match the groom's actual dirty Blues hat. The wedding cake is simple looking but was kind of difficult just because of the size of the tiers. I drove all these cakes to St. Louis bright and early on a Saturday morning after staying up almost all night to finish them. I think I stayed awake on the drive there by adrenaline only haha. 

 
 They all survived the drive and I got them quickly set up and started painting the "All You Need is Love" line (the bride is a huge Beatles fan). Then I went to Joe's parent's house and took a nap before the reception. Overall I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

This last cake is a 2nd Birthday for our little buddy, Aiden. I work with both his mom and dad and they were nice enough to commission me to make his cake. To say that Aiden is obsessed with the movie Cars is an understatement to say the least. The boy loves him some Lightening McQueen and Mater! So his party was all Cars themed. I made a couple dozen cupcakes and then the small checkered flag cake to put some candles in for him to blow out. This cake came together pretty quickly and I think it turned out cute. The hardest part was cutting around the template I printed of his name and the Cars logo. But even that worked out alright. 

I'll have at least one more big cake this year that I'll try and share. In the next few days/weeks I'm hoping to get some Christmas decorating done as well as shopping and baking. I'm sure you all will be crazy busy as well and I hope that you're also getting to have some fun in between. Until next time, have a great night!

Wedding Cupcakes and DIY Cupcake Tower

Two posts in one week! Wooohoooo :) And not only is it 2 posts in one week, I'm actually writing this one the same weekend we delivered these cupcakes! It's a Christmas miracle. October is shaping up to be a pretty cake heavy month, so be prepared. This weekend was my first cake order for this October and also my first wedding cupcake order ever. The bride who ordered them is my friend's sister's friend's sister. Did you follow that? haha. She was so nice to ask me to make her wedding cupcakes without ever meeting me or even trying anything I'd made. I was excited to do cupcakes for a wedding since I figured it would be way easier than a full wedding cake. It was easier, but it was definitely still a lot of work. Plus I still made a small cake for them to cut and to keep for their first anniversary. Here's a peek at the final display:

FYI - the cake flavors are: (bottom) vanilla cake, peanut butter filling, chocolate icing; (middle two) chocolate with cookies & cream icing; (top two) pumpkin with cream cheese icing; (small cake) vanilla and vanilla. 

When I asked the bride how she wanted the cupcakes displayed, she sent me a picture with a cupcake tower that she liked. I knew that I could probably buy or rent one, but to buy one would have been over $200 and the only ones I found to rent were much smaller and not at all like her inspiration picture. So I showed the picture to Joe and we came up with a plan to build one! I decided I wanted tiers that were 8" through 18" with a 2" diameter change between tiers. There is also an extra 10" circle that acts as the base of the tower. Though I think Joe and I would both recommend making a larger base circle. After we came up with our material list we headed to Home Depot. To make this cupcake tower you'll need the following materials and tools:

Materials
2 sheets of 2'x4'x1/2" MDF
2'x2'x1/4" piece of plywood
2 pieces of two foot long 1" PVC Pipe (1" inside diameter)
7 1" PVC Couplers
Paint (We used both spray paint and high gloss latex paint)
Gorilla Glue
Hot glue gun and hot glue
Small finish nail (like a Maze nail)

Tools
Router with a straight bit
Drill with several regular bits and one large bit (1 3/8" diameter)
Small carpenter's square
Saw for cutting PVC (Joe used a miter saw)
Hammer

First you'll make an "arm" that will attach to your router to allow you to cut all your sizes of circles. Start by removing the base plate from your router. Place the base plate in once corner of your 1/4" plywood and mark where the screw holes are that attach it to your router. Also trace the circle where the router bit actually comes through the plate.

After that, draw a straight line down the 1/4" plywood that is the width of your router base. Taping off the plywood where you're going to cut it will help reduce the top layer of veneer from splintering. A saw blade with more teeth makes cleaner cuts, and Joe already had one from making our built-in bookshelves. Make your cut down the line.

Then drill a hole in each location you marked making sure to use a bit that is sized for the screw that will attach it to your router. Then use a large bit to allow the screws to counter sink into the plywood. This allows the head of the screw to not stick up and will let the arm lay flat on the wood when cutting.

Now's a good time to make sure it fits :)

Next use a larger bit to drill out the hole where the router bit comes through.

Once that is done, you can attach your router. Then use a ruler and measure from the INSIDE edge of the router bit down the arm and mark the radius of each circle size you want to cut.

Use a small drill bit to create a hole at each mark you made. These holes will allow you to temporarily attach the arm to the MDF board to be cut, and the nail will be the pivot point.

To cut your first circle, pin the arm down onto the MDF with a small nail through the hole marked for the radius of circle you want to cut. Be sure you left enough room all the way around to cut the circle. You don't want to have a flat edge :) It is also necessary to have the MDF up on some supports so that when the router blade goes through it doesn't scrape into your floor. You can see in this picture that Joe is going to cut a circle with a 9" radius, so that will be our 18" circle.

Set the depth of the router bit so that it will cut only halfway through the MDF. Making 2 passes around the circle to get the full depth will be easier on the router. Turn the router on and use both hands to rotate the arm around the pin.

After one pass, lower the router to the full depth and make the 2nd cut around. You may have to stop part way through to adjust the supports under the MDF. After the 2nd pass, the circle should be free!

After cutting out each circle, Joe used a 1 3/8" drill bit (which is the outer diameter of 1" PVC pipe) and cut a whole through the middle of the circle. The mark left by pinning the arm to the circle should mark the perfect center of the circle to drill through. The top tier and the bottom support do not need holes drilled through them since the pipe won't go through those.

Then repeat for all your other sizes!  The next step we did was to paint. First try and make sure all the sawdust is off the circles. Then either spray paint or roll/brush paint. I first tried spray painting, and the kind I was using (which was supposed to be really good) just wasn't covering at all. I ended up painting all the circles by hand using a paint brush and some leftover high gloss latex enamel paint that we had. I did that this morning in between making icing and decorating cupcakes :) Joe used some white spray primer that we had to paint the PVC pipe and couplers since they had some words printed on them.

Now it's time to cut the piping and assemble each connector. Start my gluing a coupler to the center of the top of the base layer and the center of the bottom of the top layer. We painted them first and then used Gorilla glue, but I would recommend gluing first (also preferably more than 2 hours before final assembly) and then painting. You want the glue to stick to the MDF, not the paint.

Then cut the number of PVC lengths you need for your number of layers. Since we wanted them to be 3.75" each, we cut them to a length that would account for the MDF thickness. Since the board was 1/2" inch thick, we cut them to 4.25". Joe used a miter saw to cut the pieces.

Once the pipe is cut, put each of them except for one into a coupler. The one you don't put into a coupler will be the one that goes into the coupler that's glued to the base layer. Use a rubber mallet to make sure you get the pipes all the way into the coupler. Otherwise the layers won't be the same height.

At the venue, we assembled the tower by hammering the first connector into the base plate with a rubber mallet, then sliding the 18" circle over it. The we hammered in the next connector and placed the 16" circle over that. We continued that process until we got to the top piece that had the coupler glued to the underside. We placed the attached couple over the final connector and hammered it in place. Then we added a little hot glue where each circle met the coupler beneath it for stability. Then it was finally time to load it up with cupcakes!

After it was full, we were both of kind nervous about how it was a little wobbly. Luckily we had 3 extra couplers with us so we slid those in between the 10" base plate and the 18" first tier to act as extra supports. They really helped! Then we called it good and went on our way.

Here you can see some of the extra couplers we added for stability at the bottom. 

Geez, that was a really long post. I realize most of you aren't going to run out and make a cupcake tower, but just in case you wanted to, now you know :) Or if you want to borrow ours, that's fine too! If you do decide to make one, may I suggest not waiting until 2 days before to start it? And DEFINITELY don't wait until 2 hours before to glue things together. You want more time for your glue to dry. Trust me. Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!