Honoring the red, white and blue

With the new year here and the Christmas season behind us, I thought it was a good time to remember those who are sacrificing their lives for our country's freedom. It's easy to get caught up in the busyness of the holidays and not have time to think about those who are serving in the armed forces, both here and abroad. My younger brother, Reece, is a couple months into his deployment now, and we are thankful for God's protection over him so far. Please keep him and his fellow servicemen in your prayers, as well as his wife, Krissy.

Before Reece headed off to Afghanistan, we had a deployment party/send-off. We went with a patriotic theme, and decided to have a dessert bar...cake, cake pops, cookies, and all sorts of candy in red, white and blue!


I made a red velvet cake with a blueberry filling to fit with the color scheme. The bunting on the cake was an idea I had seen online...so fun!


Reece and Krissy


Cake pops were decorated in red, white and blue with ribbons to coordinate.




Candy buffet!

Thanks for reading!
Rianne

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'Tis the season!

How can you NOT love this time of year? It's such a cozy, festive time of year and I'm enjoying every moment of it with family and friends...setting up the Christmas tree, shopping for gifts, hot chocolate and games by the fire, making gingerbread houses, yummy treats, family and friend get-togethers. There's so much to be thankful for--especially when we remember the true meaning of Christmas!

The holiday season, for me, also means baking! A reason to make and decorate yummy treats can never be passed up by me. I decided to stick to just a few things this year, and focus on things I could package up for neighbor and family gifts.

I've been wanting to make and decorate sugar cookies for a while now, so this was a perfect excuse. I scoured some sites for inspiration and decided on snowmen, candy canes and Christmas trees! My royal icing started off quite a bit runnier than it should have been, so it made for some disappointing outlines on the cookies...but lesson learned :)

Simple, striped candycanes.

I think these trees were my favorite...clean and bright!

Happy little snowmen! I added some sugar sprinkles to the green scarf for a fun touch!

And all the festive cookies together...ready to be packaged up for delivery and consumption! :)

Wishing everyone a wonderful, happy holiday!

Rianne

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Olivia!

I adore the Olivia books...Olivia is cute, spunky, and a little bit of a troublemaker--kinda like a lot of kids I know! :) The books are very well written, and often make me laugh out loud. So when a friend from church asked me to make an Olivia cake for her daughter's 3rd birthday, I was quite excited!

She asked for an 11x14 chocolate cake (the birthday girl's favorite!), decorated with Olivia in her ballgown and a color scheme of red, blue, white and black. I armed myself with a bunch of printouts of Olivia, and away I went. I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was very happy with how the cake turned out!

Plus, here's a couple pictures of a yummy cake I made for my wonderful mother-in-law's birthday...yellow cake with a yummy chocolate frosting!

I'm super excited to start my holiday baking...this week I want to start some decorated sugar cookies and post them soon--so check back!

Have a sweet one!

Rianne

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