How To: Cake and Cupcake Stand

First off I LOVE pinterest. I was resisting because I didn't want to transfer my massive idea folder that I already have but now that I have started I just love it. I have part of my idea folder up there now and slowly I'll get the rest up. No more will I have to transfer my idea folder between computers and my backup hard drive as I can just reference it from anywhere and so can any friends who are interested. LOVE!!! Anyway, I mentioned to someone that I could give them the dimensions to make a cupcake tower and then I figured why not just blog it and then I can put more info up on it.

So, this is the cupcake/cake stand I made for my wedding last October. My friend Selena (behind the stand) made all of my cupcakes and my cake and she was wonderful. They turned out so nice! My niece Julia was quite the helper for her as was my niece Brianna (Julia's cousin).



This is what it looked like before I painted it. I put it all together in the garage to check the fit and see if anything needed to be trimmed up at all.



The support pieces are pretty simple. Mostly you cut out some rectangles and notch the centers. When you cut the center notch you cut it slightly wider than your wood (so that even after painting it will slide smoothly) for half the height of the board. As you can see in the picture below most of the supports are 5 inches tall so the notch is about 2.5 inches so it will fit nicely together.

My support pieces are 7 x 5, 11 x 5, 16 x 5, 20 x 2.5. Most pieces are cut from MDF except for the short support (2.5 inch tall). For that I just used a 1x3 I had in the garage in the scrap pile.



When you are ready to assemble the whole thing this is how the supports fit. They just make an X (or + depending on how you look at it) and then the circle is set on top.



Here is what it will look like all put together. The circles I cut are 10, 14, 18 and 21.5 inches. You could probably make a couple more layers (maybe 24 and 28 inches?) but my reception was fairly small so I stopped at 4. The reason I went with 10 inches for the smallest layer is so that a 8" or 9" cake fits nicely on top. After that it's just a matter of sizing for cupcakes so I allowed a little room on either side for the next layer and then went up a little for each of the next.



My edges aren't perfect (after I drew the circles with pencil I cut it out with a jigsaw) so I trimmed the edges with ribbon. If you are going to use ribbon instead of sanding more I recommend that the ribbon be the same width as your board thickness but I didn't think about it and by the time we started gluing it was the morning of the wedding and there wasn't time to go to the store, haha. So my ribbon is a bit too wide.



The nice thing about building it this way is that you don't have to use all of the layers:



The layers can be separated into multiple towers:



And you don't even have to center anything so you really have a lot of flexibility.



When storing you can stack it flat which is what I did for quite a while.



But later I decided that it was more convenient to use a pan rack (this one was picked up at Walmart) to make it easier to get to the layers I wanted. It also takes up less shelf space (slightly) this way.



And to finish it off, how about a couple more action shots:





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10-10-10 = 42 and Happily Ever After

This Sunday, I was a 10-10-10 bride. A little over a year ago we were deciding on dates when hubby, being a computer geek, noticed that the date was all 1s and 0s and could be a binary number. Since he was sitting at the computer anyway he converted it to decimal and behold, it was 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything At least, it is according to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but maybe there is something to it because it sure felt like a great day to me.



Our ceremony was in a casino since I do live in Reno after all. And I must say if you are getting married in Reno, the Atlantis really was beautiful. We looked at several of the chapels here and considered the possibility of an outdoor wedding. Unfortunately, the weather in mid October is a little too unpredictable to guarantee good outdoor weather (though it did turn out to be a beautiful day) and all of the chapels we saw looked like they might have been decorated in the 80's and then forgotten. I wanted something a little prettier and the Atlantis certainly delivered. They partition off ballrooms and bring in an arch just for the weddings and it's quite pretty.

I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding since, as lovely as it was, it's only one day and we have the rest of our lives to be married. Luckily my family and friends are fantastic and honestly, I don't know how anyone pulls off a wedding without the help of friends and family.

All of my photos were taken by family members and friends. Luckily, someone got a nice shot of the Atlantis for me.



Selena made my cake and cupcakes and did a beautiful job. I feel that I am seriously indebted to her for this. The cake stand (cupcake tower) I made with what lumber I already had in the garage and I think it turned out pretty. My nieces Brianna and Julia helped make and place little 42s on every cupcake, too.





Since this wasn't my first wedding and we both came in to this marriage with children we decided that the kids would be our bridesmaids and groomsmen. My children walked me in and gave me away.



Technically Keith was a groomsman but he was 100% sure that he was our miniature Master of Ceremonies.



Family vows were also added to include the children as they are a very necessary component of this life and relationship.





Groomsmen


Bridesmaids


Our first family photo. I told Eric that we should come up with more reasons for him to wear a tux because he looks fantastic in one.



We actually managed to get all 11 grandkids in one place at the same time.



Though very soon we will need a new picture so we can have all 12... These are my sisters, without whom (along with Selena and Mom) I would have never pulled off a wedding so well.



Not at all hard to tell what the kids are thinking about.




Erin was glad to finally get her hands on some chocolate. Yum!



It was impossible to catch all of the family in any one shot so we took lots. The man on the left of the second shot is Eric's best friend and also our Pianist. I owe so many thanks to him as well.




All of the children had fun blowing bubbles everywhere. So did many of the adults.



All in all, quite a lovely day.