Review: A Sweet Fix cakes

So, back up to my daughter's first months of life... stress had already set in about her first birthday party.  I knew already from television, my friends and the Internet that one of the single most important things you can do for your child revolves around their first birthday party.  I am kidding... I think... but the first birthday party is huge to some people.  With that information logged securely in my brain, I set out to find a place to purchase an awesome cake. 

We live in the DFW area of Texas and I knew that, ideally, I wanted to stay local to the Ft Worth area since I didn't want to drive all over creation to get a cake.  I had a cake made from another local bakery the year before for my baby shower and it was expensive and not really worth it.  I wanted a better experience.  I began looking for local bakers with decent pricing.  I will say that even though a person doesn't seem to have their ducks in a row on their website or in person they sometimes want to charge an arm and a leg for their cakes and I wasn't down for that either.  I do understand the cost difference between a grocery store bakery and a baker making us a custom cake and am definitely willing to pay more for the craftsmanship and quality. 

Mission: Find a local bakery who provided consistently good cakes, good flavors and decent pricing.  Who would have guessed this would be so difficult to find?  Most wanted to offer a single layer cake or cupcakes for the price that I wanted to pay for everything.  Or their cake flavors were sub par.  Also, I look a lot at online reviews.  I always figure that if you are upset enough to go online and write a poor review then you must have a had a bad experience. 

Then I found Heather from A Sweet Fix on Facebook.  *angels singing and a harp playing* 

 

She offered numerous pictures of her cakes, from all angles and multiple different categories, like birthday, adult themed, etc.  Her website included flavor lists, what she normally offers for cakes and it's obvious that she does custom work.  I really enjoyed looking through the pictures of the cakes that she has made in the past for inspiration and was glad that I got to take full advantage of that before I called her so I was semi-prepared.


 I called and spoke to her right away.  She was so friendly!  We talked about what I wanted (hot pink, black and white Minnie Mouse for Isabella's first birthday party) but other than that I was open.  I knew that I wanted a layer cake, 2 smash cakes (one for pictures and one for the actual party) and some cupcakes.  I was open to flavors and decorations on the cake.  We decided on a layer cake with vanilla cake and vanilla buttercream for her bigger cake, chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream for her cupcakes and vanilla cake and vanilla buttercream for her smash cakes.  Other than that, I left the decorations up to her.  She quoted me a price well under what I was expecting and I almost fell out of my chair!  Based on what we had seen from other bakeries this seemed too good to be true!!

This is what she came up with!!  We thought it was amazing.  I will admit that we did leave the cake out in the hot for a bit too long and so it slid a bit but the taste was AWESOME!  As you can see Isabella loved it as well!  The cake was so moist and delicious!  The buttercream was sweet but not overly sweet, which is a delicate balance that not many people can get correct.  The chocolate cupcakes were great!  I was completely happy with our order. 

 

Of course, I was so pleased with our first order that we went back to her on Isabella's second birthday and this was the result.  Again I left it open to her creativity and I was super pleased.  Forgive the nameplate - she made an error but fixed it ASAP!

Again, it was delicious!!  This time we decided on vanilla cake on one layer and strawberry cake on the other.  This tasted like actual strawberries and not some fake strawberry gross flavoring.  It was AMAZING!  We had a relatively small party and managed to have less cake leftover than the last party where we had one of her cakes.  It was a hit! 

 

I will say that normally she works with fondant on cakes but we don't usually care for it so she makes our cakes with buttercream.  Even though she doesn't normally make them that way, I think that she does an amazing job.  I have recommended Heather to all of my friends, family and anyone that I know from Ft Worth who is looking for a cake.  She does awesome work and you really feel like you are getting a fair price considering all of the detail work that she puts into her cakes.  You can tell from the pictures above that she attended to all the little details, like even the little hot pink bows on the Minnie Mouse heads were perfectly shaped.  It's the attention to those kind of details that really make her cakes stand out.  I envision that we will be ordering cakes from Heather for years!! 

 

For more information and details you can visit Heather on her website http://asweetfix4u.com  or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/asweetfix .

Taking my own advice and admitting one of my faults

This advice is hard for me to say outloud because I am one of the worst people with this topic.  This one idea is applicable in almost every situation that one comes across, and you will almost never be in the wrong for remembering to do this.  Ready?  Mind your own business.  That's it.  It sounds so simple, right?  Trust me, as a self-proclaimed busy body - it's not. 

I am a gossip.  I don't like celebrities at all (partially because I don't understand why most of them are famous), but I am quick to gossip about a lot of other people/subjects.  It's not 100% bad but it definitely is almost always 100% destructive.  Even if you start out with the best of intentions to not beat someone down with gossip, it's like your brain gets total control and you end up going crazy. 

I was reminded of this again tonight while watching the most recent video of one of my favorite YouTube mommy vloggers (dreamflight6000).  She is the mother of two cute little boys and the eldest has been diagnosed within the last year with Type 1 diabetes.  She shares a lot of details about their struggle as a family with his diagnosis, and some of his day to day operations with it, which I appreciate even though I don't have it and I don't know anyone else who does.  She is very informative and she is an awesome teacher.  They had a scare this week with her child's medicine, and had to end up calling 911 for an ambulance to come to their house for her little boy.  It was very scary for everyone and traumatizing for both Amy and her family.  In her video she mentioned that she did not want to explain what happened because she gets a lot of hate comments on her diabetes videos normally and doesn't want to make that any worse, which I totally respect.  When she said that, it just broke my heart, because she is dealing with this diagnosis as well as can be expected and works hard everyday to ensure life is good for both of her boys.  Who are these people to post hate on her videos?  Who are these other people to presume to know anything about his medical condition and give potentially deadly advice re: different medicines that they should try or different alternative diets that they should put him on to "cure" diabetes?  Can't we just give support and butt out?  Why is it that, as a society, we have to project our thoughts and opinions on other people who are just wanting to tell us their story?  Can't we just mind our own business?  It makes me embarassed as a person who watches her videos on behalf of these people who can not just watch and leave positive comments...

Thinking futher about this though made me remember and realize that, while I am not guilty of projecting any negativity and hate towards Amy and her son that I do "hate" on whole groups of people for random reasons.  Never racial or anything like that, but I will detail one of those below:






Parents who don't ERF (extended rear face) their children in car seats.  Let me start by saying that I don't say anything to anyone's face re: this subject unless approached by the person to talk about our situation.  I don't chase parents around in the parking lot of stores with brochures showing decapitated children or anything like that, but I do say things outloud in my car anytime I see a small child foward-facing in a car.  I don't care how many times I hear that someone's kid screams bloody murder in the backseat, or how their child was too tall to sit rear facing, it is still PROVEN safer for children to sit rear facing as long as their sit still fits them for weight and height than to be turned around.  It's not uncomfortable for your children to sit like that past one year no matter how tall they are.  Now, I understand that every parent has the right to make decisions for their own child and that there are people out there who turned their child around at (insert inappropriately small number of months) and their child was fine, but seriously, why is this like a badge of honor?  Leave them turned rear facing.  Your child doesn't know what they are missing.  Why would you want to take your child's safety for granted?  My children are 28 months and 13 months and they will remain rear facing until they outgrow their seats.  We have a Sunshine Kids Radian XTSL in grey and a Diono XTSL in grey camoflauge. 

I feel justified by talking about these parents because it's better for their children, but when I start to think about it, I am no better than those people hating on Amy and her family.  They probably feel that they have her son's best interest at heart but in reality are just as annoying as I probably am about the ERF topic. I can't vow to alter my way of thinking because I will never change that, but I can resolve to stop being so negative about parents that choose differently than I do.  I am making an effort to be better.  I can't promise anything but an attempt, but I will definitely work on it. 

-Sara