Icing Smiles Ornaments: Give the Gift of Smiles This Holiday Season

Meet the family and Sugar Angel who inspired this year’s design. 

We are so excited to share with you our second annual limited-edition Icing Smiles ornament and the family and Sugar Angel who inspired this year’s design.

Whether you’re looking for a new tree ornament to add the final touch to your holiday setup, a gift to give a cake-lover or Sugar Angel in your life, or a way to support a nonprofit near and dear to your heart, your purchase helps us to provide custom celebration cakes and other treats to families impacted by the critical illness of a child. 

How? The cost of this ornament covers the cost of a cake so that a child can receive smiles and happy memories, even in the darkest of times.

Meet Super Sibling Christopher

This year’s ornament is a replica of a cake delivered to Super Sibling Christopher Gonce on his fourth birthday. Christopher’s family has a genetic predisposition for cancer called Li-Fraumeni. Christopher tested positive for the gene, which means he has a 50% chance of childhood cancer and an 80% chance of lifetime cancer. So far, Christopher has been cancer free.

However, his little brother Joshua hasn’t been as lucky. The doctors found a large sarcoma in Joshua’s leg during his first annual MRI. Now 20 months old, Joshua and his parents spend a lot of time in the hospital at doctor and chemo appointments.

“Christopher has struggled to vie for attention,” says his mom, Rebecca Gonce. “He is not quite old enough to explain what is going on in our lives, but he knows his brother gets a lot of special treatment: He doesn’t always have to eat his dinner. He gets to sleep with Mommy when he isn’t feeling well. But Christopher never puts up a fight. He has been so patient with all the extra attention his brother has been getting.”

Rebecca heard about Icing Smiles through her mother-in-law and thought it would be the perfect way to give Christopher a day all to himself. She applied and was connected with Sugar Angel Megan Angolia. Christopher’s chosen theme? Construction. 

“It’s an obsession with the boys in my house,” Rebecca says. “He can name any construction vehicle that’s ever been created. He will correct me if I call it a backhoe when it’s a front-end loader. ‘That’s not a bulldozer,’ he’ll say. ‘That’s a skid steer.’ We drive a special way to school so he can have construction sites on his side of the window.”

Constructing the Cake

A figurative sculptor, Megan started working as a cake decorator at a bakery in 2016. Using her background in sculpture, she specialized in 3D fondant cake toppers and sculpted cakes. But having previously worked at a nonprofit, she was looking for a way to give back. She joined Icing Smiles as a Sugar Angel five years ago. Christopher’s cake was her third call to action. 

For Christopher’s construction-themed cake, she created a front-end loader using modeling chocolate. The loader, manned by a character that looks just like Christopher, is lifting a 6-inch vanilla cake with vanilla icing. It sits on a chocolate-frosted cake scattered with Oreo-crumble dirt and edible construction cones.

Megan delivered the cake the day of Christopher’s birthday party, and Christopher was nibbling on the construction cones before she could finish setting everything up on a table wrapped in caution tape. 

“It was fantastic,” Rebecca says. “I swear, she’s a creative genius. All I did was say construction, and she just went with the idea. She even asked me for a picture of Christopher so she could model the character that was driving the loader after him — big head and big eyes just like in real life.”

For the first time, Christopher was able to invite friends from school to help him celebrate. They played in a bounce house for hours. But it wasn’t just a special day for Christopher. 

“Remembering the joy this gave me brings me to tears,” Rebecca says. “We have had a rough year. Finances have been tight since our youngest’s diagnosis, and I haven’t been as present with Christopher because I have been in the hospital with Joshua. This cake made our son feel so valued and important, and the gesture of kindness and love made us all feel understood and cared for.”

For weeks after the party, Christopher talked about the “cake lady,” asking when she can come back, his mom says. 

Picking the 2022 Ornament

Last year’s ornament featured a replica of the first cake ever delivered by Icing Smiles — for Violet’s forever 7th birthday in January of 2010. Sales helped us raise $5,658, which has helped make the 2,700+ cakes delivered so far in 2022 possible. 

“When picking the cake this year, we wanted to showcase how our bakers take something that doesn’t look like a cake and make it into a cake,” says Icing Smiles’ Development Coordinator Chelsea Boog. “It was such an honor for the organization to get to serve Christopher, and we are so excited to hear he loved his cake. This ornament is special to us, telling the story of the power of a cake and what Icing Smiles does, and we love that this year’s is inspired by a Super Sibling!”

Rebecca says she was shocked when she learned Christopher’s cake would be represented on the 2022 ornament: “To think we’re a part of it is really astounding. You have an opportunity to share that special ornament and that special day and make something so important to us a part of a family memory for someone else. It’s wonderful.”

Give the Gift of Smiles

The beautifully designed ornament is 2.3 wide and 2.5 inches tall and is available for purchase online. Yes, we know the form says tickets, but we can’t change it. One “ticket” equals one ornament. The price includes shipping, and all ornaments will be shipped beginning of December.