Number 10

This is always such a busy time of year for our family as it is the season of vacations, holidays, and birthdays. Daylor's 10th birthday is at the end of September. It gets harder as the kids grow older trying to pick out themes that are age appropriate and still fun. Daylor has been playing the piano for a couple of years and absolutely has a gift for it. He's written multiple songs and insists on practicing at least an hour a day. So, in light of his enjoyment of it he chose to have a piano/keyboard theme.


Now, we are not the type folks that go all out for parties. I have some friends who throw their kids AMAZING parties for their children. They make extraordinary invitations and party favors and games and decorations - every detail is thought of and it is so beautiful! Me, well, I have learned to accept that I might be in the minority of my buddies who throw birthday parties. Pretty much my kids are lucky if they get birthday hats! That doesn't mean we don't plan and put an emphasize on their birthday's because we do! Our parties are just a bit more (OK, a lot more) understated, but we still have a blast!! At our house, the party is ALL about the cake!

If you will remember this post from earlier this year about my relationship with the confection, I challenge myself each time to make something creative and beyond what I think I can do. This year I made my largest cake yet! A 3 foot 3 inch keyboard cake. Probably one of the most fun I've ever done!



I found a picture on line where someone had used Kit-Kat's as the black keys on a regular 13x9 sized piano cake, but it looked funky and off-balanced. So, I borrowed their idea and put 3 sheet pans together to make it life sized. This made the Kit-Kat keys look much more realistic. I iced the chocolate first after I marked on the cake how far to come down, then followed with the white icing. After waiting about 20 minutes for the icing to harden up some, I took a kabob skewer and using a ruler, I measured the keys one inch apart. I used the edge of the skewer to make the impressions of the spaces between the keys on top and in the front of the cake. Then, I placed my Kit-Kats down. For the decorations, I used several flavors of Tic- Tacs, upside down Hershey's Kisses, and white Mentos for blinky lights and the knobs. The volume had to be ten, of course for Daylor's age, but it took some serious self control not to bump it up one more to eleven (for those of you who have no clue what I talking about, you would have to see the movie Spinal Tap to understand. And yes, I am THAT old.).



Because we had just come home from vacation we decided to have a family only small party where Daylor got all kinds of great stuff he loved!

The cake is always a surprise for them and Daylor seemed to get a kick out of seeing his keyboard in edible form.

After gift opening and cake and ice cream, Daylor gave us a concert of some of the music he has been writing and Perri did a little interpretive dancing for the family.

Then the kids got thier worship team together and sang a few tunes to end the night out.

We had a wonderful time and Daylor had a great birthday!

Playing Like There Snow Tomorrow..and Other Stuff

Duglin got a fabulous late winter birthday surprise last week! It snowed. ALOT. It doesn't really snow that much here where we live. We might get a couple of dusting's every season but usually it's here today and gone tomorrow.

It started snowing around noon and didn't stop until 6: 00 the next morning. 12 inches later we had ourselves a winter wonderland! We actually had a drift or two that was 2 ft! That's huge for us! We bundled the kids up, I armed my self with the camera, and we all headed outside for some birthday snow fun!

Duglin always like to do things a little "differently" - wears his clothes backwards and inside out, eats with the wrong end of a spoon, dips his carrots in ice cream. Here, he is making a "belly-flop" face down snow angel. I just love that kid!

WE have a couple of great hills in our backyard that make for sledding fun. We didn't have a sled so we used the top of the turtle sandbox. They LOVED that! Our rat terrier, Harmini was having a ball, too!

We all had a such a blast. Well, maybe with the exception of...

I am not sure what is more sad, the fact that Sundae's tail is so far between her legs that it nearly froze to her belly, or that I made her wear a coat. Poor baby!

Isn't he gorgeous?!

Duglin had a wonderful birthday party! The cake turned out cute and I had minimal green food coloring under my fingernails. We had a military theme this year.

In Duglin fashion, gift opening time went much like this.

AAAAAAAAAAnd, we're done.

A Love/Hate Relationship

I don't know why I do it to myself. About 3 times a year I do something that I am so conflicted over, so stressed out about, and SO completely obsessed with. I have practiced, failed, retried, "stayed the course", trained, and nope, we're not talking about a marathon here. I'm talking about baking and decorating my kids birthday cakes.

This is a major source of stress in my life and Duglin's birthday is coming up next weekend so the strategic planning has begun. This all started back on Daylor's 1st birthday. I REALLY wanted to make his first birthday cake. I had in mind this "simple" & cute hedgehog cake. (I know, a hedgehog cake for a first birthday? What was I thinking? Apparently, I wasn't. All that nursing I did must have sucked the brains cells dry.) There was just one itsy-bitsy problem. I couldn't cook.

Like the good mommy I was, I ventured out into the uncharted territories of baking and attempted to make this joker. Umm, attempted. This was my fourth try. The first I burnt. The second I drop on the floor. The third fell into a bazillion pieces when I dumped it out of the pan. Finally, after calling my best friend and cousin and sobbing to her on the phone for an hour, I tried, yet again, and came up with this. (Kinda creepy looking, huh?)

I am not one to ignore challenges. I forced myself after his birthday to commit to making the cakes every year. "WHY!??!?!?," myself screamed to myself! Because it was and still is hard for me. Sure, I could just order one, but because this is such a challenge I make myself do it every birthday. The first 5 years I HATED it. I whined and I complained. I continually burnt and broke most of those cakes, and I had to control myself as to not cuss at every Duncan Hines cake mix I saw. I even begrudgingly took some cake decorating classes. I kept trying and still do.

But now, even though I couldn't say it's something I would enjoy doing everyday, I have learned to like it when those birthdays come around. I enjoy the creativity behind coordinating the cake with the birthday themes the kids pick out.

I have done LOTS of car themes:

I also like the cakes below because they are what I call "interactive cakes." The first pictures are of Daylor's last year's cake. He had a Hot Wheels theme and so I found the rad car launcher that we let him and a couple of the other kids launch Hot Wheels cars into before we served it up. (This the only time of year we let the kids play with their food.)

Then, there was this cake which is probably one of my favorites. We found this cute remote control Caterpillar bulldozer. We made it look like the bulldozer had plowed through the cake and then let Duglin, push the cake around and off on to our guests plates. THAT was a most excellent cake, especially with a kid whose is a hands on kind of guy! It was a blast!

I LOVE to use props with my cakes, and at Daylor's 4th birthday he was really into dump trucks. Target had this huge dump truck in it's summer stuff for $5.00 and I made this AWESOME recipe that included crumbled chocolate cake, (I used Devil's food and milk chocolate for two different colors to have a more realistic "dirt" look.), Cool Whip, a little bit of strong brewed coffee, chocolate pudding, and Heath bits. I poured it into the truck's bed and popped in a few candles. Looks like dirt, but tastes sooooooo good! Fast and EASY!

I have made a few dinosaur themes including a Dinosaur Park cake complete with a picture of Duglin walking his T-Rex.

We've done Blues Clues and frog ponds. One of Duglin's nicknames is "Frogga."

I am even venturing out a bit and doing a few cakes for close friends and relatives.

But my absolute favorite cakes to do are my girlie-girl's cakes.

My favorite and best cake by far was for Perri's Cinderella themed birthday last year. It took three hours to complete, but I did it!

So there ya have it. My love/hate relationship. With cake. And this Friday night I will once again trash the kitchen, dye my fingernails green with food gels, and wonder what is wrong is with me as I make another culinary birthday surprise for my precious Duglin's birthday party. I have a LONG way to go and someday I might even be brave enough to try to use fondant, but for now it's just me, my lazy Susan, and my Wilton tips. Wish me luck!