Cakes and Kids and Two-Headed Giraffes

So this past weekend started out with a trip to the zoo. My daughter adores the zoo, and loves it even more if her Moose goes with her.

No not that Moose...this Moose.

So we spent a few hours at the zoo on Saturday and a good time was had by all...even the two-headed giraffe. I was so tired by the time I got home that I wasn't even going to attempt to start baking for the party on Monday.So on Sunday I started the baking. Oh the baking! I had a castle cake to make and a Cinderella cake to make and cupcakes to make for the Punk to take to school. Not that I am an overachiever or anything. Just an overcommiter. Plus...I had to live up to the awesomeness that was the cake last year....

So I started with the baking after sleeping in late on Sunday. And I baked, and I baked......and I baked. I was trying to get it all done before going to my niece's birthday party. She is turning 3 this coming Sunday. My sister is due with her 5th child on Saturday. The second child is having a birthday on Nov. 5th. What does this all mean other than my sister has a lot of children? It also means she gets laid on her birthday every year and never fails to get pregnant. But I digress.

This is the progression of cake baking that transpired on Sunday. It started with the castle cake and half the cupcakes.

I didn't take pictures of the cupcakes because, let's be honest, everyone has either baked those puppies or decorated them and I didn't do anything special because they were all going to be devoured by sugar starved preschoolers, anyway. So I managed to get that up there and the Cinderella cake baked. The story on the Cinderella cake was when I asked the Punk what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday, she informed me that she wanted a chocolate happy face cake, a chocolate Cinderella cake and a castle cake. I planned on just making the castle cake until I found the "now discontinued in stores" Cinderella cake pan in the clearance section at the craft store. $12.99 marked down to $3.69. BOO-YAH! While I may be the clearance queen, I am also over ambitious and a poor judge of time management. So I took a break from the Cinderella and castle cakes to go to the niece's party. I can't show pics because I don't have permission, but I can show you the almost done bun in the oven.

So after the party was over, I came home to decorate some cakes. I got the cupcakes and the castle done before I realized it was 3am and I was about to fall out. Here's the finished castle.

I fully planned on getting up the next day and decorating the Cinderella cake, the house, and wrapping all the Punk's presents. The party was at 4:30pm. I ended up putting the gifts in bags and I quickly put up about half of the decorations. Eh. She's 5. She won't remember that the entire room was supposed to be hosed down with silly string like I promised. I'm not even going to show pictures of the undecorated disaster of a Cinderella cake. Thank goodness it tasted OK with just a slapped on layer of frosting. She got a great haul of presents, and was thrilled to the point of ecstatic at being able to blow out the candles. There was a paper princess decoration on the table that almost got in the way of the flaming candles, but we managed to avoid disaster. When she got home from school and saw all the decorations, her first reaction was to tear the castle and the Cinderella off the wall all the while complaining, "What the name is going on here? It's not the same! Someone hurt my house! It's not the same! Ooh...balloons!"
Here are some pictures from the party. She hasn't let go of that card since the party. She just keeps opening it and singing along to "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes."



There is a picture of the centerpiece we almost set on fire, a picture of me with a flaming cake and a picture of Punk after she blew out the candles. So that's about it. Lots of sugar and kids and energy (not mine) and princesses. She had a great time. She was so happy with all the Cinderella stuff she got. She has come such a long way. I can't believe my baby is 5 years old already. Since Tysgirl asked, I am going to post a few pictures of Punk's miraculous beginnings.



She was only 1lb. 5oz. She was 11 3/4" long. I was only 23 weeks along when I had her. She was born dead. I died during delivery. We are both survivors.