birthday

Princess Doll Cake – The (Almost) Caketastrophe

January 5, 2012 By Lisa 243 Comments

Let this post serve more as a warning to you folks attempting to make your own Princess Doll Cake, m’kay?

Note the strategic blurring of the photo around the edges, particularly the bottom. Don’t ask what happened to the bottom cake. It wasn’t pretty.

First, save yourself some trouble – not every cake needs to be made from scratch. I’m not a big boxed cake fan to begin with, but there are some decent all-natural and organic cake mixes out there you can use. Take my advice, use them. Don’t be like us. Frosting and decorating this monstrosity is enough of a hassle without the added torture of baking a cake entirely from scratch added to it.

Second, be sure to follow directions, especially when it concerns the decorative frosting. Y’know, the frosting you’re not familiar with using, haven’t made in a long time, using all-natural food coloring you’ve never used before. Yeah. That.

Don’t wing it. Read and follow the directions. Completely. And when you get to the part of the directions when it tells you to “let it sit for fifteen minutes” before using it, LET IT SIT FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Or else your yellow icing is too drippy to be decorative, and instead of ruffles, you get drips. (See top picture for details.) See how the pinky-white is so much better than the yellow? Yeah. That’s because it sat while I ~~messed up~~ did the yellow. *slaps forehead*

Thirdly, if you use a real doll (as we did), and use a batter bowl (like ours from Pampered Chef), the doll’s feet will stick out below, requiring the need for a second cake to go underneath. By making a second cake, we were able to thwart the foot dangling issue, but for the love of whatever you consider holy, do yourself a favor, and don’t make it look like mine.

(For the doll cake recipe, cooking times and more, go here. And for the doll cake “picks” to use instead of a real doll, to ensure no feet dangling issues, see Wilton’s site for a good selection, or your local crafty store, like Joann’s.)

Also, allow yourself extra frosting, and make sure you use regular frosting on the intended “frosted” parts (those you plan to frost with a knife or spreader, especially on the second cake) or else, be prepared to smear harder-than-normal frosting on the bottom cake. You’ll be left wondering what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks you’re doing, and whether you can take pictures of the top part of the cake without getting the bottom, since it’s a complete and total disaster area. (See below.) *facepalm*

But in the end, it’s actually funny (in an ironic, kind-of way), because the kids actually marveled at the cake. (No really, they did!) ”Wow, mom! You made the cake look like her dress!”

(Even if I didn’t think it looked that great, it sure did to them. Mostly.)

Besides, it was pretty cathartic to hack into that bad-boy once the singing ceased, the appetites were whetted, and the knife was sharp. After all the pain we’d gone through, and mistakes we’d made, seeing the cake being served, and half gone, gave me a weird accomplished sense of pride (and thankfulness the dang thing still tasted good despite being only semi-okay to look at).

I’ll never look at my poor daughter’s doll the same again.

(P.S. See more of my #dessertfail posts here. Further proof that mom needs to step away from the kitchen every so often.)

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A Happy Birthday Lesson (To Me)

November 20, 2011 By Lisa Leave a Comment

Today, as I celebrate being thirty-five years young, and (not) celebrating having to check off the 35-44 category on questionnaires now (instead of the 25-34 category), I am proof that you’re never too old or too young to keep learning new, valuable lessons. Even on your birthday.

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Yesterday, when my husband took (most of) the kids out of the house (I imagined, in search of a gift for me for my birthday), I had a house filled with nothings and silence that I had no idea what to do with myself. I strapped on my (too tight) compression pants and a pregnant belly-exposing tank-top, and began cranking in some miles on the elliptical, having been way too long since the last time I’d set foot on it.

I wasn’t even on it for a .1 mile before one of my sons came in with an argument. I stop.
After his issue was fixed, and I restart the elliptical and DVR, another son comes in with HIS problem. I stop. Again.
And then his problem gets fixed, and I restart the elliptical and DVR, huffing and puffing in aggravation and now, instead of a relaxing, “Time for me” workout, it’s about releasing aggressions and painful reminders to myself why I haven’t seen the dang thing in a few weeks.

The doorbell rings. Surely, it had to be one of the neighbor kids, I thought to myself. “DAMN IT! NOW WHAT!?” I let out in a loud yell, infuriated and aggravated.

I huff and puff my way to the door, sweat forming, towel around my neck, practically marching when I approach my glass door and see it’s a blonde woman with a button down blouse I don’t recognize. I open the door.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” She says to me, smiling.

My look of WTF turned into a look of shock.

She had, in her hands, a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a bright orange card. I was suddenly heavily embarrassed by my anger and frustration. “Thank you,” I stammered, peeking behind her to see a familiar mom-type minivan with a small person peeking out the window, waving, helping her mother with deliveries.

Tears welled up behind my eyes, as I hid them from her while looking down at the bouquet in the beautiful heavy purple vase (my favorite color). I thanked her again and closed the door to let the tears fall. I hadn’t even opened the card yet.

These lovely flowers are from the kind folks at Nintendo. Thank you for always being so wonderful to me!

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This morning, my toddler tried waking me to tell me she was hungry. I couldn’t tell if she was talking in her sleep or actually wanting to eat. It didn’t matter, though, I had no idea of the time, and since I’m a light sleeper, she had awakened me. I laid there, cuddling her for a while, after finally realizing she was dreaming, wondering if I should just get up or relax a bit longer.

Footsteps came barreling down the stairs. Whispered discussions and opening/closing of the fridge, with an all-too familiar sound of the egg carton opening, and the over-spraying of the pan. Someone boop-beep-booped the house alarm off and went outside, plates shifting, forks whipping up eggs in a bowl, clammering around in the kitchen, despite their whispers and attempts to be quiet, I was now fully on RED ALERT in that my two eleven-year-olds were fixing eggs, and my oldest was the one outside to feed our neighbors dogs while they were away.

I stretched my leg over to a sleeping hubby, jabbing him in the leg with my toe, whispering softly but firmly, trying my best not to wake Baby Sis on my left arm, and Baby Dude on my right, both leaning on me. Finally, he stirred. “Babe, can you check on the kids? I’m pretty sure they’re cooking eggs without supervision.”

His eyes weren’t even open, but he sat up, releasing a tired sigh, slumped over as he stammered, blurry-eyed into the kitchen. I heard his supervisory tone, and more dishes and forks and things happening. Minutes later, he appeared and laid back down. I tried whispering back and forth with him about what was happening, when Baby Dude woke up.

The conversation didn’t last long, my husband tried his hardest to fall back asleep, but the overpowering smell of pancakes suddenly had me concerned again. “Babe? Are they making pancakes, too!?”

He bolted upright and into the kitchen as fast as he could. It was undeniable, the familiar smell of pancake batter, and neither child had any clue what they were doing. The dish-clanging was much louder, now, as were the whispers and sink running and “OH, WHOOPS” type responses I heard.

Moments later, standing before me, were two bright-eyed, wide-smiled eleven-year olds with a green kiddie plate filled with scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast they made for me. “Happy birthday, mom! We made you breakfast in bed!”

“Oh my….. thank you!”

Here, all this time, I thought they were trying to make themselves breakfast, and it was actually all for me. “Dad is making the waffle we were trying to make you. We were doing it wrong.”

Baby Dude began eyeing my eggs, and Baby Sis, now awake, snagged a piece of raisin bread toast. (The kids had made me three slices.)

I never got to enjoy what they made, as it was picked off by my hungry toddlers, and I never got a waffle, because my son was trying to create his own recipe to make just.one.waffle. and added about twice as much milk as he should have (my husband told me he was stirring a bowl of lumpy milk trying to make it happen), but I truly appreciated their effort in wanting to make me breakfast for my birthday. They later confessed they’d actually wanted to stay up all night to do it. (Holy scary thought, Batman!)

What I found when I tried to make coffee – the mess they’d left behind creating my birthday breakfast. LOL

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Mom’s never-too-old birthday lesson learned – things are not always what they seem, and definitely not always the worst thing you’ve imagined. (But mom’s instincts are dead on – yes, your kids were trying to burn the house down. They ran the toaster oven with plastic and paper still sitting on top.)

It might not be the most perfectly executed birthday ever, but it’s always perfect when my family is celebrating it with me.

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Toy Story Birthday Party

September 28, 2011 By Lisa Leave a Comment

This was Baby Dude’s first big-deal birthday party, where he was old enough to realize everything happening. He’d been talking about it being his ‘birt-day” for weeks now, but doing all of THIS? This was HUGE to him.

As huge Toy Story fans, we’ve amassed quite a collection of Toy Story paraphernalia. We broke it all out for this shindig, and set up his play set action figures on the table as decorations.

We hung color coordinating ribbons, and hung dangly ceiling decor with a huge helium Toy Story balloon from Party City.

I flipped my two-tier centerpiece and aligned Buzz Light Year, Woody and Jessie to hug together in the center.

To create the “Andy’s Bed” cake shape, we needed to bake it in a 9×13 pan, and make some gingerbread dough to roll out and cut into the shape of the headboard. We then cut out thick “pillows” from the dough, and, with the excess dough, we created cut-out cookies in Disney shapes. Can you guess who?

I may or may not have gotten flour on my pregnant belly in the process. Whoops!

Meanwhile, I was busy at work creating the homemade “Pizza Planet” pizza for the party. I used pre-made dough, organic pizza sauce, and made cheese pizza, sausage pizza, and sausage with peppers pizza.

Time to sing!

Here’s our all-natural finished product – our Andy’s Bed Toy Story Cake! A from-scratch made vanilla cake made with homemade whipped cream icing, gingerbread headboard and pillows, and melted-then-frozen chocolate chips, cut into pieces to signify the cow design on Woody‘s vest, topped off with a miniature Woody and Buzz on the top, and a number three candle.