Birthday Fun

Phew, Kate's birthday time is over! I baked a ladybug cake for her real birthday. I was out of red food coloring paste though, so I went to the party store to get some. I looked and looked, but they didn't have anything that was 'red red', the closest they had was terracotta. The little color dot on the top was very red though, so I just hoped it would be fine. Well, it wasn't! I made the icing, and found out that terracotta meant terracotta, not red, even although the color dot looked so nicely red. Added orange, added pink, cursed a bit, and then decided that a terracotta ladybug just would have to do LOL.

The next issue was the black spots and lines. Black is always hard to make, and it kept coming out more dark grey-ish than black, so I just hoped for the best on that one too. Luckily it looked black enough in contrast with the terracotta, but it still wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Of course, where I saw all the imperfections, Kate just saw the exact cake she wanted, a ladybug!!! She was happy with the result, so maybe I should be too :-)

For her birthday party, she had asked for a castle cake. I have made those before, and let's just say, they are not my favorite! Somehow my castles always seem to be structurally challenged, in danger of toppling over if you bump into the table, or talk too loud when close to them :-) But being the nice mom I am, I just decided to try it again, and hope for the best.


Well, this time, it actually came out right! How amazing! I think it helped that I did more rigorous cutting than usual, to make the pieces really flat. So I ended up with a bit smaller cake, but much sturdier than my normal castles, so I didn't care. Kate was thrilled with her castle, and so was I. Well, mostly, I still saw some flaws, but less than usual :-) She had chosen special Powerpuff Girls and horse candles, which made the cake even more special.

Now it's all over, and I just realized that the next birthday will be the new baby! Very much looking forward to meeting him!

Spring finally seems to be here for real! This was one long winter! But on Sunday, I saw my very first robin in our neighborhood! Monday I saw so many, I kind of tripped over them :-) Then Tara wanted to come with me in the afternoon, to see them too, and guess how many we saw? Yes, zero... Well, two flying ones, but not easy to see that they were robins.

So I offered her to come on my morning walk with me, and we saw tons of them again, she counted 26... Wow! No wonder I was tripping over them :-) She might have double counted one or two, but I am sure we saw at least 20 different ones.

We have some crocuses blooming too! And yesterday, I put black plastic on some of my gardens, to get a headstart on defrosting them, so I can start putting in some plants. Can't wait to get my hands dirty!