For most of this past week, I’ve felt frustrated because I haven’t gotten much of anything done when it comes to the house, projects, blog posts, etc., but, in reality, this past week was more about just being ‘mom’. We’ve celebrated both boys birthdays (their birthdays are only 4 days apart) with small cakes and family dinners. My oldest went to a chemistry camp an hour an a half away every day this past week, so we were up and in the car by 6:30am everyday and not back home until late in the afternoon. The only upside to the camp was that while he was in camp, I was able to do some discount shopping for a few décor items and some other delayed ‘essentials’. Not to mention Easter shopping…last minute birthday shopping, etc.! One day, I literally climbed into the back of my car with the seats down to wrap presents because it’s the only time I had to do it:)

I’ve said before that I would share my project successes as well as failures, and I have to say, the cakes are on the line this year! Normally (in a non-covid, planned party world), I like to create big cakes for them and take time and plan details, etc., but the past two birthdays for them have been at home, with just family, so it meant a much smaller cake. And, since I’m not a fan of using fondant (never found one I liked the taste of and that’s kind of the point of cake….to eat it:)), I only use homemade buttercream icing. I always get a general idea from the boys on what ‘theme’ they want, then google images to get some ideas and go from there.

My oldest wanted Godzilla with burning buildings, so I decided to try something new and use a modeling Rice Krispy recipe and then melted candy coating over it rather than using icing (I thought it would be smoother). I’ve used Rice Krispies before, but never done the melted candy coating on them. I think with practice it would come out better or smoother, or maybe if I had melted enough to dip the full brick in a few times, but I wasn’t super thrilled with how this one came out.

My youngest wanted a Lego cake. Sounds simple enough right…. well, his favorite color is red, and anyone who decorates cakes knows that red icing that actually gets red tastes awful, and the ‘no taste’ one never gets red, just really pink. So, in my ‘camp time’ shopping, I found a red liquid that was new and said it didn’t alter the consistency of the icing, had no taste, etc…..wrong…. I had to add so much red to get the red color that the icing was pretty runny, so extra time spent on attempting to smooth it out, which meant by the end of the process (literally right before we put the candles on it), I didn’t have enough icing left or time to make more for the white layer to his name (the goal being like the Lego logo colors) or to do any kind of board along the different color cubes, smooth the cubes or the marshmallow tops well, etc.

With all that said, it’s really only something I’ll beat myself up over, my kids thought their cakes were great, they tasted just fine and both of them were more focused on opening presents anyway:)

I’m hoping I will get to post up at least one new project I finished before the birthday/camp madness this week and am about to go pick up a new piece to work on – I’m super excited about this one for several reasons and HOPING it comes out like I plan, but it’s kind of a big project, so I’m not sure it will be finished this week, but maybe! And, as usual, tons of other ideas in my head, pieces sitting in the garage to complete, oh, and I promised my youngest I would build him a Lego table….so that will probably have to get done first or he’ll bug me to death:) But, first….Easter eggs and baskets…