~three~

what a good number. happy 3 years brandon.

the curse of the cake

remember back in october when i made my very first wedding cake? i swore i would never do it again. well my dear friend jenni recently got married. she wasn't planning on having a cake... but for some reason beyond my understanding i volunteered to make one for her.... a rice crispy cake i should add. it was going to be so easy. a simple, small cake and because i wasn't using real cake i could make it days before the wedding and still be able to enjoy the festivities.

i got this genius idea to try a cake stencil. i did my internet research and again assured jenni that it would be so easy! she continued to remind me that she didn't need a cake and ordered that i not stress over it. haha, if you know anything about me, it's that stress and i go hand in hand. i don't do much in life without stress right there at my side.

i ordered a stencil and was excited to try it out on a practice cake. remember how easy it was going to be???? you were suppose to be able to tape the stencil to the cake, cover it with icing, scrape off the extra, remove the stencil, and wah-la... you have a beautiful cake! so easy! ha! ya, right. is any project ever easy? not in my life. first off, i couldn't get the stencil to lay flush with the cake. it gaped at the top and wouldn't stay on the cake long enough to get the icing on. i literally needed 3 hands. i wish i had a picture of the end result. terrible. it was a globby mess. so i waited for brandon to get home from work. he patiently held the stencil in place while i frosted. (i love that he always gets roped into my "easy" projects) even with his help, the cake was not much better. i practiced several more times with the same messy results. next, brandon got the fantastic idea to use spray food-coloring. i had some blue left over from a cake i made last august. i practiced with the bright blue color and it was perfect!!! except that her colors were peach and orange, not blue. sigh. so i googled more colors. nothing but bright, basic rainbow colors. i needed something soft and elegant. so i looked into an airbrush. i found a $15 gun at harbor freight and some airbrush ready color online. perfect.

tuesday: the colors arrived - ivory & peach. (did i mention the wedding was friday, and we were spending thursday night in fairview... talk about pushing it). i had the cake ready and started to apply the color. the airbrush worked amazingly well! the color on the other hand was terrible. the ivory was mustard yellow and the peach was hot pink. i looked into diluting them but every website said not to. grrr.
thankfully brandon was between classes and stopped in at michael's craft and found some airbrush food coloring. it was pearl (which really looked silver) but i didn't care at this point. i ended up using my own concoction of color and came up with a soft peach. perfect. 30 seconds into spraying, the gun stopped working. are you kidding me!!!! thinking it was clogged, brandon took it apart. but then we couldn't get it back together. after working on it for a good hour i had had enough and decide to just go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

wednesday morning: i exchanged the airbrush, then ran all over town re-buying supplies to make a new crispy cake since the other was covered in baby-poo-yellow. i got the cake remade and covered with fondant.... started spraying..... and.... the gun stopped working. aaahhhhaaahhaahhh. bad words.

wednesday night: wedding dinner. delicious but i was panicing inside the whole time. i was out of ideas. we came home and were able to get it working again! yay. i sprayed half the cake and let it dry overnight.

thursday morning: i woke up and decided the cake was far too big. (what is wrong with me?!) i went to walmart and bought a smaller pan and made a new cake top. i sprayed half and let it dry. in the meantime i got ready to spray the second half of the bottom layer of cake. don't worry, the gun stopped working again. at this point i was done. brandon was at work and then had a test to take so i knew i was completely on my own. i tried everything we had done the night before with no luck. then baby girl decided that this cake was getting far too much attention and demanded to be held and rocked and loved. sigh. brandon got home at 6:00. exactly when i had wanted to leave. instead, my house looked like a small bomb had gone off. there was powered sugar, marshmallows, and smears of crisco everywhere. i broke down. poor brandon got the wrath. this was not his first encounter with an over-stressed wife and he knew to leave me alone and quietly worked on the gun. i packed the car while sniffling and wiping away boogers. i kept thinking... this was going to be so easy. so so easy. a few minutes later brandon quietly told me that the gun was again working. i managed a pitiful 'thank you' and finished the cake. we were in the car by 6:45 with a finished cake sitting on my counter. i could not have been more relieved.

friday: the wedding was perfect... of course. we drove home from manti and packed up the cake. it looked beautiful (if i do say so myself) as did the reception. gorgeous!
don't worry, it's not over. about an hour in, jenni came up and told me that the wind had knocked over a piece of decor which had then knocked the cake onto the ground. what? are you kidding me? i had to laugh. what else could i do? luckily the cake was made of crispies and was pretty sturdy. i did my best to reassemble it. a couple minutes later it was on the ground again. ha!.... what are the chances that it would be knocked over twice?!?!? by the end of the night the poor thing was completely dented and had big gashes in it. but hey, i learned how to airbrush a cake and it really is super easy! no lie.

yeay for jenni & lee!

it was a perfectly gorgeous day. thank you for letting us be a part of it.