Day 3: A favorite picture

I love this picture of Walter taken when he was four months old.  His big blue eyes, the Gerber baby look on his face.  He just looks sooo adorable.  Thank you to my sister-in-law Jana from K & J photography for taking this picture of Walter.  A link to her photography blog is listed on the right hand side of my blog.

I just cannot believe Walter is going to be ONE YEAR OLD in a little over a month!  He's getting so big.  He does not look like a baby anymore.

Speaking of his birthday, I decided to do a few "practice cakes" for Walter's birthday cake.  It is a good thing I did too because this was no practice cake this time.  I made a Mickey Mouse's face cake from a cake pan mold of his face and a cake mix yesterday morning and covered it in plastic wrap until 4:30 p.m. today when I went to practice frosting it.  First off the cake had shrunk and I could barely make out the features of his face to try to frost it.  Crap! NOTE TO SELF: FREEZE NEXT CAKE BEFORE FROSTING.

Second, I decided to only frost it in white frosting this time so I don't use/waste too much of the special "Mickey Mouse face food coloring" I bought for the real cake.  I'm going to pipe the cake instead of just spreading on frosting.  So my plan was to practice my non-existent piping skills.  Good thing I decided not to waste the food coloring.  I let the frosting sit out for hours thinking it would be easier to frost a cake using room temperature frosting.  WRONG! It was so soft that it was impossible to get the piping to look like piping.  I gave up and just frosted the cake with a spatula. NOTE TO SELF: USE COLD FROSTING WHEN PIPING.

Third, I planned to frost the sides of the real cake with a spatula before piping the top.  I learned today that I am terrible at frosting a cake with a spatula and I need to work on that "skill" as well.

I'm worried this cake is going to be such a disaster on Walter's birthday.  I'm tempted to take the Mickey Mouse cake form to the neighborhood grocery store and pay a baker to make and frost it to perfection.

My crafty sister-in-law Jana has made epic cakes for her children.  A Curious George cake for her first son's first birthday, an Elmo cake for her second son's first birthday and a Browbee cake from the kid's show Yo Gabba Gabba that looked just like him.  (He's the green monster.)  I just don't think I can live up to that kind of pressure!

Jana did say she would help me sometime and that maybe we could try using fondant and that her friend has a great, easy recipe for marshmallow fondant.  You know I will definitely be taking her up on her offer to help.  I hinted to my other sister-in-law Roxie (who is a professional cupcake maker and decorator AND WHO WENT TO THE ART INSTITUTE FOR CULINARY ARTS btw) that I was hoping for some decorating tips for this cake.  She was very good at pretending she didn't get the hint.  But can I blame her? I bet she gets hit up all the time for people to help them decorate cakes.

I'll keep you posted on my attempts to make the perfect birthday cake for my son's first birthday.  It has to be perfect or else that means I'm a terrible mother and that Walter will grow up to be a hooligan, right???