Happy Bird-day!

huh.... this is my 400th post.

These days the Chaos family is exploring the realm of "good 'nuff." Nothing is getting any elaborate treatment, nothing is 100%, nothing is perfect... but it sure works OK, and we have a good time balancing a larger family. Mostly.

My days of spending hours decorating a cake (or writing a post for that matter) are over, but in my opinion, the cakes that are resulting are still fun and cool. The kids dig 'em so... even if they weren't and aren't, big whoop-tee-do.

Birdie wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday party, so we got the invitations, a few TMNT themed party goods, and went on a search for a good cake; as per usual we found a great, do-able cake on this site, truly a website filled with the coolest amateur cakes you have ever clapped eyes on. Birdie hit on the one that I was interested in trying, a cake that used some fondant, but not enough to cover the whole cake.



I had never worked with fondant before, but it was much like working with a sticky Sculpey or Fimo. As far as taste? I think it is accurate to call it "chewy frosting," kinda gross, but it looks cool. Plus Birdie had the TMNT mini's that she had gotten for Christmas, so it was kinda a no-brainer to try it.



Two very satisfying comments/squeals from guests: "Look! It's two cakes STACKED UP!" and "Look! There is FROSTING in the middle!"

The part where the balancing act collapsed was in the party-games department. I figured with the extra time used in eating pizza as well as the cake, we would only have time for a few short games. So Birdie came up with a Duck-Duck-Goose game called Turtle-Turtle-Ninja, and as she was running out the door for school the day of the party, she asked me to come up with a "pin-the-tail-on-the-Turtle" game. I was running short on time, so when I finally grabbed up a magic marker, paper, and one of those Ninja Turtle minis and saw that they had no tails... I just decided to add one and call it good.

Y'all... there is a reason that the creators of the TMNT franchise did not give them tails.

Observe.




...and I am here to tell you that when we added the little green construction paper tails that LaLa designed for the project, things did not look any better. I did not get a photo of that bit of risque business, just suffice it to say that it was in no way my finest hour or judgment call. Really, I didn't realize what I had wrought until I was taping the stupid poster up the the wall, and by then I had zero time and just hoped for the best. Luckily, most of the guests were of the seven year old girl variety and if anyone saw anything to comment on, at least no one did.

Happy Birthday little Bird!