Cake Drama

All growing up my mom would always make whatever we wanted for our birthday cake. It was totally our choice. Whatever we wanted to think up she'd do. Even if it was a pie instead! When we got older sometimes she'd bake the cake and let us do the decorating. That was SO MUCH FUN. I'm TRYING to keep that tradition going as best as I can even though my only experience in cake decorating was a my older birthday cakes that I decorated, a few YW activities growing up, and now decorating my kids cakes. They have come up with some doozies (sp?) too, for example Olivia's pink and yellow WEDDING cake, transformers, basketball, cookie monster...
So anyway, Grant originally wanted a Thing (or is it THE Thing?) cake, but he wanted his decorations to match and they didn't have those and so he changed his mind to spiderman. So yesterday I bake the cake along with 30 cupcakes for his class. Then after I get Seth down for his nap I decide to really be organized and hurry and decorate the cake before he wakes up. BIG MISTAKE! Note to self: Never try to decorate a birthday cake when you are in too big of a hurry because you do stupid things!!!! I forgot to level the cakes so they stack up more sturdy, I forgot to make the frosting blue, and I was being lazy and thought I could decorate it with the can of frosting from the store. It was awful!! It was all lopsided and even though the cake was COMPLETELY COOL, the frosting wouldn't stick on to it. It just slid off everywhere. I was trying to do the sides and when I got back around to where I started, the frosting in a pile on the bottom of the cake plate. UGH! I freaked out for a little bit and then called my mom to vent about it. Then I put another cake in the oven to bake and dumped cake #1 down the disposal.
Cake #2 went MUCH better. I remembered to level it and I used whipped cream frosting and I even remembered to dye it blue. It still didn't turn out perfect or the way I would have liked it. But its how my Grantman wanted it so here it is. Lessons learned: Don't procrastinate, don't use the store frosting!!

P.S. Happy birthday my sweet Granters. More to come on him later...