myLOVE: Serejane is 6?!?!?!

Last weekend we had the loveliest little bunch of butterflies visit our yard for Serejane's 6th birthday!

All the guests were asked to come wearing their prettiest dresses and sporting a pair of wings.  Gladly they all complied and we were treated to the lovely sight of 8 gleeful little girls flitting about the yard, swinging on swings, and blowing bubbles.  It truly was achingly adorable.

After doing the piñata we headed over to the planting table to make nice flower baskets sure to attract some butterflies in a couple of weeks.  The geraniums and pansies which Zellers put on sale for a quarter a piece because they hadn't watered them for a few days (a night in a tub of water perked them up perfectly) should be in full bloom right about when the first butterflies of the year are looking for someplace to rest - but in the meantime we provided some fun little butterflies for their flower baskets.

I LOVE pinwheels... and about squealed with delight when we found these little guys for the flower baskets...

The too-adorable dresses these three lovely little ladies are sporting are a brand called Thy Thy sold at Zellers.  They are usually anywhere from $45 to $60, but if you watch, they go on sale for half price a few times a year.  When they do, I stock up... a little girl can never have too many over-the-top girly dresses, especially when they have a dripping with sweetness and twirl factor of plus eleven like these do.

OK - so the cake...  It was hideous.  Not since I tried (unsuccessfully) to make something resembling train cars for Wil's 3rd birthday have I built something quite as awful as this.  I was giggling as I put it together because all I could think of was, it's a good thing I'm not a professional or this would be on its way to Cakewrecks... let's break it down...  

It all began with Serejane selecting her own flavours of boxed cake.  Yes, I admit, I used a boxed cake.  Two of them, actually - one rainbow sprinkle and one chocolate.  Sue me.  But, I did bake it myself.  I used two heart-shaped tins with the pointy bottoms hacked off for the wings, and a section cut from a 9x13 cake for the body.  I didn't exactly get the rainbow sprinkle batter divided in half, so one wing was noticeably thicker... so there was about an extra inch of frosting on the skinny side.  The frosting... now that's a whole other story.  ~sigh~  

Serejane requested pale blue icing.  Now.  Even on a boxed cake, there is a standing order from my family that the icing must be my famous and super-yummy homemade butter icing.  Fair enough.  But of course when you make butter icing, it has a bit of a yellow tint to it, especially after adding the vanilla, and so despite my best efforts the pale blue looked the exact shade of Crest.  I contemplated adding mint flavour but thought it might freak out some of the parents who were coming and didn't know me that well... so my solution was of course to just make it very pretty.  With those little tubes of laziness called pre-mixed piping, that I discovered at about midnight (read: too late to change my mind) were about the consistency of cold snot and not actually so great for doing intricate scrollwork like we can with our Christmas shortbread.  Also, I'm not entirely sure who decides when the colour is just right, or what kind of acid they drop before packaging the colour combinations, but suffice it to say that the piping did little to mask the peculiar shade of toothpaste I had inadvertently iced the lopsided butterfly with.  

Enter Bill.  Whose solution was to create a diversion.  By adding the leftover pop-rocks Mini Eggs, whose effect you can't fully appreciate without seeing the cake from the side.  

Serejane of course LOVED the cake, as did all the little girls, but my day was totally made when one of the Moms came up and said, "You made that?  WOW... that's awesome!"  Another Mom chimed in she only ever bought store-made.  So, while they didn't go out of their way to compliment my not-so-inspirational disease-infested acid-trip toothpaste decorating with words like 'beautiful' or 'cute' or even 'neat', they were nevertheless impressed that the end result was "homemade."  I sheepishly refrained from letting on that the only homemade part was the butter icing. I thought, let them eat cake.