he's a dichotomy. and so is his cake

in my last post i talked about topher's cousin(i forget already! 2nd cousin...?...) cooper.

cooper is a funny fellow. he loves himself some marvel superheros, power rangers, star wars guys, lego anything, and zombies. he likes dressing up and shooting fake guns and doing boy stuff. he is a boy's boy. (equivalent to a man's man.)

 

but dear cooper also LOVES himself some stuffed animals. he loves his stuffed penguin, 'happy', who has his own little personality according to cooper. his mom, elisa, also told me that on a recent visit to barnes and noble, he found a little gray and baby blue panda bear, and walked all around the store with him, and read books with him. when it was time to leave, cooper put the bear back on the shelf, gave it a kiss, and wept with tears of true sorrow to be parting with his new found friend. at the sight of this, cooper's older brother kiefer just looked at his mom and exclaimed: "can't we just buy it for him!?!?!?" what a nice brother. they bought it for his birthday a few days later :)

 

anyhoo, when elisa asked cooper what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, cooper was torn. cute dog cake? (new obsession: biscuit. the cute little dog. you know what i'm talking about... right?) but he also kinda wanted a zombie cake.

so we did both. cute dogs and zombies.

 

elisa wanted to see how the whole 'fondant' thing worked out, so i brought some store bought stuff (easiest to work with) over to her house and we started making stuff for cooper's cake. elisa made the yellow fire hydrant that is pictured below. pretty great! elisa also baked the most incredible looking cake (and delicious too!)- it was dense and had no dome to cut off or anything! perfectly level. incredible!i was very thankful that elisa wanted to bake the cake for her son. that's just not really my thing, and it was one less thing to do!

 

so, here's cooper's cake. he enjoyed it. so it was all worth it. all the zombies have exposed brain, per cooper's request. (except the worm! i forgot to give the zombie worm a brain!) there were other limbs coming out of the cake on the sides and stuff, but i didn't get pictures of that. oh well. my favorite part of the cake was where the icing wouldn't stick, so i made a zombie face coming out of it. it made the accident look intentional- major score!

 

topher's first day of preschool!!!!!

topher started preschool on monday. he is going to a quaint little lutheran preschool with his sweet cousin Cooper. (well, cooper is chris' cousin's son. what is that then? apparently he is topher's second cousin, and he is chris' first cousin once removed...)

i feel a bit bad because i did not cry when i dropped him off. i didn't even get emotional. i did get emotional about not getting emotional if that counts... i know! i'm a bad mom! i should have been emotional! topher has been by my side without missing a beat for the last 4 years and 5 months! he's my bud! but he's also a middle child. and that's just what happensto middle children. but his consolation prize is that chris and i are both middle children, so our parents probably got equally as unemotional about stuff as we do. who's gonna help us pay for topher's future psychiatrist?!?!?...

anyway, topher is awesome and he handled his first day like a champ. he had a brief moment when he whispered: "i want to go home with you." and for a brief moment i wanted to take him with me. but the moment passed and we all man-ned up.

on his first day, they talked about the letter 'A' and ate apples and sang his favorite song: "i like to eat apples and bananas." AND someone in his class had a birthday to celebrate, so he got to eat cookies to boot. in fact- there was a birthday celebrated on wednesday and friday as well! quite the introduction into preschool! hopefully he won't be too disappointed about his second week when there will be nary a birthday cookie in sight.

hey topher! i don't know if it's the year 2025 and you are reading this post with some serious disdain for your heartless mother. but here's the thing my handsome son- when your sister started preschool two years ago- i REFUSED to buy her a new outfit for her first day of school. but i saw this AWESOME blue power ranger samurai t-shirt for $2.99 and i had to buy it cause (it was cheap!) i knew you would LOVE it and look so superhandsome in it! i want you to know how special you are, and i am really really really sorry i didn't cry on your first day of preschool.

but do you know what's better than tears?

i know you know.

TOYS.

and your dad picked you up from your first day at school and brought you to target and bought you an awesome batman toy! cause you are awesome, and we love you so much.

here's a pic of topher, awake early the day after his first day of school. he is playing with his new toy, and has his samurai shirt on still, and a super-groggy face, cause it's not 7am yet...

interview with a cowboy, and a vampire (looks like a vampire...)

topher started school on monday!!!! but more on that in the next post.

i took these videos of the kids a few weeks ago and haven't gotten around to posting them til now. obviously.

anyhoo, the first video is of topher, who is now four years and almost-five months old. this was just a regular conversation that he and i were having over some yogurt and granola.

and here is a creepy looking video of my sweet lily. who is now 5 years and 5 months old.

i just figured out how to use my video camera, in the dark, on my phone, so bear with me folks.

this story was so good that i decided to record it, what you missed so far is that there once were three little pigs- lily, mia, and topher. the big bad wolf has already blown down lily's house of straw, and then she ran to mia's house which was made of sticks. mia can't talk so lily does all the talking for her. and when the wolf blew down her house, lily picked mia up and ran to topher's house. cause mia can't walk yet.

superniece loves superman

my niece christina is obsessed with superman. seriously, totally, and completely obsessed. (topher's a couple steps behind her. or maybe 13 years behind...;)

she just turned 17, and barb threw her a birthday party, cause barb is a wonderful nana! so i made some superman sweets for the shindig, that my kids were very sad about not being invited to.i told them it wasn't a party for kids. they said: "oh, we like hanging out with old people." and then i tried to explain to them what a 'teenager' is. they didn't get it.

anyhoo, i tried to do something new and awesome. only it didn't necessarily turn out awesome: 

i wanted the cake to be blue and red, with yellow frosting between the layers. as you can see this looks like it should be a cake for a baby shower...

 here's how it turned out- on the outside and inside:

maybe next year i will add a blazer on the outside, and a lot more red food coloring on the inside...

then i made some cake balls- and i know i told you i HATE cake balls, cause i cannot make them look pretty for the life of me. so this time- i covered the cake balls in marshmallow fondant! and they behaved much better! did they taste good?... i have no idea. i'll have to ask barb or christina later.
under the superman symbol are pieces of cake that i cut out with a cookie cutter. then i just put a swirl of buttercream on top. if i had preplanned this portion of my contribution to the birthday party better, i would have made actual mini cupcakes. but i did the best with what i had (which was an extra layer of a cake) when i felt like i should bring more to the party.

the like the little capes :)

so, that's it. i have a little break from cake making and then it's more cakes!

and look! i found a picture of an acorn cakepop that i made for corban's birthday party. like i said, i don't like making cakepops, cause i am not very good at it. these things can't stay upright cause they are too heavy and pierce through the top. will practice make perfect? we'll see...

panCakes

look!

i am so proud of the above picture. ok. look at it but don't inspect too closely...

what does that look like to you?

a stack of pancakes?

why would i take a picture of a stack of pancakes? cause that stack of pancakes is just rolled up fondant arond a chocolate cake that i baked for a five year old who loves pancakes!

i got an e-mail from a super-faithful blog-reader who asked me to make this cake for her son. she did all the leg work of finding a blog that had a tutorial on how to make it and everything! great job kelly and buttercream bakehouse! you can check out the original here 

so this is how my cake turned out and is sitting nicely in it's little box. the original cake has the 'syrup' as piping gel mixed with syrup. the order came in speciafically requesting that the gel not taste like syrup. so i just used piping gel, a little brown gel coloring, and a little hershey's chocolate syrup.

it is AMAZING what you can do with fondant (i used homemade marshmallow fondant), wilton's gel colors, and a paint brush. that's pretty much all i used. so great.

i was gonna post about the superman cake i made from my niece, but i just got supertired. so that'll have to wait til tomorrow...