The Party

For Claire's Birthday, we had a little 'party' with Josh and Andrew. We decorated cupcakes:





And we even got out some parachute guys and let them sail off the top floor! :) (Hopefully I can get some more pictures/movies of that one to include here--it was pretty funny!)


I tried my hardest to make Claire a really cool cake.
This is what I wanted to make:



This is what happened:


I was singing Ring Around The Rosies in my head: "We all Fall Down!!!"
I cried a little inside as I watched the walls fall down. I wondered if that's how the people of Jericho felt when Joshua and the children of Israel came and knocked their walls down? :)
But, I was able to salvage it a little bit, and this is how it turned out after a LOT of frosting and some time in the fridge:





I learned a lot from this experience, though. #1: I just plain cannot follow a recipe to save my life. #2: Don't try to make a huge cake that's stuck together with frosting in a warm tropical kitchen with no air conditioning. Everything just slides right off! #3: I think my next 'fancy' cake will happen after a few cake decorating classes... #4: When making said 'fancy' cakes, use homemade cakes instead of boxed junk. The boxed cakes are just too flimsy to hold together. (But, the pieces sure taste good!) #5: Kids don't really care what it looks like as long as there's a lot of frosting. :) Ha!!


And here's the quilt I made for Claire's birthday:



It was nice of Dev and Drew to pose with it for me... (Well, we actually couldn't get Andrew off the blankets, so he was just there...) It turned out pretty nice, but it's still not quite finished yet. I still have to do the edges and tie it...but Claire was very excited to get it. I learned new things after doing this project, too: #1: DO NOT make a double bed size rag quilt with only 4 days to do it in. It just plain can't be done. #2: Don't spend hours sitting at a sewing machine while you're pregnant. You get swollen feet. #3: ALWAYS have a friend helping you cut all the stinking seams while you sew it together. Otherwise you go a little bonkers and it makes your fingers hurt! #4: When you wash the rag quilt, and put it in the dryer, make sure you open the dryer and check the lint thing every 10 minutes or so, or it will kill your dryer. :)

All in all, it was a good experience. But I'm VERY tired from all of that and just hoping that I can enjoy my Halloween today! :)