It took me hours to make my dad his birthday cake this year. Since I have branched out from cookies to cakes and cupcakes, the poor guy was desperate for a birthday cake. I was under strict orders to not make it like I usually do: with Swiss meringue buttercream. He wanted the artificial-tasting, extremely sweet frosting that tastes like the kind on grocery store cakes. And "LOTS OF FLOWERS!" - that was the most important rule of all. And they couldn't be flowers made of royal icing, they had to be frosting flowers that stayed soft. I love the man so I agreed to do this, but I had no idea how taxing it was going to be to shove the whole process into a Friday night after work. I am usually against making cakes from a box, but I knew dad's cake standards were far inferior to mine so he wouldn't care if Duncan Hines made his cake for him. I got a yellow cake (I went with this particular mix because it required more specific ingredients & instructions than the other cake mixes. Things like, "beat on slow for 30 seconds, then beat on high for exactly 4 minutes." Made me feel like it was more legitimate) and went w/ white frosting. It took about 2 hours total to make the batter, bake it, cool it, chill it, level it, and layer it with frosting. THEN I had to do the decorating, which took a damn lifetime. I was basically working on this thing from 5:00pm until 11:30, making sure the icing was perfectly smooth around the cake and each stupid flower was the correct size and placed in the correct spot. Here's the finished product:
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| He's actually 36. Got the numbers backwards, silly me. He loved it. I suppose it was worth the pain in the ass (and feet, and back...) because a home-made (Duncan Hines...) hand-decorated birthday cake with frog balloons that read "You're Toadally Old" made him very happy. In addition, here's the first decent family photo we have taken since several Christmases ago: |
In other news: I did my taxes like a grown-up. I filed them electronically, so the money was in my savings account about a week later, which pleased me greatly. What pleases me far less is knowing it's all going to be blown on stuff for the new apartment. My landlord has sent me a lease already. She wrote the start date as April 1st. As if I'm going to pay her an additional $200/month starting April 1st when I know damn good and well we won't be in that apartment until at least the middle of the month. I think I'll just mail her back the lease w/ April's rent... the same amount of money we pay for our current apartment... and depending on when we move, she can do the math and calculate how much additional we owe her. She actually raised the rent on this crap-hole we are living in now for our unfortunate friends that are moving in here once we peace out. She did this because she was going to raise the rent for the one we are moving to, but I got sneaky and asked the girl upstairs how much she paid before talking to my landlord about prices. So the girl upstairs says, "Um... did she tell you a price? Because I pay $$, but she mentioned she wanted to raise it..." That's all I needed to know. I immediately called my landlord and told her I had found out the price of the apartment it was perfect for us - therein trapping her so she can't raise it thinking I don't know any better! HA! Can't pull a fast one on me, lady.
When I was home for dad's birthday, Nick and I checked out the couch that mom offered us. I would take it because I know it's good quality and comfortable, but it's too big to fit in the back of Nick's SUV (just what we had anticipated). It has a very high back, and that's what ruins it, because it's definitely short enough length-wise to fit. Nick asked his friend if we could borrow his father's truck to haul it up here, but that's a big fat "no," so we are just out of luck. Getting a U-Haul would be the price of getting a new, inexpensive couch, so I don't think it's worth it. Plus, if we got a new couch, Nick could likely fit it in his car to bring it home. Mom and I toured Home Goods and I salivated over all the gorgeous stuff they have in there as Nick followed behind me saying, "That's too girly. So is that. I want it more contemporary. This is girly, too." That's swell if he was paying for any of it, but he's not, so the decor may sway more in my direction. I don't feel too bad about it because it's not like I would want the place decked in flowers from floor to ceiling... I don't really decorate in an overly-feminine way. But this kid wants chrome and glass everywhere and that ain't happenin' on my watch. Either way, we'll end up moving without any furniture at all to see how much extra space we have to fill. I don't want to buy anything ahead of time and then we get up there and none of it fits in the room or works together. Updates on the apartment to follow.
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