Shanna and Haley turn 10!

My girls are 10! Yes, double digits now!  So crazy.  Time does not slow down, does it?

I never learn and always start their cakes way too late.  I think once I finished a cake before midnight.  I need to work on this.  I was away for the weekend though and then spent Monday getting the budget done and regular first of the month stuff, plus household cleaning and laundry.  Monday is my day to do laundry and clean the house (mop the floor, clean the downstairs bathroom).  Anyway, I was busy all day.  I finally started on the cakes that evening.  Two of them. 

Almost done making the fondant.  I love the recipe that my sister shared with me years ago.  I don't even use the recipe now.  I just spray a little water into a bowl of marshmallows, melt that in the microwave, and mix in powdered sugar using greased hands (buy "fresh" powdered sugar from the store to use!). Then I add in gel food coloring.


Before that I made frosting and then cut the cake shapes out.  I know I took a picture of Shanna's cake shapes but I must have deleted it.  I did one coat of frosting and then let it chill in the fridge while I worked on the other one.  I also had to make a second batch of frosting.


So a little after mid-night I realized that I didn't have any yellow gel coloring so I did a Walmart run.  I made it there and back in record time with no traffic. 17 minutes!  I am really glad I got the yellow gel.  Haley wanted Pikachu. Even light orange would have still looked orange.  It took hours to get their cakes done....so long that I didn't even go to sleep.  I finished them right before they awoke.  The power went out that morning.  We were going to have bacon and Scotch Eggs for breakfast.  Lee actually make and baked the Scotch Eggs the night before, but we didn' have a way to heat them up.  The boys had cereal before they left for middle school.  Soon there after the power came back on.  We were able to have the Scotch Eggs and orange juice, though we'll cook the bacon another day. 

The finished product!  I do hope when they look back on their birthdays they'll have fond memories of their cakes.  I started making them as a way to do something special and nice on their birthday when we chose to spend practically nothing on them.  The cakes are relatively inexpensive to make and create--just time consuming.


Shanna wanted a castle.  I had to create my own as I couldn't find an exact one online that I liked.  Thankfully Cal was saving toilet paper rolls...not sure why...and I used those as the towers with a waffle cone on top.








They were both happy with their cakes.  Thanks Lee for decorating!


Haley likes editing the photos.....




Shanna showed this to me that morning.  So cute. 


Sadly I spent the day sleeping.  We had a fun party with the girls that evening. We talked about going out to eat that night.  The girls chose McDonald's.  I loved coming home to a clean house afterwards!












Since we had two cakes for eating I invited some friends over last minute to share in the sugar.  My friend Katherine and her kids were able to come, which was fun.












Lee and I thought it was funny that the candles started burning the tower.  I didn't try very hard to make the back of the tower look perfect.












In between birthday stuff the boys had a Spring Concert.




They did a nice job. 






The girls had friends over on Friday after school for a birthday party.  We don't normally do them.  This one was pretty easy.  We walked home with the girls from school, they played and had a snack.  Then they made their own pizzas, watched a movie, opened presents and had dessert and played some more. We left up the decorations from their birthday.  I added a purple tablecloth and some helium balloons.






Haley and her friend attached the balloons to Haley's race cars.  Too funny!


A little movie of them racing around.

We watched Moana.












What a fun birthday!  I'm so thankful to have these girls in our family!