Crafty birthday

LazyToddler is now officially LazyKid, having turned three years old earlier this week. We had the party today, complete with garden-themed birthday cake and food. I'm not usually a theme party kinda girl (last year she got cheap pizza and an ice cream cake, and the year before that we gave her a Kroger cupcake three days late), but I had fun this year. The cake was the best part ...

LazyKid helped make the "seed packets," and she helped mix the cake, but I decorated the whole thing after she went to bed so the final product would be a surprise. Decorating a cake after 10pm leads to flights of fancy that may include (but are not limited to) ...

... giant worms ...

... and bunny turds.

I was a little bit worried that the cake was going to be awful - I monkeyed around with the size of the pan so I'd have plenty of "garden" to decorate, and it took almost twice as long to bake as the original recipe suggested. I even had to wrap the edges of the pan in foil partway through to keep them from getting overcooked. That worked pretty well, actually, and the edge piece that I had was just as moist as the middle.

I was also a little bit concerned because I didn't notice until I was halfway done making the frosting that it never gets cooked or heated after the raw egg is added. But I solved that problem by feeding a healthy dose of extra frosting to LazyHusband last night and watching him carefully for signs of food poisoning. It's excusable to throw your spouse under the bus in an effort to keep kids from dying of salmonella, right?

All in all, it was a fun party, even if I didn't get to do some of the more elaborate things I had planned. I guess if I had gone all Martha Stewart on the decorations and games, my friends would have had to slap some sense into me, and that would have been unfortunate. So we'll just save the "pin the center on the flower" game we made for next year, and thank our lucky stars that the "toss the bunny in the rabbit hole" game never got finished.

And if there's any lingering doubt about my ability to give Martha a run for her money, you need look no further than my attempt at Ladybug Pizzas to see ... I'm not even in her league.

Who knew canned chopped olives looked so disgusting? Oh, well, at least they tasted better than they looked.