Looking back

Today I went to Walgreen's and picked up 229 photos.  Yeah I think this is the first time in about 7 years that I've held actual pictures in my hand.  Everything is digital.  Great idea, cuts down on clutter, and all that happy jazz.  Except I think today is the first time my son has held a picture.  He got to look back through events, vacations, moments in time.  He'd actually forgotten about some of them.  Which proved to me that taking pictures and saving them to my computer is not the same as taking pictures and sharing them.  Bug needs to see those pictures, to remember the things he's done and seen.

He's not the only one.  While looking through the pictures I found some from his 9th birthday.  The last cake I made him.  I discovered something, let's see if you can figure out what I figured out.  Take a look at the 9th birthday cake, and a few other cakes and tell me what you think.

Bug's 9th Birthday Cake

He was in love with dragons at this time

So I learned how to make and use modeling chocolate for the figures, sculpting skills required!

He was also crazy about playing in the water, and the book series Warriors
It's about feral cats.  Doesn't the dragon's eye glitter perfectly here?

Okay for this angle my dragon looks a little skinny but for a first try, I rocked it!

So there you have it, a dragon, a cat and a boy, pretty awesome 9th birthday cake.

Bug's 5th birthday cake, ends up looking like an inverted traffic light

The butterflies are made with melted chocolate, they looked awesome!  For Bug's kindergarten teacher, on her birthday.

Tinkerbell cake for a friend's daughter, on her 7th birthday.  At least I think it was her 7th.

So, what did you think?  For me I thought, OMG I'm actually pretty good at that cake decorating thing. I wonder how awesome I would have become if I had made more than like two cakes a year, max?!?!  I mean really, did you see, I was fearless when it came to cakes.  Right from the very start I was making those three tiered deals, I remember Bug's pervious birthdays I'd made a clifford the Big red dog, all white with melted chocolate clifford faces.  It was pretty awesome, that was Bug's 3rd birthday I think. His 4th was a jungle theme, bright green cake with jungle animals on it.

The first year was a complete failure, I tried to bake a caterpillar cake I'd seen in Martha Stewart.  It didn't come out right at all.  So I thought, fine a store bought cake for the first year, not what I wanted but better than no cake.  Well yes, except Bug's party was on Easter and in the midwest, back then, everything was closed.  We ended up getting this awful brownie pie thing from Bob Evans.  Don't get me wrong, the brownie thing tasted just fine.  It was the shame I felt, the looks I had to endure from my ex in laws.  Like I screwed up the most important thing on the planet...bad enough I decided to breast feed my child, worse that I wanted to be a stay at home mom, but this, this cake thing, that was the final straw!  I still shudder thinking about that ill fated first birthday.  His second I made him a three d truck cake.  Well maybe that's what you'd call it, or a truck sculptured cake, maybe.  At any rate, cakes were were it's at.

Once we did his entire party as Christmas in March ~laughing~  His birthday party fell on April Fool's day that year.  For the treat bags we did stockings.  Had holiday yard ornaments as decorations.  Can't for the life of me remember what that cake was.

I'm wondering if perhaps this isn't a sign?  The past few days I have been freaking out, wondering what I'm going to do next year because I just don't see myself doing another year of this.  This working for peanuts and all the crap is just not seeming so very worth it anymore.  So is it a sign that a friend was telling me all about how she got 50 pictures printed out at Walgreens for only five bucks.  Or that I thought that's a great deal, I have some pictures that I'd like to print out, or that I'd look through all the pictures on my hard drive to see exactly which ones.  Or that I'd see all these cake pictures and be reminded of how much I loved it, and how good I was at it?  Chance?  Luck?  An answer?  I don't know but suddenly I'm taking a good hard look at my skill set and maybe things aren't nearly as hopeless as I was thinking they are.

I can write, at least a little bit, right?  And apparently I can decorate a cake, and I baked them too!  Whatever could one do with those skills?  Let us consider...

Oh and on a wonderful high note, Bug is now excited about getting the little potted indoor tree thing, he wanted to get it tonight but heading to walmart at 7 pm on a Sunday is just plan madness.  So we will go get the tree tomorrow after work.  I will let him pick it out.  In a sense we are hunting our tree, but this year we won't be tromping through the mud, laying in the mud as Bug cuts it down, carrying a dripping wet tree to the car, stuffing it in driving home with that wonderful smell filling us with another year of hope.  But we will hunt for it in a store, and carry it home.  I don't think they smell much so that'll be a bummer, but we will decorate it with popcorn and the few ornaments we've bought this year.  It'll be good, and I love my son.