Happy Birthday, Paige!

Um... yesterday. It was low-key. We went to Joe's and ate sushi to the point of gastric injury.

I made her a cake. An incredibly weird-ass cake. She requested a strawberry cake with Captain Crunch mixed in the batter. It was an idea that Gabe had and it sounded like an interesting experiment. Turns out it's not such a hot idea. I had baked it but didn't have time to decorate it before we went to dinner. When we got home Paige and Gabe went to get her a new filter for her aquarium and I stayed to decorate the cake. I had bought these cute, multicolored candles which gave me an idea for the design. I was going to pipe a black outline of a kitty and fill it in with green icing and give the kitty a big toothy smile. It would have gone really well with the candles.

I didn't have any black food coloring so I mixed the frosting with cocoa powder and a little blue food coloring. That made a pretty decent black color. When I found my cake decorating supplies I was missing some essential parts. Ok, improvise. I was going to make a tube out of baking parchment but the stuff we have seems to be a bit more like waxed paper. Tape wouldn't stick to it. Ok, no paper cone. I decided to use a sandwich bag with a small hole cut in the corner and insert a metal decorating tip. I filled it with the black frosting color and piped the outline of the cat's face. I didn't have very much control but it looked ok.

Then I filled in the green. That looked ok too, though it wasn't up to my usual standards. When I got that done I started to pipe on the nose with the black icing. The bag exploded and gushed black icing all across the cat's face! AARGH! I tried to clean it off but it kept getting worse and worse. Eventually I gave up and smeared it all around to blend the colors. It looked like the color of guacamole after it's been sitting out a while. And when I added the candles it really took a turn for the ugly. When Paige came home I ran to the kitchen to explain what had happened. I really didn't want her thinking I had made that monstrosity on purpose.

Lindsay and Kyle and Sam showed up a little later. We all gathered in the kitchen to cut the cake. You'll just have to imagine the glory of this rotten, avocado-covered thing with pink insides punctuated with yellowish, chewy blobs. At least it still tasted like cake.

Today we're going to the Folk Center to buy Sam a ukulele. She borrowed one of mine for a while to see if she really liked it. Now she's hooked and wants to get one of her own.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Missouri with Drew and Mindy to visit Debbie and Bob and the gang. We'll be back Thursday. Poor Drew. He's going to be stuck with me for 4 days while I talk his ear off about my home improvement ideas. The other day I filled up several notebook pages with lists and ideas. I'm taking it with me on the plane.

Ho-hum. Another hot summer day in Southern California.