I am no longer the smug mother who couldn't bear to think of my little darling having a party at *gasp!* the Little Gym or some such place. Nor will I ever mock another awkwardly-decorated, homemade birthday cake again. Karma, as they say, truly is a bitch.
I suspect (hope) from a guest's perspective, the party was a success. But from the perspective of one of three adults left to clean up the mounds of glitter, crepe paper, frosting, cheap toys, half-empty bottles of water and beer, crushed juice boxes, warmed-over guacamole, stale chips, wrapping paper, and Christ knows what else...it was a total nightmare. K and I are no strangers to throwing parties. We've had tons of 'em. But let's just say we've both earned our black belts after this one.
I won't bother giving you a blow-by-blow of every last detail but perhaps a few cake-related highlights (or lowlights) will suffice.
Oh where to start? Maybe after I removed my perfectly exquisite swiss buttercream frosting from the fridge to let it come to room temperature before I, per the recipe, rewhipped it to a spreadable consistency. Only to have it suddenly, and without warning, turn into a goopy curdled mess. At 1:00pm. An hour and a half before the start of M's party.
Or how about when I foolishly attempted to make a second batch of frosting...only to have it curdle immediately after I began adding the butter. At 1:30pm.
By 1:45pm, I had to admit defeat and bow down to the wisdom of my mother who sent my dad to Safeway to grab three cans of Betty Crocker Vanilla Cream Frosting which we then dumped into a large bowl and mixed with my fresh strawberry puree and various shades of food coloring.
But that's not all, folks! Because it was shortly thereafter that the side of my lovely strawberry palace bundt cake decided to detatch itself from the mother ship and plop into the frosting of the base cake beneath. After MUCH wailing and gnashing of teeth, K came to the rescue and carefully repaired it with the help of several toothpicks.
After that, it's all a bit of a blur. When I'm hosting a party, especially when there are lots of people and food and entertainment involved, I feel like I'm in the middle of a very long out-of-body experience. It's hard to describe....but it's as if everything is speeding by in a whirl aside from a few brief moments where I can focus on a person or conversation. When you add many small children to the mix, it becomes less like an out-of-body experience and more like a very bad LSD trip.
Anyway, enough about me. Here's a photo of what our house looked like after the party (I'm sparing you a pic of the backyard. Imagine, if you will, post-eruption Pompeii...sans the bodies, of course...):
I suspect (hope) from a guest's perspective, the party was a success. But from the perspective of one of three adults left to clean up the mounds of glitter, crepe paper, frosting, cheap toys, half-empty bottles of water and beer, crushed juice boxes, warmed-over guacamole, stale chips, wrapping paper, and Christ knows what else...it was a total nightmare. K and I are no strangers to throwing parties. We've had tons of 'em. But let's just say we've both earned our black belts after this one.
I won't bother giving you a blow-by-blow of every last detail but perhaps a few cake-related highlights (or lowlights) will suffice.
Oh where to start? Maybe after I removed my perfectly exquisite swiss buttercream frosting from the fridge to let it come to room temperature before I, per the recipe, rewhipped it to a spreadable consistency. Only to have it suddenly, and without warning, turn into a goopy curdled mess. At 1:00pm. An hour and a half before the start of M's party.
Or how about when I foolishly attempted to make a second batch of frosting...only to have it curdle immediately after I began adding the butter. At 1:30pm.
By 1:45pm, I had to admit defeat and bow down to the wisdom of my mother who sent my dad to Safeway to grab three cans of Betty Crocker Vanilla Cream Frosting which we then dumped into a large bowl and mixed with my fresh strawberry puree and various shades of food coloring.
But that's not all, folks! Because it was shortly thereafter that the side of my lovely strawberry palace bundt cake decided to detatch itself from the mother ship and plop into the frosting of the base cake beneath. After MUCH wailing and gnashing of teeth, K came to the rescue and carefully repaired it with the help of several toothpicks.
After that, it's all a bit of a blur. When I'm hosting a party, especially when there are lots of people and food and entertainment involved, I feel like I'm in the middle of a very long out-of-body experience. It's hard to describe....but it's as if everything is speeding by in a whirl aside from a few brief moments where I can focus on a person or conversation. When you add many small children to the mix, it becomes less like an out-of-body experience and more like a very bad LSD trip.
Anyway, enough about me. Here's a photo of what our house looked like after the party (I'm sparing you a pic of the backyard. Imagine, if you will, post-eruption Pompeii...sans the bodies, of course...):
And for what it's worth, here's a photo of the cake from hell complete with dripping icing thanks to the 90+ degree temps outside (but, apparently, it was still a success in spite--or because?--of the shitty frosting I was forced to use at the last minute):
And that, my friends, is that. Frankly, I cannot bear to think of going through this all over again in October for Z's b-day. Perhaps the Jehovah's Witnesses are onto something?
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