Have you ever just wanted ONE thing to be perfect...when you know there's no way you can pull it off? For Daniley's birthday, all I wanted to do was to make my baby her first ever birthday cake. Now I'm sure most of you know, big cakes aren't just thrown together. But that's okay, I've got cake baking experience...my largest was a 6 layer wedding cake, and it turned out beautiful. So, I carefully chose the cutest cake I could find for Daniley's birthday. It was so adorable in the book, and I had big dreams. Friday morning around 8am, I woke up and got started. I use these silver cake pan insulators that make your cake come out level (as opposed to humped at the top). However, any good cake baker knows that you NEVER overfill the cake pan. Well, I just wanted to get all that good batter in there, so I overfilled, ever so slightly. No problem. Until the SMOKE ALARM started going off. As many of you know, I have no sense of smell. So the alarm goes off, and I look into the living room only to find Daniley sitting there watching her cartoons ever so content, IN A GREY ROOM OF SMOKE. The overfilled pans spilled over into the oven and baked onto the side. I can only imagine what it must have smelled like. So, to prevent my precious angel from getting CARBON MONOXIDE, I dump her out into the garage while I locate the fire extinguisher and prepare myself for a major ordeal. I'm fanning the smoke out of the house, praying Daniley doesn't slip off down the hill or eat the dead bugs in the garage floor. Finally, I got the smoke under control and got the nasty cakes out of the oven. I had to redo a pan or two because I had to remove them from the oven before they were done. Anyway, upon taking out the next cakes, one didn't come out of the pan just perfectly, and a little bit of the edge fell off. No problem...usually this is fixable. Well not this time. I had 6 layers put together and the middle one was acting like a combination of quick-sand and a sinkhole. By this time, it was 2pm and I was disgusted...the cake was pitiful. Usually a cake like this is an 8 hour ordeal, so there's no time to start over (but there's still time to call Walmart!) I contemplate how I'm going to fix the cake...but then Dan calls. He and Daniley have gone for a haircut. Dan proceeds to tell me Daniley has this rash breaking out all over her. I wasn't overly concerned because we had been to the beach and she usually reacts slightly to the sunscreen. Back to cake baking. Then Dan calls me and tells me that Daniley is slightly unresponsive, he can't get her to wake up, and her temperature is dropping. Okay, now I have a new perspective. By this point, I have mixed colored icing and it's ready to go. But screw the icing, I find myself freaking out rushing to the Dr. to meet them there. When I get there, she's acting normal (thank goodness, but now we look like idiots. lol.) It turns out, she had an allergic reaction to Penicillin (sp?) she was taking for her first ear infection. So, get meds, and back home...back to the cake. Now since I left all the icing out uncovered, the icing has set up. Stirring it only creates large nasty looking air bubbles. At this point, it's 6pm and I am ready to cry over my cake. I have gone through 6 boxes of cake mix and 10 lb. of icing. There's no chance in you-know-where that I'm mixing more icing or baking another layer. I removed the middle two layers and shortened the cake (I was scared I would tump it over on the way to the party anyway, since it was leaning like CRAZY anyway.) I did a tragic fix-up job and left it alone. By 8pm, my crooked, whop-sided, but very good tasting cake was ready for the party. It's too bad it doesn't look ANYTHING like the picture I picked out. But next year, I'll be.......baking another one, even if the cake is ugly, whopsided, and lumpy. Happy Birthday Sweet Girl...and I hope you liked your cake!!!

Here are some pictures from the party!