Birthday Party

Today is my youngest son Logan's 4th birthday. Logan is a cliche boy--he's into cars, burps, dogs, and slimy things. I went to Ben Franklin Crafts, the closest craft store where I can pick up cake decorating stuff and a good selection of food coloring, yesterday to pick up supplies to make some really cool, creative original design cupcakes. What we left the store with was a Lightning McQueen cake pan and the supplies to decorate that cake, even though I'd promised myself years ago that I'd never ever make another character cake like that again.

For one, the cakes make a huge mess. Most of them require no less than 7 different icing colors--in fact it's usually more. The McQueen cake used 10. For another, decorating these cakes kills my wrist. Thankfully the McQueen cake was smaller than a lot of other character cakes. Finally, once the pan is used, it's almost never used again. This year for Halloween, I'm considering doing a Hundred-Acre Wood zombie-style, just so I can use the Pooh and Tigger cake pans again.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that Logan was immediately enamored with the Cars theme cake pan. Logan has been obsessed with all things Pixar and Miyazaki since he was old enough to comprehend that the TV existed. Our boys get to choose one movie in the evenings and they alternate who gets to pick the movie. Logan inevitably picks something from either the Pixar studios or Studio Ghibli. Cars is his favorite Pixar movie. He waffles between Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa, and Ponyo for his Miyazaki favorites, but that's irrelevant since I'm pretty sure they don't make Jiji or Fox-squirrel cake pans--although it'd be awesome if they did. When Logan saw the McQueen cake pan, he was incredibly excited. This counts as one of the few instances where I've caved in like that.