Have Your Cake *pic heavy*

And we ate it, too!  Happy Tuesday.  It's been a good day here at the clinic.  My co-worker, who I've worked closely with for the last 7+ years, found out that she's going to be a grandma!  I've never seen her so excited and happy!  I'm so happy for her and her daughter.  But I'm also glad it's her and not me.  LOL  Other than that...we had an awesome thunderstorm last night!  It rained and hailed and lightninged (is that a word?) for over an hour last night.  There was so much rain - you should see all the dirt on the roads this morning.  The area I live in isn't completely developed so there's lots of open land.  When we get a lot of rain like we did last night, it causes flooding - I can't imagine the mess there must've been last night!

As I mentioned before, the bestie and her gang came over on Sunday evening for an early birthday celebration.  The hubs asked what kind of cake I wanted.  He asked this *after* he'd already decided on what he was going to make, so my want wasn't really relevant at that point.  Anyway, since I didn't get much of a choice, he told me what kind of cake it was going to be (red velvet) and I told him I wanted a skull cake.  I wasn't much more specific than that.  LOL  Well, if he was only going to half-ask what I wanted, I was only going to half-help him with the rest.  Fair?  I think so!  So, sit back and relax - I have a lot of pictures to share with you.  He said he'd document the experience so I could make a blog post.  He did a good job taking the pics (and there's a lot of them)!

It started off as your basic run-of-the-mill red velvet box cake.  One round cake pan.  There was extra batter so he made 6 good size cupcakes.

He had a helper!  You've seen Mr Nate helping me in the kitchen - now it's Daddy's turn.

We have a bench along one edge of the kitchen.  It's perfect height for Nate to help with the mixing.  Daddy must be braver than me - I practically stand on top of him when he's using the electric mixer.

I guess he's supposed to be pointing at the batter in horror because it "looked like blood".  LOL  I love the look on Nate's face.

Double thumbs up!  Nate loves to help us in the kitchen and usually we're in such a hurry that we shoo him away.  He gets excited when we actually ask him to help.

All finished baking!  They did all this (and cleaned up) while I was away at the grocery store.  Daddy even let Nate stay up late until I got home (he didn't get to bed until around 9:30 that night) - partly because he was being good and partly in the hopes that he'd sleep in the next morning.  He did.  A little.  He got up around 7:20 the next morning. 

Hmmm.  It seems I'm missing a picture.  *sigh*  Anyway, this is the round cake with a wedge cut out of each side to create the mandible.  The hubs frosted it all with cream cheese frosting.  Yum!!

Do you know how hard it is to find black icing when it's not Halloween?  It's hard.  Luckily, I found some dark chocolate "brownie topping" that was so dark brown that it was black enough.

The finished decorated cake.  It looked even better than I thought it would.  The hubs really is quite he artist!

Doesn't this look great?!  I almost didn't want to eat it.  Almost.

The hubs with his creation.  I think he looks rather proud of himself.  He wanted to tilt it up a little more to show off the cake but he was afraid it would slide off the plate.

And what's a good skull without little minions?  I love the little cupcake skulls!  The cupcake on the bottom left reminds me of Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas.  LOL  The kids were happy to have their very own skull cake.  Pretty cool, huh?

I missed out on PHD's weekly nail challenge this time around - first time in 10 challenges! - but here's a link to this week's gallery: Song Inspiration.  She's going on vacation next week so there won't be a challenge this week.  I get a little break so I'll be back on the game for the next challenge.

Listening to: Forever by Kenny Loggins (OMG look at that hair and beard!)
Mood: workin'