Rainbows

Gina was so excited about her birthday today. She got up early and got dressed and then put up streamers in the doorway to decorate. She wasn't as happy about helping to clean up and get ready for her party but she tried. I was really tired today after running around yesterday to 5 different stores to get stuff for her party. She had invited the other 7 girls in her class and she had big plans for the event. Originally, the plan was to play in the sprinklers in the front but the cool, cloudy weather changed those plans (2 weeks ago it would have been perfect). Instead, the plan was to play soccer in the front and then make bead bracelets and finger knit. The soccer idea was fine for awhile but with 8 girls, some of them got bored fairly quickly. They had fun making the bead bracelets but it didn't consume a lot of time. So they started making up their own game of pretend. I only had to intervene once or twice to keep the decibel level within reason. Overall it went pretty well.

And then there was the cake. A friend had made a rainbow cake for her daughter's birthday and it looked really cool. And then I came across another rainbow cake on a baking blog and I decided to make it for Gina's birthday. Gina liked the idea but in the last few days she started asking for sea otters playing soccer to be on her cake (she is researching sea otters in school). I didn't think I could do that exactly but then I came up with the idea that she could make a sea otter out of marzipan to put on the cake. She was excited about that though she didn't like the taste of the marzipan. I colored some brown with cocoa and then colored some more with different colors so that she and Andrew could make different sea creatures. They got into it and made squid, sea stars, fish and jelly fish. So in the end, I frosted the cake blue, decorated the top with a rainbow and clouds and then created an ocean with a sea otter in the middle holding a starfish. Each layer of the cake is a different color and is supposed to be a different flavor. Yellow is lemon, orange is orange, green is lime, blue is blueberry, red is raspberry and purple is blackberry. But the flavors ended up being very subtle once the cake was baked and assembled so I don't think it tasted any better than the original white cake mix. (The blue layer reminded me of my one of my roommates in grad school, Jeramiah who would make cakes with electric blue frosting.)