A cake, a tutu and a photo shoot

We had a full weekend and I would have loved to have Columbus day today as opposed to last week because I am DRAGGING today.

On Friday evening, while J had dinner with some of this grad school buddies, JOE and I went over to our neighbor's for happy hour. At first I wasn't going to go because JOE had been in her rare mood earlier on in the day so I was TIRED. But then J sent me an IM and said to go because someone's bound to want to carry JOE while I was there. Sure enough, he was right :-).

On Saturday, I got up and started decorating JOE's smash cake. I baked the cake after work on Thursday evening so it was just a matter of decorating it. Our neighbor had suggested putting something JOE likes on the cake so she can reach into it and smash the cake. Good idea but my JOE is a smart one. More on that later.

Yellow cake and vanilla cake. I love this pan. Yes it uses 2 boxes of cake mix but I like that it makes for a quick multi-layered birthday cake.

All done. Cake bakes for 55-minutes as opposed to the traditional 30 - 35 minutes. Top of the bottom piece was trimmed with a serrated knife.

Another DIY! I got a plate and candle stick holder from the dollar store. Glued them together with super glue and voila! An instant cake stand.

Cake! I used pre-packaged icing. Bottom was decorated with yellow recess pieces and top was decorated with JOE's apple puffs.

Close up :-). Yes the icing was supposed to look like that. I wanted it to look like a messy "candy hut". I was channeling the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale.

Another DIY. Used word to type up the letters and then J printed them on glossy paper. I cut then, used a hole punch and used a ribbon to hold it together. We used this as a prop for JOE's photo shoot.

Yes...that is the crinoline from my wedding dress. I just cut some off and used one of JOE's headband for the waste. Her top was purple and white and then she picked out her own gold and green necklace. I had some from visiting my sister for Mardi Gras in New Orleans when she lived there.

So on to the photo shoot. JOE was a little tired because she hadn't slept all day. To make matters worse, she threw up earlier in the day so we were a little concerned as to how the session would go.
Thankfully, she was in an OK mood when we got there. However, instead of smashing the cake, JOE proceeded to meticulously pick out her apple puffs! She refused to smash the cake! When I used her hand to smash it, she stretched it towards me so I could clean it up. I guess she didn't want to be messy. She wasn't feeling it but thankfully, we were able to get some good pictures from the session.
I wish I took pics of JOE during her photo-shoot but I was so busy trying to get her to smile and smash the cake, I never got a chance to. I will be sure to post pictures from her photo session once we get them back in a couple of weeks.


Yesterday, we headed to church as usual. JOE wore the outfit I made her last week. Coincidentally, it is the colors of her dad's favorite team. I guess it is now his good-luck charm since his team won yesterday :-).

And here are my two loves. J watching TV and JOE doing what daddy does when he watches football games...talking to the TV! Yes, she has picked that up! 

How was your weekend. I hope it was awesome!