The icing on my cake

There’s so much icing in my life at the moment.

The metaphorical stuff is a total buzz: just as sweet as the real thing, without being messy, calorie-laden or complicated.

Yet.

The sugary real stuff, on the other hand …

There’s a vast, terrifying chasm between deciding you are going to make THIS for your daughter’s 11th birthday …

And actually replicating it.

I mean it LOOKS easy, but something tells me there will be tears.

I’m an ideas person, but big picture. I find the actual DOING a little tricky. I’m not quite enough of a perfectionist. And I tend to skip all those annoying bits like sifting flour and adding baking powder because …

Fortunately 11-year-olds aren’t hyper-critical. Well, at least mine isn’t. So I’m hoping to scrape through on this one.

There’s a tutorial on how to make the sandcastle cake at Living Well Spending Less.

It scared me a bit. So I spent yesterday at Woolies searching for foolproof shortcuts, like ready-made sponge rolls that I could turn into turrets.

Deep breaths.

The eldest is also super-keen for a watermelon shark that looks like this …

Gawd. No shortcuts on that one. I think it’s beyond me despite completing 3-Unit Art for the HSC (how the talented kids hated me for getting higher marks than them – my artistic skills were so woeful I did a dodgy collage as my major work, but I streeted them on the essays).

However, despite my messy, non-perfectionist streak, I’m a doggedly determined creature. So I’m going to grab myself a watermelon and give it a red-hot go.

In the meantime there are birthday cupcakes to be baked and decorated for her to take to school. Step away from the terrifying cupcake decorating book my sweet 11-year-old-to-be!  Who the hell thought that would be a fun gift?

The countdown is on … only four sleeps until party day … wish me luck!

Song of the day: Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy “Icing on the cake”