The cake...

Ok, so I know I promised to blog about the cake I made for Sammy's party "tomorrow" in Monday's blog edition, but give me a break...it was MY birthday yesterday & I forgot! :)

SO, Sam wanted a Harry Potter birthday. Since I'd been working ALL week last week on fixing up his bunk bed, I was a little out of it when it came to planning his special cake. I mean, a HARRY POTTER cake??? What was I to do?

Google.

I spent HOURS on Google Images looking at other people's Harry Potter themed cakes. Some were pretty cool! I found one that looked like the golden snitch. I really liked the idea of it, and I already have the Betty Crocker Bake 'n' Fill pan, so I decided to go for it.
My biggest problem on this front was Fondant. I have never liked the taste of fondant icing. and I had never worked with Fondant. So I searched for the fondant recipe and Ta-Da!!!! I found one that did not call for glycerin, and went for the gold.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rolled-Buttercream-Fondant/Detail.aspx

So I baked 2 half circle cakes. One chocolate, one yellow & "glued" them together with regular frosting.

Resulting in this.

Then I covered this giant "ball" of cake with regular frosting and applied the fondant. I found this surprisingly easy as I am a PRO with play dough!! I also used a little cookie cutter like thing I have in my cake decorating tool caddy to put swirlies on the cake.

My next hurdle, WINGS. I decided to print out some wings that I could place under wax paper & then "trace" with melted white chocolate to make wings for the cake. 

While the wings turned out VERY cool looking, they were rather awkward at applying to the cake in a sturdy manor. Add to that 80 degree temps the day of the party, and the wings broke while I was sticking them into the cake and I had to adapt at the last minute and trim the wings a little. This was my end result...

Still not too bad! And Sam thought it was AWESOME! Which is what really counted in the end! :)

To summarize my last week... The Bunk Bed.

I spent all of last week preparing for Sam's birthday. For starters, I received a bunk bed from our friend to give to my son for his birthday. I'd picked it up a few weeks ago, but the weather would not cooperate, or my budget, or some other issues that would not allow me to work on it until the last minute.

So starting last Sunday, I brought some of the parts of the bed into the house and started taping up the parts that I did not want to paint.

The bed was now ready to sand. On Monday, I went out in the chilly garage & sanded all the pieces. since it was cold out, I got a little lazy and decided not to sand the side rails.

Then, in the thought that it would save me money, I started painting the bed on Tuesday with spray paint. I got the first coat on 1/2 of the bed on Tuesday. on Weds. I flipped all the pieces and did the 1st coat on the 2nd half.

By this point in the week, I was down 4 cans of spray paint & starting to freak out about needing to clean the house for a party that I'd barely started planning. I was already tired of spray paint fumes. and had not even started planning out my son's cake. I felt SO behind!
Thursday, I bought 3 more cans of paint. got the 2nd coat on both sides of the bed & decided it was good enough, and that if I'd missed any spots I'd touch up from there.

On Friday, I took off all the tape! That felt like it took almost as long as applying the 1st coat of paint. AND I'd barely cleaned the house!  Ok- I did make the kids vacuum. 

Allie helped me take the tape off, and we were trying to keep Sam from seeing the finished product.

Saturday, My dad came over & helped me clean up the yard because the weatherman was calling for 80 & an outside party seemed great! That ended not allowing Sam to see the bed because I had to open the garage door to put some stuff away. But he still loved it.

Sunday was Sam's party. I will blog about that on weds. Tomorrow's blog will be my cake. The Golden Snitch Cake from Harry Potter

Today is Sam's birthday & the hubby & I assembled the bed in his room while he was at school. I did have to  finish the lower bunk after he got home, but he was still happy to see it. & I've heard him say about 7 times now that he is going to sleep on the top bunk! :) I'd also bought him a second comforter to match the one he has so it matched:)