A picture tells a thousand words..

They say a picture speaks a thousand words... and this picture is definately no exception. It was Mirandas birthday last friday (she turned 9) although unfortunately, when she was born, she collided with the long weekend that we celebrate ANZAC day and since over her short life, most of her friends are children of defence members, the weekend just does not work to arrange a birthday party. Especially since it sees her own daddy marching and often away.


Even though many of her friends now are not defence children, their parents see it as a great opportunity to sneak away for a lovely weekend away.. so ... I think you get the picture.



Anyway... This year I promised Miranda that she could chose her own cake and I would make her a cake. She is the only one of the three that has not regularly had me make her a cake and the only one that has not had the opportunity to chose the design of her cake. So, she chose a castle and had a giraffe as backup.. though do you think that I could find all the trimmings required to make either of them? Bah... no way!
I tookyesterday off as an accrued day off from work so I would have time to make her a cake, shop for the party favours and food and have a little nap before being overtaken by a hosue full of 8 and 9 year olds.


Well... at 7am yesterday morning, Kiera and I were scouring the internet like crazy loons trying to find a wow factor cake that would not necessarily require me travelling to all corners of Melbourne to look for trimmings when we came across a whole heap of "topsy turvy cakes"... the colours in these cakes were amazing... and there was definately some WOW factor to say the least, so we started off sketching out our own design ideas... only i knew i did not have enough time, i sketched the cheshire cat out of Alice in wonderland, sitting plump and round with the mad hatters hat on his head and a tea cup precariously balanced on top. (the teacup would have been made out of fondant)... anyway... we figured that since Kiera was going to school so i would not have the extra hands i would need to make such a cake, and that I was going to the gym, heading across town to the bank manager with Matt, then getting back at about 1.30pm to start the cake decorating, that I would only have a few hours before firstly, Miranda came home and secondly, party guests would start arriving... so, the cheshire has been put off until next year and I settled for this instead... The cake : children ratio was alot out, and there is just under 3kg of sugar in that baby... though who cares when I got a responce like i did!?


All morning we had been telling her that we were going to be making her a cake with a dinosaur on top. My darling friend Richard sent over this amazing cake topper that when batteries are inserted, roars and has eyes that glow red. When i say cake topper, I dont mean the pathetic little things we get here in Australia, I mean, about 6" of roaring animated cake top action!
While my baby is a little too polite to say "mum - pull your head in, im a 9 year old girl and so not into dinosaurs" the look on her face was telling me exactly that, mixed with a lot of worry and concern. So when she returned home from school and automatically ran down the hall and headed to the kitchen, she was

very concerned when she was stopped short and told she could not see her cake!
This poor babe had to wait until 9pm last night before she finally got a glimpse at her cake and Matt was on hand with the camera... This photo was not staged, this is the first snap of the camera - taken precisely at the second she first laid eyes on her cake!

I love it!