The Helms: Birthday Shenanigans

Friday Laren turned 23 years old. Woohoo. I absolutely loves birthdays and they have always been a big deal in my family so I wanted to do something special for Laren on his special day. I spent most of the day making his cake which you will read about in a little bit. It was a long process and I learned a lot about cakes, but it was fun and I was glad I got to do it for him! Friday when he came home for the day I made him fettuccine alfredo with chicken. It was delicious :) We spent the rest of the evening enjoying our time together, watching Law and Order and playing Farkle. Then I surprised him with his big cake! I decided that I was going to make him a football cake. Laren loves football and BYU is his favorite team in the whole world, so I made him a big football field with BYU on the endzones and a football in the middle. Now a few things before I the pictures

1. I am not a cake designer

2. I have never worked with fondant before

3. I don't profess to be good a baking/ cake decorating, although I hope to be somewhat decent someday.

The point I'm trying to make is I am not a professional and this was my first attempt at making something more than a simple box cake with frosting, so it is what it is, but I'm pretty proud of it :)

Here is the football. It is probably the cleanest part of the cake! I used two circle cakes to make it. I cut out the middle of the cake and the stuck the top and bottom pieces to make a football. I used brown fondant, (which by the way brown is an incredibly hard color to make!) and Laren's rice paddle to texture it.

This football field is a well-worn field! Getting the fondant to lay nicely over two sheet cakes without tearing was pretty impossible, so I went for the used football field look.

I loved how the colors turned out!

I had to throw this picture in, because yes, that is Toddler's and Tiara's on the TV in the background... hahaha.

My handsome birthday guy!!

This was his first attempt at blowing out the candles. He did it too fast, so I made him do it again so I could get pictures!

This was the 2nd time around.

yay! Happy Birthday!

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of him. I love it so much!!

Saturday we slept in and then got up and went to go get Laren his birthday present. He has been needing a new pair of shoes so badly and so I decided that that would be a perfect present. He found a pair that he loves and we both ended up getting a pair... After we picked out our shoes we headed to lunch at one of Laren's favorite restaurants the Wild Ginger with all of his buddies. We had a great time visiting and eating yummy Chinese food. We spent the rest of the day studying/relaxing and it was wonderful!!