Marching towards spring...

Wow, what a winter this has been! So cold and so much snow... I think I speak for all Ontarians when I say we're ready for the end of winter. Our water pipes have frozen twice, leaving us with no water in the main bathroom for two three days at a time. The kids have missed more school this year because of the weather than they ever have before, and I can't stand winter on the best of days! I can handle it on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and maybe Boxing Day, for all the festivities, and then as far as I am concerned, it can all melt and torture someone else lol! But let's face it, we all want BBQ season back with those long, hot, lazy weekends! Am I right? Bring it!

I am excited to say that I have March Break off with my kids, the only downfall is that my oldest son is going to Ottawa with the Sea Cadets (for winter fun lol). They will be touring the Parliament building, skating along Rideau Canal, and enjoying some snowboarding and skiing. He is going to have so much fun and I will miss him so much! But he's back mid-week and then we can all hang out together :)

This cake is the last one I did for the month of February. February was a very busy, very productive month for me and I loved it! When I look back, I wonder how I did it... and then I remember, my family helped me. My husband was great in helping me out with the assembly line for Valentine's Day and making sure I had enough supplies (I stockpiled for awhile before the big Valentine's Day promo!). I couldn't have done it without any of them!

 

 

This part was impressive enough! After covering the cake in green fondant, I trimmed dark chocolate KitKat bars into varying lengths and secured them to the side of the cake with buttercream as a fence-like trim. Then I piped grass around and in between them and put the yellow piece on with the big number 6. The second part needed to dry for two days before I felt comfortable putting it on the cake (and I still wasn't entirely sure it would stay put!)

 

 



I started this part on the Tuesday evening before the cake needed to be picked up. I began by cutting a tree trunk out of chocolate fondant and scoring marks in it to make it look like bark. It was attached to a piece of green fondant at the bottom, but you can't see it very well in the picture.

Then I went to work on Phineas and Ferb. I'm going to be honest, I have never seen the show, and if you're a fan of the cartoon, you can tell because of the placement of orange hair lol! I'll tell more about that later! Cutting out all the small pieces was no problem, but I learned a lesson about 6-7 months ago with another project with all kinds of little pieces... USE royal icing to secure them! So I did... but it wasn't until the following night that I recalled this important information (I blame memory lapse on my kids!).

I kept everything separate until the evening of pickup. My oldest son mentioned that the one guy was missing hair (guy... lol... again, never seen the cartoon!). The customer was waiting in my hallway as I put the finishing touches on (the grass, the bushes). So I put some orange squiggles on top of his head... I looked at him, and he's like, "Nooooo. It's not curly!" I scrape it off and try again. I look at him again for confirmation... aaaaaand he shakes his head. I said, "What is the problem?" He goes, it's at the very back of his head." I said, "You mean where the other guy's (lol) head is?" He tells me yes. I said, "Well, I can't put it there! The guy's head is there, this will have to do!" LOL!

In the end, the little boy was very happy with his cake and that, my friends, is all that matters!

Stay tuned for the next post, and stay sweet!