Works For Me Wednesday - Going With the Flow

So, yesterday, Baby turned ONE!  Boy, that year flew by!  I scampered around like a madwoman to throw a birthday party for family and friends.  I learned an important lesson during this scampering:

Thou shalt not "wing it" with fondant.

The cake turned out well, just nothing like I had planned.  I had envisioned a beautiful cake that liiked like 2 presents wrapped in dark chololate with colorful ribbons and bows stacked on each other.  Um.  No.  That didn't happen.  I read a few fondant recipes (my first try using it let alone making it) and found one I liked, however, it was for WHITE fondant.  I wanted CHOCOLATE fondant.  So, I dumped in some cocoa powder at the last minute.  As I put the fondant in the fridge overnight, it resembled either a shriveled brain or a giant turd.  Yeah.  The color didn't work the way I had expected.

After baking all morning, I began to assemble my "present" cake.  Shaping a box mix cake isn't the easiest task.  After a half hour of making a crumbly mess, I realized the cake looked more like a vehicle than a present.  Add in the turd color of the fondant and you get:

MATER!

I am thankful for one piece of advice from the recipe I decided to not follow:

Advice from Peggy: "One of the first things that I learned in cake decorating is to relax and have fun. Try to remember that you are working in a medium that is meant to be eaten. It won’t be around 50 years from now. The memories and pictures might be around, but I can promise you that the important part of all of this is that you went to the effort and everyone was delighted.

Lesson two is that no cake decorator creates a perfect cake; the pros just know how to correct the errors and go on. The cake that I’m going to use today is a dense, moist cake that will hold its shape under the weight of what can be a heavy bit of icing and decorations."

I am thankful I didn't go all out with a specific theme.  Going with the flow works for me!

Oh - to add to the excitement of the birthday, Baby started walking on Monday and we found out we are PREGNANT on Sunday!

Oh - a cleaning tip for this themed edition of WFMW!  I love Flylady and some of her routines.   The one that works for me is the shiny sink routine.  Each day, I try to go to bed with a clean kitchen and an empty sink.  The day just starts off better that way.  My favorite cleaning tip - after wiping the counters with water to get the gunk off, I pour a little vinegar on them and wipe.  The vinegar naturally disinfects.  Another plus - the kitchen smells like EASTER!  You know - the smell of dyeing Easter eggs in vinegar?  Yeah. 

Head on over to We Are THAT Family to see other great tips!