Happy Hippo Birthday T!

Last weekend we celebrated T's second birthday in the backyard with lots of friends, lots of food, lots of mimosas and bloody mary's and one lumpy, collapsed blue cake!  My birthday party (and I guess party in general) specialty here is brunch since I can make almost everything in advance and just heat things up in the morning and because it is much easier to serve just bloody mary's and mimosas along with some coffee and juice than to operate a full bar.  Also, my children become evil, grumpy, nasty little monsters after about 5pm so evening gatherings aren't really their strong suit.

I was a bit concerned about planning poor little T's party after the unicorn and dragon extravaganza that was K's last birthday party.  I was struggling to come up with a theme when T herself provided one during our last trip to Lower Zambezi.  The girl is obsessed with hippos!  She got so excited ever time we saw any that it seemed like the obvious choice for the birthday theme.  

So, we committed to hippos, brunch, and a date and proceeded full speed ahead.  I ordered lots of hippo plates, and a pinata, and cute little napkins and a nifty little hippo cake topper... or I thought I had ordered a nifty little hippo cake topper which I planned to put in a perfectly lovely round blue cake (a river, obviously).  Except two nights before the party I finally got around to opening the giant box of hippo paraphernalia and no cake topper.  Not because the company forgot to include it.  Oh no!  because I forgot to order it!  I looked at it, I decided I wanted it, but I left off that crucial step of actually clicking on it and putting it into my cart and purchasing it.  Whoops!  Not a problem thought as we have lots of little colorful stone hippos from the local junk market.  Not exactly the look I was going for but it would be fine.  Just fine!  Blue cake (red velvet cake with blue food coloring instead of red).  Not just any cake, mind you, but the same recipe I have been using successfully since 2002.  I have probably made this same cake twenty or thirty times.  Indeed, it is the cake I dyed green earlier this year and cut into the shape of a dragon!  And all I wanted to do this time was color it blue and have a basic two tiered round cake.  Simple!  But then, this happened:

It's a caketastropy!!!

The first layer seemed a bit unstable but I was able to get icing on it.  The second layer was causing a bit of concern and then, at the first spoonful of icing, utter and complete collapse.  I kept adding more icing in hopes I could sort of glue it all back together but it rapidly became apparent that it was just making things worse.  So, I did what any responsible parent would do 15 hours out from a party with a debacle of a cake on her hands.  I stuck it in the fridge, poured myself a glass of wine, and decided to deal with it in the morning!

Once it chilled a bit in the fridge I was able to add a bit more icing and while it was still a lumpy mess we decided it looked rather lie a river in which hippos might live so good enough!  And, not surprisingly, no two-year olds minded one bit that the cake was wonky.  They were all too excited about their blue tongues to care at all.

Victory (or close enough)!

The party was great with a bunch of awesome people.  We had a pinata with pull strings, rather than the traditional whack it with a stick model because I was still a bit emotionally scarred by the stick wielding children from K's party.  This was much safer!  Perhaps slightly less exciting, but so much less stressful.  The kids drew all over the playhouse with chalk, overfed the bunnies (apparently they like banana bread, who knew!), generally ran amuck in the yard, and overall had a ton of fun.  Perhaps I am recalling the morning with mimosa goggles, but I don't really remember a singly screaming fit or fight.  A birthday miracle!

Sting pinata- all the candy without the horrible fear of someone getting hit with a stick!

T got a baby stroller of her own, which she loves, and an awesome piggy pillow.  So cute!

Happy sisters!  Super cute dresses courtesy of grandparents, of course!