Colorful Cake

I was honored to make a birthday cake for a repeat client last weekend. He is colorful, full of life, energy, and encouragement. He cannot be summed up in a cake but I wanted to expose some of his energy and texture in this cake. After it was finished I deeply wished I'd made the icing dollips in different shades of teal, I think it would have added the bit of character I felt it was lacking. However the Italian cream cake sealed inside I was happy with. I do still like the whimsy and texture of the cake but do wish I would have pumped up the color some more. Next time.

Penninsula Camping

Last weekend we geared up to go bad weather camping/hiking for our friend Daniel's 30th birthday on the Olympic Peninsula. Turns out, we had pretty good weather instead. It rained/hailed/sleeted/snowed while we were there but never when we wanted to hike, eat outside, make dinner. It was quite amazing.

We started the day exploring Rialto beach. We meandered along picking up fun shaped driftwood, finding sea glass, spotting sea anemones, and chatting. The landscape there feels different every time we go. This time the waves were small and happy, the tide was low most of the time, and the shore was littered with bright orange wood.

Wrapped up our time outside playing the beach game we invented with people last year, Jerkin the Gherkin. Ended the evening around the fire with pies for the birthday boy. The next day we trekked a bit along second beach, ate lunch along the lake, and took the ferry back home. It was a great amount of quality time with the outdoors and our friends.

Joshua's 29!

The cake was a tahini cake

with a chocolate mousse filling

in mascarpone vanilla bean frosting!

On Saturday we threw Josh a birthday party. We had a giant cheese board, lots of Rainier, and our disco ball light bulbs all spinning. Since he is an introvert, we played a round of Bonco so it broke everyone up into smaller groups that he could chat with. As we started to play though lots of more people walked in so mostly it became chaos with people subbing in and out, me yelling which table to move to and another disco ball being passed around to whoever got the last Bonco. The chaos was actually a ton of fun. We also handed out prizes such as 'a dog wearing a cone' band-aids to the loser and a magnet with a unicorn that says 'I poop glitter' to the winner.

All in all we had about 17 people stuffed into our apartment and Josh got to play records all night. We were both happy.