Floundering in February

What a fishy post title, eh?

I seem to be floundering (Definition: Struggle mentally; show or feel great confusion: "she floundered, not knowing quite what to say") when it comes to blogging lately.

I've had spurts of being incredibly busy amid bouts of lethargy, with an occasional whopper of a headache waylaying plans to do much of anything that wasn't vital to surviving the day. The headaches are barometer related. I live in a house, not out in the elements, but barometric pressure seeps in through the keyholes I guess.

Not having much to say doesn't make me feel guilty as it once did. Obviously I can say a lot about nothing...and I'm doing that right now! I do feel badly that I've neglected some of my favorite bloggers though. I hope to rectify that this week but today seems to be slipping away from me.

The only thing blog-worthy that I have to share is that I made a cake and mini cupcakes for a great nephew's birthday party yesterday. Josh is 8 now. Every birthday I get the honor of making birthday cakes for him and his sister. They tell me what they'd like and I try to accommodate them. Some times I think they are purposely challenging me but I've managed so far.

What would an 8 year old boy want on his cake this year? I've done football themes twice, a bicycle and a skateboard in recent years. Would it be another sports theme? Yes, sort of. He wanted the Under Armour logo.

Huh?

If you aren't aware, Under Armour is the name of a line of athletic clothing. I don't think I am infringing on any copyrights because the cake was made for personal use.

I wasn't sure how much cake would be needed so I made a chocolate 13x9 cake and yellow mini cupcakes.

Packed and ready to be transported to the party

 

Cupcakes in place and the cake ablaze while we all sang

 

If anyone is wondering how I accomplished this, I found the U A logo online, placed it into a Word document, narrowed the page margins as far as I could go and enlarged the image as much as I could to fit and print in landscape orientation. 

With a crumb coat of frosting on the cake, I placed the cut out logo and traced it with a toothpick, then began filling in the background and sides of the cake with plain butter cream stars. I tinted icing brown for the logo and used a slightly smaller tip. Brown isn't my favorite color to tint icing, but I thought going for the opposite of the cupcakes was a good idea.

The white letters on the cupcakes were done with white candy melts and an alphabet candy mold. The small logos were the same image scaled down to an inch wide and repeated multiple times in Word. I printed the page, placed wax paper over it and piped the logos with the same white candy melts and a small decorator tip.

I've had that alphabet candy mold for decades and it is the most used mold I own. Kids love seeing their name on a cake and being able to eat it. I need to remember to make a few extra letters the next time as siblings and cousins like to at least find the first letter of their name and claim it. There are no E's in Happy Birthday Joshua but he does have a cousin whose name begins with an E, and how could I forget C for my favorite redhead, Colton?

Actually, I didn't forget my grandson. I had plenty of yellow cake batter so I used an old Wilton singles pan in the shape of Winnie the Pooh's head. Colton got this as surprise. Size-wise, I'd say this is about 6" at the widest point, maybe two cupcakes worth of batter.

I don't want to leave you with baited breath, waiting for me to perch my bass on my computer chair and compose another post so I will tell you that I am clamming up for today. Just for the halibut though, tuna in tomorrow and see if I'm still floundering.