18 MONTHS IN THE MAKING !
June 3, 2017
My husband is a genius. Other than being really smart, he can build stuff. And I mean HARD stuff. He has been working on building a 1930 Model A Ford for the past 8 years or so and this month it will finally be finished. Talk about a lesson in patience…….. (which you MIGHT need to make it to the end of this post, but I personally feel it’s worth it 😉 )
So 18 months ago, when it occurred to me he wasn’t too far away from his 50th birthday ……..
(OK, let me take a minute here. I’m sorry but that DOES make me feel old. I mean, HOW can I be married to a 50 year old man when I’m only 25 myself? Ok, 25 myself ‘in-my-head’. But still, YOUNG??
Ok. Over it)
….. I knew exactly what his cake was going to be for his 50th birthday. A replica of the car he had poured his heart and soul into. But, this presented a few problems.
- How does one prepare a surprise cake, for a surprise birthday party, in the home of the surprisee? (is that a word? it should be a word)
- When preparing said cake, how does one react when surprisee (I’m going with it) suddenly comes home when you’re not expecting him?
- And finally, how does one learn about electricity enough to have working headlights in the cake once surprisee arrives at his surprise party?
Well, here’s the answers.
- You tell surprisee that you have two cake orders that week, and they’re big so you need to start on them VERY early in the week.
- When surprisee arrives home and you’ve already cut said cake into the OBVIOUS shape of a car, you hurl a 10×14 inch cake board on top of your carving, and let it ‘hang’ there as it swings to and fro. That’s right. A cake board. On TOP of a cake. That is smaller than the cake. Making the board act like a see-saw. And THEN acting like this is completely normal (it’s not!)
- Lastly, you go to the local lighting store, have them set you up with lights, wires and a 6volt battery (that sucker’s huge!) and have them tell you about positives and negatives and that you ‘probably won’t have a fire’ with this setup. Probably? Like I probably won’t eat this whole bowl of leftover ganache by myself and call it ‘research’? NEWSFLASH – I’m eating the ganache. It’s ‘research’.
The bad news is, the battery didn’t last long enough for the surprisee/husband to see it. The good news is, all of the guests did.
Wait a second. All of the guests DID LAST LONG ENOUGH in order for the husband to see them, but they ALSO got to see the working headlights. Note to self, sentence structure is important…..
The other bad news is I wasn’t able to hide the battery inside the cake like I was hoping to, but the good news is I learned plenty about car cakes for the next one. (Did I REALLY just say ‘next one’? Like I’m planning to DO a ‘next one’? Re-evaluating……..)
Anyways, you’ve been very patient reading. So here’s the visual of this whole ordeal. Happy 50th Birthday to my best friend, car-building extraordinaire, my husband xoxo