"we love you, stacy!!" - words happened

a very sad thing happened. my lovely boss and friend, stacy, left grey's after working there since the pilot. technically, even before the pilot, if you can believe that such a time ever existed. some grey's fans weren't even born then and wow.

a lot of changes happened this year in our little show family, but instead of focusing on how really fucking sad it all was, we tried to celebrate some.

so, look over there! it's stacy in her sunglasses! and sweater! and scarf! standing in front of her old red saturn! classic stacy. the best part was that, at the party, stacy was wearing her sunglasses! and sweater! and scarf! classic stacy being classic stacy.

and don't be sad... look over there, there! on the cake board. do you see that beyonce wrapping paper? how great is that! beyonce is the best! we are all happy and not sad because we love beyonce! and beyonce loves us! because i'm from houston and stacy's from houston and so is beyonce. did you know that?

and definitely don't be sad because look! at all those words! i wrote them all! isn't that hilarious! that i would do that to myself! 

those words are the titles of all of the episodes of grey's that stacy has ever written. and it's getting sad again... but it's happy because that's an amazing career and holy shit!

but if we could make it about me for a second. that really is a lot of words. and i don't know why i thought it would be a good idea to do that. but i did that. and then i spent all of yesterday looking to see if there was some sort of world record for "most words on a cake." no such record exists, so i'm only half-kidding when i say that... i'm looking into it.

ok, back to stacy! we love you!

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 3.5 hours + 1 hour on the guinness world records site, and forever scarred by some of the things i found there.

thirty-one episodes in total,

sassy badger

"bugs" - big

y'all, this cake was big. in about a billion ways. big.

this cake was two round cakes stacked on top of one another. each layer consisted of three boxes of cake mix. so, six boxes of cake mix total. as in, this was, essentially, six cakes. the cake was so heavy, easily the heaviest i've ever made, that i had to reinforce the circular cake tray below it with duct tape and hot glue.

minor construction and six cakes later, i had a big thing to decorate.

a big thing to decorate means lots of icing. probably went through about 4-5 tubs of icing on this one. my teeth hurt just thinking about how much of that icing i ate for breakfast that day.

the decoration also proved to be a big/huge/high/whatever-the-fuck learning curve. i'd never used the "grass" icing tip before (yes, there's an earlier post about it, but i posted them out of order because i'm lazy. okay?). all of the instruction videos about the grass tip make it look so easy. it is not. some of the grass looks like grass, others look like a cluster of pimples, and others look like limp noodles. appetizing, yet?

the other lesson along this big learning curve was figuring out how to icing the side.

let's face it. i'm very smart. i'm very talented. everything comes easily to me. so, i thought that this would be simple. crush some oreos. mix it in the icing and spread along the side. that did not work at all. it big time failed. eventually, i found a system of balancing some oreos on the spreading knife and then quickly sticking them into the icing. it almost felt like i was just catapulting them up there and hope some of them stuck.

i was also in a big rush to pull this thing off. i had to finish this cake and another in one day (see jerrika's cake below). the baking on this one took longer than the decorating. i had to wait for each big layer to cool off before starting on the next one. my life is hard.

but, the biggest big part of all of this was how much of a pain in the ass it was to load these stupid pictures onto my computer so that i could post this stupid blog for my five readers. 

so, i had taken these pictures with my nikon coolpix (pay me?) camera. i went to pull out the sd card to load the pictures onto my laptop. my new laptop doesn't have the sd slot. okay. what about the usb transfer cable? can't find it. okay. i'll just load the pictures onto my old laptop and email them. i go to get my old laptop. turns out the battery, overnight, has gotten so swollen that it's pushing the trackpad out of the keyboard, and it won't turn on. read the online forums, it says just take the battery out and use the charger. okay. i try that, but two of the screws on the bottom won't come out, so the battery can't be removed. okay. now, at this point, i remember that my nikon coolpix has wi-fi. it's an incredible feature (seriously. pay me.). so, i go to connect my camera to my unbloated, working, won't-explode-and-kill-me-in-my-sleep-laptop. i try and try and try. it's not working. i go to the forums. they say that it's easier to connect to the phone. okay. i try that. turns out you need an app. i hate apps. big time. i download it. after about twenty minutes, it finally works.

so, even though this is one of the lamest blog posts in the history of this blog, y'all better enjoy the fuck out of these pictures. or else.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 3 hours + some extra party crafts i got to help with once i delivered the cake. i present to you... "grape worms":

pay me, ashton kutcher,

sassy badger

"jerrika as stephanie as the easter bunny" - a goodbye

in college, i would often bring cakes to parties. it was usually someone's birthday, but not always. halloween, the end of finals, or just 'murica were all reasons enough to have people over to your shitty off-campus apartment. and cake was just that thing that went with underage drinking (not me, parents, promise!).

so, for the love of beyonce, i do not know why i thought it was a good idea to bring a cake to a real grown-ass grown-up party at an actor's house where other grown-ups and actors would be. where there was an open bar and caterers walking around with trays of food and desserts that were prepared by a real chef.

like, did i think it was just going to be a few beers and a bag of chips? apparently so. i'd just drop this puppy down on the coffee table that somebody picked up off the street. and boom.

again, this was not that party, but none of my actions seemed to align with that fact. i brought a cake. problem number one. then, i didn't even walk in with it in a nice cake box or anything. i just threw it in my own plastic cake carrier WITH MY NAME WRITTEN ON IT LIKE A FUCKING KINDERGARTEN LUNCHBOX and waltzed right into the party. well, actually, i walked a few blocks into the party, even though there was a valet because... did i assume there would be a valet? no. of course not. in my mind, this was a beer and chip party, and i would accidentally park in a permit zone, and i would feel grateful when my car was only ticketed and not towed at the end of the evening. that is how parties work. still. always. forever. i will never get used to how people be grown-ups, especially here in los angeles.

but despite all of my stupidity and less-than-great choices, i am glad that i showed up with that cake. someone who was a warm and giving heart to me (and hundreds of others) was moving on. jerrika has always been a bright spot during my time at grey's, and her character, stephanie, became one of my favorites over the last few seasons. i would miss them both.

i couldn't show up with nothing to say thank you and goodbye. and, often, i don't know how to be a person and say the things that i want to say. i prefer gestures to words most of the time (except this blog is full of words? lol idk). and as soon as i got the invite to this "party," i immediately decided that i would have to make a cake. k not a stressful decision at all.

what should be on the cake? jerrika was only around for over one hundred episodes, so it's not like there were a lot of character moments to choose from... ugh. when that became too overwhelming, i reminded myself that it only had to look amazing and be super funny...

the day of jerrika's party, i also had to make another cake (which i will post about when i find the picture i took of it). so, it had to look amazing, be super funny, and also be able to be baked and decorated in like 3 hours. and for whatever reason, that did the trick. my mind immediately jumped to an episode where stephanie had to dress up like the easter bunny to give candy to kids in the hospital.

it was hilarious for me. probably sweaty for jerrika. and perfect for the cake. an easy design and a pretty damn good quote to encapsulate the character leaving the show.

instagram: @hellojerrika

so, goodbye, stephanie edwards. and thank you for everything, jerrika hinton (including washing my cake carrier and bringing it back to me).

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1 hour + the easter bunny forever being ruined by sean spicer.

the cristina yang of her resident class,
sassy badger

"a street" - easy money

ok. ok. so here's the thing. my boss was like, "i got these plastic cake toppers. can you make this cake?"

and i was like, "sure!"

and then she put the cake toppers on top of the cake (wild, i know).

and there you go. that's the whole cake. 

and like, it was so easy. like the easiest. probably not easy for y'all because... obvs. but definitely easy for me. i'm pretty sure that no one's ever thought of this before, but copying other people's work to make money is, legit, the way to go.

it was still a bit of a learning experience. i'm not the best at making the tops of cakes completely smooth (i'm still better than y'all because... obvs). usually, my designs can mask it pretty well so you can't tell how bumpy it is, but this cake just left it all out in the open, and i think it doesn't totally suck.

also, it was only my second time using the "grass" icing tip. some of the spots were super good-looking and others, not so much (but definitely better than anything y'all could pull off because... obvs).

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + one bloody finger after trimming one of the cake toppers EVEN THOUGH i used child safety scissors because i want to be safe and because i don't own a pair for grown-ups.

wee ooo wee ooo wee ooo (a firetruck sound),

sassy badger