"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