Fire Truck Birthday Cake

Right now I am a stay-at-home mom of two crazy kids.  By crazy, I mean, they drive ME crazy!  I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when I had a career in the advertising/wedding industry (Yes, me!).  I had a laptop (that wasn't covered in  Gogurt ... thanks kids), sales budgets (and I don't mean the teeny-tiny shopping budget I have now), and CLIENTS!!!

There are a few clients that I've stayed in contact with, and Katie is one of them.  Katie and I have "met" a few times thanks to client lunches (that sounds so swanky now!) and networking meetings (WHAT!  You mean I used to leave the house just to mingle with other ADULTS?), but I have never mets her cute boys.

So, I was THRILLED when she asked me to make Will's 3rd birthday cake.  Then she told me she wanted a FIRE TRUCK, and I think I stopped breathing and peed my pants (just a little.)

Seriously, I talk a good game about what I *think* I can do, but making a fire truck was on the far, outer reaches of my comfort zone.  I started obsessing about this cake day and night.  I COULD NOT LET HER DOWN!  After all, she is a wedding planner - she owns The Charmed Event in Charlotte, NC.  If I got this cake right, maybe, just maybe (fingers crossed) there might be more business in the future.

Long story short, we had a "calendar malfunction", and I ended up having to make the cake 3 days sooner than I originally thought and found out the day before.  There was no time to pee in my pants ... I HAD to knock this cake out of the park.

Did I mention that this cake needed to have working flashing lights on it?  Did I mention that the red lights I ordered were on backorder for weeks and scheduled to arrive THE DAY I needed to deliver it.  It would have been fine if we hadn't had that "calendar malfunction", but now I wasn't going to have the flashing red & white lights on time.  Luckily for me, that week, I found that Michaels carries some flashing white lights - they're not top quality, but they would work in a pinch.  They would have to.

I stayed up pretty much all night, but thanks to all of my afore mentioned obsessing, I got this sucker done.  I was thrilled with the final result.

This is what is looked like around midnight:

(NNNOOOOO ... I wasn't drinking.  It was my husband's beer bottle.  Really, it was.)

Due to the time restraints, there were some details that didn't make it onto the cake and there were some areas that were flawed (don't make me point them out.)  But, all-in-all, I was really happy with this cake.  Maybe it was just because I was exhausted and would have been thrilled with anything that resembled a fire truck.

Here's the final result:

LOOK!  The white chocolate ladder on top of the fire truck said "Will 3" on both sides.  I even tried to make it stand out a bit with a dusting of red luster dust.  (I know ... I'm slightly obsessed with putting names in white chocolate)

The license plate said WLLS3 (Will's 3).

OK ... I wasn't THRILLED about how the front turned out, but hopefully the blinking lights deflected from the flaws.  OK ... I'll point them out - lower right corner was sloppy, had to use toothpicks to keep the bumper on (you can see the pin pricks), the headlights weren't even.

Katie said *most* of the lights worked, and she moved some around to make sure everything in the front lit up for Will.  I CANNOT WAIT to get some pictures from Katie.  It's wedding season, and that means I'll probably have to wait until November to get them, but that's OK.  I can be patient.  (Are they ready yet, Katie???)

And, check out The Charmed Event's blog - http://thecharmedevent.wordpress.com/.  Katie & Jill have lots of fun tips & ideas.  You can even read all about the award the received for planning a vendor bash for me when I was The Knot sales rep!  They won Best Social Event Under $40K.  They did such a fabulous job, and were totally deserving of the award.  Congrats Katie & Jill!!!

(Are the pictures ready yet?)