Baked with LUV

My initial plan for Southwest Airlines' Baked with LUV contest was to have two entries.  Yesterday, I posted my first entry to the contest: a Southwest airplane made from cake.  After posting, I set to work on my second entry.  Oliver and I baked a sheet cake together.  I was about to pop it into the oven to freeze in preparation for carving when something occurred to me.  I could first frost it like a traditional cake, take a fun photo with it, and then scrape off most of the frosting and freeze it to carve later, as planned.  So, just like that, I came up with another entry for this contest.

I used some of my leftover "Southwest Airline Blue" fondant color from my airplane cake to create numbers for the top.  The rest of the cake, I decorated traditionally.  I finished late into the night again, so I stuck the cake in the fridge for photos in the morning.

Cake decorating steps:

My plan was to take a family photo.  Each of us would have a thought bubble popping out of our heads, thinking of a great trip we would want to take.  I would be thinking of Florida and warm, sandy beaches.  Andrew would be thinking of me in a swimsuit.  Oliver would think about Disney World, and Jo--well, Jo would just be thinking about milk.  We would all be in our pajamas, looking a little stressed out, wanting to be on vacation.  Even if Jo cried, it would only add to the charm of the photo.

This morning, I was so tired from staying up late the last two nights that Andrew watched the kids to let me sleep until 7am.  When I finally got up, he had to get dressed to go to work.  Unfortunately, I couldn't wait and postpone the photo shoot to tonight because I needed the sheet cake in the freezer for carving today.  The show must go on, so we took pictures without him.

Things didn't quite go as planned.  Oliver didn't have any clean sets of jammies ready.  So, I put him in underwear shorts and a T-shirt.  I put Jo in a onesie that I thought resembled an undershirt, and I got dressed in an over-sized nightgown.  I got our thought bubbles and Mickey (OK, Minnie) ears ready, set up the camera for some self-portraits, and grabbed the cake.

It went OK.  I felt a little stressed instead of just pretending to be a little stressed for comedy.  Oliver covered himself, which gave the appearance that everyone was dressed for the day except me.  Haha!  I guess it did reflect the life of a stay-at-home mom after all.  Not to do all that extra work for nothing, I settled on the best photo of the group and submitted my second entry.

Here's my entry pin:  http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066795331/


#HappyBdaySWA