So I’m beginning to feel the anxiety building over Kade’s 5th birthday extravaganza next weekend. There will be a house full of children here on Saturday for the Haunted Halloween celebration and then the family party is set for Sunday, which will be much more low key and pretty much sloppy seconds from the soiree the day before. Sorry, family…but I just can’t swing the usual hoopla two days in a row and come out of it a sane woman.

Kyle and I aren’t Goth (although this summer my aunt asked me if I was because my toes were painted with black polish), we don’t dabble in the Dark Arts, and our home isn’t decorated with ravens, skulls and red velvet, but we’ve managed to have a child who is obsessed with Halloween, skeletons (especially Jack Skellington), vampires, and all things spooky, frightening and just plain odd. Apologies to all the Goth, Dark Art dabbling, Edgar Allen Poe-design-style folks out there…didn’t mean to stereotype you. I just wanted to make a point that Kade didn’t get this from us. To be honest, I’m wondering if he caught the bug from my grandmother.  She is a witch (not of the Dark Art variety, but of the earth-loving, wiccan strain)…and she does decorate with ravens, skulls and velvet, and maybe she did read Poe to me at bedtime. Okay, so mystery solved. On with the post.

So that’s the theme…Halloween. In March.

I think it’s pretty freaking cool. And the decorating and planning will be easy since Kade knew he wanted a Halloween birthday party the day after his Spiderman party last March, which gave me an entire year to plan and buy discounted crap at the after-Halloween sales.

It’s the cake I’m worried about. I’ve set a precedent and it’s now biting me in the backside.

It all started out so simple…

Then he had to go and fall in love with The Wiggles (I can’t take credit for the store-bought sheet cake, but the Big Red Car was all mine).

Then things really got interesting when he decided on the pirate theme. This had to be the most fun I’ve ever had making a cake. It even made me think I could do it for a living, but taking two days to complete one cake doesn’t seem all that lucrative).

Last year’s was tedious and time-consuming (still nothing compared to the Ariel cake) and I had the bright idea of making spiderweb cupcakes to go with it because I have absolutely no idea how many people one cake will serve when it isn’t shaped like a circle, square or rectangle.

And that leaves me with next weekend. Two parties. Two cakes. One mama. And a ticking clock…

I’m thinking Jack Skellington cupcakes for the kids party (totally doable and requires no frosting tinting…bonus). We can always throw in other Halloween-like characters too, but that might require me to dye and bag a crap-load of frosting, which is not the goal here.

And a tombstone cake for the family. Or maybe a vampire cake. I’ll make it a surprise.

Actually, I love making the cake for my kids birthdays. I’m not a crafty, hands-on, let’s get messy kind of mama. But twice a year I get creative and put my heart and soul into something that takes two days (or more) to make and lasts but a few hours before it disappears forever. It’s my gift to them. And sometimes, just sometimes, it’s their favorite one…