Who needs running, make a cake instead!

Wow, this week has been horrible for me training-wise.  I don't know what happened, but it's like all of my energy and mojo washed away with all of the colour from last weekend's Color Me Rad 5k.  Yup, I feel like every ounce of my motivation to stick to the schedule went right down the drain with all of that coloured cornstarch!  Needless to say, no long run last Sunday and not a single step during the past week either.

The best (or should I say 'worst') part of it all is that my eating has gone through the roof all week too.  Bowl of potato chips?  Sure!  How 'bout a refill?  Yes please!  Mmm, grocery store cookies...I'll have two!  Big glass of chocolate milk?  You bet!  I seriously gotta lock it down because I'm going nowhere fast at this rate!

But, in the absence of my usual running, I have at least been sorta busy.  Doing what you ask?  Planning my oldest son's 3rd birthday of course!  We don't do big birthday parties for the boys and tonight was really just the grandparents and my sister's family.  We had a wonderful night with tons of appies instead of a sit-down meal, lots of drinks, lots of fun, lots of excitement for the birthday boy and of course, lots of cake!

Last year I made a 3d Thomas the Tank Engine cake and I think it turned out pretty good.  This year, I decided to stay away from a cake that required any sculpting or carving so I merrily searched on Pinterest and came up with this little construction-themed number...

Source: Fredellicious Blog

Now I've been chuckling lately at the "Pinterest Fail" blogs that have been going around and hoping to not wind up on one myself, I decided to use this photo as my inspiration for M's birthday cake this year.  He helped me pick out Devil's Food cake mix (yep, used a mix, had to save my energy for the decorating effort!) and was a diligent little helper measuring out and mixing the ingredients.  I made the cakes last night and set to work today during nap time.

I'm no Cake Boss, but I do have a few tools to make things easier and one of my favourites is the cake slicer.

This handy little rig lets you slice off the rounded top on a cake that you want to level off for layering.  So easy and then the layers of your cake are perfectly level and flat for stacking.  My cakes were kind of flat so I stacked up 4 layers with bright orange icing between.  I used plain chocolate icing for the rest of the cake and yummy Oreo cookie crumbs for the "dirt" and Oreo cookie chunks for the "rocks".

I did my best and here is the finished product...

My picture isn't quite as thoughtfully composed as the original one on Pinterest but I think it turned out pretty good.  I made the little signs on the computer and printed them on photo paper...

The most important thing is that M loved it and couldn't wait for us to do the candles and sing "Happy Birthday".  In the end, both boys had a hand in blowing out the candles...

It wasn't a big production but the boys had smiles on their faces all night and there was no shortage of excited squeals and laughter from both of them.  They got to stay up late and both are now fast asleep with new trains tucked in bed with them.

So no, I didn't accomplish anything this week that brings me at all closer to my goal of finishing the Goofy Challenge in just over 4 months from now.  In fact, almost everything I did this week took me a few steps further away from that goal (including all the appies, wine and pieces of cake I had tonight!)  But that's okay.  When you're really focused and working hard towards something, I guess sometimes your body and your mind just needs some time to slack off and recharge every now and then.  I guess that was this past week for me.  Seeing those little smiles on the boys has me feeling good tonight so hopefully I can get back some of my mojo and pick myself up and hop back on the wagon...