What’s The Point of a Cake You Can’t Eat?
I know it has been a while since my last post, and I’m sorry for that because I really do enjoy writing in my blog. I have several projects going on here at home, and our summer was quite busy with out-of-town adventures. That meant that when I was home, I was focusing my time and energy on things other than my blog. At the very least, I made sure I took lots of pictures so I could blog about them later. Now that the craziness has subsided, I can start working on catching up on here. YAY!
As I’ve mentioned before, my little brother is getting married this year. What usually accompanies wedding season? If you guessed wedding shower season, then you guessed correctly. Robby and Elizabeth had three different wedding showers planned for this summer, all of which I was invited to attend. Knowing that I could not afford to give them three fabulous gifts, and ignoring the suggestion of several of our best friends to “buy one gift, cut it into thirds, and give them a piece of their gift at each shower,” I decided on small gifts for two showers and one awesome gift for the honey-do shower that my parents’ best friends were hosting at their home. You see, Robby and Elizabeth bought a house, and with a house comes huge responsibility – and the need for, you know, most of that stuff they sell at Lowe’s or Home Depot that, until you own a house, you simply ask, “I wonder what that thingie there is used for?” Once you own a home, you finally go, “Ohhhhhhh, now I know what that’s for….and I need one because there is water all over the bathroom floor.” Yeah. You know what I mean. Anyway, because Robby and Elizabeth bought a house, Mom and Dad’s friends decided to throw a honey-do shower in hopes of helping the bride and groom acquire some tools, yard stuff, and other important home maintenance items. When Mom told me the plan for this shower, I immediately remembered the diaper “cake” I made for a dear friend’s baby shower a year or so ago:
I started thinking about how I could make a really cool “cake” out of tools, etc. for Robby and Elizabeth. While I was still in the planning stages of this experiment, I casually mentioned it to my mom’s best friend (the one hosting the party at her house). She got all excited and said, “Oh! That’s great! It’s going to be a display shower, so we’ll make that the centerpiece. I can’t wait.” No pressure, right? Because Jen works with tools all day and also owns a house, I called her and said, “Let’s go to Home Depot. I need help.” A few hours, a lot of strange looks from other patrons, and a ton of laughter from us later, we left with our shopping cart full of potential. We got home, unpackaged everything (hope they didn’t want to return any of it!), and laid it all out on my kitchen table.
Then we began the assembly process. There was a bit of trial and error as we figured out what would sit level where and how to create a tiered look for the “cake.” We used Mod Podge to attach the brick-patterned paper to the wooden letters. We rolled the shop rags into logs and secured them with rubber bands so we could stick them inside the tape rolls. I applied something Jen found on Pinterest to the canvas tool belts and ended up with this:
Basically, I printed two of their engagement pictures onto tissue paper, cut them out, and used Mod Podge to attach the tissue paper photos to the tool belts. It turned out pretty well, I thought. I then used some of my scrapbooking stamps to put “his” and “hers” on the respective tool belts. I’d hate for Robby or Elizabeth to use the wrong tool belt. ;)
By this time, Scotty was home and Jen had to leave. Poor Scott had to listen to me grumble about getting “this stupid thing” to actually stay together. I knew I’d have to travel with it – what I didn’t realize was that I was going to have to take it for an hour’s car ride, an airplane ride, and another two car rides before it ened up at the party destination. Thankfully I didn’t know all of this until it was made and too late to do anything about it/stress about it. Also, for the record, glue dots are amazing things. That whole cake stayed together all the way to the party! HAHAHA! I could NOT believe it. On with the story…
Once I finished assembling the cake…
…I stood back and realized I was going to need some kind of base on which I could carry this thing. The following day, I returned to Home Depot and purchased a piece of plywood which the employees kindly cut in half for me. I bought some drawer pulls, some bolts, some nuts, and a roll of caution tape. With help from Scotty, our finished product looked like this:
Robby and Elizabeth loved, loved the cake and have told me several times how useful the items we included have been around the house. Robby told me that I should make one of these for every single person I know who buys a house…… I still have not replied to that text message. :)
For those inquiring minds, here’s what was included in the tool cake:
2 Home Depot canvas tool belts
10-piece set of pliers/wrenches
2 packages of Velcro cable ties
1 tub of neon-colored zip ties in various sizes
two packages of shop rags
3 rolls of Duck Tape
3 rolls of masking tape
1 16’ tape measure
1 25’ tape measure
1 package of glow sticks
1 100’ medium-duty extension cord
1 extension cord wheel
1 mini can of WD 40 (cake topper, haha)
2-pack of Leatherman tools
2 mini LED flashlights
1 set of socket wrenches
1 package of disposable gloves
1 vise-grip wrench
1 box cutter without blades (I opened it up and the blades were all rusty and I threw them away. I meant to get them some more blades but forgot. Oops!)
50-piece set of Dewalt drill bits
1 square tool box with movable dividers