Kristen's Latest Crafting Adventure

Work has been really crazy and I continue to feel less and less enthused about my job. Last weekend I was shopping at my favorite place in Hilo - Ben Franklin Craft Store and saw that they were having a sale on Hello Kitty things. Most notably, the Hello Kitty head cake pan that I've been eying since we moved here. So of course I, with my limited impulse control, bought the pan. I noticed one tiny poster in the store for a cake decorating contest. There were two categories - cupcakes and cake. The rules for the cake were pretty simple, you had to use the Hello Kitty cake pan. A perfect excuse to use my newly acquired pan and plus something to look forward to!

Friday night I did the bulk of my baking and decorating. I created a body for my Hello Kitty. It wasn't perfect, but cute enough. I wasn't expecting a ton of competition, so I definitely cut corners out of laziness. Saturday morning I was up early for some final detailing and then with some help from Chris getting it into the truck, I set off for the store. I was surprised to see some competition...when I got there, 2 cakes were already there and I was on the heels of 2 other contestants holding their cakes. I was not so pleased to see that they had done bodies too. Here are the other cakes:

HELLO KITTY WITH FLOWER POWER

HELLO KITTY WITH A CANDY CANE (?)

HELLO KITTY AS A MERMAID

SCARY HELLO KITTY

NERDY HELLO KITTY

The competition was by customer votes. I drove home in attempt to get Chris to rally and come with me so I'd have at least another vote, but he was set on fixing my car. Torn between the measly vote and possibly getting my car fixed, I opted for car. I was not so reassured by Chris telling me that the mermaid might beat me. I was resigned to losing, which really annoyed me because I'm really competitive.

I returned to Ben Franklin and wandered around the store for an hour (which was rather easy to do for me). Then it was 12:30 and time for the results. The store employees wanted us to stand by our cakes and only 3 of us were there. Then the manager started talking over the PA system. No one could understand him so when he came down and announced to us that we were all getting gift certificates, I was pretty happy. They handed the 3rd place girl her card (The mermaid) and then they handed me mine. Yippee! $25 dollar gift card that would definitely get used. I overheard the manager talking about how the other people who weren't there would get $5 dollar gift cards so I asked one of the store employees what was happening. She said, "You won!" So here's my winning cake!

MY HELLO KITTY CAKE

I made my little name tag/label too!

There was a little mishap on the drive home. As I was driving through Hilo I happened to look down and Hello Kitty was decapitated! I didn't have the board supported correctly and the bumping of the road kind of bounced her head off the body! I pulled over and propped up the head end and wouldn't you know it...the bouncing of the road bounced her head right back to her body :)