Making birthday cake

So my child turn 3 last week and I decided to be a good mom and make the birthday cake from scratch. Since there would be 2 parties, one at the daycare and one at a playground with close friends, I had to make 2 of them. In order to make a cake, I found this little book with ideas for kids birthday parties and I picked the one that looked more fun and easy, "The Mountain candy cake", which was a cake covered in gum balls, very colorful and fun! So I went to a specialty store and bought all the tools you need to decorate a cake, a big cake pan and lots of sugar, eggs, flour, butter sticks and lot and lots of icing!
So on her birthday I made the cake for the daycare. I made it with whole grain flour which was a big mistake as the cake didn't raise, was very heavy and was not white. I followed the recipe for the icing and didn't come out sticky at all so I couldn't do the decoration like the picture on the book. And then I came up with my version of the cake. My child wanted a Diego cake and not a candy mountain, so I made the Diego cake with some gum balls. Ta-taaa, here it is:



Kids at daycare called it "Diego party" instead of Birthday Party :) Not bad as a first cake! Now I had to make another cake for more people and some of them adults, so the quality had to be better. So my husband and I decided to make it with layer of chocolate and vanilla. He made the chocolate layer and I made the vanilla one. Then we made 2 big batches of icing to cover all these layers and then we had to make the decoration, of course with Diego again! After all this, I had the second cake made from scratch and look like this:



At the playground, there were a lot of other birthdays going on but they declared our cake "the hugest cake of the day"!
So, I did check one more thing off the list of the things to be a mom, - Able to make birthday cake from scratch!

Dating...How?When?Where???

So, I've been married for a while now and as you might guess, I'm not in touch with the "market" out there. But I have a friend that is not married and is looking to get into my side of fence. But how can you do that now days?

1- Quick Introduction
is the case when someone takes someone by hand and tells : Jenn this is Ben, Ben this is Jenn. Jenn has 1-2-3 good things and Ben has 1-2-3 good things. Ben and Jenn say :OH! Interesting! And then the person leaves and Ben and Jenn are supposed to work things out themselves
2- Long Introduction
is the case when someone tells to Jenn everything she wants to know about Ben plus some good feedback about the fact that Ben is one of the bachelors that all the girls are after. This person tells to Ben as well everything he wants to know about Jenn and also mentions the fact that there is another guy that is trying to get close to her. After this both Ben and Jenn want to meet and this person gives them the phone numbers and Ben calls first and so on...
3- Blind date
Someone tells to Ben that knows this girl called Jenn and thinks that it might work between them. Ben asks this person to check if Jenn wants to meet him. Jenn says: "Oh what the heck, ok!" and they go out for a coffee or a bier and goes from there.
4- Online dating
Where people can pretend they are someone else, chat, call and then meet.
5- Family findings
When someone related to you comes to you or your parents and says that has met this person that fulfills all the condition the family is looking for out of the future in laws and after some questions they decide if the girl and boy should meet, how and where and when.

Depending on your personality, number of limits and conditions you put, urgency and family pressure one of these works better than the other. So I made the mistake number 3 with my friend and got stuck into getting a "No" from her. So she actually didn't even want to go and meet the guy for a coffee while he was ok. I got so confused and shocked and a little angry with the fact that she actually wanted to know much more about the guy before she mets him and she wanted this info from me. So I was supposed to get all the answers from the guy, get to her and maybe she would accept to go and have a coffee with the guy and find out on her own most of those questions!! I thought this was just terrible! But another thing I learned is that my friend is geographically limited and the country from where the person is is very important to her. The number one on the list is the country where we are born. Guys from other countries were in the list only if she would fall in love with them by herself... right, I forgot one of the options:

6- Fall in love
is the case when two people fall in love without any external input

I can not believe that a single person would not want to go to meet someone that a friend is recommending. This because I know she is totally against on-line dating and the chance that she will fall in love is not high in my point of view. What makes me angry from all this is that at this point she does not evaluate my opinion, the fact that I think that guy might be right for her is not good enough. BUT, if she would like the guy and I would talk bad about him, pointing out his bad sides and I would say that "I don't think this would work!", she would totally listen to me and maybe give up to the guy!!!
So ....
WHEN
do we listen to other peoples opinions and when do we stop listening to them and stick to our own ?
HOW
are we suppose to meet new people if personality wise we are not very outgoing and the wall of conditions is thick?
WHERE
are we expecting the introductions to come from when friends and family are saturated in their connections?

I guess the first thing should be to have an open mind. I like to think that I have an open mind...maybe that is the one that married me when the pressure from family was at the peek ... not that this is the most important thing you will do on your life... ohhhhhh nooooooooo... but is one of them.