Back in the beginning of March, I received an email from one of my tweeps. She excitedly told me that w00tstock was coming to Minneapolis, and “I don’t know about you, but I think w00tstock would be better with cake!”

Well, I had to agree, so I got a hold of Paul and Storm, the geeked out musical comedians in charge. Offered up some cake, they were interested, mentioned I’d have my husband – a photographer along with me to take pics… they asked if he’d be willing to be the official backstage photographer (Willing? Hell YES he was!)…
and we were on track for an adventure in epic geekery!

The plan was to make a surprise “Tardis” cake for Adam Savage & Wil Wheaton. Hubby would photograph the goings on, while I doled out samples of our caffeinated brownies and blondies (from our line of baking mixes. Cake would be served, geeking out would occur, and it would be an awesome night.

Monday was the day, finally! It had been difficult to not blab the details of the cake design itself, while I had been free to tweet that I would be DOING a cake. Everyone wants to know what it’ll look like, especially when it’s a.) Geeky, and b.) Intended for geek royalty! This blog entry is gonna get long and image-heavy, so click through to read & gawk!

The day got off to a bad start. Due to some dropped communication between the various parties involved, we ended up cakeblocked at the last minute. The Guthrie decided – between the time we left, and arriving at the loading dock – that 1″ samples would be too much competition for their concession stand, and we were left with 600 samples we could not serve. Damn!! Woulda been good to be told that – we briefly considered a tweetup sampling out of the back of our truck. LOL.

We loaded up the dolly with everything else, and set about to get the cake discreetly delivered to a room where Wil Wheaton wouldn’t see it. Of course, he was one of the very first people we came across. While a few people tried to guide him away from where we were, there were a few tense moments as we tried out best to stand in front of / conceal out delivery. My minion of the evening – Rachel – and I set about setting up our merch booth, while my husband went on the photography gig he’d been looking forward to awhile.

At that point, the rest of the evening kinda became a flurry of activity, so let me just point-form our highlights. This probably won’t be accurately chronological in any way!

- It was great to meet SO many of my tweeps! Thank you all for coming by the booth and identifying yourself as such! Kaji, TheGreenAvenger, PerpetualMind, NorthernGypsy, off the top of my head… hi!

- At one point, Wil Wheaton warned my husband (as the photographer, not knowing he was in any way related to me or the brownies backstage) that the brownies may taste really good, but watch out – they’re REALLY caffeinated!. Wil later told the story to me as well, saying that a little bit of one had him feeling like.. damn, I can’t remember how he put it. Like a hyper chipmunk or something. He was talking very fast

- Minutes before the big unveiling, I was told in no uncertain terms that Wil would “lose his shit when he sees the cake”. He did. It was great! Here are some pics:

(What happens when you present a geeky cake to a room full of geeks!)

For more pics of the cake & backstage presentation, check out our Facebook page – fan us while you’re at it!

- I took a really crappy cell phone pic of Wil on the floor, photographing his cake. Cake Wrecks retweeted it… Wil tweeted pics.. both (with a total combined follower number of 2,889,949!) including my username… and my twitter feed went apeshit. Here’s a more pro version of the Pic I tweeted:

(Being married to a photographer is handy!)

The cake, if you don’t recognize it, it the TARDIS from Dr Who. What made this cake really cool – and a stand out for my husband – is that the light on top was not only functional, it blinked. That meant a trip to Ax-Man – his favorite store in the world – as well as ripping apart a few different lights/components, and making custom electronics for it. He was in his glory We let Wil keep the blinky light!

Another interesting thing about the cake was the inside joke we piped on the back. If you follow either Wil Wheaton or Paul and Storm, you know what that’s all about I’m not describing here, as I don’t want to attract certain types of spam comment bots!

- Being approached by a friend of mine who’d seen Twitter just blow up over the cake – and all of the high-profilers tweeting about it – and the first thing she said to me was a rough quote of a local “bigshot” (in her mind) planner who told a friend of mine that I have no idea what I’m doing, that by catering to geeks and doing stuff like having Klingons as escorts at an Awards Night (see Here and Here, and Here), I was – quote – “throwing my business down the toilet”. Ah, sweet, sweet vindication. I’d actually forgotten all about that until the friend brought it up. I was very smug after that reminder, LOL.

- While he wouldn’t OFFICIALLY “bust the myth” of fondant tasting bad, (oh, how I was hoping for video of that!)… I was told that Adam Savage liked my fondant, and was totally unaware that fondant has a bad rep.

- We met two of the guys from Thaco! While hubby was photographing Wil with his cake, I went over to inform him that I noticed Bill Stiteler in the corner. You should have seen his grin! He loved that movie.. and had the “claim to fame” of being Thaco’s first review on Amazon. As Bill pointed out, that’s their ONLY review… so if you’ve seen it and loved it, go review it already! (That’s a totally unsolicited request/recommendation, by the way!)

Actually, I should be more accurate. Hubby met one of the Thaco guys, I met two – Duck came up to my booth. I have NO idea if he wanted info or anything, cause I immediately asked “Are you the guy in Thaco?”, and when he confirmed, I may have sort of screeched excitedly about my husband being a big fan, and asked for a photo with which I’d torment him. He graciously allowed it Hubby WAS jealous, just as I called it.

- Hubby had a GREAT time photographing the whole thing. His highlights included getting shoved on stage a few times to take pics, looking out on the audience and seeing a bunch of people he KNEW. That had to be pretty cool… we really did end up knowing a TON of people in attendance, too!

- You see this couple? They got engaged at W00tstock! On stage. I didn’t get to see it personally (was at my booth!), but I hear it was a geeked out moment of beauty! They later told me, at my booth, that my cakes were one of the first things they thought about after getting engaged. What a compliment! It was also cool for my husband, who was “shoved out on stage” to capture the moment. I think it’s the first engagement moment he’s been a part of, aside from his own!

- Speaking of couples getting married, guess who stopped by my booth? Check this out:

That’s a crappy cell phone pic I took of one of my favorite couples ever! They were actually anonymously “famous” that night, and have been for awhile – they’re Cory and Tori, the couple who ordered the Super Mario Brothers wedding cake for their wedding a year and a half ago! You know, the one on the front page of my site, and on most of my advertising… the one that something like 90% of the attendees at W00tstock geeked out over? Them! Awesome to see them again – and doubly awesome that he was wearing a Super Mario Bros shirt for the pic!

- We got a hell of a shoutout on stage from Paul and Storm. I’m used to very dry “we’d like to thank our sponsors” kinda mentions… this was nothing like that. I knew they were excited about the cake and enjoyed it, I didn’t expect it would come through SO much on stage. I was very honored.. and luckily, quick enough to capture most of it on video:

I CANNOT tell you how electrifying an experience it was when they crowd went SO nuts over the pics of the cake. I have goosebumps just typing about it. Thank you SO much, all of you. You made my night!!

- On the subject of unexpected ego boosts, holy crap – I read the comments on the cake pic Wil tweeted. Awesome, check it out!

- Being surrounded by not only almost every geek and nerd we know – which is ALWAYS a good time, we were surrounded by geek royalty, which was really cool. Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, Paul and Storm, as mentioned.. but also several “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ guys there: Trace Beaulieu, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy… authors John Scalzi, and James Kakalios – who I’m told COMPLETELY brought the house down with his Physics talk. (Twitter sure went nuts!), and more!

- I got to meet Neil Gaiman! I had gone back to the green room to look for my husband, poked my head in to ask for him.. where Neil was the one to answer. Neil thought that he knew where he was, and very kindly led me back. Very gentlemanly… and he actually contributed to my most surreal moment of the night. He stopped, turned around and extended a hand, and said “I’m Neil Gaiman”. Like I had NO idea who he was! Kinda caught me off guard.

I’ve met and/or worked with many celebrities over the years, and I’m pretty sure he’s the first to ever introduce himself. Many/most just expect it’s a given that I know who they are, even when that’s NOT the case – sports stars are particularly guilty of this. (Ironically, I’m usually quite guilty of not having a clue WHO they are!). I follow him on Twitter, as a result of SO many of my friends talking him up.. even though I’ve not had time to read fiction in.. wow, maybe a decade? He was just such a down to earth and nice guy! I think I’m gonna have to seek out one of his books and give it a go, as soon as I have a minute to breathe! (so probably end of July, by the current looks of things!). Any recommendations?

- As part of the show, artist Len Peralta (of the Geek A Week project) was on stage, seated at his computer… designing the official W00tstock poster. They set it up so that the audience could tweet suggestions as to what all should be on this poster… and yes, my Tardis cake ended up on it! How sweet is THAT? Thanks Len! You rock.

Wow, this entry is long and crazy. Trying to think if there was anything else?

Oh! At the end of the night, when the Geek Royalty was lined up at a table across the room, signing autographs.. 4 or 5 people came by my booth with their autographed poster.. and asked for MINE! Signed em and did a quick “Tardis cake” sketch. Fun!

All in all, a crazy awesome night!! What were your favorite memories of #w00tstock ?

Anyway, photos and video will be coming in the next few days, along with a more proper blog about it all (you know, one I’m not banging out at 12:30 am as my feet feel like they’re gonna fall off!)… but I do want to share something. Well, two things actually. Two little events tonight that MADE MY DAY, and totally eclipsed the whole “losing” thing.

1. At the very beginning of the awards ceremony, the President of MN ISES came out on stage, decided against saying what she’d planned to say, and instead gave a hearty shout out to the Klingon Federation. We all just about fell out of our seats! Found out later that she is a card carrying geek of the DragonCon variety! Awesome!

2. As I’m not actually able to CHECK Twitter from my phone, I was excited to see what everyone had been saying as we were all tweeting from the event. One comment in particular stood out. In reply to my tweet: “bah, we lost to ’sultry supper club’”, I got the following as a reply:

@burnunit @celebr8ngenr8ni’m not sayin, but it sure would be a shame if a certain supper club burned down in a hail of disruptor fire…

Is that not SERIOUSLY the best “Sorry you didn’t win!” brand of condolence message ever? It gets better though. “Burnunit” is one of the guys behind/in “Thaco, a hilariously awesome indie gamer flick. We caught a screening at Convergence back in July, and had to *immediately* buy it for my reformed D & D gamer of a hubby. So yeah. Best comment ever, from local geek royalty. Made my night!

Think we’re inspired enough to watch Thaco before passing out tonight (I’m still a little wired!), but had to share! All in all, seriously, it was an awesome night. The theme of the event may have been “Ritmo Caliente”, but the theme of OUR night was “Rockstars”.

My Klingons were TOTAL Rockstars.. you should have seen them. Everyone was asking for photos, talking to them about it all, just.. wow. A much warmer reception than I ever coulda hoped for! Also awesome? There are apparently a ton of closet case nerds and geeks in ISES, and they were outing themselves to my entourage all evening!

The cake we brought.. rockstar. Holy crap, especially the Mango Mojito – people went NUTS. As a result of THAT.. *I* got treated like a rockstar.

My tweeps, everyone who sponsored, everyone who cared enough to wish us well.. total rock stars. We’re all humbled by everything that’s happened leading up to tonight. Thank you!

And then, yeah, a rock star geek leaving a rock star of a message. Capped my evening off perfectly! Yup! All I need now is for Wil Wheaton to tweet about how he’s gonna leave a flaming bag of poop on someone’s doorstep on behalf of our loss, and I’ll be all set!

While his suggestion got vetoed, it did sort of pave the way for how we’d be spending March 14th *every year* thereafter. We host a Pi Day Party… honestly putting way more effort into that, than we do our own wedding anniversary! In hindsight, maybe I shoulda just caved on the date

While I appreciate nerdiness/geeking out in almost any form, I’ve always been confused by his obsession uh.. extremely enthusiastic appreciation.. for pi. But then, irrationality in any form tends to get on my nerves (That was a lame pi joke, for the record.. not *totally* a dig at my husband!)

(A bit of explanation for the less nerdy of my readers. Pi Day is the day that celebrates Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter. You know, 3.14159265358979323.. etc etc. 3.14… 3/14.. March 14.. get it? It’s also Einstein’s birthday. )

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp

Pi day in the Porterhouse starts about a week and a half before the actual date, with the construction of our own custom “pi-nata”. Yes, a pinata shaped like the pi symbol! Last year, we posted a tutorial – Click here to check it out.

While you may not have the time or inclination to take on such a project for yourself at this time, there are many small, fun things you can do to celebrate Pi Day. I find Pi day is an excellent excuse to clean the house and have some friends over, at the very least. You know… and bake pie.

- Have a pie potluck party! I’ll be making a lingonberry-orange zest pie this year, looking forward to see what everyone else brings – even though I’m going low carb at the moment, and actually behaving myself with regards to being allergic to wheat (sob!). Ah well. I’m sure it’ll all smell good anyway

- At 1:59pm, (again.. 3.14159…), we’ll be toasting pi (and Einstein)… with PInapple punch. Even better yet… this year, we invested in the Pi symbol ice cube tray from ThinkGeek. We’ll have icy little pi symbols floating in the punch, and more used to garnish the glasses. Very Cute. ThinkGeek actually has a bunch of cute pi themed goodies, check them out here

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp

- Pi Day Trivia! I’d post the link from where I got our questions, but… I know a few of our guests read this blog

- Read off Pi-ku (Haiku with a pi theme!), and then have a pi-ku writing contest. Click here for some examples!).

– Pi Day joke telling. This gets interesting. By “interesting”, I mean the kinds of terrible “punny” jokes that my father in law thrives on. (I’m talking on the order of “What do you get when you cut a jack o’lantern by its diameter? A: Pumpkin Pi!” Groan!).

- Pi Day Sudoku! Click here for the Pi sudoku that managed to fry everyone’s brain at last year’s party!

- Serve pizza. Not only is it ripe for another play on words (PI-zza), it’s round. Perfect. This year, I’ll be repeating my “St Patrick’s Day” pizza recipe that I made last year. This year, I’ll probably get around to actually posting the recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the wait – insanely yummy, and *completely* unlike any pizza you’ve ever tried. Guaranteed.

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp

– Cookies! I bought this cookie cutter last year. Expensive, but GREAT quality. Love it. May end up using it to cut pie/pizza dough to decorate the other food items, in addition to making pi cookies.

- Get stuff. I had no idea that other people were as obsessed ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H enthused about pi as my husband is, but there must be quite the pi-cult out there – just found this site, and many others. This one in particular has a ton of cute stuff. Maybe next year!

- Of course, recite pi to whatever insane number of digits you happen to have memorized. I consider myself pretty sane at just 10-12ish digits off the top of my own head.. my husband is quite proud of the fact that he used to know 205 digits. Holy crap. If there was any doubt as to the fact that I married the biggest nerd out there, they’re pretty much quashed at this point. One of the things I love most about him though (the nerd factor, not pi recitation in specific!).*

- I got a bit silly with preparations, and used one of the ice cube trays to make a bunch of melt-and-pour glycerin soaps. Not only will there be a set of 4 pi shaped soaps in each of our bathrooms, each guest will be taking home a little 2 piece set, wrapped in a little pouf of cellophane, and tied of with a green (St Patty’s Day!) ribbon. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out!

So… that’s our pi day suggestion list in a nutshell. Do you have any fun ways to celebrate Pi Day yourself? Be sure to tweet, facebook comment, or email them to us.. or just comment here! We’d love to hear about it!

* Plus, I can’t say much. I used to have the entire periodic table of elements memorized. Not just name/symbol, but location, and most of the atomic weights. Ya. I’d pretty much be a hypocrite if I held his 205 digits of pi thing against him

1. We’re nominated for an ISES Star award! (Events industry, a BIG deal!)

2. Not only that, the nomination is based on our 4′ long Klingon Bird of Prey cake, which we made back in November for Commedia Beauregard Theatre’s production of A Klingon Christmas Carol.

3. Given that having the opportunity to make such a cake was so ridiculously epic.. actually getting nominated for a big fancy MAINSTREAM industry award for it is completely once-in-a-lifetime!

4. This is a fancypants red carpet kind of event, which means it needs.. Klingons.

Yes, we’ve always been the types of people to live life to it’s absolute fullest, and the idea of having a Klingon entourage at such an event went from “wouldn’t it be awesome if..” to “We HAVE to make this happen!” in a very short amount of time. We don’t have any spare budget for the $300 in tickets that this would require, so we put out a plea to our friends, fans, and followers. To anyone who finds this idea to be full of win, who would be willing to chip in a few bucks to make it so.

The nerd/geek/gaming community has been awesome, and – to date – we’ve raised enough money to buy 2 of the 4 tickets! Thank you SO much to Commedia Beauregard, Kris A Spiesz, Damon Johnson, Margaret Cooper, Shannon Bergeron, & Nik Wachter for their donations! We truly appreciate your generosity, and it tickles us to no end that there are other people out there that agree – this is a great idea!

Well, I’ve got friends in AWESOME places… and I am SO excited to announce that our friends over at the most RIDICULOUSLY awesome company ever (IMHO!*), Thinkgeek.com have offered to lend their support to our quest!

EVERYONE WHO DONATES TO OUR “SPONSOR A KLINGON” EFFORT WILL BE ENTERED IN A RAFFLE FOR ONE OF TWO 2 $75 GIFT CERTIFICATES TO THINKGEEK.COM

Yes, all caps are obnoxious.. but I really think that statement required it. I am BLOWN AWAY by the generosity! Thinkgeek.. man I love you guys. BIG box of goodies coming your way as soon as I have some time to concoct some funky new experiments for ya!

Those who have already donated will also be entered in the draw. Donations must be received prior to March 22, 2010 – OR before we reach our $300 goal, whichever comes first. Click here to visit our sponsor page, which has all of the details, and a link to donate.

Thank you, everyone, so very much for your support! We were thrilled to be nominated in the first place, and now that it looks like we really will be able to have an entourage of Klingons with us.. just wow. I’m blown away by the generosity and support of the community! As a nerd (me!) and a geek (my husband/Chief Engineering Officer), we are thrilled, honored, and humbled. Represent!!

* I’m not being biased. Although ThinkGeek has been a ton of fun not only to shop from and work with, with regards to our Brownie Mix… they also put THIS video out recently. So completely full of win that there really isn’t anything I can – or need to – say about it! Although I will say, it kinda makes me wanna drop everything, drive out east, and show up on their doorstep, begging for a job with them!
]]> http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/03/02/huge-announcement/feed/ 0 http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/02/21/minnesota-monthly-food-wine-show-day-1/ http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/02/21/minnesota-monthly-food-wine-show-day-1/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:01:27 +0000 admin http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/?p=245 So, we survived day 1 of the Food & Wine Experience at the Minneapolis Convention Center. We didn’t win the Czar of Cakes Challenge, but it was an honorable loss – as predicted, Gateaux won, hands down, no contest!

I’ll post more about the cake end of things tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to post some “head’s up” type messages on products that *really* stood out to us from yesterday’s show. If you’re going, make *sure* to stop by these booths. If you’re not, by all means, check out their websites, because they’re truly fabulous!

Driving Force Energy Co. is based in Woodbury, and makes really amazing energy bars. Almost like a granola bar, but soft and SO ridiculously good. Particularly loved the PB & J flavor. Nom! Also, they had some interesting caramel popcorn – including peanut butter caramel, and sweet jalapeno caramel popcorn. Wow! Both truly amazing. Hubby asked if they sell it by the garbage bag, and I honestly don’t think they realized that he was serious.

Kayak Kitchens in Stillwater was showcasing their “Haute Habanero Paste”. I’m looking at the sheet of recipes they provided for their paste, and already thinking of the ways I’d love to use and abuse it. It’s a gorgeous orange paste with a flavor and fruityness that is *not* overpowered by heat. Really good!

Annona Gourmet was a booth that Robin from Gateaux kinda strongarmed us into visiting. Not that we hadn’t planned to check everything out, but in her opinion, we were NOT to leave without checking them out. They were hawking olive oils and balsamic vinegars. While Robin was completely sold on the traditional 18 year aged balsamic (which really was terrific!), my husband and I both immediately fell in love with their “sweet peach” balsamic. Completely over the top fabulous.

Passport Beverage was on hand to sample their Dry Soda & Q Tonic waters. I am NOT a huge fan of carbonated waters, and really, truly hate tonic water – it always tastes like baking soda to me. It blew me away that not only did I tolerate their Q Tonic, but fell in love with it. None of that horrible baking soda taste, it was light and refreshing and had a really nice flavor to it. I could see drinking it straight. Additionally, their Dry Soda was really nice. We did not get a chance to try the lavender flavor (which sounded really interesting!), but the Rhubarb, Kumquat, and Cucumber flavors were all winners with us.

Uncle Pete’s Mustard was a big surprise to us. I’m a mustard nerd, and 90% of what’s out there is really bland, boring, and/or unbalanced tasting to me. They only offer 1 flavor, a sweet & hot mustard… god was it ever good. BIG thumbs up from me!

Thousand Hills Cattle Company featured some of the most delicious grass fed ground beef I’ve ever had (and I’m a big carnivore!). Also of note was their summer sausage, which was amazing.

I should probably get ready to head out, but definitely wanted to post these not only for all you guys, but for my own scatterbrainedness. Good to have the favs all in one place! More to come!

Bit of a spoiler – it’s not getting judged till Saturday, but I’m confident in declaring that we’re all getting our asses handed to us by Gateaux. Seriously. I’d recently heard a rumor that Robin from Gateaux had sold her soul to the devil. DEFINITELY starting to believe that one. (Though, when I asked her about it, she did tell me that the devil actually sold HIS soul to HER… that may explain MORE!).

Anyway, I HAVE to post photos! It’s been killing me to keep my theme and pics all hush-hush before the competition.

So, here’s the deal. In the course of our brainstorming: “What are our favorite foods?” “What would make a kick ass cake?” “What would be funny/different?”, etc.. we got slightly off track and thought maybe to look to other media for inspiration, rather than just restaurants and grocery stores. Any songs that feature a food theme? How about movies?

Well, at the suggestion of food related movies, one of us popped off a quote about Liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti (there may have been alcohol involved in this brainstorming session).. and AWAY WE WERE. An idea that we were virtually GUARANTEED that no one else would think of, much less actually use: A Silence of the Lambs Cake

Like I mentioned in my latest blog entry, I honestly did float a few other ideas by a WHOLE BUNCH of people, a little part of me thinking I should probably be talked down from this idea. Nope. Bunch of enablers! Love em!

So, I set about working on all the fussy little details.. a bottle of Chianti (in the traditional style bottle!).. sugar “death’s head” moths, painted in cocoa… liver & fava beans out of fondant.. a fondant “radish rose” and sugarpaste sprig of basil for garnish… a fondant plate, gumpaste cutlery (all airbrushed with edible metallic silver luster!).. Hannibal Lecter’s mask.. and a brain. Muahaha!

(Editted to add – Been asked about the size a few times. The “man” is actually life sized, everything else is also “real” sized. The moths are about 5″ across, the cutlery all proper sized.. it was a monster of a cake!)
I will shut up and post photos now!

Obviously not a traditional interpretation of a “Food and Wine” themed cake, but hey.. Looking forward to seeing what the audience and judges’ reactions will be!

It was that kind of thinking that was behind my Tremors themed wedding cake, for the Chocolate Show competition. The theme was animals, I’d been looking for an excuse to make a Tremors cake… grabboids are animals, right?

Anyway, if you follow me on twitter or are friends/fans on Facebook, you know that I’ve been preparing for the “Czar of Cakes” Challenge at the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience. The competition involves 6 local cake companies: Celebration Generation, Muddy Paws, Gateaux, Jessica’s Cakes, Queen of Cakes, and .. that other one. Only real rule is that the cakes have to be food / wine themed.

It took me well over 3 weeks to settle on a theme! We started with an initial brainstorming session, which produced 3 reasonably great ideas, and one “spectacular.. but has NO chance of winning, may get us escorted out, and probably will prevent us from ever getting invited back!” idea.

I tried to get into my competitors heads, when it came to weeding through the ideas. One theme was one that I could see Jessica doing, for instance. Another was one that I could see Gateaux doing. The 3rd was a really sweet idea that I definitely couldn’t see anyone else doing.. but I got really attached to the “spectacular but crazy” idea. Didn’t help much that the vast majority of my friends – in several different circles – are also kinda crazy and weird, and are enablers. LOL. Crazy idea it is!

I just put the finishing touches on the cake, and I’m really excited now! We’ll be posting photos on Saturday, can’t wait!

After this past Friday, I think we both became Trekkies. Well, maybe pre-Trekkies. Trekkies with training wheels. Yes!

Back at that convention, there was a Klingon wedding. We were totally kicking ourselves over not knowing that was gonna happen – I would have cut a steep discount for the opportunity to make a Klingon wedding cake! The ideas – “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” flew, and built on each other. Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been itching for the opportunity to make an epic Klingon cake.

At that same convention, we picked up a sparkly gold flyer for “A Klingon Christmas Carol”. Trekkies or not, it just sounded ridiculously cool to us. We’re big fans of people who get into something – anything – and just run with it. We love crazy ideas… and we ADORE crazy ideas seen through to fruition! So, we stuck the flyer on our fridge, and awaited the play’s opening.

If you haven’t heard of this – and we certainly hadn’t, before picking up that flyer – let me explain.

A Klingon Christmas Carol is a theater production put on by Commedia Beauregard. Their mission is to perform plays that are translated – from one language to another, or from one form into another. In the case of the Klingon Christmas Carol, they took a story from a book – “translated” it into a play.. tweaked it to have a Klingon theme (Scrooge has no honor!), and then translated it into Klingon. It’s performed in full Klingon garb, with English subtitles projected onto a screen on the stage. Awesome!

On a lark, I decided to get ahold of the Powers that Be at CB theatre.. one thing led to another, and we were on board for one hell of an epic cake! (Yes, this would be the same cake that we haven’t shut up about for the past two weeks, if you follow us on Twitter, or have me friended on Facebook!)

And we’ve come to the point where a fit of fangirl overtakes me, and I have no idea which direction to go with the rest of this blog entry. There is just SO much to say! Let me be lame and bullet-point it!

- The People. My husband and I had the opportunity to meet the cast and crew of Klingon Christmas Carol a couple of times before the event. Once was a rehearsal (and yes, the fanboy/fangirl in both of us came out BIGTIME as we watched them practice fight scenes, complete with Bat’leths!), and once was a meet and greet – featuring a viewing of “The Making of A Klingon Christmas Carol” – a documentary filmed the year before. It was all very exciting.. especially because everyone involved was *awesome*.

It was really interesting to watch their prep work for the show, and we have mad respect for them as a result of what we saw. I have NO idea how they managed to learn/memorize all of that Klingon. At the rehearsal, we followed along on the teleprompter.. wow, what a difficult looking language! Weird capitalization, very few vowels, and VERY interesting syntax.

We later had an opportunity to learn a couple words, when their Klingon language expert – and translator – taught us how to say “take the chocolate!” in Klingon. The idea was to have something to say as we served the cake. I never did master just the 2 words involved that Laura taught us (thanks again Laura!), but in the end, it didn’t matter. Serving the cake was such a crazy event, I didn’t have time to THINK, much less say anything!

- The Show. OH MY GOD. Where to start? The costumes are amazing! The makeup is amazing – everything looked straight out of an actual Star Trek movie – very convincing, very high quality. There is an Orion Slave Girl bellydancer! (Holly, who’s a total sweetie!). They do a cool “transporter” effect when taking Scrooge back in time! There’s a Vulcan character as the narrator.. and SHE is awesome too!

If you haven’t gone, you totally should – we’re going to see it a few times, and wouldn’t miss it for the world! Definitely a year (and career!) highlight for us!

- The Cake. Ah, the cake. We looked forward to this from the moment that our involvement was confirmed! Now that it’s all over, it’s sorta sad that we no longer have anything that insanely epic on our horizon!

The cake started out with looking for existing information on Bird of Prey ships. Luckily for us, Trekkies are thorough in their obsession, and we were easily able to find blueprint type views of the ship from various views. Score! Scaled the blueprints to fit our needs, and we were almost good to go!

Next, we had to build a custom cake board for it. With measurements in hand, I had to make a special trip to the theater to measure all doors, stairs, etc… to make sure that this was actually a logistical possibility. It was – but only very BARELY! The cake board ended up being just short of 4′ long, and just short of 3′ wide! What a monster!

My husband is in charge of all non-edible builds related to my cakes, and has now earned the title of “Chief Engineering Officer” here at Celebration Generation Cakes. Tee Hee. I swear I’m going to make him a CEO shirt to wear to events we do! Anyway, not only did he cut and finish the cake board, he built the structure of the wings – no small feat! I married well.

The our edible Bird of Prey ship made it’s maiden voyage – to the theatre – in fine form, with no problems at all. Though we had to tilt the board at a fairly severe angle to get it in the door (Though I’d measured the frame, I had neglected to take into account the door edge itself, the hinge placement, etc!), it made it to it’s table with no problem.

- The Whirlwind! The few hours between us arriving (prior to the show), and serving the cake (immediately after the show) were a whirlwind of fan activity. The warbird was definitely our most photographed cake ever, with streams of camera phones clicking away at any time. Little did we know, one of those camera phones ended up tweeting photos of the cake to Cake Wrecks, who ended up tweeting about the cake to their Over 1 MILLION followers! Thanks again, Cake Wrecks!

The insanity continued when we brought the cake up on stage after the show. All of the flashes going off were blinding! Very “paparazzi”!

- Serving the Cake! This should win for “Best Cake Cutting EVER!”. Seriously. Picture a gaggle of Klingons surrounding the cake, as Scrooge cuts the cake with his Bat’leth! Ah, no need to picture it, we have photos!

Awesome. Seriously, just… awesome. The whole thing. The memories of Friday night are going to make my husband and I grin for a very long time. They’ve got shows playing right through till December 13th, tickets are available online at http://www.cbtheatre.org.

My husband with a Vulcan, an Orion Slave Girl, and another Klingon enjoying Red Velvet cake!

More photos are available on our facebook gallery, http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10955&id=100000056868269&l=3928cc8bf1

This year, we have an exciting new option available: in addition to “a la carte” ordering, and our traditional mixed treat boxes.. there is now an option to order a mixed box of CAFFEINATED goodies! Treat your local guild or programmers right.. or just use the boost to help you party all night. Either way, it is a most delicious way to abuse stimulants this holiday season!

As always, our most popular favorites are back this year, from chewy chip cookies, to nanaimo bars. Check out the full selection, complete with photos: http://celebrationgeneration.com/holidaygoodies.html.

Orders may be shipped, delivered, or picked up, but all orders must be received by December 14th.
]]> http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2009/11/19/order-your-holiday-goodies-now/feed/ 0 http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2009/11/17/ticket-giveaway-a-klingon-christmas-carol/ http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2009/11/17/ticket-giveaway-a-klingon-christmas-carol/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:18:10 +0000 admin http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/?p=171 Back in July, hubby and I were attending a local event, checking out a table of information, when a shiny gold piece of paper caught my eye. Ever the human magpie, I had to check it out.

It was a flyer for a production called “A Klingon Christmas Carol”. It sounded so freakishly awesome that it has been displayed on our fridge at home ever since, as we awaited the season.

“What is it?”, you may ask. A theater company got together, tweaked the traditional “Christmas Carol” story to be Klingon themed, TRANSLATED it into Klingon, and perform it – in full costume – with English subtitles projected onto the stage. I’m not even a Trekkie, and that just sounds so over-the-top AWESOME, I can’t even stand it!

Flash forward a few months. A strong desire to make an epic Klingon cake, a few emails.. and I’m now in possession of a sponsorship contract with Commedia Beauregard, the geniuses in charge of this brilliance!

More on my contribution to their efforts in the coming week or two… in the meantime.. I have tickets to give away!

I will have 2 giveaways, one through this blog, one through twitter. If you don’t follow us, you SHOULD. Details for the twitter giveaway will be announced on Monday.

In the meantime, here’s how you can win a set of 2 tickets* to A Klingon Christmas Carol:

It’s easy, really. Entertain me! This is a really free form ticket giveaway, mostly due to my indecision about how to run it!

What that means is that your entry can be whatever you want it to be. Tell me a joke, draw me a picture, tell me why you want to – or deserve to! – go see this show. Tell me the nerdiest thing you’ve ever said or done. Anything really – most entertaining/creative entry wins 2 tickets.

Entries will be accepted by Email (cakes@celebrationgeneration.com), or by mail (P.O. Box 41844, Plymouth MN 55441).

Entries must be received by 12pm CST, Wednesday November 25. Winner will be announced on Friday November 27!

* Tickets are not valid for either Opening Night or Closing Night.
]]> http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2009/11/17/ticket-giveaway-a-klingon-christmas-carol/feed/ 1