I intended to buy everything I needed a few days before the party but some stuff happened, I had a really tough day and could not even face leaving the house.
The next day after work I ventured out to buy the ingredients, but found myself feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the prospect of making this blimmin' cake and ended up sobbing on the side of the road.
This little breakdown had much more to do with what was going on with me than the prospect of making a birthday cake, but right at that moment it felt like the biggest challenge in the world.
So I called my sister, feeling terrible, and we worked out a simpler plan.
I would make a normal chocolate cake smothered with pink icing and we would just buy some Peppa Pig toys to sit on top.
It was not the cake I imagined and dreamed of making.
I felt like I had let my sister and niece down. And yet, when I presented my niece the cake on the day of her party, a huge smile filled her face as she exclaimed it was a "pretty pink Peppa cake", as if it was just what she had imagined.
The cake was delicious and for the rest of the weekend, despite all the other toys she'd been given for her birthday, my niece spent most of her time playing with the cheap toys we'd bought for the cake.
I learned some valuable lessons from this incident. That's it's okay to not be okay all the time.
That it's okay to ask for help. And that 3-year-olds really don't care how much effort you put into their birthday cake, as long as they can eat some of it and play with the toys on top. • Don't miss Adam Green and Sarah Van Der Kley on The Hits Hawke's Bay from 6am to 9am Monday to Friday.
