Home Economics

During the day, I work at a gallery in Vancouver. Recently, one of the most wonderful and loved staff members announced that she was retiring, after 14 years of service! Obviously, the most extreme cake was in order for her retirement party. The design: a replica of the building everyone works in. On the front of the building, there is always a huge banner advertising the current exhibitions. On the cake, this banner would bear the “happy retirement” exclamation.

Here’s what I did, step by step:

1. baked many, many marble swirl cakes (get it?)

2. Stacked ‘em up

and up

and UP

and a little more

that should do it.

3. iced it

4. paid attention to the details…

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..details…….

…..and a few final touches

5. finished the cake by adding the Happy Retirement banner. Also garnished with paper cut-out speech bubbles with messages from co-workers coming out of the windows they work in

6. and finally, for the best part: cutting up the workplace!

Back in 2008, the Regional Assembly of Text converted a storage closet in their store into the Lowercase Reading Room, which is now home to hundreds of zines and self published books, all in a space measuring less than 9 by 3 feet.

Of course the opening of the Reading Room called for a cake….