Obligatory Self-Promotion

So last year as you may recall, I gave you a sob story about getting the flu as a lousy excuse for my horrible orange creation during the Hunger Games Cake Decorating Contest.

This year let me give you a different excuse for voting for me:  I love my cake.  I think the craftsmanship is mediocre for reasons outlined below, but I had so much fun coming up with the idea and talking to my kids about it and teaching my husband about the book as I researched the different districts that I just was happy with the process of creation even if it didn't play out exactly as planned.

If you haven't read the book I highly doubt you would bother to keep reading this post because you will be running out to catch up with Hunger Games and Catching Fire prior to the release of Mockingjay at Midnight tonight but this year's contest is of course hosted by the one and only Jespy.  If you don't know about Jespy (known around here as jennyesp) than I feel sorry for you since she is truly a delightful person.  She has a great deadpan kind of humor and btw has kept me reading for the last year via both a blog and random texts, not to mention that we are super compatible on goodreads...and the rate at which she keeps up with iPhone games is one of the key reasons I miss that particular device.  She is kinda competitive, especially when her sisters get involved so keep your head down and don't make too many snarky comments if you are playing cards with them.

So back to me, the contest, I want you to know that I pulled into town at 4 pm yesterday, got my cake made, and was ready to move onto frosting when I realized I was out of both butter and powdered sugar.  Since I didn't have any untapped neighbors I decided to google search "frosting without powdered sugar" and sure enough I ran across a nice little Royal Icing that you can use for such occasions.  I had to boil sugar and cream of tartar until it hit 238 degrees F, whip up some egg whites to stiff peaks, and then mix the two concoctions together whipping constantly until cool.   A lot of work, eh?  But that is how dedicated I am to this contest.  And did I mention my kids started school this morning and we have been gone for 10 weeks?  So anyway the frosting didn't actually turn out to be stiff enough for detail hence my poor quality detail.  But it is shiny so that part worked out.

Down to biz.  Here is the cake.  Your job is to go to the site and vote... not even for my cake, just for the best one because honestly there are some really good ones.  But you have to give me SOME points for thinking it through, no?  I thought putting the numbers on there was kind of Captain Obvious/Oprahlike but I couldn't help but think there might be some who would be confused.

Need some help?

District 1?  They make luxury goods for the capital which is located there in the Rockies.
District 2?  Yeah those are the careers.  Training for the annual games because that is the way they roll.
District 3?  Explosives.  Want a close up?

District 4 is of course fishing.  Love my shiny lake?
Yeah so then you got Foxface showing her meano face in district 5
Factories/industrial district 8

Districts 9 is of course electricity
11 agriculture
10 livestock
and 13 we know is nuclear power.

SPOILER ALERT
District 12?
12?

It WAS the coal mining region but now....

There is no district 12.