Made my own Birthday Cake!

Today I finished my birthday cake. It took a little over a week to finish it. Of course I waited till the last three days to bake and put it all together. The longest part were the leaves and the flowers. My leaves were my favorite part of the cake. Yes, parts of it were not what I wanted it to be or perfect. But I'm still learning and practicing. Which is why I made my own cake.
The inside of my cake is the triple layer devil's food cake from the Cake Bible and a spice caramel crunch butter cream. It was absolutely delicious. I was sceptical about combining the chocolate cake and the spices in the butter cream. But many confectioners or chefs pair chocolate and different spices. It worked out great.
Also today I start to practice the classic knife cut, tourne. The biggest mistake was that I did what I thought I remembered being taught. Wrong! I learned that I should look up what I'm doing before I do it. I was practicing the cut the wrong way, and I ended up cutting my left thumb. Boy was that fun. NOT! This is not my first cut, but it is the worst so far. Knives are the one thing that scares me the most, and the fact that you perform this cut in your hand and not on a cutting board. The other thing I dislike is how the teacher has us cutting the onion. We hold it in our hand and carve the root and top end out. We already had one girl cut the area between the thumb and the index finger. Ouch! Well life goes on.