Birthday Cake!

So my birthday is this week, and I decided to make my own cake. However I was feeling lazy and a bit unadventurous, so I used a boxed cake mix. I also have misplaced my super-duper-end-all pastry cookbook. Sooo, Pillsbury it was. I followed the directions on the box and made two 9" cakes. then came the fun part, frosting! I did actually make some of the frosting so it's partially home-made. The recipe I used for the green frosting is from Wilton's website. (I love their stuff.) And the purple frosting is store-bought Betty Crocker icing because I don't have a writing tip.

Anyway the recipe for the Buttercream frosting is as follows:
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening (I used butter-flavor b/c it's what I use for other recipies)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick)  butter or margarine
• 1 tsp clear vanilla extract (I used my regular vanilla extract because I would be dying it later)
• 4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approx 1lb)
• 2 tbsp milk

Directions:

1. Cream shortening and butter with a mixer.
2. Add vanilla.
3. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed.
4. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often.
5. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry.
6. Add milk & desired food coloring and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
7. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

Icing Directions: I'm not an expert *obviously* but here's what I did.

1. Apply a thin layer of frosting to the cake and refrigerate (20 minutes?) *Yay I remembered to do a crumb layer!*
2. Pipe an even layer of remaining frosting all over the cake. *Decide it looks terrible.* Begin smoothing and simultaneously removing excess frosting from cake top -> sides. 
3. *Remember a knife dipped in hot water is supposed to = awesomeness* Try this in combination with smoothing action. *Works well! Yay for small successes!*
4. Draw my name in green icing with a fork so I don't forget a letter or something. Cover with purple icing.
5. Freehand a heart that looks terrible and becomes filled with squiggilys.
6. Find cookie-cutter to do star. Then discover I have 3 different sizes. *Perfect*
7. Use remaining icing trying to remember how to do shells.  *Never really figuring it out*