Sweet as Hunny Birthday Party

October is a big month in our household--both of our girls had a birthday. And when your husband's name is Christopher and yours is Robyn, a Winnie the Pooh theme just seems perfect for celebrating these milestones.

The first step in the birthday planning was coming up with something for the invitation. My sister and I put our heads together and came up with this little rhyme:

Eliza and Abby, our birthday girls will Bee

Eliza turning one, and Abby turning three.

Come celebrate with us where it's nice and sunny,

For our birthday girls are Sweet as Hunny!

I chose purple, yellow, and orange for the color scheme, and got busy working on the treats (my favorite part!).

I just had to do 2 cakes--one for each of them. I was inspired by a cake I saw here for Abby's Hunny pot cake. I baked 2 6" rounds and 2 7" rounds that I stacked together with the 6" layers on the top and bottom. Then I trimmed around the edges to smooth the lines together and get the hunny pot shape.

I debated on covering it with fondant or modeling chocolate, and finally decided on modeling chocolate, which I think went on so much easier than fondant would have. Some fondant honey inside the pot and dripping out was painted with some gold luster dust to add shine, and the cake was finished off with some fondant bees that I painted black stripes on with some black food coloring (same thing I did with the word HUNNY on the cake). The bees' wings were white chocolate I melted and piped into wing shapes and glued onto the bees with a little chocolate.
For Eliza's cake I was excited to finally use this Winnie the Pooh cake pan I have had in my closet for years. My husband told me I couldn't cover her cake in fondant or modeling chocolate or frosting that would crust over--he wanted it soft and messy for a first birthday cake. I found a recipe for Marshmallow buttercream here and worked great--never crusted over and tasted great. The only thing I might try different next time is substituting part of the butter with shortening to make it a little more stable to heat (especially in the bag when I am piping).

For some other treats, I made Hunny Cake Pops, inspired by Bakerella's pops, chocolate beehives from a mold I found at Gygis in Salt Lake, and Caramel Pretzel Tigger Tails. The Tigger Tails are made just like I made these zebra ones here, except using orange and brown candy melts for the dipping and stripes.

Our lunch menu consisted of some other Pooh bear inspired treats:

Peanut Butter and Hunny sandwiches

Shredded Hunny-barbeque chicken sandwiches

Tigger Tails (Cheetos)

Rabbit's Garden (Veggie Platter)

Mixed fruit with Hunnydew

I saw these darling terracotta pot hunny pots here, and just had to make some for the party. I used them for some of the centerpieces--filled with purple, yellow, and orange taffy with balloons coming out of them. I also used 2 of them to hold the cake pops, and one to hold the crayons for the coloring table for the kids when they first arrived.

We did a couple of activities with the kids--the first was Pin the Tail on Eeyore, but we started it off a little differently. I sat down all the kids and asked them who had seen the new Winnie the Pooh movie and what all the characters were trying to find--Eeyore's tail. We had hidden all the tails in the playground and each child had to go find one before they could play Pin the Tail on Eeyore. I got the printable Eeyore and tails here.

Next we told the kids that Winnie the Pooh needed our help. He was out of hunny and needed us to find us more. Luckily we all spied a beehive pinata hanging in a tree nearby. I saw this idea here and made a paper mache pinata, that I glued yellow yarn around and some paper bees.

I saw this idea here and made a pinata using 3 layers of paper mache, then glued yellow yarn around it with some paper bees. We made the kids wear my husbands black fleece vest so they could be little black rain clouds as they tried to break open the hive. When it finally opened they found lots of candy, including a few Bit O' Honey's.

For favors, I made caramel apples that were dipped in purple candy melts then piped with yellow candy melts on top for the honey. I painted the word Hunny on each of them with black food coloring. Attached to each were different quotes from Winnie the Pooh on friendship.

Well, the kids had fun, and Eliza thoroughly enjoyed her first birthday cake. It was soft and messy, just like her daddy wanted for her. The end results . . .

Poor Pooh Bear. I think he's seen better days. She might have been helped out by her older sister with this cake destruction. If you couldn't find Abby here, next to Eliza eating her cake you could probably find her here--

chomping down on Tigger Tails. That explains the orange lips.

Happy birthday my little girls! "'Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.'" We love you!