My Little Pony Birthday Party

When Princess #3 turned 4, life was all about My Little Pony. She loved to play with her ponies, watch the movies, and even pretend she was one of the ponies. It was an easy decision what sort of party she would want this  year. I was excited when she decided on this. I had seen different unicorn cakes floating around on youtube and facebook, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do for her cake. We made her cake into one of her favorite ponies, Rainbow Dash. 

The pony's hair was my favorite part to do. I love the colorful locks.

And obviously, if you are going to do a Rainbow Dash cake, the inside had better be rainbow too!

I really love doing backdrops with crepe paper. It fun, colorful, easy, and inexpensive. Add some white balloons for clouds, and you have a perfect backdrop for Rainbow Dash and the rest of the pony party food.

Cake isn't enough for all the little pony party goers, so we added some other edible treats for the kids--Rainbow Dash Fruit Skewers, Applejack Apple Slices, Pinkie Pie Pink Lemonade, Twilight Sparkle Unicorn Horns, and Rainbow Dash Rice Krispy Treats

This Pony Party not only had some delicious treats, but also some fun games that the kids could play and "horse-around" doing ;)

Pin the Tail on Pinkie Pie, Making Rainbow Dash necklaces with fruit loops, and the kids' personal favorite...

Rarity's Hoof Painting Salon. By the end of the party those girls had the cutest, sparkliest hoof in the block.

Happy birthday from Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, AppleJack, Rainbow Dash, and all the rest of the ponies!

Mermaid Birthday Party

 OK friends I know that I have been MIA for quite awhile here on my blog. Honestly, the past 2 years have been the craziest two years of my life. We had our 4th baby, then moved 3 weeks later from Iowa to Texas for a one year fellowship, then just to pack everything back up and move across the country again to Idaho. I thought the transition to 4 kids would be a piece of cake--everyone told me that after 3, what's one more, right? Wow, my world got thrown upsidedown and I had my first experience with post partum depression. I have had some wonderful family and friends in my life that helped me through this time, and now I feel back to me and life is a little less chaotic. We are now settled, I finally have a house with 2 ovens! (Wow, I am still doing a happy dance about that one!), and now it's time to play catch up on my blog. Don't worry, I didn't stop baking during these couple of years. I have plenty of cakes to show you. I will do my best to get them all up on here within the next couple of months. They may be a little big out of order, but at least they will be up!

During our year in Texas we had a fun mermaid birthday party for my older 2 girls. Since their birthdays fall right before Halloween, they tend to want their party to go with the costumes they decided on for Halloween. This year it was all about the mermaid.

 This cake was one of my favorites to make. I had been wanting to try out this new technique I learned online with the ombre effect in fishscales using modeling chocolate. It worked out well, and was much easier to do than I anticipated. The buttercream ruffles for the waves on the bottom tier were done with an oversized french star tip with some white streaks of buttercream in my bag filled with blue buttercream. I found a mold to make the shells and starfish, and the seaweed was easily done by twisting some extra modeling chocolate pieces.

 I'm not the best sculpter of people, or mermaids, out of fondant and modeling chocolate, but I still like how my two little mermaids turned out. They are sitting on the ocean floor made up of crushed graham crackers (you could use brown sugar too).

 Adding a few edible pearls (found in the cake decorating section at Walmart or most craft stores) added the perfect last touch to the cake.

 We had a fun spread of some other under the sea cuisine

Some edible Oysters and pearls made with buttercream and an edible pearl sandwiched between two lemon cookies.

 Blue jello with fish in them--maybe not the best idea. I made up the jello and when it was almost set, pushed a swedish fish in it. The jello sort of made the fish start to dissolve and when the kids finally ate it, it was a strange consistency that no one liked. Maybe skip this one next time ;)

Some vanilla pudding topped with graham cracker sand to portray the beach, and white chocolate shells made up these yummy treats.

 The jellyfish hanging behind the table were my favorite! All you need for these are chinese lanterns, found in any craft store, streamers, clear tape, and a good show to watch on Netflix while you are cutting and twisting streamers every 2-3 inches. I also added some thin, shiny curly ribbon for a little more sparkle and texture.Honestly, I loved these so much I left them hanging in my home for the next month, until it was almost Thanksgiving and we were having a house full of guests come into town, and my husband said the jellyfish had to finally go back to the sea.

 Here are my two mermaids. Aren't they cute! Even with the missing teeth! These were their Halloween costumes--I usually let them wear them for their party, but we had too many running around games outside with water, that I made them change back into human clothes for the party, and done their mermaid fins later. We made these necklaces for all the kids to wear at the party--just a small shell from the dollar store, a fake pearl, and some glitter glue. These were a hit with all the kids.

 Besides the water relays we did, we also raced to see which team could make a person into a mermaid the fastest with crepe paper, and we painted little sunken treasure chests.

Finally before heading home we let the kids have at our "octopus" pinata. I know, it looks a little pathetic. This was one of those crafts you do with the kids entirely for letting the kids have the experience making paper mache. Our streamer legs needed a little more stiffness to them, but they still had fun busting him open and racing to get the underwater treasure hiding inside him.

I hope you enjoyed this one. We had a blast with this party--their only birthday party in Texas, so we could actually do water games and be outside without freezing! All their other parties in Iowa were so cold at the end of October.  Cheers until next time!

Sesame Street Birthday Party

It took my third baby turning 3 years old to have a sesame street party at our house. I'm surprised it took that long. Sesame street was a childhood favorite of mine, and those characters still have a special place in my heart. Elmo won over her heart, so this year it was all about him. I convinced Princess #3 to let me add in a few of the other characters too, to keep Elmo company. That seemed to appease her.

You guys know by now that I am all about the cake at parties. I was so excited to do this cake. I loved the bright Sesame street colors. You can't help but be happy with all those colors around. The classic Sesame Street street sign with her name and age on it was a perfect decoration for the top tier with Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster underneath.

I can't help but smile with all those happy faces staring back at me. I had some blue fondant on hand and some red and yellow modeling chocolate too, so I did Big Bird and Elmo out of modeling chocolate and Cookie Monster out of fondant. Modeling chocolate was easier to use and is what I would recommend using if someone tries it themselves.

 Cupcakes probably are overkill with a cake there to serve too, but when I saw this idea on Pinterest, I couldn't not make them. They were calling my name. Super easy to make, just bake up some chocolate cupcakes, cut a mouth shape out and use the grass tip to make their fur. Add some googly eye, a nose on Elmo, and a cookie in Cookie Monster's mouth, and you are done!

And a Sesame Street party just can't happen without some delicious cookies for Cookie Monster and all his friends and fans.

In case guests wanted something other than cake and cookies, we had an Elmo and Big Bird fruit platter with some sweet strawberries, blackberries, and oranges for Elmo, and pineapple and banana for Big Bird. Some yogurt and blackberries finished off the eyes for both puppets.

For decorations we made these cute pom pom characters. I had a hard time getting rid of these guys after the party. I think I kept them hanging up for 2 more months, until I finally had to take them down because we were selling our house and moving across the country. It broke my heart to throw them into the trash. I guess if I made Oscar the Grouch I wouldn't have felt as bad putting them in the garbage ;)

A cute little framed sign and some colorful letters scattered around the table finished things off!

 ...and of course Princess #3's Elmo joined the party for some food and fun. He may or may not have tried to eat a cookie monster cupcake while he was up there.

This post has been brought to you by the letter C and the number 3! Happy birthday!

Daniel Tiger Birthday

We celebrated my daughter's 2nd birthday this year with a fun Daniel Tiger theme. She is obsessed with Daniel Tiger--it is the only show she wants to watch. I, of course, loved the idea of doing a Daniel Tiger theme--I have a soft spot in my heart for him from all my years as a little kid watching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with Trolley and such. I love the new spin off of that show in the form of sweet and cuddly Daniel Tiger.

The first element that I knew was a must on the cake was Trolley itself. I printed off a picture of Trolley from the internet, and cut it apart into the different elements of the trolley. Then I rolled modeling chocolate out, in varying thicknesses, put the paper template on top of the correct piece of modeling chocolate, and cut each piece out with an exacto knife. Then as I assembled it on the side of my bottom tier, it seemed to come to life with the varying thicknesses of the trolley, almost looking 3 dimentional.

Next I wanted to put Daniel Tiger's house on top. I cut slats into the fondant to make wood planks, then distressed them a little with a little roller tool, and finally painted on the white fondant with brown food coloring mixed with lemon extract. I followed the tutorial here for doing the wood look.

My husband had bought me a clay extruder gun for Christmas, that I was so excited that I finally got to use when I made this cake. I used the gun to make the sticks for the roof of Daniel's house. It was time consuming, but turned out just how I envisioned!

For the final touches on the cake I made a Happy birthday banner out of modeling chocolate, and put Daniel, Katerina Kittycat, and Miss Elaina on top by Daniel's house.

We also served some other Tiger-inspired snacks--Tiger cupcakes

 Tiger tails (pretzels dipped in orange candy melts and drizzled with milk chocolate.)

And these adorable Tiger mandarin orange cups were so fun for my 6 and 4 year olds to make, so that they felt like they were contributing to the party prep.

 It turned out cute, and she was so excited about her cake. That was 4 months ago, and she still talks about her cake everyday and loved it. Here are a couple pictures of the birthday girl with her cake--the one below she was attempting to blow the candle out, but ended up needing a little help from her sisters and cousins.

What was hiding inside the cake?  We'll you can't make a tiger cake with out making the inside tiger striped. To know how to do this technique, check out my post here where I make a zebra striped cake.
Ugga Mugga!