Cupcake Craze June 12, 2012

I have decided to join the cupcake craze.  If you know me, you know I’ve resisited cupcakes for a long time.  I’ve found them to be tedious with barely satisfactory results.  And messy, both for me as the baker and as the cleaner-upper-after the kids make a crumbly disaster of them.

But, I think I’ve become a convert.  I think I’m a little hooked.  I’ve gotten rid of the tedious and am reducing the messy, atleast on the baker’s end.  I can only do so much about kids.

Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up:

I was first inspired by this blog.  She talks all about different frosting techniques and the various decorating tips you need to achieve different looks.  I haven’t tried any of her frostings, nor have I tried all of the different decorating tips, but I did find her video tutorial to be very helpful.  The basic gist is to use a jumbo tip.  Different looks are achived by either starting in the center of your cupcake and circling out, or starting at the outer edge of your cupcake and circling in.  Anyhow, watch it.  Be amazed at how easily you too can have fabulous looking cupcakes.

So decorating tips took care of my first issue with cupcakes:  tedious frosting with a spatula.  Of course, a spatula gives you a nice smooth top if that is the look you are trying to achieve.  And, decorating tips do use a lot more frosting, so be prepared for that.  But really, don’t 9/10 kids just lick the frosting and leave the cupcake anyhow?

My next issue:  spooning batter makes a mess.  Here’s an easy fix for that one.  If you’re not already, use cupcake liners.  Much cuter and way easier to remove the cupcakes from the pan.  Pour your batter into a ziplock bag, seal it, and snip the corner.  Squirt.  Much cleaner and much, much faster than spooning batter into each cupcake well.  I found that a quart size bag is easy to manage and holds enough batter for approximately 20-22 cupcakes.  Personally, I like to fill my liners just shy of 2/3.  They rise to just above the top of the liner when they bake, which gives you a nice surface to decorate.

Another trick that I learned in the video tutorial above was to stand my decorating bags into a tall glass to make it easier to load the frosting.  This tip works well for loading batter into the ziplock bag.

I’ve also found that displaying cupcakes closely together (like I did in the picture above) hides mistakes.  Speaking of mistakes, if when frosting, you goof, scrape it off and start over.  Much easier to do on a cupcake than a big ‘ol sheet cake!

And finally, to cute-ify those now-fabulous looking cupcakes: sprinkles and picks.  How easy is that?  My son’s baseball cupcakes (above) had picks made from “action shots” of each of the boys.  One of the moms took a picture of each boy, cut around the player and glued the picture onto a straw.  Other pick ideas…check out your local dollar store, umbrellas, little army people or other plastic figures that match a party theme, stickers and stamps on circles of paper.  The ideas are endless,  just have fun!

Oh, and one last thing I did last time I made cupcakes…instead of doing a full batch of big cupcakes, I used some of the batter to make mini cupcakes using my mini-muffin pan.  When it came time to decorate, I used my same jumbo tip (Wilton 1M) and did one squirt of frosting in the middle of the cupcake.  They turned out super cute and were a nice compromise for parents who only wanted a bite, and for kids who tried to negotiate two cupcakes!

Now that I’m well on my way to becoming a cupcake convert, what other tips do you have for me?

Turning Ten October 11, 2011

Yes, I am still here.  Barely.  But I am here.  I’m drowning in October.  Working, chaueffering, throwing a birthday party and being an integral part of our school PTA fundraiser and it’s only the 11th day of October.  This little bloggy thing is getting sorely neglected, as is my house.  My kids have been eating, and I will be back to share lunches with you, hopefully next week. 

In the meantime, take a peek at my daughter’s 10th birthday party.  Yes, I have a 10 year old.  I don’t know how that happened.  Everyone says my daughter is a whole lot like me, and one of the things she likes to do best is to plan a party.  She ended up having a whole lot of input into this one which worked out pretty well ’cause I really dropped the ball on this one.  Just couldn’t pull it together. 

Her first request was a slumber party.  We’ve never done one of those, but it worked out really well.  A word to the wise:  Dynamics are huge.  A lot of people thought I was crazy to have seven girls under my roof, but they were seven really good girls.  And I mean really good.

Her friends showed up at 4:00 and were each given a bucket to keep their stuff in.  The buckets were just empty storage bins that I had around the house and were big enough to store their sleeping bags/pillows, backpacks and whatever stuff they amassed during their stay.  They made clean up really easy too.

My daughter spent time making a name tag for each of her friend’s – I love that she personalized each one with their interests!  She literally spent hours on these.  Some of the girls took them home, but for those that didn’t, my daughter plans to write thank you notes on the back. 

For awhile they just hung out dancing and talking, but then they got bored.  Part of my lack of planning meant I didn’t have a ton of activities so I had to think on the fly.  As part of their party favor, we gave each girl a lined notebook and pen.  We got those out and the girls wrote an opening sentence of a story and then started passing the notebook around and adding into the storyline.  This kept them busy for a good 30 minutes while I started dinner.  Who knew 9-10 year old girls were so obsessed with potty humor.  And my husband.  Poor guy.

Dinner was simple – spaghetti and meatballs ready in a crockpot so all I had to do was boil noodles and serve.  I had prepared a veggie platter that was barely touched, but since they had already polished off a fruit platter, I wasn’t going to complain.

There was no real theme to my daughter’s party, so we just picked colors that she liked.

After dinner, we had LOTS of time before our main planned activity so we played one game in which all jammies were thrown into a pile and then they had to close their eyes and find their own jammies and get themselves dressed (jammies over their clothes).  Only one mix up…I was impressed.  After that, we did nails and decorated cupcakes:

Another request that my daughter had made was to make “Candy Creatures.”  That turned into “put as much candy on your cupcake as possible,” though they all did come up with pretty cute creations.  And over the course of the night, they ate pretty much all that candy.  I had to tell them I wasn’t calling any moms over upset tummies…

Around 7:00, my ultra-talented friend arrived to teach the girls to make their own glass tile charms and personalized metal charms for necklaces.  All these girls are super creative so they had a good time and I think my friend had fun hanging with this little group of girls too.  I hope! 

No slumber party is complete without a movie, or in our case, two.  Hocus Pocus and Marley and Me, The Puppy Years.  We borrowed a projector which my daughter thought was beyond fantastic.  Poor child is growing up in a one-TV household and that one TV is not so big either.  Some of the girls ate their cupcakes and they all demolished this snack basket:

Water (with a sharpie to write their names on the bottles), fruit roll ups and little bags of crackers.  Didn’t need anymore sugar going into this group of girls.  

Amazingly, the girls were out by 1:00 and not up ’til 8:00.  We had waffles and sausage for breakfast, and then the girls played until they were picked up at 10:00.  It made me laugh that they opted to haul out big empty boxes and build forts…an age-less activity, I guess.

As for decorations, we kept it simple.  I strung colored Christmas lights around the main room – festive, but also functional as we kept these on all night.  I also made a bunch of tissue paper flower pom-poms:

Yes, that is my naughty dog and half a pom-pom.

One last thing that we did to make the party easier was to confine it to two rooms.  This kept the puppy out of mischief, didn’t displace my boys and kept the chaos contained.  It also prevented any girls from going off, and therefore, anyone feeling left out.  We did make my daughter’s room the “quiet room” for anyone that wanted to go to bed early, but no one took that option and everyone quieted down in a reasonable amount of time.

All in all a good party…my daughter wrote me a thank- you note afterwards in which she said, “I admire how much time you put into my party.”  As I feel myself drowning in day-to-day activities (which are still all centered around my kids), it was a breath-stopping reminder that our kids really do notice what we’re up to.  And very often, it’s the experiences that we create for them, the time we give them, and how often we are actually present in their lives.  Best said out of the mouth of a babe, even if she is now 10 years old.

Angry Birds Birthday September 19, 2011

My middle son loves sports.  This kid has always been happiest with a ball in hand (or on foot) and he plays on a variety of teams throughout the year.  It really hasn’t been until the last year or two that he has had much of an interest in toys as he is constantly in motion.  If trapped indoors, he is playing baseball or football.  Kicked outdoors it’s basketball or kickball.  His favorite team sport is soccer.  He loves to jump rope, swim and run as well.  He wakes up in the morning to watch Sports Center and when I make him turn off the TV, he asks to check scores on my phone.  He saves his weekend TV time for games and rattles of scores and stats like no eight year old should.  Not surprisingly, nearly all of his birthday parties have been sports themed. 

So this year, I was in a bit of a quandary when he announced that he wanted to have an Angry Birds themed party.  I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to pull this off, but thanks to a little bit of ‘net searching, we put together a pretty fun party.  I love all of you who think that I need to market this party.  You know how to flatter a mama.  But really, like most of my parties, it’s all about the research. 

I have to admit, this party ended up to be a comedy of errors.

The wheels for this party were set in motion way back in July.  My kids are constantly planning parties but I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to pull this party together until I saw the sets at our church VBS.  Our church did the Pandamonium curriculum and part of the set was the Great Wall of China.  See where I’m going?  Yep.  I snagged those boxes and got work researching a life-size Angry Bird game.  Of course, someone already had this idea and so I was able to move pretty quickly.  I even found the balls I needed to make the birds at our local Fred Meyer on sale for 75 cents a ball.  I snagged a dozen and thought I was in most excellent shape.  The next week, Michaels had acrylic paint on sale for 29 cents a bottle.  The patterns I was planning to use called for just a bit of paint and so I only needed 3-4 bottles with plenty left over.  Heck, it wasn’t even August yet and look how far ahead I was!  And look at how inexpensive this party was turning out to be! 

Like usual, we did an evite.  I have to admit, my daughter recently received a themed paper invitation to a party and it really set the mood and got her excited.  But, I’m just not that organized.  Even though I sent the evite out a good month ahead of the party.

(Do you sense a theme here?) 

Fast forward about three weeks.  Things are still going well.  My husband was on task to build a slingshot.  My kiddo wanted root beer floats.  Feeling rather inspired, I talked him into doing these cake balls too.  Since we were butting up against dinner time, we decided to serve pizza and fruit too.

We are now about two weeks prior to the party.  I decide to to a test bird ball.  I used these templates and things tested out fine.  I reminded my husband about the slingshot.  He got to work.  The first thing you should know about my husband is that he is an engineer.  Apparently he missed the part of the conversation when I directed him to the link above about how to make a slingshot.  So, being the nice wife that I am, I explained it to him and he kindly pointed out all of the flaws in my grand plans.  He and I, we are a good team.  I come up with crazy ideas and he figures out how to execute them.  Sometimes he gets too engineer-y and I have to bring him back down to earth.  This was one of those times.  I think he forgot that we were just talking about a bunch of 7 and 8-year-old boys here.  No state or national code to uphold at this party.  But he got to work.  I’ll show you pictures of what he created in a little bit.

Then things started falling apart.  I thought I had a whole week to get ready.  Three of those days would be sans kids. 

But then, it happened.  Again.

Our family has a knack for visiting the ER on birthdays.  It’s always been for something minor, but it still takes time.  This year, it was my turn.  On my son’s actual birthday day, my dog decided to snag a rib bone and shattered it.  I stupidly tried to fish the shards of bone from her mouth.  Just a couple of stitches but a reasonably open wound and loss of motion definitely made for a more challenging week. 

The bird balls got done.  They turned out really well and were super easy.

I traced the templates onto the balls using a non-permanent marker.  We had some primer left over from a house project so I used that to put a base coat on the ball.  The primer was oil based but I don’t think that matters.  Once that was dry, I painted the details with my acrylics and then used a paint marker to outline the face.  Finally, I sprayed the face with a matte finish spray so that the paint wouldn’t chip off.  We let each of the boys take one of the balls home as their party favor.

The slingshot got done too.  My husband completely blew my party budget but guess what?  This is probably the strongest, most industrial slingshot you’ve ever seen.  It’ll end up in my backyard and I suspect it’ll get loads of use. 

Here’s what my husband did.  He purchased steel pipe pieces and their connectors and they all twist together.  There is another piece at the base that connects pipes into 2×6 boards that he screwed together and into a sheet of plywood.  For those of you less techy people like me, the sheet of plywood actually stabilizes the whole contraption so that it doesn’t tip over.  That being said, we still had a grown up sit on the beam as the kids were able to pull the slingshot off the ground when they were launching their birds.  Anyhow, he also taped the pipes with brown electrical tape and then spray painted the wood to give it a more authentic look.  The “pouch” is made of burlap, doubled for extra strength.  I taped the edges with a double layer of duct tape and then my husband punched holes in the corner to tied the medical tubing that served as the bands to attach the pouch to the “sticks.”

The cake balls did not get done.  I tried, but they fell apart the night before party when I tried dipping the balls into the chocolate.  I made rice krispy treats instead. 

The night before the party, I also forgot to buy spoons for ice cream floats, ICE CREAM for ice cream floats and lord knows what else.  I was not in good shape that night. 

But, it didn’t matter.  The party was crazy fun.  We started with several games.

In this first game, we simply let the kids get used to the slingshot.  If they hit the pig ball, they got to get back into line.  If not, they had to go to “jail.”  The next kid to hit the pig got everyone out of jail.  The game was over when everyone was in jail, but I’m not sure that that happened.  This game was a good game to start with because not only did the kids get some practice, it allowed us to get the slingshot set at the right distance for them to be able to actually knock the piggies over!  I think they played this for half an hour, no kidding.

In the second game, we divided the kids into two teams:  Pigs and Birds.  The Pigs got about five minutes to build the best wall that they could (protecting the King Pig, of course) while the Birds ran themselves silly.  Once the Pigs declared themselves ready, the Birds lined back up to try to knock that wall over.  The wind blew in and made things quite challenging for the first team of Birds, but they all had a great time.  We switched sides and started over…I think this game lasted 30 minutes too.

Like I said, I was able to snag the boxes from my church, but the concept was pretty simple (not to discredit the people who spent hours on all of these boxes).  They were made of old packing boxes and spray painted with grey and black paint.  They also used a textured paint which made them quite realistic.  The boulders are made of paper grocery bags that were stuffed with newspaper and painted to match the boxes. 

After games, we opened gifts and then had pizza and fruit.  The kids ran around a played keep away while everyone finished up.

Our last game was supposed to be “Capture the Golden Egg” (aka, Capture the Flag) but due to a miscommunication between my son, husband and I, that didn’t happen.  The kids elected to play kickball instead.

As our final schabang, we called the kids over for rootbeer floats and rice krispy treats.  There isn’t much Angry Bird stuff out there, so I just used a plain black tablecloth and red plates and cups.

For their party favors, each of the kids took home a bird ball and a “golden egg.”  Since I couldn’t find golden eggs, I wrapped a cup full of candy in shiny gold paper tied with gold ribbon. 

Despite the mishaps along the way, the kids had a great time and that is all that matters!

Now, my husband’s birthday was this past weekend and my youngest decided that he too needed an Angry Bird birthday party.  So my husband ended up with this birthday cake:

The cake was made by my five year old, just a simple cake mix and frosted with the leftover frosting from my cake ball disaster.  We made the eyes out of full size Oreos and the eye ball is made from a mini oreo.  My five year old was very proud to point out that he adhered the eyeball with a bit of red frosting so that it wouldn’t slide off 🙂  The fuse is made from a Cow Tail, which is a an inexpensive candy that was as gross as it sounds.  I ran a skewer through the middle so that it’d be more stable in the cake.

And my son decorated the house with these birds.  I am so irritated that I forgot to bring these out for the kid party.  I made several of these last winter using this pattern.  Pretty cool, eh?

I made a bunch of these stuffed Angry Birds back around Christmas and my boys enjoy throwing them at each other things.

Another simple rendition of the original party.  And now my five year old wants to throw it for his birthday.  Indoors.  Little boys + slingshot in my house?  I dunno honey.

Tinkerbell/Fairy Party August 3, 2011

When my daughter turned seven, we celebrated with fairies! 

My daughter has very crafty friends, so we started out with a few projects.  It was the first year of American Girl dolls, so she invited her friends to bring their dolls and they made tiaras and wings for their dolls:

This was a very last minute addition into the party plans, so I had to deal with what I had on hand.  The tiaras were made from circles of decorative wire and curling ribbon.  And the wings where made from pony beads and pipe cleaners.  Very last minute but an easy ice-breaker.

We then moved on to making fairy wings.  This was fun, but very messy.  I found plain nylon wings and the girls used liquid water color and eye droppers to decorate their wings.  They were gorgeous, but wet.  So wet, I’m not sure I’d recommend this project.  Maybe with brushes or spray bottles, though you’d end up with a different effect.

All of those projects actually took awhile (as in I had to tell them that craft time was up and bribe them with cake), so we so set the dolls up at the little tea table and then headed into the dining room for our own tea party:

Setting this table was fun!  We used real tea cups and saucers for pink lemonade.  Some of these were sets that were given to our family by my husband’s grandma, and some of them we found at a thrift store.  Each one was different, so that was pretty fun.  My daughter desperately wanted Tinkerbell plates, so we just bought those from a party store.  And the little flower hats were found on clearance at the craft store and embellished with ribbon, bells and their names written in sparkly ink, in cursive, of course!  I also sprinkled silk flower petals on the table.

These girls are fruit eaters, so I also did two platters of fruit.

And, per my daughter’s request, carrot cake:

Decorating the cake was actually quite simple.  I just used my daughter’s set of Disney fairies and then used a leaf tip to pipe leaves around the edge.  The flowers up top are actually candles (leftover from my mother-in-law’s birthday party the night prior).  The only poor planning on my part was that Tinkerbell caught on fire when her hand got a little too close to the handle 😉

After eating, we headed outside for a game.  10 fairies were lost and needed 10 girls to help locate them.  I attached each fairy to a very long piece of yarn and wound the yarn through out our woody backyard in a maze like fashion.  Each of the girls had a starting point and then had to follow their yarn to their fairy.  I attached different little prizes on the yarn a long the way…small pieces of candy, a butterfly.  Most of the girls were able to follow this pretty well, and all of the fairies were happily rescued!

Meow! Kitty Cat Birthday July 19, 2011

 Anyone who knows my youngest son knows how much he loves cats.  He has a soft spot for all animals, but his most favorite is a cat.  He has a million stuffed cats, and still, at the age of five, he wakes up pretending he is a cat and when he needs a snuggle, he is most likely to crawl into my lap and meow and purr.  One of the things I love best about my youngest is that he knows what he likes and until recently, he didn’t care what others thought.  Two Halloweens ago, he was a green sparkly kitty.  And when he was turning four and his favorite color was purple and he wanted a kitty birthday party, that’s what we did.  It turned out to be one of my favorite parties.

We started right off with a craft:

 This was the most expensive part of the party, but it served many purposes so I went ahead and splurged here.  Somehow, I managed to find a bunch of full size Webkinz cats for $5.  At the time, Webkinz were all the rage with these little ones who have older siblings, so they ended up to be quite a hit.  I also had lots of fleece scraps left from a different project and made each kitty a small blanket.  I converted one of my toy shelves into kitty crates…and each kitty was placed with a small cat bowl that we found at the dollar store and bag of kitty treats (goldfish crackers). 

Each kiddo got to choose a kitty to adopt and then we all sat down to make them a collar (pony beads on stretch elastic) and decorate a cat carrier.  For the cat carrier, I ended up getting cardboard take out boxes  from a local deli.  My husband cut a door into the side of each carrier and we set out stickers and markers and let the kids have at it.   

Once all the cats were snug in their carriers, we played “Pin the Whiskers on the Cat”:

 

 Simple cat face made out of a piece of poster board and construction paper.  Great fun…unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the cat with whiskers.  Just as well, he looked like he had been partying a little too hard…

After all this activity, the kid were hungry, so we headed to the table to play a quick eating game:

 My little guy has January birthday so he often gets several calendars…this year he got two cat calendars so I took one apart and used the pictures as placemats.  There was much fighting over where to sit.  Who knew.  Anyhow, we had cat cookies waiting on the table, but then came the real fun.  I put a scoop of vanilla yogurt into each of the aforementioned cat bowls and the kids had to lap up their “milk.”

That took awhile to clean up, and then we were ready for a real lunch:

 The kitty sandwiches are simply PB&J cut into circles and decorated with chocolate chip eyes, carrot noses, stick pretzel whiskers and square pretzel ears.  Of course the kitties are surrounding mice!  The mice are made of strawberries with almond slices for the ears, mini chocolate chips for the eyes and nose and licorice string tails.

After presents and playing, it was cake time:

 This is one of my least favorite cakes, but he loved it. 

If you can indulge me in a mommy moment, one of the reasons that this was one of my favorite parties is that he wasn’t 100% sure that he should have a kitty party “because most boys my age don’t love cats as much as me, mommy.  They’re kind of girly and they might laugh at me.”  After much discussion, he decided that’s still what he loved best.  And you know what?  His friends loved it.  And he ended up getting three new stuffed cats (who are still all now very well-loved), cat wrapping paper and a cat game in addition to an assortment of boy toys.  I love that his friends just love him for who he is.

KaChow! Lightening McQueen Birthday Party June 24, 2011

In honor of Cars2 coming out today, I thought it would be appropriate to share the Lightening McQueen birthday party I did for my little guy a couple of years ago.  He was and still is a HUGE Cars fan.  It’s fun to see his excitement over the release of the new movie.  Marketing at it’s best, eh?

For this party, we invited three of his best buds (they still are) and their moms for a morning of fun.  I actually opted to host this party during the day when the big kids were at school, as even the best big kids have a way of skewing a party.  And once I got past my guilt, I am really glad I did it this way.  There is nothing like unabashed three year old fun. 

The first activity was to make our own cars.  Each child received a plain cardboard box that I had previously wrapped in red paper (found on clearance post-Christmas) and attached straps using wide red ribbon (also found on a post-Christmas clearance sale).  I’d just picked up a stash of boxes from the liquor store (seriously) and these proved to be the perfect size.  Each child also received four black plates and brads, and I set out construction paper, stickers, letters and glue sticks and let the kids have at it.  Excuse the blurry picture!

Once the kids finished their cars, they got to run them through the race course I’d set up in the house.  There were a few “ramps” to go up, a carwash (streamers hanging from a door), a gas pump to fill up at.  Our house has a loop, and really, just running the loop through the carwash may have been their favorite part!

Once the little guys needed to refuel, we did cake:

 

We used his collection of Cars cars to decorate this cake.  The top layer served his friends, and we save the bottom layer for the family party the next day.  At the time, I couldn’t find race car flags, so I just made those, but since then, they seem to be all over the place.  Hard to see, but in the middle of the bottom layer, there small stack of mini Oreos, ala, discarded tires.  Here’s a couple more close-ups of the cake. 

So…I know what we’re doing this weekend.  What about you?

Under the Sea (aka Pirates Meet Little Mermaid) Birthday Party June 19, 2011

My oldest both have September birthdays, and until my daughter hit elementary school, they also had many mutual friends.  When my son turned four, and my daughter, six, they had complimentary interests that inspired this “Under the Sea” theme.  This party was held at our local park, on a spectacular late summer day. 

To get the kids “warmed up,” we played Mermaid, Mermaid, Pirate…an aquatic varation of Duck, Duck, Goose.  I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining it.

As any good pirate party would lend itself to, we also had a treasure hunt.  Because we had a massive number of kids, we divided them up into teams.  Each team just had 3-4 kids and one parent helper.  Each of the six clues was mounted onto a set of colored cards – the blue team only took the blue clues, the red team took the red clues…you get the drill.  Each team started with a different clue – this took a bit of pre-work on my part to ensure that the team would not likely get bunched up in the same spot. 

The clues included:

1. Before Ariel gets human legs, she sits on this while singing to Prince Eric.  Your next clue will be located at a very large ______________.   This obviously led the kids to a huge climbing rock where they retreived their next clue.
2. “Arrrrrrrggggghhhh!”  Now you’ve done it!  Go walk the __________________ for your next clue and a bit of pirate treasure.  This clue led the kids to a balance beam that we set up (6×6 blocks and 2×6 board).  They walked from one end to the other, and retreived gold coins and the next clue.
3. If you were a fish, you wouldn’t want to get caught in this!  Find your next clue by going under, over or through this fish trap.  I honestly cannot remember what we did for this clue….it seems like I maybe set up a large net for the kids to manuever through!  It’s been a few years, ha!
4. “Go ‘under the sea’ where you’ll find your next clue.  While you’re there, be sure to pick up some treasure.   I brought our bubble machine and had that running to create the illusion of water.  Each kid picked up a bottle of bubbles and a clue.
5. Looking for treasure?  “X” marks the spot.  We just painted a big “X” for the kids to locate their next clue…
6. You did it!  You found all the clues!  Return to the party island to see what awaits you!  At this age, no party seemed to be complete without a pinata, so I found treasure chest pinata.  Unfortunately, the scramble led to lots of tears…since then, I’ve learned to hold back a bag of goodies to scatter away from the crowd so that the littlest, easily overwhelmed and unaggressive kids can get some loot too.

The older kids really enjoyed reading the clues and trying to figure out where to go to find their next clues.  The little ones did well with assistance, and were more intrigued by the different obstacles that they had to maneuver through.  Having a parent helper with each team definitely helped.  Thank goodness for parents who offer to stay to lend a hand!

After we did the pinata, it was time for cake and juice…two cakes for two birthday kids!

This cake was pretty fun to make.  We used his playmobil pirates to decorate, plus gummy sharks, chocolate coins and rock candy.  The water is made of tinted gel (Wilton makes tubs of clear gel and you can just color it whatever you need it to be).  The dirt is crushed graham crackers over mounds of frosting.  Sounds pretty gross in retrospect!

This was my first tiered cake.  I apologize for not having a picture of the entire thing – it really did stand up, but unfortunately I don’t have a good picture of that!  This cake took advantage of her Disney figures from The Little Mermaid picture, plus a few candy rocks and some chocolate shells that I made with candy molds. 

Here is the top layer.  I’ve found that using my kids toys to create cakes makes it so much simpler.  There are lots of techniques for drawing or transferring pictures of specific characters, but that is definitely not my calling.  Digging through a toybox is a much better compromise and I get to unleash a bit of creativity in creating a 3-dimensional scene instead.

For party favors…the girls got a little trinket box with sticker earrings and a necklace.  We found a heart shaped box with a dolphin and it seemd to fit the theme and my daughter’s desires perfectly.  The boys (and a few girls who wanted to trade, lol) got pirate dress up sets.    For these, we bundled up an eye patch, hoop earring, telescope and gold coins in a black bandana.  I then cut red strips of fabric to tie off the bandana – this strip could be used as a sash as part of their dress up.  Easy peasy and the kids loved them.

First Birthday Parties June 16, 2011

By now you’ve noticed I have a thing for lunches.  However, in my former life, I was a data geek.  And it seems that “once a data geek, always a data geek,” so it comes as no real surprise to me that I am quite fascinated by the fact that the statistic that indicates that the #1 search that draws new readers to my site has nothing to do with bento lunches!  Rather, it is “Toy Story Birthday Party.”

I also have a couple of friends who have suggested that I start adding posts about the birthday parties that I’ve thrown for my kids.  Tonight, I started poring through my millions of pictures and I’ve learned several things about myself:

1. I am often not behind the camera at my kids’ parties.  So there aren’t a lot of pictures in the beginning as most of the pictures contain too many cute faces.  As darling as I think my kids (and their friends) are, I do my best to protect their privacy.
2. Throwing birthday parties is a learned process.  The internet has been an incredible tool in researching ideas.  Very few ideas are my own.
3. Our family has a tendency to destroy cameras right before our kids’ first birthdays.  Really.  I have no pictures of my my daughter’s first birthday.  And I have no pictures of my middle kiddo’s first birthday.
4. Mother’s intuition is always right.  Here’s a funny little bit:  For each of my kids’ first birthdays, I managed to pick a theme that still reflects their personality.  For my daughter, I picked ladybugs because *I* think little girls and ladybugs are impossibly cute.  So cute that her first Halloween costume was of a ladybug.  To this day, she is often found digging for and creating habitats for bugs…collecting slugs on the way to school…rescuing her brothers from all those scary spiders.  For my second born, I picked sports.  He seemd to be quite the ball loving boy then, and this has definitely held true.  And my littlest.  Well, I’ve always wanted to do a circus birthday I figured his first birthday was kind of my last shot.  Guess what role he plays in our family?  Definitely the clown.

Honestly, I don’t remember what we did for the first two first-birthdays.  I think it went along the lines of inviting family and close friends, getting naked and smashing cake.  I do remember that my daughter got 3 Fisher Price Barns for her first birthday.

I did (and always have) made their cakes.  It’s one of my gifts to them, and I treasure the fact that they believe that I can create anything.  I love that they *run* downstairs the morning of their parties to pull open the refrigerator doors to see what I’ve created.  As they’ve gotten older, we’ve spend time together surfing the ‘net looking for cake ideas that they like.  

Here are a few pictures from the Circus Party.  For this party, we definitely had a plethora of older kids (but still 5 and under) so I needed a couple activities.  We had plain, primary colored cone hats and stickers for the kids to create their own “clown” hats.  And then my hubby was a good enough sport to don a clown nose and twist a bunch of animal balloons for the kids.  I’m not sure who had more fun watching that happen…the kids or the rest of us grown ups!

Number “1” cookies decorated by my big kids for their baby brother.  We ate these on the day of his birthday, cake came a few days later at the family party.

Cookies for the circus cake.  I used a glaze frosting for these – I believe it was the first, and possibly the only time I’ve attempted this.  One thing I learned with these cookies is that bright pops of color can hide just about anything.  I thought these cookies were rather atrocious, but they were so colorful, it almost didn’t matter.

The final cake.  This is quite possibly my most favorite cake I’ve ever made.  Don’t you love those little clowns?

One of my cake “signatures” is that I run a “Happy Birthday <Insert Name>” around the vertical perimeter of the cake.  It leaves the surface for design, and oddly, I find it easier to write on a vertical surface.  Is that strange?

Another thing I’ve done for each of my kids’ first birthdays is written them a letter.  A letter telling them how blessed their daddy and I are to have them our lives, what they are like at a year.  That we hope they will always know how much they are loved.  I’ll save these letters for them for when they are older, maybe when they get married.  Maybe when their first baby turns a year.  Or maybe when they hit those turbulent teen years and need to be reminded how much they are loved.  I don’t know. 

What first birthday traditions have you created?

Fighting Off the Winter Blahs April 11, 2011

Well, we are back from Spring Break…which implies that it must be spring, right?  Like the rest of the nation, however, we are experience rather odd weather patterns, including snow showers, hail storms and incessant rain last week.  This week promises to be another week of cold, damp weather.  And so, in and effort to fight off the winter blahs that seem determined to get us all, I present this colorful lunch.

The Contents – carrot sticks (and cucumber for the girl), apple bites (strawberries for the girl), ham slices on winter-blah fighting swords, a small slice of pizza and a very colorful cupcake.

The Details – Pizza fit perfectly and it was a good way to get rid of one last slice of pizza.  Each of my two older kids got half and they proclaimed it to be quite excellent.  Despite the fact that they had pizza for dinner on Friday and Saturday and leftover pizza for lunch on Sunday.  Yuck.  And isn’t that cupcake a darling burst of color?  My friend made the cutest cupcakes for her daughter’s Mario birthday party.  These cupcakes had the Mario picks removed, but each cupcake sported a different Mario character pick that she made out of a scalloped punch and stickers.  It was all done in primary colors and super fun for boys and girls alike.

The Verdict – Cupcakes and pizza.  You can’t go wrong!

Toy Story Birthday Party January 27, 2011

Not sure where the last couple months have gone and truly, my only excuse is that life has gotten in the way.  My kids have eaten, of course, and they’ve even had creative lunches, but I just haven’t had a chance to take many pics.  Our mornings have gotten so rushed.

One of the more exciting things that happened in the last couple of months is that my baby turned five.  Yes, five.  It turns out that my baby is also a party planner, and he had all sorts of ideas about how we were going to celebrate.  His party ideas moved from Mario Brothers to Chuck E. Cheese to Star Wars to gymnastics to Toy Story.  There may have been a few more ideas in there, but needless to say, there were a lot of ideas.  With just a couple of weeks to go, he finally settled on Toy Story, much to my chagrin.  Nothing about  Toy Story was inspiring me.  And if you know the way I operate, a couple of weeks is not near enough for me to throw the kind of party my little guy was expecting.  Stressed?  Just a little.

In the end, it turned out to be a pretty fantastic little party if I do say so myself.  8 kids, all wonderful.  Read on for details.  Many of the ideas are adaptable.

Little Man’s birthday fell on a Sunday, but we partied for three days, starting on Friday at preschool.

All together now, “oooh!”  These cupcakes were inspired from the Family Fun site.  Little Man and Betty Crocker helped me make rainbow chip cupcakes.  The faces were decorated with white York Pieces and a black gel pen.  We used Air Heads for the ears and Sour Apple Straws for the antennae.  Pretty darn easy and best of all, Little Man was able to be pretty involved.

On Saturday, Little Man had 7 of his best buddies over to celebrate.

One of the reasons I loved this party is that he really got into decorating the house.  Here’s the block and army men structure he put together.

Another simple idea.  I also made a “Happy Birthday” banner with a Toy Story font that I found online.  Turned out cute, but of course, no pics.

I was a little nervous heading into this party as I wasn’t sure that I had enough planned.  The thing that cracks me up about kid parties, is you never know what’s going to be a total hit and what’s going to be a complete bust.  As we were waiting for all of the kids to arrive, a few of them found a few stray balloons left over from our New Year’s Eve shindig.  Pretty soon, we had blown up enough balloons for each of the children and that unplanned activity kept them busy for a good 20+ minutes.  Knowing we needed to move on, the first “structured” game we decided to play was a version of “Jail.” 

You know the line in the movie, “There’s a snake in my boot?”  Yeah, I didn’t either.  But its amazing what a little ‘net research can teach you.  The kids lined up and took turns throwing a stuffed snake into a “boot.”  Didn’t my hubby do a great job of drawing a cowboy boot for me to tape onto a bucket?  If the child missed the boot, he had to go to “jail.”  A friend of mine was the “jailkeeper,” which meant she sat on the couch and tickled and threatened to kiss them.  They thought it was hilarious.  The next person to get the snake into the boot released all of the kids from jail.  We’ve played many versions of this game and the best thing about it is that it promotes teamwork, and for some reason, its always the kid who’d you least expect that ends up freeing a big group of kids.  After about 20 rounds of this game (really), we switched gears.

Our second game:

This how “Pin the Parts of Mr. Potato Head” was supposed to turn out.

This is what really happened.  Poor Mr. Potato Head.  I know how it feels when nothing seems to be right.

Our next game was a Search and Rescue.  This game had many components.  We scattered 100 little army men all over my living and dining room floors.  We also scattered chocolate gold coins on the same floors.  And finally, each child received their “Mission.”  I’d found a Toy Story Memory game on clearance – each child received three cards and they had to find the match.  We flipped the cards upside down to add to the challenge – some of the kids got really into it, others just stuffed their bags with as many army men and chocolate coins as they could.  No one cried, which is always the risk of a “scramble” type game.

After that, the kids said they were hungry and asked for a snack.  You gotta love kids that are comfortable enough at your house to just outright ask when its snack time.  Not cake time, but snack time.  I was actually surprised at how hungry they were – we had a simple snack of cheese booty and carrots.  And Buzz Soda.  And more Buzz Soda.  Which is really just lime Hawaiian punch and 7-Up, but apparently, when you’re five, its really, really good.  Especially when you drink it from fancy glass juice cups and blue bendy straws.

After our snack, the kids had one last game.  They’d been itching to play this game…”The Claw.”  I filled a tall laundry bucket with green balloons and enough inexpensive stuffed animals.  We used our robot claw and each of the kids got to pull out an animal.  This game was actually much harder for them than I anticipated, but they stuck with it and were excited when they finally got their stuffie.

Famished after all that game playing, it was time for cake:

I wish I had a better picture.  It was my first attempt at fondant, so I went easy on myself.  I made marshmallow fondant, which was pretty simple and the kids all thought it tasted good.  I didn’t think it was bad, much better than the store bought stuff, but I still don’t know that I’d want to eat a ton of it.  Anyhow, to make it easier on myself, I used buttercream icing to cover the cake, and just cut fondant pieces to decorate.  And I bought the characters from the Disney Store.  Little Man loves playing with stuff like that, so that actually seemed like the best route.

The kids ate the top two layers and then I was able to serve the bottom layer to our family on Sunday.  I just reset the characters and it looked like a brand new cake!

Our last structured activity was gift opening.  We played “hot potato” with a balloon, and the child left holding the balloon when the music stopped got to give his or her gift to the birthday boy.  This worked out okay – not great – but not bad.  I think it’d work better for older kids.

Before each of the kids left, they stopped to pick up their bag.

We found these adorable laptop style Toy Story bags on clearance at Target the week before.  The kids were able to put their army men and stuffed animals into their bags throughout the party which kept us organized and avoided tears over lost toys.  The bags actually came with a little coloring set and we added a bag of Toy Story fruit snacks to complete the package.

The birthday boy claimed this to be a perfect party, which made for a happy mama!