Any Excuse for Snowflakes in May!!!

Like every other little girl on the planet lately, Kate is really into the movie Frozen. So when her preschool teacher said she could choose a day near the end of school to celebrate her summer birthday with her class, she of course, OF COURSE wanted to bring Frozen cupcakes.

Well, she lucks out that her mother is semi-obsessed with snowflakes, because I was eager to oblige.

She really wanted chocolate AND vanilla for the cake part, so we did half and half.

I sprinkled white sparkling sugar over blue frosting then added the snow flakes made of white chocolate. (Normally I consider white chocolate an abomination, but for snowflakes I'll make an exception!)

To make the snowflakes I melted white chocolate and put it in a little plastic sandwich bag with a corner snipped off. Then I piped it onto wax paper over a snowflake pattern. (I used a pattern for DIY window clings I found here, then printed it at about half size.)

This movie is a great chance to use snowflakes in some month other than December or maybe January. YAY!

Phineas and Ferb Cupcakes

Claire and Scott had their birthdays several months ago, but they thought it would be fun to have a swim party at my parents' pool. So we waited until the weather warmed up and had a belated birthday/"Welcome to Summer Vacation!" party the day after school let out.

And what better theme to celebrate summer vacation than Phineas and Ferb?

There's 104 86 days of summer vacation...

I used the same frozen buttercream transfer technique as I used on Kate's Hello Kitty cupcakes a couple years ago. So easy! Made the little buttercream stickers on wax paper ahead of time and kept them in the freezer. The day of, I frosted the cupcakes, my sister helped me roll the edges in sprinkles, then we stuck the buttercream stickers on them! Voila!

But honestly, the cupcakes were about it. We had the same CD of aquatic-themed music from Kate's swim party last year playing. We kept things low key. The kids had a blast swimming, so they didn't need much else.

Just to keep it real, the rest of the "decorating" was this table with a few wild sunflowers cut from my parents' property:

I Can Has Cheezburger Cake?

My best friend's son wanted a cheeseburger birthday cake.  When she called me up to see how hard I thought it would be, we both took a gander at Pinterest and then decided we could probably do it.

Yesterday I went over to her house and we had a go at it:

Our hamburger cake turned out even better than we expected!

Nailed it!

But like, for reals, not sarcastic.

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If you want more details on how we made it, you can check out my friends' blog post:

http://geekilyeverafter.blogspot.com/2013/06/do-you-want-fries-with-that.html

Behind the Scenes

I had to share some behind the scenes stories from Kate's birthday party.

When we were hurrying to pull the last few things together for the party, the kids were a little restless.  So my dad suggested watching a video for a little bit.  After much deliberation, we settled on "March of the Penguins."

Except when they turned on the TV, everyone forgot about penguins:

What had them so entranced?

 Race cars.

Who needs penguins when there are vehicles moving at 200 mph???  Hey, whatever works!

Kate was really enjoying her cupcake.  She even licked the wrapper when she was done.  So it shouldn't have surprised me when she dropped a big piece while eating it and decided it was still good!

Cupcake a la Pool - Chocolate cake covered in a sandstone coated buttercream frosting with notes of chlorine and sunscreen.

After the last guest left, then the REAL party started:

Who knew all you need is a baby float to turn my sister into a luchadora?

    

Triple Pool Party

A couple Saturdays ago we had a joint birthday party for Kate, my niece, and my best friend's son.  They all three have birthdays within a couple weeks of each other (the other two kids are actually only one day apart - Kate is the outlier).  We decided to throw a joint birthday party now while they're young and still amenable to the idea (because they don't really know any better!).  When they're older, they will probably have a lot more opinions. ;)

The obvious choice of activity and location was a swim party at my parents' pool!  Easy and fun.  So we went with an aquatic theme.  All three of us had a little brainstorming session, and then divided up the preparation tasks.  I think it came together fantastically considering there were three different people independently preparing it!

My primary task was cupcakes:

I saw an idea on Pinterest for something similar to these that I modified slightly.  I made 72 cupcakes (2 dozen each of three different flavors of cake).  I frosted them blue and then used colored goldfish crackers.  The original source used white confetti sprinkles for the bubbles, but I had trouble finding the white without buying a whole bottle of multi-color and then having to sort out the 1/8 of them that were white.  I ended up liking the effect of the little white nonpareils as bubbles even more.  Then I just used a tube of the premade black frosting that I already had around from a previous project and a small round tip to dab on little eyes.

 

There was quite the spread thanks to both my best friend and my sister:

One of my favorite things we did were the snorkel juice boxes:

 

We were inspired by this, but we wanted juices and not soda.  There were crayons to write your name on and/or decorate your snorkel mask.  Credit to my sister for the fabulous execution on these.  She took off the straws and hot glued them back on just so.

We tried to have the food kind of follow the theme.  Goldfish crackers and chips with "dip":

Life savers and swedish fish:

For decorations we put up blue and green streamers to look like water/seaweed:

Then we put up various sea critter cutouts that my sister made all over the place:

Some were on fishing line to look kind of like they were floating/swimming:

For a little game/activity, we let the kids go "deep sea diving" for "sunken treasure" on the lawn area just off the deck.  My best friend bought Mardi Gras beads, gold coins, ring pops, and stickers for the kids to collect in goody bags.
 

 

I think the birthday girls and boy had a great time, so a definite success in my book!

Green and Pink Luncheon

Immediately following Claire's baptism, everyone came over to our house for lunch.  (Convenient that we live about 3 minutes away from the church building!)

We served food Claire wanted and the only real theme was the colors:  hot pink and apple green

 Hot pink strawberry, regular, and green mint chocolate chip cookies.

(Figuring out how to make these so vividly colored was non-trivial.  Would the masses like a tutorial?)

 Sub sandwiches.  (Thank you Costco meat and cheese platters.) 

 Pink lemonade, water, fruit (in mostly reds/pinks and greens), chips, pink and green napkin sculpture.

And of course a marker to write your name on your cup.

M's sister helped me string up these streamers:

Nothing bonds you to your sister-in-law like climbing on top of a table at 1am, right?

I ruffled the streamers on my sewing machine using this tutorial.

At the End of the Rainbow

Now that Claire's birthday THIS year has passed, I went to look for my post about LAST year and realized I never wrote about it.  So now I'm going to remedy that.

We were camping on Claire's birthday.  And that day may or may not also be a certain holiday that falls in mid-March.  I wanted to share a little game we did with the other kids who went camping with us last year.  As you may have noticed by now, I have a real love of Pass the Parcel type games.  For this one, I put glow sticks (to play with after dark at the campsite) in-between successive layers of wrapping paper.  In rainbow order:

And in the very middle, a pot of "gold" (AKA chocolate coins):

 

M and I played music and the kids passed the package around a circle until the music stopped.  The kid holding it when the music stopped got to open a layer and keep whatever prize was inside.  (In a fit of obsessive justice, M and I watched to make sure the music stopped on everyone at least once.)

The kids loved the "Pot of Gold at the End of a Rainbow" and we followed it up with cupcakes:

Emergency Cake Emergency

Scott had his birthday. Last year he wanted a fire engine cake. This year he asked for an ambulance cake. (He says he wants to be an ambulance driver when he grows up.)

At this rate, I figure I better just starting figuring out now how to make a police car cake for next year!

*see UPDATE (7/13/2012) at bottom if you're looking for more info on how I created this cake*

And just to quash any delusions of me knowing what I'm doing with cakes, let me share the outtake with you:


The first cake fell apart when I tried to take it out of the pan. I went ahead and tried to form it into the right shape, if only for a trial run. But when it became apparent that the cake was hopelessly falling apart, I plowed ahead with some haphazard frosting because I had made WAY too much frosting for only one cake anyway and I figured it would still taste good. (It will all look the same after you eat it, right?!?) The cake wouldn't be edible unless I frosted it, so I did and then saved it for us. I called it a cookies 'n' cream cake and I at least happily ate it over the next few days :)

You might be asking why I decided to make my life harder by trying to frost a chocolate cake with white frosting. Well, the reason is because we actually intended to EAT the cake. It's hard enough for me to have the frosting not be chocolate. The cake itself at least had to be. Besides, that's what Scott said he wanted. (Honestly? That may not have been an entirely fair choice for him. I'm not sure my kids know that it's possible to make anything other than chocolate cake. They've certainly never seen me make anything else!)

I changed tactics for the second attempt late the night before the party and things went much smoother with much fewer tears of frustration shed. Good thing I had started the first attempt early the day before. Phew!

For the party, we had the kids paint their own wooden cars:

M built a race track in the garage:

Then we "raced" the cars, which basically involved the kids rolling their cars down the ramp again and again and again as fast as humanly possible.

I think the kids had fun. The party was low-key and totally lacking in decorations and what have you. (I honestly don't think Scott will remember, let alone care, that we used generic grocery store paper plates with bluebonnets on them for his party.) So I will not be winning any "SuperMom" awards, but I DID actually enjoy the party.

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UPDATE (7/13/2012) -  I've had questions about how I created this ambulance cake, so I've done my best to remember, even though it was a while ago:

I made this cake by baking a cake mix in a 5x9 loaf pan.  Then I used a bread knife and cut into into 2 layers horizontally. Then I cut small pieces off the end of both layers.  Then I stacked them all.

My glass loaf pan slants a little at the sides, so if you're looking at the loaf pan the way you would bake it, the bottom has curved corners and the top has a slanted sided.  I used the bottom of the loaf to create the front end/hood - we'll call this layer #1.  And I used the slanted top to create the windshield - we'll call that layer #2.  I also cut about 1-1.5 inches off of layer #1 and we'll call this new piece layer #3.1.  I set layer #2 on top of layer #1, but with layer #2 offset by about 2 inches or so to create the hood.  Then I cut enough off layer #2 to be the same length at the back as layer #1 (about 3-3.5 inches?).  This last piece we will call layer #3.2.

I made a crude graphic to try to make this clearer:

Layer #1 - from bottom of loaf, created hood
Layer #2 - from top of loaf, created windshield
Layer #3.1 - cut off end of layer #1, created the part of the ambulance that sticks up in the back and is higher than the cab, let's call this the cargo area
Layer #3.2 - cut off end of layer #2, other part of cargo area

Then I constructed with frosting between layers like this:
1. First, I put layer #1 on the bottom (anchored with a little frosting to the plate) with the curved corners up and at the end that became the front of the ambulance.  The curved corners made it look like front bumper and hood.  Then I frosted the top of layer #1.
2. Then put layer #2 on top of that so the slanted side sloped up and away from the hood like a windshield.  I made the ends even at the back of the ambulance and offset about 2 inches at the front to leave a hood area. Then I frosted on top of layer #2.
3. I put layer #3.1 and layer #3.2 next to each other, with one flipped upside down in order to fit nicely next to the other one, and both on top of layer #2.  Again, I made the back edges even and allowed an offset in front to leave the cab area. (I might have trimmed these pieces a little to make it look right, don't remember for sure.)
4. I think I took a good serrated knife and sculpted a little here and there as needed where things didn't line up right or where corners were too sharp.
4. Then I frosted the cake with a crumb layer.  I used lots of frosting to smooth out/fill in any dents or crevices.
5. Lastly, I frosted a final white frosting layer, then decorated with red (homemade) and black (store bought Wilton tube) frosting with a round tip.

If you're trying this I wish you the best of luck.  It really wasn't too hard, but I don't know how clear my directions are.  Feel free to contact me with any questions!