Minecraft Lego Birthday Party

My 1st grader turned 7 yesterday and we had a big party to celebrate! His two favorite things right now are Minecraft and Legos so we incorporated those into his party.  Two teachers from our local Bricks 4 Kidz came to organize the activities and games for the party.  The kids got to build motorized Lego cars, have free play with thousands of Legos and play some Minecraft games. They had so much fun! Then we enjoyed cake, ice cream, cookies, and Creeper Juice (aka water).  It was such a fun afternoon!

Here's the bright green creeper cake I made...

Minecraft creeper and "7" sugar cookies...

Creeper Juice...also known as water.  I just bought a case of water bottles at the grocery store, removed the labels, and purchased these wraps from Etsy for $3.95.  It's just a file that I printed on card stock at home, cut them out, and used shipping tape to wrap them around the water bottles.

Number 7 Lego sign made out of existing Legos that we already had...perfect for part of the decorations.

Utensil holder that the birthday boy put together himself. I then washed and sanitized it before placing the forks inside...

In the Minecraft video game, everything is in square blocks.  So I also made (but not pictured) blue jello jiggler squares that represented water.  My son had so much fun on his birthday and LOVED all the Minecraft and Lego inspired decorations and food.  So much so that he said, "This was the best birthday EVER!!!"  That's enough to make this momma smile from ear to ear.

Happy Birthday sweetie! I love you so much!!!

"Fried" Chicken Leg Cookies

I try to do something fun and unique for my hubby's birthday each year.  Two years ago I made him this cream puff "cake".  Last year I made him a Llama cake. This year I wanted to make something fun that didn't involve traditional cake. I also wanted to incorporate his favorite food...Popeye's Chicken!  I found an idea on Pinterest and ran with it. Sugar cookies in the shape of chicken legs!

It's impossible to find a cookie cutter in the shape of a chicken leg so each cookie was cut out by hand using a stencil I made out of card stock.  The funniest part of this project was making a trip to Popeye's and asking for two empty boxes and a plastic bag.  I asked the manager if I could buy them from her and she looked at me with a funny face and said, "Um, you can just have them."  I then explained what I was doing and they were excited to help out with the boxes. 

These are just standard sugar cookies with royal icing on them.  Brush on a mixture of meringue powder and water, and then pat some crumbled Corn Flakes on top to give them a fried chicken texture. For complete details and instructions, visit Bridget's blog over at Bake at 350. She makes the most amazing sugar cookies and I just love following her blog.  This was her idea and she used a KFC bucket to put her cookies in. 

Here's my cute hubby in his ugly Christmas sweater after opening up his Popeye's "chicken". I delivered two boxes full of cookies to his work so everyone could share in on the fun.  

Happy Birthday Babe! Not sure what I'll come up with next year...but I'm sure it will be good! :)

Owl Birthday Cake

My baby girl turned THREE last week and today was her big party.  We could not have asked for the weather to be any more perfect than it was today - sunny and absolutely beautiful!  Kadence has a love for owls lately.  Her big girl bedroom has an owl theme, some of her PJ's have owls and even her favorite pair of socks are those with owls on them!  So there was no question in my mind that she needed an owl cake for her birthday. This year I ventured out and used dark chocolate fondant!  Seeing her face when she saw her cake just melted my heart.  She is growing up so fast and I just love her to pieces!



My hubby and I had such a fun time decorating this cake. He helped by coloring all the fondant and cutting out the eyes, feet, branch, and leaves.  He did such a great job that I'll have to hire him for future work. ;P



I found a cute stamp at Michael's and made little individual bags for the potato chips. (Idea from Pinterest.)



Also served cheese and crackers in the shape of an owl! This adorable idea came from Beth over at Hungry Happenings.



Another idea from Pinterest was this lollipop flower pot. It took a JUMBO bag of Dum Dums to fill it up!



What a wonderful day spent with friends, food, and lots of sunshine!  Happy Birthday K!!!

Beyblade Cake

Yesterday my first born turned SIX!!!! How did that happen? How did time fly by so quickly?  Today we had his birthday party and he's been asking me for months to have a Beyblades birthday cake.  This kid only plays with 2 things right now....Legos and Beyblades!

Of course this mama listened. The smile on his face when we saw his birthday cake was priceless!  He loved it!!!



Little does he know, this cake was super simple to make.  I bought the edible rice paper image off of Amazon and just applied it to the top of the cake and then iced a border around it. "Easy peasy, nice and easy" as C would put it!



I am feeling very blessed right now. We had such a fun day today with C, his sister, and a couple friends. My heart is overflowing tonight. Happy 6th Birthday big guy!

John Deere Tractors

I grew up on a farm in Indiana so I know good and well what a John Deere tractor looks like! :)  I had a blast making these cookies for a cute little boy about to turn 2 years old. This little man lives in Iowa so this was my first "long-distance" order.  I was a little hesitant to do it but I figured, why not give it a try? I'm glad I took some before pictures because unfortunately none of them made it there in one piece. :(  Apparently Iowa is too far away from Michigan to ship cookies no matter how much bubble wrap and "FRAGILE" stickers you put on the box! Oh well, lesson learned and hopefully they were still able to eat some of them! Happy birthday P!



On a side note, there are many people on Etsy that sell decorated sugar cookies and will ship to anywhere in the U.S.  If I have any readers that do this, can you offer up some advice? What did I do wrong?  What can I do differently if there is ever a next time? Thanks so much!

Dog Birthday Cake

My baby turned TWO this week! We celebrated by having a BBQ and small party with family. K just adores dogs of all shapes and sizes. We don't have any pets at our house but every time we drive past a dog or see one going on a walk she will yell with excitement. I thought is was only appropriate to make her birthday cake in the shape of a doggie this year. It was made with 1/2 chocolate cake and 1/2 banana cake with chocolate buttercream icing. My inspiration came from this tutorial on Cake Central. I was very pleased with how it turned out and K liked it even more! It was the perfect cake for her second birthday.

R2-D2 Birthday Cake

Speaking of birthday cakes, my preschooler just recently turned 5! Did I really just say FIVE?!?! That means he'll be heading off to kindergarten this fall...full day kindergarten...as in gone all day. Ok, ok, I don't want to think about that right now! I'll get all sad and teary eyed and start wondering how in the heck 5 years flew by so quickly!

Anyways, he is into Star Wars everything right now. Star Wars legos, Star Wars movies, Star Wars light sabers, if it involves Star Wars in any way then he loves it! His favorite characters are R2-D2 and C3PO. At least 90% of his Christmas and birthday presents this year were Star Wars related.

For C's 5th birthday, we had a low-key birthday. No birthday party with lots of friends and lots of pre-planning. Instead we decided to have a family fun day and spent the day at an indoor water park. He LOVED it and had so much fun going on all the slides and playing in the water all day. Even his little sis had a blast. They both passed out in the car on the ride home which is proof that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.



Even though we didn't have a party, every birthday boy needs a cake and this year I wanted to make it. I surprised him with an R2-D2 cake! I believe his exact words were "this is the best birthday cake ever!" It melted my heart seeing how much he enjoyed the cake.



I didn't have a template or anything to cut the cake from. I found a couple sample R2-D2 cakes online to use as a guideline and just eyeballed it, trying to keep it as simple as I could. I made the same chocolate cake as I did for the Chocolate Raspberry Layer Cake that I blogged about 2 days ago. I baked a double-batch into an 8-inch round (only used 1/2 of it for the head) and then 2 square cake pans to cut the body, arms, and legs from. Next I made some buttercream frosting (see recipe below) and divided it into different portions to color it white, blue, grey, and black. The red dot on his head is a red hot. That pretty much sums it up.

Classic Buttercream Frosting
Source: Savory Sweet Life

1 c. unsalted butter, room temperature
3-4 c. confectioners (powdered) sugar, sifted
1/4 t. salt
1 T. vanilla extract
up to 4 T. milk or heavy cream

Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.

Robot Party

I wanted to share some pictures from my son's 4th birthday party. He wanted a Robot party so I ordered some supplies from The Oriental Trading Company, started saving my empty soup and formula cans, gathered some random nuts, bolts, and hinges, and got creative using my hot glue gun. There are lots of great ideas all over the internet that got my creative juices flowing.

For example, I made this utensil holder out of soup cans, a big formula can, and some colored electrical tape. Isn't he cute? The red and blue plastic forks and spoons are essentially the robot's "hair".



All the food even had a robot theme to it. Here's what we served:

Computer Chips - Potato Chips
Memory Cells - Cheese Puffs
Nuts and Bolts - homemade Chex Mix (recipe below)
Robot Energy - Fruit and Veggie Trays
Battery Cells - M&M's
Machine Oil - Juice Boxes
Fuel Cake - Cupcakes
Robot Pizza - Pizza

Mickey Mouse Oreo Favors

My son decided he wanted a Mickey Mouse theme for his 3rd birthday party this past January. For today's post, I want to show you these adorable Mickey Mouse Oreo Favors. (The idea came from www.mypartyfile.com) Aren't these just adorable? The kids loved them! I made some into cookies and some into lollipops.





Directions:
Melt red chocolate melting chips in microwave, until chocolate is melted and smooth. Dip the bottom half of each Double-Stuffed Oreo into the red chocolate. Gently slide a lollipop stick directly through the center of the Oreo cookie (through the white filling in the middle) and stop just before it comes out the other end. Lay on waxed paper for the red chocolate to dry.

Hint: If you are having troubles with the Oreos breaking, pop the Oreos in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds before you dip them in red chocolate and insert the sticks so the centers will soften up and the stick will slide right in.

Rub a dark chocolate melting chip on the side of a hot kettle to slightly melt it, and gently insert between the biscuits. Repeat for the other ear. When the icing is dry, add two dots of white icing (I used a tube of white icing) for Mickey’s buttons. Store in an airtight container, and refrigerate if the weather is hot!

If you want to give them as party favors, pop each one into a cellophane bag, then tie a little ribbon at the bottom.