Where The Wild Things Are 1st Birthday Party

 My littlest turned one this year! He's a bundle of fun and just a little wild. I think that is just part and parcel of being the second child! We decided to put on a Wild ONE party. I centered the theme around the book, Where the Wild Things Are. There are so many great directions you can go with this book!

Let's start with my favorite part of a birthday party...the cake! Cam's cake was 3 tiered. The bottom cake was an 8 inch lemon cake with a lemon curd filling and a whipped mascarpone frosting under the ombre American Buttercream waves.  The second tier and the third tier were  chocolate cakes with the same whipped mascarpone as filling and frosting. The second tier was a 6 inch and the third was baked in a small ramekin.

For the decorations I used American buttercream in three different shades to give the wave effect.  I used black fondant to cut out silhouettes of the monsters from the Wild Things book. I did this a few days ahead and let them dry a little. Once on the cake I brushed them with a little water and edible dusting powder to give them a nice sheen. I also used some yellow fondant to make the crown.

The menu was Italian themed. We had pasta salad,  crescent ring sub sandwiches, caprese salad with French bread, fruit and veggie tray, and a Lasagna dip. For drinks, since it was mostly and adult party we had ginger ale and a white wine Sangria. It was all pretty tasty! I mean how can you go wrong with bread and cheese right?

You can find the recipes I used below:
Lemon Mascarpone Cake
Chocolate Cake
American Buttercream
Pasta Salad
Crescent Ring Sandwiches
Lasagna Dip
White Wine Sangria

I found a little crown for the Wild One to wear at Target and I made little shirts for both of my boys. I got the plain shirts at Walmart and purchased some transfer paper. On my computer, I found some free clipart silhouettes of monsters, a gold crown, and dowloaded some fun fonts. Using basic word, I created the image and REVERSED IT before printing on my inkjet printer. This was super easy and relatively fast and cheap!

On the big brother's shirt below the Monster silhouettes it says "Wild and Five" and Cameron's says Wild One with a monster peering out of the pocket.  

On Cam's it has the same monster silhouettes that are on the front of Big Brother's and Z's says Big Brother.  

 I also had a craft. We painted terra cotta planters and then planted little succulents. We just used craft paint and sponge brushes. They turned out great and were a lot of fun! Everyone's were so different and unique!

We had a blast with our little Wild ONE!

I've loved making cakes these last few months, but I'm itching to get back into my sewing room. I'm hoping to use my creativity in a different medium. But for now, I'll say Cake On since I've still got cake on the brain....Unicorns and Mirror Glaze cakes are in my future. 

J

Lego Birthday Party!

I love celebrating birthdays! It has always been fun to go all out one day a year for my kiddo. I love spending time planning birthday parties. I've mastered the food- going with a Nacho Bar, fruit and veggie trays pretty much guarantees that all the party guests will have something to choose from regardless of need or preference. (GF, Vegan, Paleo, etc) 

This year my 5 year old wanted a Lego themed party. I was thrilled because I was intrigued by the Lego cakes I'd seen on Pinterest. There were many cakes that inspired me. Some were shaped like numbers, some were giant lego block, others were construction scenes. I read many tutorials and watch videos trying to perfect my approach to the lego cake. I loved every minute of it!

Z decided that he'd like to have a square lego construction cake with one tier being chocolate with cookies and cream filling and the other tier would be chocolate with mint chocolate chip filling. I use a fabulous chocolate cake recipe from Sweetapolita. I have yet to have it fail, in fact, I use many of her cake recipes and find them wonderful. You should check out her blog for sure. The filling/frosting was a Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I added crushed Oreo cookies to. To make the mint cookies and cream filling (it tastes EXACTLY like a Thin Mint cookie) I made Swiss Meringue Buttercream and added the Oreo cookies, peppermint extract, and green food coloring. It was amazing! 

Making the individual lego blocks seemed daunting at first, but then I found a tutorial by Kathy over at Merriementdesign.com . She did a great job explaining how to use a baseplate as a texture roller to create the lego bricks. It was so slick and worked like a dream. The rest of the bricks on the side I used legos to measure the thickness and then cut varying lengths from a variety of colors. It looks complicated, but it went together easily. 

Aside from the cake, I also made some decorations using Mega Blocks, poster board,  plastic table clothes, construction paper, and crepe paper. Using the Mega Blocks, I made letters to spell out Z's name. Using the poster board, plastic table clothes, and construction paper, I made giant Lego bricks. It was far cheaper and easier to purchase the table clothes than primary colored wrapping paper. I used the crepe paper to jazz up our wooden banister and draw the primary colors together throughout the house. 

I like to have a few organized activities for the littles to work on. This year, I had three stations for kiddos. The first was a decorate your own MiniFig station. The second was a Building Station where little built race cars. The third and last station was a racing station. I propped a board up and put a yoga mat over top to create a race track. The kiddos LOVED racing their newly built creations down the ramp.

Ever since the Lego Cake, my brain has been focused on all things cake! I'm currently working on a baby shower cake. Hopefully, I'll be ready to share a success story next week!

So long for now!
J

Dino-Mite Birthday Party

Hiya-

If you've been looking for the upcoming QAYG post, you may have noticed that I've been neglectful of my blog the last couple of weeks. I thought that I'd share with you what I have been up to! I have been preparing for my Little's 3rd birthday party. It seems to me that often I become consumed with a quilt, fitness routine, or in this case...a toddler party!

I had so much fun planning this party. I'll be the first to admit that it took on a life of its own and that perhaps it might be a bit much...BUT I couldn't give up one thing I was so in love with everything.

My Little LOVES dinosaurs! We are talking obsession! So it was clear that a Dinosaur Party was a MUST! I started buy making a banner out of construction paper. I made a template in word for the pennant triangles. Then I inserted a text box in each of the three pennant triangles. I trimmed my construction paper down to 81/2 x 11 and then just printed. Each time I printed different letters and crossed them off to make sure that I didn't have two of the same color next to each.other. Then I used a hole punch to make the holes for the string and then I threaded the string through and hung it up.

I also used dinosaur themed library books, construction paper foot prints (176 to be exact), and large dinosaur figures that we already had ( I also borrowed some from my mom) to decorate shelves, windows, the fireplace etc.










I thought that the easiest menu would be a Nacho Bar: I called it the Cretaceous Cafe. It turned out to be very easy to put together because I didn't have to worry about my guests' special dietary needs because there were so many options. We made Chipotle Chicken , Queso, Pineapple Black Bean Salsa, Guacamole, Tomato Salsa, Veggie Tray w/ dip, Fruit Tray w/ Dip ( This is fabulous! I use plain yogurt), and Yellow Cake, Chocolate Cupcakes (Vegan Friendly), and Cookies.

If you'd like to have some of the other recipes, let me know and I'll email them to you. They are family recipes that I haven't put online. 





Cake Inspiration: I searched on Pinterest for a Dinosaur Cake that would be easy yet stunning, and Katie at Butterlust had the perfect one. She included her recipe for the cake, though I didn't use it because I was looking for a yellow cake. I also modified the ganache a bit because mine was too thin. I just added more dark chocolate to take care of the problem.

Cake Recipe: I love Rosie @Sweetapolita. Her cake recipes turn out wonderfully! I used this cake recipe for my sister's wedding cake and it turned out amazing!

Frosting Recipe: This recipe is a Swiss Meringue Buttercream also from Rosie@ Sweetapolita. It makes 10 cups which is a lot. But I used it to fill and frost a 3 layer 8 inch cake as well as frost my cupcakes. It is delicious and great for piping. It isn't as sweet as American Buttercream which is perfect for us!

I made some chalkboard fabric table runners so I could easily label all of the foods. It is great because these just wipe off and can be reused. You can find the Chalkboard fabric at Nancy's Notions.  I found a Chalk Marker at Walmart that worked great. You can use regular chalk, but I didn't want it to rub off around the food.

I also made my Little a birthday shirt to wear at his party. It was very easy! I purchased a plain shirt at Walmart, then created an image in a word document to print off on Transfer Artist Paper and iron onto the shirt. He loved it!















We also had several activities for the Kids to participate in at the party.

Dino Dig:
I set up a Dino Dig station for the kiddos. I purchased a large shallow tub and filled it with cloud dough and plastic dinosaur figures. The kiddos could dig around and find different dinosaurs to take home.  Cloud dough is awesome!! My little LOVES playing with it. It is a mixture of flour and baby oil.

Recipe: Mix 8 cups flour with 1/2 cup baby oil (I've heard mineral oil or veggie oil will work, but I prefer the smell of baby oil) For this bin I used 4 1/5 5lbs bags of flour and 2 1/2 bottles of baby oil. 







Dino Egg Hunt: 

I hid 60 large "Dinosaur" eggs filled with dinosaur figurines around the house. Before the hunt began I handed out dinosaur pillow cases I'd made as a take-a-way/egg basket. The toddlers had a lot of fun searching for them and packing them away in the cases.

Story Time: 
After all of the eggs were found, we sat down to open our eggs and look through the "loot". While they were examining their dinosaurs, I read a short dinosaur book.










Dinosaur Magnets: 
I have these fabulous dinosaur cookie cutters that cut out the silhouettes of the dinosaur as well as presses in the skeleton. They made perfect salt dough figures! I decided to glue magnets onto the back before the party and then have toddlers paint them using some neon temper paint.

The party was a lot of work but it was all worth it because my Little LOVED every minute of it. I'm not gonna lie....so did I!

Now that the party planning is over with for another year, I can get back to quilting and sharing what I've learned.