Baseball Birthday Party

Hey friends, I am sorry for not showing my face for three weeks around here...I'm a blogging space cadet! Ha! Well, I'm back today to share some details from my sons 5th Birthday party!! Three weeks ago I shared with you the Stadium Cake that I made for him...which was my favorite cake yet! So, now here are some of the details from his friend party!

Micah's birthday party was a lot of fun, we couldn't have asked for better weather. We had 9 great kids and their parents join us to celebrate five years of life for our sweet little man. What an incredible day. Micah was so anxious for his party and wanted it to start right when he woke up in the morning but we kept him occupied with helping to set things up to keep his mind off the time...it worked for a little bit. We enjoyed being outside almost all day and even ate lunch outside because it was so nice.

I had posed a question about treat bags on facebook and got some great responses. The majority of people said that they tried to stay away from a bag of candy and little plastic toys but still liked for the guests to leave with something. I was planning on having the kids trace themselves on paper and draw their own jerseys but there just wasn't a good place to do it. I also had cut out triangles so they could decorate their own pennants to put on a pencil but totally forgot to bring that out at the party. Those were originally going to be my "gifts" for the guests to take home but while I was at the dollar store getting a few things for the party I noticed some bat/ball combination toy so I decided to get that. I also got some plastic popcorn buckets for the kids to use at the party and take home. My kids love to use their popcorn buckets when we have movie night so I thought it would be a good versatile take home party favor. So, all in all the party was great and Micah had a blast. I'm glad we're not going to do the big blow out birthday party every year...you plan and plan and plan and then it's over...just like a lot of things in life. But we truly enjoyed celebrating Micah. Here are some photos from the day.

 Our "thanks for coming" gift.

 The kids "pitched" the ball through the hula hoop.

 Everyone ran around for a bit and just had a good time playing with friends and being a kid.

Greg then helped all the kids who wanted to have a chance to hit the ball off the tee. They loved it!

 The kids enjoyed some peanuts, popcorn, pretzels and fruit!

 My dad helped the kids play pin the ball on the bat.

 My frosting fell flat...I think I added a little too much milk...but it still tasted good!

 The cake pops were a hit too!

 A great suggestion that a friend made on facebook was to have the gift giver sit next to the birthday boy while he opened the gift from them. It gave the gift giver a great view of Micah opening their gift and it took the pile of kids on the birthday boy opening presents away.

Baby girl slept through part of the party but had a blast watching all the kids running around!

 A good time was had by all. If you're planning a party and need some help let me know. My dream job is to be a party planner...so let me know how I can help!!

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Princess Birthday Cake

I wanted to share a few details with you from my daughters 5th birthday! We had a great time but we didn't do the whole BIG party thing since she had one last year, but I think we did a good job of focusing on her and making her feel special.

The kids birthdays in our house usually start out with daddy taking them to breakfast. This year was no exception. So Greg and Naomi went to Perkins while I stayed home with the big kids (maybe I need to get in on this deal too and alternate years with Greg). We then went to a local farm with our neighbors for lots of fall fun! You can see some of the details from that here! Then we had lunch at home and of course cake! And not just any cake but princess cake. Naomi has been talking about having a princess cake since last year (when I didn't really let her decide the theme of her party). And she says that next year she's going to have a fairy party...we'll see!

So, today I wanted to show you how I made her princess cake!

Instead of just doing one princess we bought the multi pack of little barbie/princess bodies (head and torso) at JoAnns. I was trying to figure out what pan to use in order to get the curved dress form. I did a little research and found out there was a pan specifically for the little doll dresses (of course there is!) So, I ran to Hobby Lobby on Thursday morning with my 40% off coupon to get the Mini Mold pan. Micah and I baked the cakes on Thursday and he couldn't understand why he couldn't eat it as soon as he stirred the batter.

So, I baked the mini dresses, then I put the rest of the funfetti batter into a round cake pan but I knew it was going to be really small with the small amount of batter I had left so I mixed up a choclate cake real quick and added some to the round cake pan. I knew I needed something for the Princesses to stand on so I put some wax paper in the bottom of a 9x12 cake pan and added the rest of the chocolate cake batter.

I let the cakes cool and put them in the freezer overnight. Then I had to do quite a bit of cutting on the round cake to make it look the way I wanted it to. I frosted the 9x12 cake with a crumb coat then put the round cake flush with the back of the large cake and cut it to have a square corner. I then used my biscuit cutter and cut out two places for two of the princesses to stand in front of the "hill".

Then I frosted the whole thing with a crumb coat and put it back in the freezer.

I also crumb coated the dresses before putting them back in the freezer as well.

Personally I think the freezer is my best friend when making a cake that needs to be decorated...unless you're using fondant or something similar, then it's probably not necessary.

On Friday night I pulled all the frozen cakes out and started decorating. I mixed up a total of 8 colors. You can see here three of the skirts are "finished". To get the smooth bottom to Snow Whites dress I took a piece of paper and kind of curved it and ran it up the side of the dress.

Then came the fun part of making the princesses come to life. I tried to stay as true to their outfits as possible. Here's Snow White...

 Ariel...

 Belle...(I was trying to tame her crazy hair with the rubberband)

 Aurora...she could have used more time but I simply didn't have it in me anymore (it was REALLY late)

I decorated the main cake portion to look like grass, the beach and some water.

I crushed vanilla wafers for the sand.

Back into the freezer it all went.

Saturday morning when we got back from the farm I put the whole thing together. It was thawed enough for us to eat when we finally got around to that part. I did put a skewer into the cake where the princess dresses were just to make sure they stayed put. But I'm glad they were frozen or I would have totally messed up their dresses. I didn't have any extra frosting to fix anything so it just was what it was. But...

she LOVED it and that's all that matters to me!!!

Want to see what I made her for her birthday? Check it out on my other blog!

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