Category: Birthdays

Bluebird’s 9th Birthday: Baking Party!

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It was during the week after Christmas–you know, when you’re fighting the urge to be sad that the big day is over, and you’re kind of euphoric with all the lofty New Year’s Resolutions to which you’re thinking about committing–that I found myself obsessed with the idea of throwing each of my kids their dream birthday parties in 2013.  We don’t do a lot of birthday partying in Brooketopia, mostly due to cost and logistics (newborn babies every two years will do that to you), but here we were going into a new year with no new babies…the idea sounded feasible.
 
Bluebird and I sat down to gorge ourselves do a little research on Pinterest birthday ideas, and we happened across a pin of a baking birthday party and she was awestruck.  Culinary celebration, commence!
 

First, we raided the fabric stash and picked out fabrics that somewhat coordinated with each other, and then I settled in for three weeks’ of sewing aprons for Bluebird and her guests:

Apron B from Little Retro Aprons by Cindy Taylor Oates
(Yes, you’ve seen this pattern on the blog before, both the child’s version AND the adult version–I’m totally in love with it.)

Then we hurried about with all the other preparations (amidst all the ear infection fun we were also dealing with at the time) and Bluebird bounced off the walls as she counted down the days until her party.

Finally, the Big Day of Baking Fun arrived…

…but first the girls had to stop and adore Baxter for a few minutes before I could entice them towards the birthday fun.  (After insisting they wash their hands after touching the dog.)

First, they made cupcake liner flower pins to adorn their new aprons, then we gathered in the kitchen to make mini pizzas for lunch.

While waiting for the pizzas to bake, the girls made fruit kabobs which they then drizzled with milk and white chocolate:

 

I had hired two of the young women in our ward to help me out, and they cleaned up the lunch mess while the party girls watched Bluebird open her presents in the living room.  Then, while the party girls decorated cake boxes, my helpers finished tinting batches of frosting for the finale of the party:

Man, a gang of 8-9 year old girls can pick up the basics of cake decorating pretty quick!  Candies, marshmallows, sprinkles…we had it all and they had a blast creating their own dream cakes.

After decorating cakes, we sat down to enjoy Bluebird’s actual birthday cake, complete with raucous singing and laughing:

Hardly anyone wanted any cake after the candles were blown out because they had just spent the past three hours stuffing their faces with candy, pizza and frosting.  No biggie, just more left over for the other Brookelets when they returned home!

Nine years old.  Bluebird, you’ve been with us for almost a decade!  You bring me so much joy, and I’m happy to indulge your lofty ideas.  You are such a creative spirit and I look forward to fleshing out more of your big birthday plans in the future.

Roar! #2

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Pattern: “Roar! A Dinosaur Hat,” by Kate Oates
Yarn: Knit Picks’ Shine Worsted in Green Apple & Grass
Needles: US 7

Even though Penguin is modeling the hat, I made it as a 4th birthday present for her future fiance, Will. He’s big into dinosaurs right now and his mom made a random comment after seeing Monkeyboy’s Roar hat that Will would totally love a dinosaur hat of his own. And seeing how she was able to deliver that comment without exuding any pressure upon me to actually make one for her son, I decided to make one because I wanted to make it.





I totally love this hat and I totally love this yarn.

Click here to view this project’s Ravelry page.

Penguin and Will have been intended for each other since before they were born, when Denise found out she was having a boy and I found out I was having a girl, due at the same time. (I went into labor a week early, she went into labor a week late…) I was thinking about this blog post when I stumbled across some archived photos from the first version of this blog (long since deleted), and found the following:

Holding hands:

This is from when we referred to the two of them as “Tank and Tink”:

And this happened one random day when Denise and I were messing around with her camera:

I’m a little concerned over how forward she was in kissing him first…

Totally meant for each other. I will make their boy babies lots of dinosaur hats. 🙂

Planet Earth Cake

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I just realized that I never showed y’all my cute little Planet Earth cake that I made for Bluebird’s space birthday party. Here it is!

If you’re interested in making one for yourself (as in, next Wednesday is Earth Day…), it’s quite simple:

Take a regular ol’ box of cake mix, mix it up and pour it into your pans–I used Wilton’s Sport Ball pans, but I’ve heard of people using Pyrex bowls. Bake it. Let it cool. Frost it with some blue frosting (I used the stuff from a can…many of you are already aware of my disdain for making frosting.)

Now don’t get scared, but this next step requires a map or an atlas:
Make some green frosting and put it into a decorator’s bag with a #3 or #5 writing tip on it and freehand some continental outlines. (Don’t worry too terribly much about accuracy, it’s a blinkin’ cake…you’re going for recognition, not masterpiece.)

Once you’ve got your outlines, put on a star tip and start filling in your land masses.

Voila! Planet Earth Cake!

I laugh every time I see how close Japan is to Alaska, and I was thisclose to leaving Australia and New Zealand off of the whole thing altogether because it was really hard to get the frosting down there, but I figured I owed it to my brother (who resides in New Zealand) to represent his place of residence…oh the fun of frosting creations.