The Art Cake

Josie already had her big birthday party a few weeks ago. It was an Art Party and an appropriately themed party for Josie's interests lately.  She is one crafty little girl.   Always coloring.  Always creating.  Always thinking.  For her party, I had made rainbow cupcakes and she brought some more of those in for her treat at school today as well.   But for her actual birthday celebration, I thought it would be fun for Josie to decorate her own cake - with food markers!  

Josie requested a chocolate-flecked cake for her birthday cake.  This cake has become an absolute favorite in our family.  It's definitely Josie's favorite cake and it's in my top two!  Anyway, I covered the cake in fondant for her and she was very excited!

For her birthday party, one of the activities the kids could do was decorate cookies with food markers.   Her Daddy decorated this cookie and put it in her lunch for a fun birthday surprise.  

Wilton makes these food markers which I love!

So the decorating begins.  Appropriately, the number 6 takes the lead.

The start of a rainbow but then she realized we didn't have an orange marker, but just kept going anyway.  Two suns.  Polka dots.  Looks fun to me!!

She's very proud of her creation!

 Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Her name and a sun.

Clifford the big red dog, blue sky and a sun.

An elephant.

A volcano.

"6 Y O!" for "Six Years Old!"

I don't know about you, but I call this a masterpiece!!!

Her friend Hope and cousin Connor are taking it in!

And Josie's very proud.  Probably a little more excited to get to eat her cake though.  And she picked out chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream as the "side".  She chose well.

It's going to be hard to top this birthday celebration, but we all had so much fun in the process!

Happy SIXTH Birthday to my amazingly beautiful, talented daughter!  The last six years have been some of the best years of my life!

A Baby Shower

One of Josie's teachers is expecting a baby later this year.  Jessica, a mother from Josie's class, thought it would be a neat idea to host a baby shower for her.  Jessica brought the diaper cake and planned a game and I brought the cupcakes and took pictures.  We made a great team!

Josie's teacher doesn't know the gender of the baby yet, so we thought yellow would be an appropriate color choice.  

And because the wrapping paper had polka dots on it, I put polka dots on the cupcakes.  You'd think we planned it this way!  ;)  I got the little toppers from Ben Franklin Crafts.  They are a Wilton product.

It was a super fun celebration and it's always a treat to send the kids home all hyper from the sugar rush!   Congrats to Josie's teacher!!  We can't wait to meet this new addition!

Evan's Alphabet Block Cake & Cupcakes

Last July, Chelsie asked me to do a Baptism cake for her son Evan.  A few weeks ago, I was absolutely thrilled to get the call to do his first birthday cake as well!  And, I might add, it's AMAZING to think that he's already a year old!  My word!  Time flies!

Chelsie wanted to do an alphabet block cake for Evan's 1st birthday.  Lots of letters, numbers and colors.  Every month for his first year, Chelsie had taken a picture of Evan with alphabet blocks that spelled out how old he was.  Cute, eh?!!!  So, the theme will carry on for his first birthday celebration!

Here's Evan's cake.  I did four layers of chocolate cake and filled it with buttercream, Oreos and fudge.  Again, one of my all time favorite combinations.  And the chocolate cake --- it doesn't get better than this one!

The cake is covered with buttercream and topped with gum paste/fondant strips, the number 1 and letter "E's" on the sides.  

  

Chelsie also ordered some gluten-free yellow cupcakes.  I topped those with fondant, gum paste squares that looked like more alphabet blocks.  

Best of all, Chelsie forwarded some pictures for me!  Here she is with the birthday boy!

And here's Evan enjoying his cupcake!  CUTIE!!!!!!!!!

And the inside of the cake.  Mmmmm!  Mmmmm!!!!

It most certainly looks like Evan had a great birthday bash!  Many blessings to you, Evan, on these wonderful years to come!

Jodi's Owl Cake

Jodi and I used to work together - back when I was "Professional Ann," a Human Resources professional.  Oh, those were the days!  I miss the people (Jodi included) but I don't miss the job too much.  Cake decorating and stay-at-home "momming" is a lot more fun for me!  

Jodi requested a cake for her own birthday a few weeks ago.  She wanted to "treat" herself to a Cake Mama cake and I was so excited!!!  She wanted me to do an owl cake and sent over this picture: 

She liked the first two in the top row but was incredibly open to whatever I had in mind.  

I got such a kick out of the second one and thought it would look so cute on a cake so I stuck with that one. 

And I love the way he turned out!!!

Jodi told me she was a fan of chocolate so that's exactly what she got.  A chocolate cake with buttercream filling.  The owl is made out of a gum paste/fondant mix and I frosting the cake with more buttercream.  

Jodi - I hope the Brewers win today and I hope you have a fantastic birthday!

Josie's Art Party

Josie is going to be turning SIX at the end of this month.  I can't believe she'll be six already!  Man!  This went fast.  Coming up with the theme to this year's party was actually a pretty easy one.  She's had a princess or villain theme the last few years and this year she wanted to do something different.  Since last summer, she has become quite the artist, so it seemed obvious for us to do an art party for her.  

We had close to 30 kids at our house, so even though I am the Cake Mama, I wanted to keep it simple and I didn't want to have a huge cake to cut.  Also, the prep time would have cut in to the other fun things I had planned.  So I decided to do cupcakes but they had to be really COOL cupcakes.  I did this technique before with Josie's Elmo party 3 years ago, so I did again to make rainbow cupcakes.  

First step is making the batter and splitting it into 6 different containers; one for each color of the rainbow.  

One color at a time, I added about a tablespoon full to each cupcake liner.  I started with red...

...and ended with purple.

I frosted each one with some white buttercream and topped them with colorful rainbow sprinkles to match the cupcake liners.

And voila!  Rainbow inside!

The rest of the party was super fun to plan.  I ordered these aprons online and absolutely LOVE them.  They are Oriental Trading Company aprons, but I actually got them on Amazon.com (better deal for me that way).  With all of the kids we had coming, this was a super fun and affordable gift to give each of them.  And before we started the party, they looked so fun and colorful flapping away in the wind!

Rainbow balloons were a must for the party!

I added some colorful artwork to dress up the gardens.

And then as each child arrived, we had them take a picture with Mona Lisa or The Scream.  These pictures will be sent with Thank You cards.    Here's Josie...

And here's Hope and Josie.  They are SO silly!

After all of the kids arrived, I decided it was best to feed them right away.  We had a rainbow of a buffet with very kid-friendly foods.   (The food labels were made by my mother-in-law, Marcia, and were made from color sample paper from the local hardware store.)

Mmmm - lots of colorful foods!

I was most excited about the Rainbow Jell-O.  Six different layers of Jell-O topped with whipped cream and sprinkles!  YUM!

The kids had some time to eat.

Then they had some time to play together.  

Then we gathered them all up for a group shot before we split them up into four groups.   Each group would circle around to all four different stations.

One group got to decorate cookies with food-safe markers.

Another group got to decorate their aprons with fabric markers.  

A third group got to paint with watercolors.  My husband taped painters tape in the shape of the first initial of each kid's name onto cardstock.  They painted on the cardstock and then we removed the tape to reveal a white letter.  (If we were to do this again, we would have chosen different paper or different tape.  The tape didn't want to come off easily...oh well...)

We dried them on the line.  Look at all of that fun color!

The last group got to do an art-themed obstacle course.  SUPER fun!

THEN - it was time for CUPCAKES!!!    Josie loved listening to her friends sing Happy Birthday.

She got to open her presents while her friends looked on and  played some more.  

All in all it was a fabulous day!  The weather was perfect and the turn-out was humbling.  I had so many helpers along the way and am so appreciative of each and every one of them for helping make Josie's day a super special one.   I couldn't have done it without you!!!

Happy [early] Birthday, Josie!!  We love you so!