Posts Tagged ‘birthday’
Pikachu Birthday Party Cookies
Hello blog world! Yes, we are still alive over here at Threaded Together! Between family trips, work trips, Halloween, and more, we are keeping busy doing all sorts of things that have kept us away from craft posting for a little while. We’ll try and get back on the blogging wagon though, especially as the holidays approach!
Yesterday we celebrated my son’s 9th birthday! I know, I am getting so old! For his birthday we decided to play it low key this year and just had a group of boys (12 to be exact) come over to hang out at the house. We ate pizza, watched movies, colored, and snacked on chips, cookies, and cupcakes. They DEVOURED the four pizzas and two boxes of wings I ordered and there were only 3 of 24 cookies leftover at the end.
We did not have any a cake at this party. My son does NOT like cake. I know, right? Clearly he is not my son, but I’ll have to figure that one out another day… Instead of cake I made him his favorite type of cookie, sugar cookies, and decorated them to look like Pikachu from the Pokémon card trading game. Go figure, he didn’t like the cookies either. Apparently I didn’t make the right KIND of sugar cookies. Don’t let this lead you to believe the cookies didn’t taste good. They were awesome. My kid just has issues :).
Instead of walk you through how I did it, check out this great post on Snack or Die. Apparently, knowledge of this website is a necessity if you have a boy ranging from age 5 to 15 who likes to play video games! They have cupcakes, cookies, and more, all decorated to look like characters and worlds from video games and shows. Super cool.
I followed their tutorial exactly, all the way down to the fact that I had to cut the cheeks and chin off of my bunny shaped cookies to round out the faces. My differences: for cheeks I used red-hots, chocolate morsels for the ears and eyes, and fruit by the foot pieces for the mouth. I also just used regular butter cream icing spread over them.
Homemade Birthday Treat Bags
To continue with a post about my daughter’s birthday, I wanted to share with you the treat bags I sewed. This was not a project I had intended on completing for the party. I did not want to buy the cheap little plastic bags to put the treats in for the guests, but I also thought I would be able to find something cute to put them in! While I was searching for inspiration, I found some wonderful small canvas bags online that had drawstrings to pull them closed. Alas, I was doing this mere days before the party and would not have enough time to order them. I went to every craft/fabric/grocery store in my area and they did not have anything close to what I was now bound and determined to have for the party! So, I did what any other Martha Stewart mom would do and decided to make them myself!
I have tons of leftover fabric from previous projects/projects I never finished. Since it was a princess party I went with pink fabric for the girls and green fabric for the boys. Initially, I was going to throw the things together, sew them really quick up the side and tie a ribbon around them. After speaking with my super sewing mom, I was talked out of that! She convinced me of how easy it would be to take a few quick extra steps to make the bags look cute and better put together.
First, rip the fabric into elongated rectangles, about 10 inches by 16 or 18 inches. Fold in the edges of the two elongated sides, approximately 1/4 inch, and iron (this is to create a clean edge). Fold the rectangles in half along the short sides, with the right, or front sides, facing each other. Iron along fold. Fold down the top of each side so there is approximately a 1.5 inch “cuff” at the top of each side.
*to save time to not have to feed a drawstring through later, I tied the knot in my cording and tucked it under the flap on one side. Leaving a 1/4 inch edge, sew across one side of the cuff. Flip the bag around and repeat on the other side, tucking the cord under the flap and sewing across. Make sure you are not yet sewing the two sides of the bag together!!! OR you can just sew across each cuff and feed the cord or ribbon through later.
Last – holding the folded piece of fabric together, sew up each long edges to close the bag, stopping just at the seam on the cuff. Turn bag inside out and have some fun!
This, of course, still does not produce an amazingly well made bag, but the kids loved them, the adults thought they were great, and it only took me watching the entire movie of Moulin Rouge to finish 24 bags from start to end! Thanks for the help mom!!!
Tags: birthday, Craft, Homemade, party, recycle, Repurpose, Sew, Treat Bags
Little Princess Birthday Cake
Finally the time has rolled around this year that not only did I get to make another fun cake, but it was for my very own little girl! Little K turned 5 this year and was DYING to have a big party with all of her friends. Her birthday is in the middle of the summer and everyone was on vacation at one time or another, so we decided to wait and celebrate right before school started. We are so blessed with the amazing friends we have who pitched in to help set up, celebrate, and clean up! Especially with my hubby gone! The party was princess themed and it was the perfect opportunity for me to get to doll up a cake. There were over 40 people at the party when you include the kids and the parents (I told you we are blessed!) so I went big with a 3 tiered cake.
I covered the cake in pink rolled marshmallow fondanton two layers (both chocolate) and white in the middle (yellow cake). The stars and stripes cut outs and the balls along the bottom were also fondant. The “bling” around the bottom of the top two layers is rock candy. I searched everywhere until I remembered the best place to buy something like rock candy is Cracker Barrel! I also put some “bling” in the middle of each star on the cake. Last but not least, the crown. I tried to make a fondant crown and it was actually quite cute! Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to move it from the wax paper I had it drying on, it broke :(. This was definitely a foreseeable problem, so I had a back up plan and simply placed a tiara on top of the cake. It probably ended up looking a lot cuter!!
So, there you go! A cute little princess cake. I was very please with the results, and apparently everone else was too because it was almost gone! Okay, so I might have been cutting the pieces a little big, but not that big.
Oh, and thank you to all of the friends who stayed behind and helped me jump my car after my battery was dead! You’re the best!
Happy Birthday Baby!!!
Tags: birthday, cake, Marissa, marshmallow fondant, party, princess
Super Mario Bros Cake
this would be a problem, but tried anyway. The result was a whole lotta fondant that was flat and stiff as a board. With the inability to flex around the curved edges of the cake, it went in the trash too. I am still a little worried that Mario might pass out and fall backwards on the cake. Heat exhaustion maybe! Really, he is definitely top heavy in the back of his head and I will be very happy to find out that he stays standing all day tomorrow! (see bottom of post for more pictures)Other than those minor things, it really was an enjoyable experience. I learned so much about my own abilities and different techniques working with fondant. I used two different types of fondant – rolled fondant to make the creatures and marshmallow fondant to actually cover the cakes. I have found that the rolled fondant works much better when it comes to molding things than the marshmallow. But the marshmallow tastes so much better (in all the opinions of the people I have polled) so I prefer to use it to do the covering. As usual, I made all of the fondant myself, which I still prefer doing as well. The extreme heat made it difficult to work with the fondant at times. I felt like the Cake Boss when the edges of his Empire State Building were falling off in the heat. My A/C is already working double time with it being 104 degrees outside though, so there was little I could do about it!
I would have to say that Mario was the most difficult to make (go figure, the one I wanted to have the most detail!) and I had the most fun making Yoshi and the mushroom head guys. My 8 year old was ready and willing at all times to tell me what creatures I should be making, what they should look like, and what I was doing wrong with them!!! :) Credit is also due to my husband who thought of making the warping pipe (the green thing off to the side). I had extra cake and didn’t want it to go to waste! It became a cute way to show that little E is turning 5!
So now that I have sufficiently de-Crisco-d my kitchen, I can officially say I am done! The cake is ready to go to its Super Mario home tomorrow and I am sure little E will love it. His mom came over today and she thinks he will too. That is the most important part and I cannot wait to find out.
Since I was covered in Crisco every step of the way, I wasn’t able to take pictures of the process. Probably a good thing since I tried to get the messy parts out of the way while my husband was gone! The last thing I need is proof of how the place looked! I will give you a quick run down of how it all went. We estimated the entire process took about 16 hours from start to finish. I used:
- 4.5 bags of powdered sugar
- 2 bags of marshmallows
- 1 container of glucose
- .5 containers glycerin
- A LOT of Crisco (makes everything not stick to everything else until you want it to!)
- The equivalent of 4 cake boxes (but I made mine from scratch)
- A lot of icing color
- 1 box of unflavored gelatin
- 12 eggs
- a few cups of oil
- I think that about covers it
I modeled the figures by their colors. I started with red and made the heads of the mushrooms and the backs of the turtles, etc. Then picked the next color that I would need on the most things that had red so I could build onto those pieces. So on, and so forth. Then I baked the cakes and let them chill before making the icing to top the cake. I put a crumb layer of buttercream icing on all the layers before putting them together and chilled them until the icing was set. I then colored and put the marshmallow fondant on top of each layer. Here is where I built the layers, putting measured and cut plastic dowel rods into the bottom layer which then supported the tiered plastic plate holding the top layer. After the layers were built I started placing the figures, really wherever they would sit! By the way, these were all dried by the time I did this. If I had ten people working for me, I would have tried to do this cake in a matter of hours, unfortunately that is not possible as a one-woman crew! After it was all done this evening, into the refrigerator it went!
I really do hope little E thinks it is the best cake ever and I hope to get many more opportunities to make such awesome cakes!
I should also say my husband is happy the cake is done because he has felt neglected this week when it comes to my baking. Apparently, the 36 scones I made him the other day have not been enough to put an end to his baked goods hunger. Sheesh!
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Tags: Baking, birthday, buttercream, Cakes, fondant, icing, Mario, Marissa, Super Mario Bros
