William's GO, DOG. GO! Party

I love original parties. This party was for William, Frances's son, who turned 2 today. I helped Frances with Alexa's butterfly/dragonfly birthday party last fall. This party was based on Go, Dog. Go by P.D. Eastman. Sure, there are a lot of inspirations for doggy parties, but there are elements from the book. The cars, the stoplight, the party hats... The color theme of the decorations and food are based on the book cover.

Dessert Table: paper cones w/puppy chow, stoplight pretzel sticks, "Go, Dog. Go" cake, oreo pops and cupcakes, strawberry and chocolate cakeballs, lollies and doggy bone treats, and 2-layer striped jello jigglers.

monkey and mod!

Cake for Charlie, Jammie's son! We love Curious George!

Very chic, mod, and too cute baby shower cake! I love polka dots (if you can't tell with most of my cakes) and this cake for Sam's baby shower is one of my favorites. :)

More May Madness...

Did I mention that May is crazy busy with birthdays? My long-time BFF (since 7th grade, Industrial Tech, 6th Period, 1993) had her baby on my daughter's 2nd birthday. Crazy, huh? Anyway, for Colt's birthday, Steph had threw a kitty/puppy party.

Colt's Smash Cake

Doggy Cupcakes

Baby Shower cake for Sarah... There was supposed to be a palm tree... but it fell... :(

cake for my mom's boss... I didn't have time to put all the letters on the keys, but I think I still captured the likeness of a Blackberry phone.

Molly (Jude's Mom) is a classmate of mine from highschool. She's an awesome artist who helped me by drawing Chamryn's Superhero artwork for her party in exchange for a cake. "Yay!" for bartering! Jude's cake... Spencer! (Thomas the Tank Engine's friend)

My good friends, Josh and Janine, threw a ninja/Asian/dragon party for their son, Xander. He had just recently watched the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" (or something like that) and had asked if I can do "Toothless"... So this is my attempt at Toothless the dragon... not having watched the movie, I think I did an okay job.

Pretty in pink...

Bridal shower cake...

With coordinating cakeballs

Say Cheese, Cake! :)

Audrey's 1st Communion

Last weekend, a friend's daughter also had a first communion... I absolutely love the colors of the cake: Orange, Pink, Peach

And of course... matching cake balls... so yummy....

Girly Bowling Cake

This cake was Wendy's cake. She loves to bowl and likes the colors green, purple, blue and orange. I think I was able to cram everything in this 6" cake. I also made cupcakes for her party at the bowling alley. It was a fun party... my husband and I went with our 2 year old daughter, 3 year old nephew, and my friend's 6 month old in tow. You can just imagine the fun we had... I had baby duty so unfortunately, the hubby got stuck wrangling toddlers!

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 4...

The final class of Course 1... and we're tackling... the dreaded Wilton Rose... duh du dummmm.... Things started out rough... my icing was a little thin, so the bases were flopping over and the petals were flopping over, leading to roses that look like... well... smooshed, hot pink cabbages.

After a few more roses, I got a little bit better... now my roses look like a rose/carnation hybrid, but at least its not flopping over.



The picture below is my friend Tomi's roses...

To compare to my roses... which look like... CARNATIONS! AAAH!!!

So... we did it. We finished Course 1 and accomplished The Rose.

And Tomi and I are crazy enough to take Course 2 in May... Yup. The same month that my friends and I decided collectively (not really) to have babies, therefore having parties every weekend that month. I will have 9 cakes to do next month. Yes, NINE. and 4 birthday parties. I love my friends, but our next babies will not fall in the same month ever again!

Ruth's Castle Cake

This was a very special cake personally... Ruth hugged me so tightly I teared up a little. :)

Mickey's Toodles!

I totally forgot to post this... I made this Toodles cake for Riley (yup, another Riley) last January. Toodles helps Mickey Mouse and his friends on the Mickey Mouse Club House show, kinda like how the Backpack helps out Dora, by giving Mickey and his friends tools to help solve problems and help them achieve whatever their goal is on that episode.
I also made cupcakes to supplement the cake... Of course, I cannot just make regular plaine ole cupcakes with regular plain ole sprinkles... Mickey is made up of chocolate. :)

Thomas cake... take 3.... and other news...

Another Thomas cake for another Riley... Seriously, I have at least 4 friends with kids named Riley. I made a deal with Bethany that I would do Riley's cake if she sews Chamryn's birthday party favors. This Thomas cake turned out so cute... its not 3D or carved but its one of my favorite kids cake so far. :)

I also did some cupcakes for Amy's sister's baby shower and Makenna's 1st birthday this weekend...

So the other news is that my friend, Tomi and I are going to sign up for a Wilton decorating class starting in two weeks... I really need help on buttercream decorations and I can't do an icing rose to save my life. The class is every Thursday night for 4 weeks. It should be a fun time learning new things and having some mommy and cake talk with Tomi. :)

Easy Flourless Chocolate Cake

Hey guys! Make your sweetie this super chocolatey dessert for Valentine's day... you still have time... and it's super easy! It reminds me of chocolate truffles.

1 bag of bittersweet Chocolate (I used 11.5 oz of Ghirardelli 60% chocolate chips)

2 sticks of butter +3Tbsp

1 1/4 c sugar

6 eggs

3/4 c cocoa powder

1 Tbsp heavy cream (or milk would be ok)

1Tbsp light corn syrup (or honey)

1/4 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven at 350 deg. Spray a 8" springform pan (or regular pan will do) with cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with a circle cut out of parchment paper. Spray the parch paper with cooking spray, and set aside.

Melt butter and 8 oz of the chocolate chips in a saucepan on low heat (or the microwave...) and stir until melted and well blended. Transfer in a large bowl and mix in the sugar. Whisk in one egg at a time. And stir in the cocoa powder.

Pour in the pan and bake for 30-40 minutes until its baked through (or not so jiggly~lol).

Take it out of the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Invert into a plate and throw away the parchment paper. Let cool while you prepare the ganache glaze.

Melt remaining 3T of butter and chocolate for (microwave) 30 sec in a bowl until melted, stirring until smooth (may need another 5-10 sec in the micro.) Stir in 1T heavy cream or milk, 1T corn syrup of honey, and 1/4t vanilla. Let cool for a couple minutes. Pour over the top of the cake and with the back of a spoon, smooth along the top and drip onto the sides.

Let cool completely for 30-60 minutes.

Optional: serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy! :)

Blast from the Past: Kim's baby shower ~ May 2009

After Steph's baby shower last April, then the kid's Yo Gabba Gabba party early May, I was getting full steam into party planning mode. Kim's shower was next on the agenda... (Chamryn's 2nd birthday party was the day after Kim's shower, so that was a busy crazy week.) Our friend, Patti, Amy (Kim's friend who lives in NY) and I were the cohosts. Amy was in charge of the invitations and helped set up when she got into town that weekend. Patti and I (also with the help of Kim's mom, Deb) took care of the decorations and food, and I tackled the cake. There may be similarites between Steph's and Kim's parties... but major differences include the boy/girly colors (blue/orange vs pink/green/orange) and the size of the parties. Steph's more intimate shower fit in my living room, while Kim's shower required a park pavilion rental. And of course, almost all the inspiration came from this "Oh Baby" baby shower by Amy from Stem Parties.

"BABY" sign at the food table

Tablesetting

POMS

The pavilion and tables/chairs setup

Individually wrapped water bottles

We had a brunch spread... we had "Sweet" and "Savory" items...

"Sweet" items included a fruit salad, fruit pizzas, cream puffs,

pound cake, graham pretzels with chocolate cheeseball

"Savory" items included cucumber sandwiches,

spinach quiche, sausage casserole, crackers and dip

The cake--yes those are fondant shoes!

The orange boxes in the foreground were the favors....

each box contained a brownie square.

The guest packets, again, another idea from Amy....

patiently and painfully packaged by Patti...

who did her best not to complain about the tedious work caused by my ideas....

well its not my idea... blame Amy's party website.

Included in the packet was the celebrity baby game ("R" for baby Riley)....

Baby Bingo sheet, Baby Lotto "pickle cards" and the Thank You Envelopes.

These were the prizes for raffles and games...

I don't remember what was all in the bags...

This was our gift (from Patti and me) to Kim...

The banner behind Kim says "baby girl Riley" :)

Rock 'n Roll and Super Bowl

Rock n' roll... I'm not referring to the pretty lame half-time show by The Who (who?). No offense... I'm sure they were groovy(?) or rad(?) back in the old days, but they sounded... well... old... Anyway, lets get back to cakes, shall we?

So Bakerella did football cakeballs last year and I wanted to throw it. I had this grandiose idea of doing cake balls, white with the Colts logo in blue and brown with the Saints logo in gold... then prop them on a printed football field... with a cakeball football in the middle... well, after a few sad attempts at freehand piping the Saints fleur-de-lis logo, plus I waited till 2 hours before the SB party, I gave up on the idea and just had to settle for the color-coordinated drizzles. I also gave up on shaping football shapes after 5 balls, coming to the conclusion that Bakerella just has too much time in her hands... and she didn't wait the day of the Super Bowl to make her football cake balls. The Saints cake balls and footballs were chocolate covered strawberry cake balls and the Colts were white chocolate covered chocolate cake. (and sorry about the pic... its taken from my cell as my camera battery is dead once again... if it isn't my cell battery, its my camera.)

This rock 'n roll guitar cake is for Aaron, Elizabeth's hubby...

Blast from the Past: Yo Gabba Gabba Party

In the next couple weeks, I'm going to post some of the past parties we've had in the last 2 years. I've posted them on Facebook and my almost-non-existent MySpace page, but I'm going to post them here so that I have them all in one place. And also add more information and details on each party. We'll start out with the most awesomest (yes, I stink at grammar, its my blog and no, I don't want to proof it.) Yo Gabba Gabba Party. Its the best one out of the Gabba Friends blog/website, but I'm a little biased. The following is the entry from the Gabba Friends website, and no, I don't think I'm infringing on copyright stuff, since I'm the one that wrote it for the blog. :)


The original post from the Gabba Friends website can be seen here.

********************

Grayson, Xander and Chamryn’s birthdays were each a week apart, so we decided to host a Super Awesome Triple Birthday Dance Party!


Xander’s dad, who is a professional photographer and super creative, made the invitations.

sidebar: check out joshuatreephoto.com...

a little plug there for ya, Josh! :)

The Gabba Friends website gave me the idea to stack Brobee, Plex and Foofa and use marshmallow fondant. This was my first try at making MMF... after this cake, I was officially addicted to cake decorating! The bottom layer (Foofa) was red velvet, with a faux layer (otherwise we would have had too much leftover cake.) The middle layer (Plex) was chocolate and the top (Brobee) was yellow.

My husband and I wrapped water bottles with Yo Gabba Gabba characters and logos. Yes, he looked at me funny at first, but for some reason, maybe I had to bribe him--I can't remember, he ended up helping me gluing the little decals and different colors of construction paper.

The weather was a little chilly and super windy, so we had to have relocate it in our garage. The streamers, tissue paper poms and balloons made it look a little more festive! Not too bad for cleaning and decorating the garage 2 hours before the party!

Note the balloons with the different character facial cutouts. The paper I used were heavier so the balloons drooped and even some balloons didn’t float, like the ones stuck on the far wall...

At the food table, I made banners from cardstock and printed the logo and letters. Grayson's parents provided the food. At the bottom left corner of the picture, there were coordinating colors with partyware and the corresponding character cutout right beside it.

sidebar: Chamryn's pendant is STILL hanging in our garage. LOL

I made goodie bags by printing the YGG logo on a sticker label and a cutout of a YGG character. The bags were filled by Xander’s mom with candies and toys. I was going to add stickers on the sippy cups too, but I ran out of time.

At the cake table, I printed out the Gabba Land and attached it to foamcore board stands.
I also printed out a 3’ Plex, glued it to foamcore and cut out the head. The adults had more fun with it than the kiddos!

(that's our friend Kevin. LOL)

In the background, I loaded up my iPod with the fun songs from the Yo Gabba Gabba episode (especially the Dance, and Fun episodes) along with The Ting Ting’s Happy Birthday song and played the party soundtrack continuously throughout the party.

It was a fun party... I can't wait to do it all over again in May. :)

But this time, I think we're having separate parties... so it'd be 3x the fun! :)