March of the Penguins

These would have turned out even cuter had I been able to find Famous Chocolate wafers and if I had used mini cupcakes and plain donut holes rather than mini donuts and chocolate covered donut holes for the penguin bodies. My Sunday school class loved them though.

Oh my Cuteness!

Aren't these cupcakes cool? The shark is from Hello, Cupcake! I couldn't find the chocolate cookies they suggested so I used a triangular graham cracker piece, for the eyes: mini chocolate chips, the body is a Twinkie and the mouth is a oval shaped piece of fruit by the foot. I glued the Twinkie to the cupcake with frosting , stuck in the graham cracker and froze until hard. Then I melted vanilla frosting in a measuring cup for 20 seconds in the microwave and stirred in a tiny bit of Wilton black gel food coloring to make pale gray. Then I dipped the whole shark into the melted frosting. When it was a little dry I stuck on the mouth and eyes, drew on the teeth and gills with frosting and then smeared on some blue frosting waves.

The sunflowers are brownie batter baked in foil cupcake liners. I used canned vanilla frosting dyed yellow and squeezed it out of a Ziploc with a corner snipped off. 

The ladybugs were partly frosted and then dipped in red sugar crystals. I used snipped Ziplocs filled with chocolate and vanilla frosting again for the whites of the eyes and the wing divider. I used mini chocolate chips for the eyeballs and spots. 

I had the best time making these cupcakes. Cupcake decorating is my new fetish. I keep finding excuses to make them. The sharks (and penguins I will soon be making) are for my Sunday School class and the Ladybugs and Sunflowers are for a baby sitting co-op lunch today.

Baseball Party

These are some ideas for my nephew's baseball party:

Invitations: cut to look like tickets to a major league game. The invitations can say "Take me out to the Ball Game . . . It's a Baseball Birthday Party for Ollie! Help this slugger celebrate his 5th birthday in true baseball style!" For the ticket seat (row and section), you can put birth date of your child. Or they could look like baseball cards with a picture of Ollie in a baseball uniform and write "All Star," put the picture on the front and the details of the party on the back. Ask the guests to come dressed wearing baseball hats and jerseys.

I think you start out with food that you would typically eat at a baseball game: hot dogs, soda, popcorn, nachos, marshmallow peanuts and cracker jacks. Maybe you should throw in baby carrots and cherry tomatoes as bats and balls. Pretzels, soft or regular. For the drinks maybe lemonade or soda or gatorade. Licorice, Cotton candy, ice cream sundaes.

Cute goodie bags would be those red and white cardboard popcorn containers (dollar store!). Or you could give wiffle balls and bats as party favors.

A fun game would be musical chairs, but using baseball bases that you could make out of white cardboard and you could play the Boys of Summer or Take Me Out to the ball game. You could also play hot potato and use a baseball as the potato. The kids could also hit wiffle balls through a hula hoop.

Another fun game would be a bean bag toss with baseball bean bags into a little baseball diamond you have made with white spray paint on the grass. You could do a baseball on spoon relay using ping pong balls decorated with red pen for seams.

I think a cool cake would be a baseball diamond with little plastic baseball players on it, you could even make it an ice cream cake layered with cake. Or a cupcake cake frosted to look like a giant baseball or a bunch of regular cupcakes frosted as baseballs. Or some vanilla ice cream scooped into round balls, rolled in white chocolate flakes or coconut and then decorated with red licorice shoelaces or red frosting  to make the seams for baseballs.

Decorations: banner made from freezer paper on the front of the house with "Welcome to Ollie Field" Use old baseball trophies, cards, bats, balls and gloves. You could make place mats that look like baseballs or baseball diamonds and laminate them. 

Other Magical Party Stuff

The invitation included this picture of a magician and asked the guests to come dressed as witches, fairies, genies, magicians, wizards or other magical beings and I put a bunch of glitter and sequins in each envelope.

For the games I chose regular old party games and gave them a magical twist:

Simon Says=Genie says (and whoever was the Genie held a blue glass bottle that my daughter broke a week later)

Freeze Dance and pass the parcel to songs with magic themes:

Witchcraft-Frank Sinatra

Somewhere over the Rainbow-Israel Kamakawiwo'

Magic-Olivia Newton John

Bibbi-bobbidi-boo-Fireside singers

Magic Dance-David Bowie (My Favorite!)

Calling All Munchkins-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

The Witch is in the House-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

I'm Flying-Mary Martin

Mahna Mahna-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

Do You Believe in Magic?-The Lovin' Spoonful

Thumballina-Harry Nilsson

Three is a Magic Number-Bob Dorough (School House Rock)

I also had my husband (show name Professor Presto) put on a magic show. The twist there was that he did the tricks and then showed them how to do the trick themselves. I have never seen such an enthusiastic and believing audience! I really regret that I didn't videotape this, it was priceless. One little girl even came up and hugged him after he showed them how to perform the tricks themselves:

Chinese writing

floating scarf

levitating

disappearing penny

unpoppable balloon 

I tried to find them on you tube, but came up with lots of trash instead:(

Later one of the moms of a guest told me that her little girl was doing the disappearing penny and floating scarf trick for weeks after the party.

They also made magic wands using wooden dowels, craft paper shapes, ribbons, glitter, glue and sequins. 

And that was my daughter's magical 7th birthday party. I hope I can maintain the same quality and enthusiasm for my sons' birthday parties in the summer. They both want to do Lego Star Wars Wii and one wants to also include water games and possibly a surfboard cake with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker surfing and battling with light sabers on top. We'll see!

Goodie Cups

I found this idea in Martha Stewart Kids Magazine Spring 2005 issue. I couldn't find them online, I guess there isn't much money to be made in paper cup pails so I took a picture of the magazine page. You can punch holes in colored paper cups and use ribbon or pipe cleaners for the handle. I used black cups and dipped the top edges in Elmer's glue and then glitter. I had also wanted to glue miniature playing cards to the outside of the cups, but couldn't find them anywhere! 

It was actually surprisingly hard to find magical items to put in the goodie cups so I just did my best at the dollar store. I think I figured out that each cup cost me about $1.79 to make including everything. I heart the dollar store. If you are going to waste money on tiny items that will eventually end up in the trash then the dollar store is the perfect place to get them. 

Each cup contained: a balloon, a sparkly pencil, glow-in-the-dark jewelry, dum-dums, pixie sticks, razzles, mini bubbles and a glittery bug. They were really fun to make and fill. I would totally make them again, but choose an easier theme. The dollar store had tons of circus, bugs,princess and ocean critters stuff, but alas no Lego Star Wars Wii items (next two birthday parties I have to plan for).

Magical Foods

I did not have that many magical food items, but I did make pretzel wands and playing card sandwiches which were both huge hits. They had both the cuteness factor and they tasted good. 

The wands were super simple to make. I even let my kids help. To make, melt white chocolate (or if you are trying to save money like I was, white almond bark) in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water. Dip both ends of the large pretzel wands into the melted white chocolate and then place on a piece of wax paper. Sprinkle with candy or sprinkles. I chose Wilton stars to make them extra magical. 

For the playing card sandwiches I bought some loaves of soft white bread and cut all the crusts off. I cut them all in half. I used some miniature cookie cutters I got from Williams-Sonoma to make hearts or spades or clubs in the corner. I did not have a diamond shaped cookie cutter. For the hearts I spread the bottom half of the bread with peanut butter and then spread strawberry jam over the peanut butter and placed the slice with the heart cutouts on top. I did the exact same thing with the spade and club sandwiches, but used Nutella instead of peanut butter and jelly. I think the playing card sandwiches were my favorite food item, they just seemed so Alice in Wonderlandesque to me.  

For the decorations, I just did traditional streamers and balloons in all different colors. I forgot to get a picture of the room when I was done decorating, but it was more colorful than magical. For the table I spread a white table cloth out and placed red napkins down the center like a table runner. Then I sprinkled the entire table with sequins and confetti. I used all my silver and crystal serving pieces so it was extra fancy. 

Magical Princess Hat Cake

I had been wanting to try this wizard hat cake I saw on Nick Jr for the longest time, but decided to do it my own way. It turned out totally cute looking, but I guess kids don't like fondant because most of them scraped it off (except my kids, they love anything sugary). It took me three days to complete (in stages) and was so much fun for me. I wish I could work at Charm City Cakes in Baltimore.

I started out by using a pound cake mix and baking it in a glass two cup measuring bowl, a small glass bowl and some ramekins. I stacked them together and glued them using apricot preserves (heated and strained to get the chunks out). Then I stuck a sugar cone on top for the peak of the hat. 

The fondant started out white and I dyed it with Wilton gel food coloring and rolled it out to cover the whole cake. To make the ribbons, I dyed more fondant, printed it with a cheese grater to make some subtle texture, cut them into strips and curled them around chopsticks or kind of draped them on a cookie sheet until they dried out. I used cookie cutters on some white rolled out fondant to make the veil and then draped it over two rolling pins to harden. I had to attach everything with royal icing which was a royal pain to make because I did not have any egg white powder so I had to pasteurize my own egg whites which is a tricky task.

I learned, the hard way, that fondant has a tendency to sag when other objects such as marzipan bugs and hard fondant ribbons and veil are attached to it. But overall I was pleased with the result. My favorite parts of the cake were my African-American marzipan fairy and my marzipan toadstools and the ribbons and veil.