Birthday

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A Floral First Birthday Party!  Rose, flower & butterfly cake, cupcakes with icing flowers, a floral invitation to play, and flower wall decorations…

My little miss Bee is one!

So we thought we would have a little shindig to celebrate. As Bee’s birthday is in September (which is the start of Spring in Australia), we decided on a floral theme.

Starting with THE cake…

For the base, I used half of A Cooker and a Looker’s Butter Cake recipe (and saved the other half for another cake that I’ll post shortly). I iced it using ready-made icing (the type that is like play-doh), some of which I’d coloured using all natural food colours (so it was free of these nasty food colour additives).

I learnt how to make the roses recently on a cupcake decorating course, and I used a 3D cookie stamp for the butterflies. The other flowers, stems and leaves were improvised.

My big tip, is to use baking paper on both the table and the rolling pin when rolling out the ready-made icing. It was quite humid, and I found that otherwise the icing would stick to both. The baking paper also made it easy to flip the icing over onto the cake to make the white background.

And you can’t have a kids birthday party without cupcakes…

What’s the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? Icing on top!

Ironically I used this no-added-sugar wholemeal banana and blueberry muffin recipe, and then went and added a ton of sugar-laden icing on top. 🙂

I cookie cutter to cut out star shapes from the ready-made icing, and then stuck store-bought iced flowers on top with water. That’s cheating I know, but I had the iced flowers in my cupboard already and was looking for an excuse to use them up…

I was pleased to see that the kids were eating the whole thing (or in JJ’s case, eating the muffin and leaving the icing – bless!), so the healthy-ish cupcake / muffin base was a big hit with the toddler crowd.

And I kept one of the larger cupcakes icing-free for Bee. She hasn’t really had added sugar in her diet yet, and I’m hoping to keep it that way for a while longer.

A floral invitation to play…

As there were some older kids invited, I set up a floral “invitation to play” in a corner of our backyard.

Stems of fake flowers were displayed spilling out of watering cans and plant pots, around the log stools. I also included our dolls house and play kitchen (both council clean-up finds), our various toilet paper roll dolls, our stick family (I’ll have to blog about them another time), and a few other odds and sods that I thought would encourage some interactive play.

Flower wall decorations

On the upper level of the garden, I used these flower decorations  to tie the theme together. (I love an excuse to introduce textiles).

Looking left
Looking right

These flowers were actually made a few months ago, and have up on our playroom walls over Winter. But in honour of Bee’s birthday, we brought them outside into the sunshine.

The flowers themselves were simple to make – they are just fabric glued to recycled cardboard, stuck to the fence with packing tape and/or blu-tack.

I think they added quite a bit of pop to the backyard!

We had a lovely afternoon. Bee enjoyed being the centre of attention, even if she didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about.

What a happy and grubby birthday girl!

xx
Danya

PS: Special mention to Mrs T for the outfits and the set up, and to Megan for helping with the happy snaps. Love you both!

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My friend Megan Webb is celebrating her 40th birthday today, so I made got her this totally fake genuine signed birthday card from her teenage crush Alex Papps.

You remember Alex as Vince from The Henderson Kids, and then as Frank Morgan from Home and Away, don’t you? Well, actually I don’t, but then I’m a few years younger than Megan. Although the top right photo of Alex in the green shirt does ring a bell…

But now that I have kids, I do totally know Alex in his current role as a Playschool presenter. (Particularly the scene where he dresses up as a watermelon in a fruit fashion parade. I’d show you a photo, but my Google Image search for “alex papps camp watermelon outfit playschool” came up blank…

Anyway, Megan is such a closet fan that she actually married an Alex Papps look-alike. Talk about dedication! Their youngest (Master 4) is convinced that the centre photo in this collage actually is his Daddy, and can’t work out where Daddy got a watch since he doesn’t usually wear one? He’s also a tad jealous that Daddy’s apparently met Big Ted.

But, I digress. Just wanting to wish you a very happy 40th birthday Megan. Hope you have a lovely day, week, month, year and decade!

xx
Danya

PS: None of these photos were actually taken by me – all credits go to the original photographers. This birthday card was made just for laughs. I found all of the images via Google Image search, but I forgot to save some the sources at the time (*smacks hand*), and some of those I did save have been since deleted.
If you know the source of any of the other photos, please tell me so I can attribute. Thanks.
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Happy first birthday Bee!

We’re in first birthday party mode here, I’ll be sharing some of our festivities shortly.

But in the meantime, here is her first birthday party invitation template. Cute, no?

Where exactly did that year go???

xx Danya

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I made this chocolate and beetroot brownie monkey cake for JJ’s zoo animal themed second birthday party.

Monkey birthday cake

We used the same monkey face design that we used for the monkey masks. I used this Chocolate & Beetroot Brownie recipe from Vegie Smugglers, except that I used a round spring-form cake pan instead of a rectangular one.

(A non-pro tip: make sure to measure out the walnuts while they are still whole. If you measure out after they are already chopped, then the consequent larger quantity makes the walnut flavour too overpowering – something I luckily discovered on my test run the week prior, and was able to rectify for the ‘real’ cake….)

monkey cake

To make the beige / light brown icing, I mixed up icing sugar mixture, water, a touch of cocoa and one tiny drop of yellow food colouring (that stuff goes a long way!). I spread the icing to colour the whole cake, and then covered up the middle section with a piece of baking paper that I’d cut to size. I liberally applied chocolate sprinkles to the outside, uncovered parts of the face, patting down the sprinkles so they stuck to the icing. I then removed the baking paper, and added more icing to the middle section, bringing it up to be level with the chocolate sprinkles, and fixing up any areas where the sprinkles had crept in as I went.

I then left the cake out on the bench overnight for the icing to set. (I covered it with a box to keep our curious cat at bay). The next morning the icing was nice and hard, and the monkey face outline was still prominent. Yay! I then cut a third off two wagon wheels (a type of Australian chocolate biscuit) and put them on each side for ears.

Then I delegated to my father the drawing of the rest of the facial details with a tube of Rich Chocolate Writing Fudge.  (Thanks for stepping up on that one Dad!)

Chocolate & beetroot brownie monkey cake

So what do you think? I reckon it turned out OK! I know the flavour is a little unusual for a 2nd birthday cake – it was intended mostly for the adults to eat. But I figured that some of the kids would try it too, and if they liked it, then great! If not, there were plenty of other cupcake options with milder flavours. I only served little portions, about 4cm cubed, and you know what? Almost all the kids scoffed it down. Goes to show that you shouldn’t underestimate what kids will and won’t eat…

If you’re planning a zoo animal themed party, you might also like these zoo animal face masks and Easy zoo animal cupcake toppers.

Zoo Animal Face Masks

Easy zoo animal cupcake toppers

And here’s the photo that we used as the background for JJ’s party invitations on. Cute, no?

Riding the baby rhino

Or if it’s cakes you’re after, here’s a few other ones I’ve made – the ‘1’ cake, a ‘floral’ cake, and some professional-ish looking cupcakes.

Dotty Spotty One (1) Cake

Floral cake

Cupcake decorating class

 

Yum!

xx

Danya

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These cupcake toppers are so easy to make! I made a batch of about 50 or so in about an hour. We made zoo animal themed ones, but you could easily adapt to suit any theme.

Easy zoo animal cupcake toppers - can be customised to suit any theme
I bought two sticker books from the local discount shop, but as each book had 180 stickers (enough for 90 toppers), one would have been plenty. They cost me $2 each. I already had the rest of the supplies, so all up this project cost me $4!

Supplies Needed

A book (or two) of little stickers to match your theme
Regular paper
Glue Stick
Toothpicks
Regular scissors
Pattern-edged scissors

Pattern Edged Scissors

How To?

Grab a few sheets of paper – I used normal printer paper, or you could use coloured paper if you prefer. Cut the paper using regular scissors into little rectangles about 4cm high and 8cm wide. Glue one side, put a toothpick in the middle and fold the paper in half over the toothpick, effectively gluing the two halves together.

Stick a sticker onto each side, centred by height, keeping as close to the toothpick as possible.

Then use the pattern-edged scissors to cut off the excess paper around the stickers. Choose pattern-edged scissors with a small pattern – I used the stamp pattern ones, but the mini pinking or mini scallop pattern ones would work just as well.

And voila!  Homemade, zoo animal themed cupcake toppers!


They turned out quite well, especially considering how little time, effort, cost and resources were involved.

And if you are wondering what the little treats on the cupcake stand are? The top layer are grandma-homemade cupcakes (thanks Mum!). The second layer are egg-free cupcakes (to cater for some of JJ’s friends with egg allergies). They were so creamy! I’ll see if I can find the recipe to share with you… The third layer are wholemeal banana and Nutella (hazelnut spread) scrolls. I based them on this recipe, but used wholemeal (wholewheat) flour, added banana and deleted the crushed hazelnuts. They weren’t the prettiest, but they were yummy, and kind of healthy. (I had to sneak wholegrains in somewhere).

These were served at my daughter JJ’s second birthday party, along with these Zoo Animal Face Masks, and Chocolate & Beetroot Brownie Monkey Cake. It was zoo-ilicious and animal-tastic!

Zoo Animal Face Masks

Chocolate and beetroot brownie monkey cake

xx

Danya


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