Kitty Cat Tea Party Birthday

Laila turned 5 this fall and wanted a kitty cat birthday party. I found plates, napkins, and decor at our local party store.

I found a kitty cat cake on Betty Crockers website. Click HEREfor the link.
It is just 2 round cake pans cut into a few shapes and pieced together using frosting. I used m & m's for the eyes and nose, and black licorice for the whiskers and front paws.

 

 

 

This cake was for our "family" party. And I also really wanted to give her a miniature tea party with a few friends to celebrate her turning 5. She invited 5 little girls who dressed up and came over to our home for tea, lemonade, tea sandwiches, fruit kabobs, and mini marshmallows. The dishes they used were Laila's great-great grandmothers! It was her china and was passed down to me, which I am very thankful for!

 

 

My 5 year old!

The gift of baked goods

Baked goods, (or "gifts in a jar") are an inexpensive easy gift to give to those special people in your life for Christmas; teachers, bus drivers, neighbors...

Laila's teacher has mentioned that she loves banana bread, so I decided to make Cinnamon Swirl Banana Muffins for her and her assistant (the recipe is for bread, but I used the same method to make muffins).
And Emma came home from school one day and told us that her teacher had all her students try egg nog. So I am hoping that she likes our gift because I found a delicious recipe for Crumb Topped Cranberry Eggnog Muffins. {Click on the recipe names for links to the recipes.}

 

To package them, I bought cheap but festive $1 snowman paper plates, muffin liners, and picks at Dollar Tree. I hole punched around the edge of the plates, and laced ribbon through and tied at the top.

Then I used Press N Seal to cover and tied yarn/twine over the top.
I tied 3 paper tags to each plate; a Merry Christmas stamp, the name of the muffin, and each girl wrote her name on one.

Emma's note for her bus driver: she even drew a little bus! :)

 

So proud of Laila for being able to write her own name (see it there on the circle punch?)
Which is just one reason why her teachers deserve a treat!

 

Be sure to thank your teachers!!!

BEE Snacks

Laila's preschool uses Beatrice Bee for their school mascot. She encourages the kids to use positive behavior and make good choices. Laila's class earned 30 "bees" so they got to have a "BEE" party! Complete with costumes and pizza...and these adorable little bee snacks!

You only need 5 things to make them.

 

 

 

And if you can:

 

frost a cookie,

open a candy bar,

and cut a marshmallow in half,

you CAN make these!!

I saw them on Family Fun click HERE for the link to see their version. For the cookie part, I used Keebler striped cookies. They are bigger and I thought the stripes were perfect for the bee theme.

1. Add yellow food coloring to white frosting to create yellow frosting.
2. Frost the cookies
3. Place a mini Twix bar on top of each cookie
4. Cut a marshmallow into fourths, diagonally workers best to create "wings", and place 2 wings on each bee.
5. Scoop remaining frosting into the corner of a sandwich Baggie, cut open a tiny hole in the corner, and squiggle the lines onto the bee's back.
6. I had enough frosting to put 2 drops on the front of each Twix, creating eyes.

*Tip: lightly wet your fingers when working with marshmallows; it helps with the "stickiness"!

Lalaloopsy Birthday Cake

A very special little girl in our family just turned 4 and she LOVES her Lalaloopsy girls! Naturally, we had a Lalaloopsy birthday party for her.

For her cake, I saw an idea for what I wanted to do months ago, and since we have plenty of props for it, I figured we could do something similar.

I started with 3 pans. I used a 6 inch, 8 inch, and 10 inch. I baked Pillsbury Devil's Food Cake for all layers. I used 2 boxes; 1 box filled the 10 inch, and the other box filled the 6 inch and 8 inch. They all took about the same time in the oven. The 6 inch took a little longer because it was thicker, but only by a few minutes.

 

 

I also made homemade buttercream frosting, which was a first for me.

I used Taste of Home's Easy Vanilla Buttercream recipe; click HERE for the recipe. I doubled it and it was just barely enough; probably should've tripled it especially when using chocolate cake, cause those black crumbs are difficult to hide.

It definitely helps to make some room in the freezer to put your cake in after the crumb coat. It helps the final coat to spread and stay put better.

Crumb coat ready for final layer of frosting:

 

The decorating was the most fun I've ever had decorating a cake! I think the most fun I've ever had baking!

In process:

 

I used my handy Wilton Dessert Decorator to pipe the rosettes around the edges:

 

After I finished frosting and piping the cake, the birthday girl helped me place her Lalaloopsy girls (by the way, there are over 50 different dolls, but we have a select number of them so far) around the edges. Then placed the Ferris Wheel which she got last year for the cake topper. Then we got a little carried away and added the pets and some props.

She LOVED her cake!!! And it was delicious too!

I love baking our own birthday cakes cause we can personalize them so much and save a ton! This cost me about $2.50 for the cake mixes. And less than $5 for the frosting. And we had about 16 guests and only ate half of it!



Most of all, I love making memories with my family!

 

Linking up at these crafty parties...


 

 

Number "8" Birthday Cake

I already posted a blog here on Emma's recent birthday.

I finally have the cake post ready!

I have been making my kids' birthday cakes for a few years now. They certainly don't look professional by any means, but they mean a lot to them (I hope!) and are fun.

This year I made a number "8" cake for Emma.

I used 2 boxes of cake mix, and 2 cans of frosting (probably could've used 3 frostings to be honest)...CHOCOLATE for both of course! There is no white cake mix in this house! :) And don't ask why the bananas are in this picture...this is just where they sit on the counter and they happened to be there when I was getting ready to bake the cake. ha ha!

I used 9 inch cake pans and baked 4 cakes (yes I had to use them twice since I only have 2, but they cooled pretty quickly in between).

I love this extra large 15 x 20 cutting board that I found at Walmart. I bought it for the sole purpose of setting up cakes because I needed something big enough to display them on.



This number cake is the first one I've ever made, and I'm glad that I chose an easy number for my first one.

Steps:

First I used the size of a small cup to cut out a circle in the center of each cake.

Then lightly frosted all 4 cakes.

Then I stacked them 2 cakes high (2 on 2).

Then all I had to do was cut off a little bit off the edge of each cake and smoosh them together to form the shape. (see picture) You can do whatever you want with these "cake scraps" since you don't need them. I gave Laila a small pile of m&m s and let her decorate them. This kept her busy enough to leave the main cake alone while I finished it. It took me about 30 min to add all the m & m s.

Then frost all over and cover the top with M & M s!

If you are interested in baking a numbered cake, check out this link for how-to's on cutting and piecing cakes to create numbered cakes.

Those goofy girls really enjoyed the cake after some swimming!

Linking up at...

So You Think You're Crafty

Little league snack night

There are many fun treats you can make with Rice Krispies. When I was little, my mom always made M&M Rice Krispie treats for me to take to school on my birthday. She added M&Ms into the mixture...it was my favorite!

I saw this idea on pinterest and decided to make these baseball rice Krispie treats for my daughter's little league team this week.

You just make the rice krispie mixture as usual. Then instead of spreading in a cake pan, you use wax paper to help push the mixture into muffin pans. That way, you get equal sized "baseballs". Then you spread melted white almond bark on top and pipe the red lines on. I had planned on simply adding some red food coloring to the last of the melted almond bark to use for the red lines. Well, friends, that doesn't work cause it immediately clumped...so off to Walmart I ran. And so glad I did because I found Cakemate Glitter Gels!

Ingredients used:

Rice krispies (9 cups)

Marshmallows (1 1/2 bags)

Butter

Almond bark

Red decorating gel

I used cellophane bags to individually wrap them. This recipe made 28 treats which was plenty extra for all the younger siblings that like to be included at snack time. They deserve it too after sitting through a 90 min game. Ok, they don't sit, there's a playground, snack bar, lots of other kids, etc, but still...

I wish I would've had the camera ready at the moment after the game when there was a mad rush of 18 little girls all scrambling for a treat bag and a Gatorade! Priceless!

GO TEAM!!

New Kitchenaid Mixer!

[caption id="attachment_484" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="How FUN is this?!"][/caption]

Thanks to my amazing mama, my kitchen has a new accessory...my new Kitchenaid stand mixer! It has only been on my wish list for a short while, but she knows I love to bake. She came over last month to watch our kids while we went away for our anniversary, and surprised me with it. I'm loving the flat beater that scrapes the sides of the bowl so perfectly.

So naturally I had to spruce it up with a cute decal...or in my husband's words "pimped it out". There are so many cute decals out there (or you can print your own using vinyl) that it was hard to choose just one. They are all so much fun! I found a cute subway art style baking one on Etsy for 5 bucks! Once I opened it, I could tell that I was going to have trouble applying it as one whole sheet, so I decided I was going to have to use a little patience and apply the words individually.  I took a picture of the sheet prior to cutting so that I could refer to it for each step. And mine came with a handy little craft stick to help transfer the letters.

[caption id="attachment_486" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This is what the vinyl decal looks like when you open it."][/caption]

All you do is

1. peel off the backing

2. use the stick to rub the edges of the letters onto your material

 3. peel off the transfer paper...EASY!

[caption id="attachment_485" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="You can still see the transfer paper on the word "eggs". This peels right off after rubbing the letters onto the material."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_487" align="aligncenter" width="152" caption="Top view"][/caption]

So far, I have made banana bread, coffee cake, and even mixed meatloaf with my new love! And I have so many new recipes I cant wait to try out thanks to my Mops group. A fellow Mops mom compiled recipes from everyone and we made these adorable cookbooks.

This is my sour cream coffeecake all ready to go to MOPS! I used a recipe I found on Brown Paper Packages' blog. It looked so good after baking that I skipped the whole glaze step. It was so scrumptious that I only had a couple pieces left to bring home!

 

Another accessory adorning my kitchen...

BAKE letters!

The idea was inspired by a kitchen update I saw at Lemonade Makin Mama. I do not have a lot of wall space in my kitchen so I just made mine on a smaller scale. I bought the wooden letters at Michaels and spray painted them silver.

With my new kitchen decor, I am looking forward to baking dessert for Easter this weekend!