A St. Patty's Day Birthday

Ok.  Do I remember how to do this? It has been. Quite. Awhile!  Apparently I have been missing this here blog, because I keep thinking "Man, I should post that".  Kind of a crazy thought since it has been almost two years since I have posted anything.

But time to come back.  Right?!  So let me come back with something that fits with March coming up soon.

Last year, my son requested a St. Patrick's Day Birthday Party since his birthday is around St. Patty's Day.  We made it a more "family" type of party and had a true blast.  Kids got fun and games and adults got Irish beer.  Good all around!

As you can see in the pic of my son and daughter, we had hats (from Oriental Trading) and beads to wear.

We did a lot of decorating with rainbows.
 

For food, we ordered pizza but then I also made fruit and veggie rainbows.


We had the kids play a couple of games.  We started with "Gold, Gold, Who's Got the Gold?".  You can read the rules of the game HERE.  Another game was to "Shoot the Shamrocks" with nerf guns.  I had to cut out a lot of shamrocks!  We also had them go on a gold coin hunt.  We hid chocolate gold coins throughout our house with numbers on them.  Then each kid was assigned a number and had to find their numbered coins.  Of course they need a bucket to collect their coins, so I spray painted some tin buckets and created a rainbow handle from pipe cleaners.

For a small additional party favor, I saw the idea to make licorice rainbows with Rolo candies as the pot of gold.  I found it on Pinterest, but this is the original source for the idea.

Finally the cake was the part I was most giddy about!  The outer decorations were ok, but the inside of the cake was the best part!!

 

Just look at those colors in the cake!  Just makes me smile whenever I see how pretty it was!

So since it has been almost a two whole years since I was on here, I should probably fill you all in a bit.  During that time we had a big change to our family...we added a kid!  My daughter, Oliann, was born in December of 2012 and is now 14 months old! Amazing how much can change in two years!

So here is my THREE kids (and final!) last summer:

And here is a bit more updated of the little one.  

Well hopefully I won't be such a stranger around here...but hey, I have three kids now...so now promises! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Spongebob and Patrick Cupcakes

Ok, so I totally admit I am a crazy Mom and person in general.  So even though my son was going to be having a big birthday party (Board Game Theme party I have posted about before), I also wanted him to be able to take in cupcakes to school on his actual birthday.  So me being the type to go way too far, made Spongebob and Patrick cupcakes purely for him to take into school.  But man did they turn out cute!

So I did 12 of each character...yup again a lot of different colors and still only 4 bags and no identical tips!  Really need to buy more!  Anyway, I do not free hand anything but the faces.  I print out the images I want to make, cut them out, and then trace around them with a toothpick onto the base frosted cupcake.  I will freely admit that this was really tedious and I probably included way more detail than I should have attempted...I mean I attempted to give Spongebob his collar and tie!  But like I said, I know I am just a wee bit crazy!

Thanks for checking out my (crazy) kind of engineering!

Board Game Theme Party Cake

This is the last of my Board Game Theme Party posts....hope I haven't bored you!  I was just pretty excited about all that went into it and wanted to share every piece.  If you missed the first 3 posts, click the following links to check them out: Board Game Theme Party, Life-Size Candyland, Goodie Bags & Birthday Clue.


So this is the cake that I made for my son's Board Game Theme party.  I tried to incorporate things from the party to tie it together.  So the top of the cake has the Twister board, the pawn shape that I put on their t-shirts, and scrabble tiles (that were on the invitation) that spelled out my son's name.  Then I made the Candyland path around the side of the cake.

This cake made me want to go out and buy my cake decorating bags and identical tips as there was a lot of different colors (7 in case you were curious).  Even though it took awhile because of the switching of colors, I love how it turned out.  To make decorating easier, I wanted to try and do all of one color so I wasn't switching colors the entire time, so I drew the design on the cake with a toothpick so I knew exactly where all of the red went, etc.  


Well I hope that I might have given someone, somewhere some ideas for a Board Game Theme party or whatever.  Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

A Year in Review

I have always wanted to do this every year, but it finally took a fellow crafty person (and Hambo Stamps design team mate) to encourage me to do so.  Karin from With and "i" for Paper is hosting a Year in Review Blog Hop with a chance to win a prize for participating!  So join along and create a blog post of your Review of your Crafty Year...you need to have it linked up HERE by tonight (yup I am late in getting my post up!).  So here are my favorites from this year:

January - Tied Up in Love (Billy and Bianca Love Bunnies by Paper Makeup Stamps)

February - Leaf Pile Scrapbook Page

March - Wipeout Cake (for more views of it, check out the post HERE)

April - Whoo's Having a Birthday (Webster the Owl by Paper Makeup Stamps)

May - Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cake (for more views of it, check out the post HERE)

June - A Monster of a Father's Day (Me & Pops by Paper Makeup Stamps)

July - Dancing in the Rain (Emma Silhouette by Paper Makeup Stamps)

August - Party Time Spike (Spike by Paper Makeup Stamps)

September - Sympathy Butterfly (Everyday Miracles by Sweet n' Sassy Stamps, Beautiful You by Verve Stamps, Papers from Paper Temptress)

October - Football Monster (Football Fan by Paper Makeup Stamps)

November - Just a Hare Late (Roller Bunny by Hambo Stamps)

December - Adore Him (Manger by Hambo Stamps)

Hope you enjoyed my Crafty year in review (with a couple of cakes too).  Don't forget to join in for a chance to win a prize!  Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering and Happy New Year!!

A Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday

 Wow, sorry that I have been a little non-existent on the blog here for the last couple of weeks.  I had my daughter's 3rd birthday over this last weekend and I had invitations, party favors, craft projects, and a cake to make for it...all at the last minute of course!  Seriously, I saved most of it till the week of for some reason....no idea why!  But now that it is over, I need to get back into some normal crafting...although I promised some graduation announcements for my nephew...so I better not procrastinate on those!!


So I thought I would share with you today all that I have been doing...all to make a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday Party as special as my sweet little girl!  This is a long post, so grab a cup of coffee (at least that is what I need right now!) and enjoy.  First I made the invitations.  Since I was running way later than I would prefer, I kept them very simple. Most of it was designed on the computer and then I added the stamped/embossed/colored Mickey Mouse on top.  Again nothing spectacular but I thought they turned out cute.


Then came the party favors.  See I follow Jessica Witty's blog (she is the amazing former Go-To Gal for Paper Crafts magazine whom I have actually chatted with via FB...my brush with fame! hehe!) and she did this adorable project during a Papertrey Ink release of a paper mache hot air balloon.  Well when I decided to do Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as the theme for my daughter's party, I immediately thought back to that project and how I could transform it into the Mickey Glove Balloon from the show.  Yah....fantastic idea...one I definitely should have started weeks before the party...one that I started the week of the party.  I blew up some latex gloves, taped down the pinky finger (Mickey only has 4 fingers), taped on a paper ring on the bottom, and paper mached it with tissue paper and gluey water.  Near the end I was sort of cursing Miss Jessica's name (really I still love her) as paper mache is a very time consuming process for 7 party favors!  After I paper mached them, I paint them white and added the black marks like Mickey's glove.  All of this would have been fine and dandy really until I decided to pop one of the "balloons" too early (i.e. before it was completely dry) and it imploded!  Mind you I only had exactly 7 gloves to work with!  Thankfully my husband was smart enough to think about blowing up a small regular balloon inside to get it to blow back up, we re-glued it, and let it dry for days...just to be sure!  Again all during the week of the party.


I then built a paper basket and glued it all together with some cookie pop sticks.  I printed all of the kids names out and attached them to the basket.  Then I filled the basket with the silly little trinket toys that kids love and parents hate!  My kids have loved them...they put animals and figures in the basket and fly them around.


Next up was the cake.  Of course I had to make the cake into the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!  I did my typical research online when thinking up a cake...to see what others have done.  No sense in re-creating the wheel!  But alas, as I have often found, a lot of others use Fondant to create a lot of cool stuff.  I do not know how to use fondant nor do I like the taste of it.  So I took some of the ideas and came up with my cake.  The base is two 9 x 13 cakes and the Clubhouse body is a cake made in a bowl that was the roundest one I had.  The shoe, head and ears, and the slide are all made from Rice Krispie Treats.  This is where the challenge was.  One, the ears did not want to stay on the head.  Two, warmth makes the ears not want to stay on the head even more.  So there was 4 toothpicks in each ear holding them in place and I frosted quickly and threw them in the fridge so they wouldn't fall off...again!  I got a little smarter with the slide and stuck it in the freezer for a little bit before I tried to frost it.  

 

 I normally would have tried to smooth out all of my frosting, but due to the warmth / things falling off issue, I decided against it cuz I didn't want to mess with them anymore than I had to!  I kind of like the look though...kind of artsy looking...or am I just making myself feel better?!  The circles around the sides of the base were to mimic the circles on the invitation.  That Mickey Mouse head was heavy...didn't really think a big ball of Rice Krispie treats would be that heavy, but it was!  I had to walk very, very slowly when carrying the cake around because the head was kind of teetering on there a little bit.  I was so nervous it was going to fall off!  But all worked out, and my daughter loved it! 


I will leave you with my big 3 year old girl!  Just now noticed that she has a lovely snotty nose in this picture...ah well, kind of goes with the girl...and I do LOVE the girl!

Wipeout Birthday Cake

So do you watch the television show Wipeout? It is one of our favorites mainly because our son thinks that it is hilarious...well we do too! Basically a bunch of ridiculous obstacles in which you expect the contestants to "wipeout" on and commentators that make it even funnier! One of my son's favorite things to do is to make-up "Wipeout" courses for his Fischer Price Little People including replays, screams, and even some of the witty commentating! He has been doing this ever since this show started...something like 2 years or more. So why not make a "Wipeout" cake for his birthday! So first I asked him what obstacles were some of his favorites and then decided from there what I thought I might be able to actually make. My husband even helped me make one of the obstacles. So without further ado, here are the Wipeout obstacles!

This is the Starting line for the course...where the contestants let out their Wiepout cries! I learned of a technique to mash cake crumbs with some frosting to make a "meatloaf" type consistency and then use that to make into shapes. That is how I made the ramp.

Next up is an obstacle that I cannot remember the name of, but basically the checkered wall has doors that open as the contestants are trying to run past them and then the sweepers are there to make it that much harder (and that much funnier when they wipeout!). My son later told me this was suppose to be a mud obstacle...whoops!

The Banana Hammocks! A fun mud obstacle made from Laffy Taffy formed to make the shape and set on Tootsie roll posts.

The Big Balls...gotta have the Big Balls! I made the big balls with that "meatloaf" combo I mentioned above and coated them in red chocolate. I did not coat the bottoms of the balls though so they kind of sank down on their posts.

The Giant Swings...they have done many combinations of the giant swings on the show, but we just went for the basic one. This is the obstacle my husband put together. The sticks of Pringles Honey Sticks and it is held together with white chocolate.

Here is the top view of the cake. The Starbursts mark the path between the obstacles. I also tried to add some little grass accents around the course and around the bottom of the cake.

It ended up being a lot of cake for us and the little mini party we had for my son, so my husband had to take a huge chunk of it into work. Again a very time-consuming cake, but I will admit it was a lot of fun to make! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Super Mario Cupcakes

I'm back! Last week was a rough week like I anticipated...well actually a little rougher than I thought. I knew I was going to have late nights with the decorating that I was planning, but I didn't realize that my daughter would be sick (and hence not sleeping well) at the same time. So it was fun dealing with a cranky, tired, feverish little girl when I was pretty tired and cranky myself (no fever for me!). But it is done and the cupcakes and cake turned out great! First I will show you the cupcakes I made for my son's classroom...the cake will be in a separate post.

My son loves to watch his Daddy play Super Mario Galaxy. For some reason he refuses to try and play the game himself (anyone else have a child like this...I swear he can be very odd sometimes!), but he LOVES to watch Daddy play, talk about the different Mario worlds, and even draw new Mario worlds. So I thought it would be fitting to make him some Mario themed cupcakes to take into school.

Obviously the Mario and Yoshi ones were the hardest, but since so many colors were used, it was a long night of decorating! I need a couple more of the same decorating tip or something to avoid having to constantly wash the tip everytime I want to change colors. I was smart enough to buy a couple extra decorating bags though which brought me to 4....probably could use some more since I still had to wash bags too while decorating! You can see individual images of the designs below. Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!