'Snow Party Like a Snow Party

It's funny to write about a winter party in the summer, but classes and studying have kept me busy.

Chi had his first big, get to invite the whole class birthday party this year and we had a Snow Party!

First, I'll show you what I did for a take-home goody for the guests. I do not believe in goody bags of trinkets, but I try to send the guests home with a little something.

This year was a No-melt Snowman Kit:

Supplies needed are:  

small mason jars, cupcake liners, small styrofoam balls, 3 toothpicks (we used the fancy kind that have one blunt end), 10 mini brads per snowman, orange pipe cleaner (or whatever we are supposed to call them nowadays!), strip of colorful felt, and instructions.

Just make an assembly line and place each item in a jar.

Be sure to add a slip with assembly instructions on it.

Then place the lid on top, add the cup cake liner and then screw the ring on.

And now I should show you and assembled snowman...

sigh. I never took a picture of a complete one. But, you can imagine, they are super cute.

On to cake.

I made a snowman cake and snowball cupcakes.

Mini marshmallows pressed into the frosting of the cupcakes made the "snowballs." 

The bottom "ball" of the cake was made like the Bomb cake. The top "ball" is actually a frosted styrofoam ball because I needed it to remain light.

Chocolate chip eyes, mouth, and buttons. Baby carrot nose. Fruit by the Foot scarf.

I served the cupcakes (along with ice cream cups) to the kids and saved the snowman cake for the family celebration later.

Most of the party was held outside - in the snow - as a Snow Party should be. :)

I broke the kids into smaller groups and cycled them through several games, with the help of many of the other parents.

They did Ice Bowling.

We froze six water bottles for the pins and used a volleyball.

Target Practice.

We froze colored water into regular ice cubes. Then the kids stood back and tried to hit the bulls-eye which was created by spraying colored water on the snow.

Snow Long Jump.
Just as it sounds.

Snow Painting.

I made frames in the snow by repeated dropping an empty frame in the snow. Filled several spray bottles with different colors of water. Then let each child "paint" their own picture.

My lawn was so colorful. :)

We also just let them build snowmen. We had lots of color ice cubes left over from the target game so they used them up for decorations.

One tip, when you transition inside for cake and ice cream and presents, have a garbage bag with each guest's name on it. Stuff their boots, coats, mittens...all of it, into their bag so you can find it later. And, so your house stays relatively dry.

I also laid down blankets and drop clothes to absorb the water.
 

All in all, this was a successful party for a winter birthday boy. 

 


 

Sidley the Spy Plane Cake

Last month, Chi turned the FIVE! And, if you have read this before, you know that I go all out for my kids' birthday cakes.

It all started watching the Food Network cake shows, and thinking "I could do that." Not that I was disrespecting their talent. Au contraire. I just believed that if I wanted to put the effort in, I could figure out cake sculpting.

So, my kids now challenge me.

This year Chi wanted "Cars 2! Der, der, der...der, der, der...der, da,do, da, der,da, der..." (He can't say it without singing the music, usually all while stricking a pose that is a cross between Elvis and Michael Jackson.)

At first I thought I could get away with something simple like his Cars cake. But then it became clear we were in Millenium Falcon cake territory.

He wanted Sidley, the spy plane at the moment when Finn McMissile and Mater are racing to get on board. Geez.

So, we pulled up some images from the 'ole interwebs. He's really silver with dark blue, but we cheated because I didn't want to deal with metallic, so he became white and blue in our version. Judge me if you must.

Mateo grabbed a thin wood board and after several attempts, we finally drew an plane outline that satisfied us, and he cut it out. He also added supports underneath to hold it up, but we would turn those into wheels later.

I covered the wood with foil to protect the food.

And made 3 9x13 cakes. Yeah, these things always get out of hand. (I should mention that only we were planning to feed only 4 adults and 4 kids. People were sent home with cake.) I used the recipe for Blondies from my Home & Garden cookbook. Blondies are kind of like brownies but butterscotch flavored, not chocolate. (Delicious!) I was looking for a dense cake because it is easier to work with. Chi doesn't like chocolate cake, so if your kiddo likes chocolate you could use a brownie recipe.

So, I had my plane base and my cakes. I laid one cake on the center of the cake and used a serrated knife to trim off the excess, just following the shape of the wood. A dab of frosting on the base will hold it in place. 

I worked around, adding the wings, and then building another layer on the plane center using frosting between each layer. 

On the upper layers of cake, I just used my knife to shave off cake to make the right slopes.

Once done, I frosted the whole thing, and Mateo rolled out the fondont. We just grab Wilton's pre-made at Michael's. It tastes as good as any, and you cannot do better price wise making it on your own. We did this once, but it takes so much that unless you are a bakery, making it en masse, forget it. You aren't saving anything.

So, we laid the fondant on the cake and smoothed and trimmed.

Once the white was in place, Mateo colored some of the fondant blue and we rolled it out and put it place. We used water to make it stick.

I stuck gummy LifeSavers together with toothpicks and covered them in fondant to make the jets. 

We secured them to the cake with more toothpicks. They were a little off scale, but Chi wasn't complaining, so I didn't really care.

I used the little gel frosting tubes for windows. I just used white because I couldn't find any in light blue like the picture. On the front I used concentrated black food coloring and a toothpick to draw his eyes. When it dried, I went over the area with the gel frosting in yellow.

Then I stuck some more gummy LifeSavers to the supports as wheels.

Cake done. Now for the scene. I grabbed a poster board and drew a runway. Then I used watercolor paint to just do a quick fill of color. I wasn't aiming for perfect. In fact, I left my lines a little wobbly so the effect was perfect imperfection if you get what I mean.

Mateo made a hatch for Sidley out of cardboard. I got out Chi's Mater and McMissile and hooked them together and put them on the runway, like in the movie.

So, will I be the next Cake Boss? Um, no. But I had one terrifically excited five year old boy and that's why I do it. :) 
            

     

Spy Party Passports

It completely slipped my mind to do a tutorial on the passports for the Spy Party until someone asked. Sorry!

I took my own passport and opened it and scanned the cover. I placed the scan into a document and copied and pasted so I had two on a sheet to save paper when it came to printing. I made them slightly smaller than a real passport size.

Then I flipped over my passport and scanned the inside page with the picture and details.

I opened the scan in Photoshop.

I made a new layer and then proceeded to draw boxes over the stuff that needed to be erased or changed. So, I boxed out my photo and name, birthdate, etc. I just messed around until I found a color that faded into the background and it was different for most of the boxes since the background gradates. 

Then I saved this as my template. For each person, I created a new identity. I just made up names that were somehow based on something related to spying, like Hunt or Trace and for their first names I picked names of British origin that started with the first letter of their real names. So Gabe became Greyson Hunt. Why? I don't know. Just some rule to follow for consistency. 

I made up birth dates and places. I also changed the coding on the bottom of the passport. It has numbers like your passport number and birthdate embedded in it, and I replaced it mostly with my new made up numbers, but I also just filled in with random numbers.

I printed each identity, no photo, and I also printed some pages with stamps (you can find clip art for free on the internet that looks like passport stamps.) I placed everything into document pages so that I could have doubles printed per page like with the cover.(First, double check that all your dimensions are the same.)

I cut them down to size and stapled each passport together.

On a separate file, I made a box that was the same size as the box for the photo on the passport. This way I could quickly drag the photos to resize them when the time came. You could just change the dimensions a menu if you preferred.

Then when the guests arrived, I had them stand against a blank wall and snapped a picture of them. Once I had them all, Matt started spy training, and I uploaded the photos, used my box to quickly resize them, and printed the pictures to photo paper. I left it like above so I could just cut right on the line.

I cut them out and used a glue stick to attach them to their passports. Once spy training was done, each guest received his or her new identity for the mission.

The kids were all very excited that they were allowed to take home their passports.