Geekling's 3rd Birthday

We'd planned to have Geekling's 3rd birthday in a park nearby but the weather has been abysmal here in Brisbane.  It's been raining so long we're considering building an ark!  So we had the party at home.  After the party I remembered why I love birthdays in a park - 10 kids in a small house is soooo noisy!

The birthday boy requested a Thomas party as the blue tank engine is his favourite thing in the world right about now.  I grabbed a few cheap Thomas decorations and balloons from a nearby party shop and a nice blue tablecloth from Lifeline thrift shop.  My dear mother in law brought a fabulous fruit platter, we set out some chips and dips, vegie sticks, fairy bread and lollies, cheerio frankfurts and sausages in bread.

And of course the cake.  We'd decided on a cake in the shape of a 3, with train tracks and little train on it.  I made a 3 out of two round cakes (ALDI 75c vanilla cake mix is my go to cake 'recipe'), iced it in green icing followed by green tinted coconut.  Now what to use for the tracks?  I considered liqorice rope, but couldn't find any in any shop nearby.  I decided to pipe chocolate but burned both batches while I tried in vain to multi-task.  I finally did a last minute dash to the supermarket for black writing icing and it saved the day.  I used a train from Geekling's wooden train set and that was that.

Happy birthday, beautiful boy xxoo

Hubby's birthday cake

My husband is a bit of a quirky guy, and one of his most obvious eccentricities is his penchant for Hawaiian shirts.  To be fair, in our climate they are nice and cool in summer and as they're button up and collared they are technically suitable for a wide range of occasions.

So Geekling and I made his 32nd birthday cake in the shape of a Hawaiian shirt!  We baked a square cake then cut a slice off to cut up as sleeves.

I wish I'd gotten a picture before it was pincushioned, but this will have to do.

Happy birthday, hubby!

Geekling's bedroom - 2 years old

Now that Geekling is toilet trained, we've sold his nappy change table (for almost double what we'd bought it for! $45 second hand off ebay 2 years ago, sold for $80 on ebay recently).  We moved his chest of drawers to where his change table had been, moved his bookshelf to where his drawers had been and put up the play tent I made him for his birthday.  We've also now got an easel his Grandma gave him, and we blew up balloons for his birthday!

The playtent is just a hula hoop ($5), a queen bed sheet donated by Geekling's Grandma and a bunting donated by Lumpy's Mum.  The tutorial I followed is here.

Geekling LOVES the tent, loves his new Very Hungry Caterpillar bedsheets and pillow and his easel!

I love comparing photos and seeing how his bedroom has evolved.

Previous posts about Geekling's room:
Geekling's newborn nursery
Geekling's new bed

Geekling's 2nd Birthday

We celebrated Geekling's 2nd birthday last weekend at our favourite park at Chermside - its huge!  The play area is under cover, and although not a priority for us there are lots of options for special needs kids too which is nice to see.  There are toilets and lots of tables and benches and lots of grass to run around on - its a wonderful space.

We had a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed party as its Geekling's favourite book at the moment.  We ate all the foods that the caterpillar eats in the book!

 

 

I've been struck down with Ross River Fever that I must have picked up from a pesky mosquito while camping a couple of weeks ago, which put me out of action in the lead up to the party.  A HUGE thank you to:

• my mum who made Geekling's awesome caterpillar cake;
• my mother in law who made the jellies and cupcakes and supplied drinks; and 
• my wonderful husband who did the rest.  

The only thing I managed was to pick up a second-hand single bedsheet from the thrift store and stamp it in greens and red with a cut potato.

Hoot Cupcakes

Geekling's 2nd birthday is near, so I had to send cupcakes in to daycare so the kids could celebrate.  These are what were made:

They are little owls decorated with halved oreo biscuits, halved malteasers and orange jelly beans.  They look a bit like Geekling's favourite character Hoot, from ABC's Giggle & Hoot.

It took 3 packets of oreos to get enough halves for a dozen cupcakes, but the remaining bare sides are sitting with the left over malteasers waiting to go through some home made ice cream, perhaps with a touch of my home made Baileys - mmmmm.

Confession: I used packet cake mix.  I normally make everything from scratch, but my mother-in-law made the most amazing cupcakes and when I asked for the recipe she confided that it was ALDI 'Hillers' brand vanilla cake mix.  That stuff is only 75 cents a box!  And it makes the most divine cupcakes!  So its my go-to for cupcakes now.

I did however make the frosting and it was awesome - creamy, buttery but not too sweet.  I posted the icing recipe on my new Thermomix blog I am going to use to post my fave recipes and my own conversions.

Lumpy's 2nd Birthday Party

Yesterday Geekling and I helped Lumpy celebrate her 2nd birthday - what a lovely party!  Thank you Mara and Lumpy for having us!

 Adorable teacup treats

Geekling LOVES to play with sliding doors

Check out the cake - a joint effort between Lumpy's mum (who baked the six different coloured cakes) and friend Jaime who is a cake decorating queen and came up with the awesome marbled fondant.

 SIX layers of bright rainbow colours!

There was also had a DIY cupcake table that the kids just loved.  Geekling did a decent job of applying his own icing with a spoon and dotting it with m&ms and jellybeans before toddling off to eat it.  I was very impressed he didn't try to over-load it or sneak a few lollies in the mouth while decorating.

 Spreading his cupcake with icing

 Decorating his cupcake

 Ready to devour his masterpiece

The birthday girl decorates her cupcake with lots of crumbled oreo - yum!

I was also very impressed that he was able to communicate his need to go to the toilet in an unfamiliar environment and didn't get 'stage fright', including a stop on the way home just before jumping on the highway (which I was very grateful for).

Healthy Cake Decorating

For Geekling's first birthday some months ago I baked and decorated a cake to send to daycare for him to share with his tiny friends.  As he was one of the oldest in the nursery and many were not at cake-eating stage, he was invited to share his cake with the toddler group, and was one very popular boy for the day!

It is a plain vanilla cake that I then 'iced' with mashed banana, then in whipped cream and decorated with blueberries.  It is not the most stunning cake, but Geekling loved it and his daycare were happy to have a cake that wasn't loaded with extra sugar, additives and food colouring :)

Cheats Cake Decorating - Kit-Kat & M&M cake

I made this cake for my Mother-in-Law last year.  I do enjoy making and decorating cakes, but for whatever reason I wasn't up to the task of doing it from scratch, so I went with this cheat's option.  Its a Caramel mudcake from the supermarket with a 'fence' of kit-kat chocolate, and topped with m&ms!

(Excuse the mess in the photo!)

I used the family sized Kit-Kat blocks (2 of them) with the sticks snapped in pairs.  I think it would have been better to use the smaller bars (perhaps buying a pack or two of fun sized bars) as I would have needed less m&ms (there are two packets of mixed m&ms, and three would have looked better but it still caused an avalanche when we cut the cake!), or perhaps used two cakes with frosting or cream in the middle.  I also would have preferred to match the ribbon to the colour of the m&ms.  Oh well, my mother-in-law loved it!