Monday, October 26, 2009

I love a good party: He's Three!

"Happy birthday to you"


It was all trains for Pete's third birthday party.


The cake was a success (and the frosting, too, which I find utterly miraculous). I am not good at decorating cakes. Like those little roses and writing and, well, creating anything with frosting that is supposed to look like something? Not my forte. I had to be outside the birthday cake mold on this one.


It was to be a mountain cake with a train comin' round it.


Do I think too much about this stuff? Last night, I was thinking, what if I had a boss who told me that I had to do this stuff as part of my job. I would think she was totally nuts as she explained: "So, tomorrow, I need you to figure out how to make a mountain cake...you need a domed cake mold, but don't pay a lot of money for it. Just find a cake mold for, hmm, maybe one dollar. And then, in a couple weeks, figure out how to make your newborn look like a banana..." More to come on the banana baby later. I just keep telling myself: I'm using the same skill set as my former professional, blow-dried, black-suited, put-together self. It's just a different application of my skill set. Right? riiiight?



Anyway, I found my one-dollar domed cake mold. I baked the cakes a few days earlier and froze them (using this favorite cake and frosting recipe which I will now always use for yellow cake and chocolate frosting)
Why pay for one of those white-noise machines when you have a perfectly good KitchenAid?

I then left the actual construction up to my very capable husband. Shaner is a procedure man; one who has sutured and poked and extracted. I leave the fingernail clipping, the bath giving, and the cake constructing up to his steady hands. The results were my vision realized! I patted myself on the back for delegating this task to just the right hunk of burning love.



And the only thing left to do for Pete and I was to adorn our mountain with little lego pirates and knights and trees and horsies. I call this cake a success!

Ok, so maybe not suitable for the cover of Martha Stewart Living, but Pete thought it was awesome.

We had a modest spread of train-shaped pb&js, popcorn, and crackers with apple juice. I tried to keep it all low-key this time around, given the recent events (that is, bringing baby brother to this world a couple weeks earlier. oh man.)




And, for party favors, I found these little engineer hats and train whistles at Oriental Trading. Pete likes his homeboy style.

2 comments:

Marlo said...

So much fun. Becca you rock. Hey, I borrowed your idea for using a train theme to potty train. In the end I even gave Noelle a train set. So thank you from the very bottom of my heart for helping me have half the diapers to change each day. You are officially my hero. Sweet sweet party. I love how this is a low-key party. Ha!

Jill said...

WOW! I've been staring at that cake for a long time and I still can't figure out how you did it. It looks amazing! And you even made it from scratch! I'm sad we missed the festivities this year. Your parties never disappoint. Happy Birthday Peter