birthday cake

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I just wanted to share a couple things from our son's birthday cake, in case it could help any of you out.

The recipe for this cookie cake can be found here.  It was so good.  I doubled the recipe so that I could make a 9x13 pan and there was enough dough that we made a dozen cookies as well.  They were soft and chewy and so was the cake.  I made this the night before and it was still perfect by the time we served it the following night.  I also added sprinkles to the dough to add some color.

These vintage-looking little trucks were purchased at Target.  They have a great selection of Hot Wheels cars.  Needless to say, our son was in car heaven when we picked these out.

I followed the tutorial in this video for the first piping technique to make sure that the edges looked good.  Then I topped them with some colorful sprinkles.

The birthday candles I bought from Target, you can get them here.  I made the card stock number 3 (inspiration came from here).  I created it in Photoshop, picking the font I liked, sizing it to how I wanted and then turning it backwards so that it would print on the back of the card stock.  Then I cut it out, pasted it to another section of the card stock to make it thicker, cut it out again and then hot glued it to a long bamboo skewer.  It was actually tall enough to stay on the cake with the candles lit.

My son loved his cake and was so excited when it came time for singing and blowing out the candles.  I loved that I didn't have to frost a whole cake because, while I don't mind doing it, I'm actually really horrible at it!

Card Stock Streamers

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Happy 3rd birthday to my sweet little boy!!!  I'll post about his cake tomorrow; a cookie cake with trucks and sprinkles.  He picked it himself, because now he's old enough to make decisions like that...what!?

Did you know that you can sew paper?  And that it's actually a lot of fun?  I love these streamers and the possibilities are only limited by your own imagination.

Supplies:
card stock
scissors
sewing machine

I did several different types of streamers to add interest to the decor for my son's birthday party.

For the fringed look, all you need to do is cut your card stock to your desired length and width (mine were 5x5).  Fold in half and cut slits almost all the way to the fold, but not through it.  To sew them together, open them back up and sew along the fold line, straight down the middle.  Feed them one after the other into the sewing machine without overlapping them.  Make sure that you leave enough thread attached at both ends so that you can hang them when you're done.

For the jagged fringed look, cut and fold your card stock just like with the fringed card stock, but instead of cutting slits, cut out little triangles.  I made mine long and narrow.

To make the triangle streamers, cut a bunch of triangles out of your card stock.  Don't worry about making them all the same; I think it looks a lot better when they're all a little bit different.  It adds texture and interest.  Use your sewing machine to sew them together, feeding them in one after the other without overlapping them, and making sure to leave enough thread at both ends to hang them.

I used a 3" square craft punch for the squares and a 2" circle craft punch for the circles.  Sew these these the same way as the triangles, without overlapping.

Tissue Paper Confetti

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My baby boy turns 3 tomorrow!  I'm kind of having a hard time wrapping my brain around it.  Where has the time gone?  I mean seriously, I remember his birth so vividly, it literally feels like it was just yesterday.  Since his birthday is during a time of year that is less colorful (goodbye beautiful autumn leaves) and he definitely brings a lot of color (i.e. energy) to our family, I try to make his birthday as colorful as possible.  I though that big tissue paper confetti was a great way to incorporate bright colors.

Supplies:
tissue paper
card stock
craft punch

Fold your tissue paper so that you're punching several layers at one time.  My punch could do a maximum of 8 layers.  Place your card stock on top of it and slide them into your punch together.  The card stock needs to be on top so the punch has something thick to punch through, otherwise it won't work.

Repeat until you have as much confetti as you want.  The tissue paper I bought is Hallmark brand at Walmart in a pack of all the colors pictured including white.