The Party Post....prepare for plenty of photos!!!!

In July we celebrated my little man's 2nd Birthday with a party for all of his little friends.  At the time he was very into Bob the Builder so we had no choice but to have a Construction Party (if the party was tomorrow, it would now have to be The Wiggles).

Well, lots of preparation went into the party which I just LOVED...and may have gone a teeny tiny bit overboard!

Anyway, here is how it turned out:

Guests were welcomed by a series of witches hats/construction cones leading them straight to the front door.

There was a new Birthday Banner and some 'Work Zone' signs posted around the house.

The table was set long enough for every child to have a place.  It was decked out with a Bob the Builder Table Runner, some 'Dig In' construction signs and colour co-ordinated plates, napkins, balloons and even fairy bread!

I couldn't go any further without posting an appropriate picture of the Birthday boy in his new party clothes.

 ...and one of him with his cousins!

The cake was decked out with die-cast toys of the Bob the Builder characters (I couldn't be bothered making them...and for $5.50 each at K-Mart it meant that the Birthday Boy could have them forever!).  The brown sugar was very effective as dirt!

Food....no party is the same without it...definately at our place - we always seem to over cater, but it is better to have too much than not enough!

...Colour co-ordinated rum balls...

...sugar cookies in the shape of all the appropriate carpentry tools...

...little racing cars...just because we could...

...jelly cups with chocolate tools in them....

...and what more could a tradesman want than a mountain of bite-sized iced doughnuts!

Well, I hope that you enjoyed your visit to the Birthday party! I hope to be back soon with some really crafty stuff!

Keep Crafting!
Cathy

Bob The Builder....Yum Yum Yum!!!

Well....sorry I have been away for quite a while.  It's just been one thing after another!  We had Z's 2nd Birthday party...which had to be postponed because we all got a tummy bug but was still a roaring success, but I will have to post about that later.  I have heaps of photos to share!

This post is about the cake that I made for the night of Z's 2nd Birthday night.  The theme for his party was construction and this was also so the night of his party...with the cake at least!  So I am going to share with you how I iced the image on the top of the cake.  You could do this with any image you choose, but of course, ours was Bob the Builder.  You can download the template here.  You may need to resize it to suit the shape of your cake.

Once you have downloaded the image, you should get something similar to that above.  You then need to cut it out into the 2 main sections - the hat and the face - I didn't worry about the hair as that was just a nearly straight line and didn't feel that I needed a guide.

Once you have the sections cut out, place them all on the cake so that you can make sure that there is room for the entire image.  Once you are happy with placement, remove every section EXCEPT for the face (see below).

Take a very sharp and pointy knife or a skewer and make a line around the shape so that you can see it in the icing.  When you take off the piece of paper, it should look similar to the line I have outlined below

It is now time to make your icing!  I used pure icing sugar, something I always do, as it seems to keep its shape better that the soft icing sugar.  You need to make the icing fairly thick so that it doesn't ooze out of your piping bag.  Now take the piping bag with a narrow tip and fill with icing.  Pipe a line along the line that you made in the icing with the knife/skewer, then continue making more and more lines inside that initial line to fill the face section.  Often the lines will merge together, but if not you may need to brush over the icing with a butter knife or spatula to even it out.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this.  Z kept getting out of bed and interrupting me so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Repeat this process for the hat and the hair, marking the shape with a knife or skewer and then filling with the appropriate coloured icing in a narrow nozzled piping bag.  Before you put away the yellow icing, put a star/flower tip onto the piping bag and pipe stars around the outside of the cake.  I feel that this just finishes off the cake and helps it to stand out from the plate.

Once I had finished icing the hat, face and hair, I took a tube of black 'Queen' writing icing that I purchased at the supermarket to mark all of the lines, the nose, eyes, mouth and ears.

You should end up with something similar to the above. 

Add some candles and you're good to go! 

I was quite impressed.  Z knew exactly who the picture was of on the cake.  It has inspired me to do something like this again.  I wonder who his favourite will be next year?

Anyway, Happy 2nd Birthday Z!  We love you very much!

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