Elmo Birthday Party Fun

I frequently lust after the parties I see on some of my favorite party planning blogs, like Hostess with the Mostess and Pizzazzerie.  The parties are amazing, the details are creative, the photos are beautiful, and the people appear to be having the time of their lives.  While I would love to host parties that are featured in blogs and magazines, I consistently run into a few “minor” details… such as budget and available free time.

While I enjoy planning parties, making decorations, and baking cakes, these are just a few hobbies that compete for my ever dwindling free time and funds.  I am on a mission to create the perfect party plan that maximizes a few quality decorations, stays within a reasonable budget, and sets the stage for fabulous fun!

As I continue on my quest for the ultimate party plan, here are a few components that will definitely make future party plans:

Elmo Birthday Dress

Dress: I found this fabulous black and white Elmo chevron dress, by Valentina’s Place, on Etsy.  I loved the look of the black and white chevron contrasting with red Elmo and used this look throughout the invitation and party decorations.

Invitation: I would love to learn to play with Photoshop or Illustrator to create fantastic invitations and amp up my party decorations, but I am definitely not ready to commit to another hobby!  I created a  simple Elmo birthday invitation by layering and filling different shapes in Microsoft Word.  If you are not familiar with this process, Just a Girl and Her Blog has a great simple tutorial on making labels that outlines this process.

Elmo Birthday Banner

Decorations: It was exciting to host our first party in our new house!  I am still trying to figure out the best way to decorate our new space, so I stuck with the standard birthday banner, centerpieces and balloons.   I used my Silhouette Cameo to create the party decorations and used the trace function of the Silhouette Studio software to create an Elmo design.

Elmo Birthday Centerpiece

I used the cake as a decoration, as well as the photo props and favor bags (which I completely forgot to handout).  I also created a table with Elmo coloring pages and crayons, which looked festive and provided a fun activity for the kids (okay, really all the guests).

Cake: I wanted to stick with the red, white and black Elmo theme for the cake.  I am learning to simplify my cake designs and used the same Elmo cutout to create a stencil for my fondant.   While I would have loved to make the backdrop of this cake black and white chevron, I decided to simplify with the black dots.   I also simplified by using a paper “Samantha” sign to top the cake, instead of creating a sign out of gum paste.

Elmo Birthday Cake

Photo Props: After I finished the birthday banner and the centerpieces, I discovered extra cutouts and extra paper, so I thought it would be fun to create some photo props.  Turns out the photo props were a fantastic idea – Samantha, in particular, loved the props!  We used an empty wall to capture great photos of our friends and family.  The photo props will definitely now be on the list for all future party plans.

Elmo Photo Props

Confession of a *wannabe* party planner… I created my own pin the nose on Elmo game and fun make-your-own-Elmo-ornament favor bags… both of which I completely forgot the day of the party!  D’oh.

 
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Ribbon Cake with Bunting

My dear friend Audra truly appreciates a good party plan and is amazing with the execution! I was ecstatic to make her daughter’s first birthday cake, but also seriously nervous. I love decorating cakes for friends and family, because at this point I am pretty confident that whatever I put together will be more fun than what they could pick up from our local grocery store or Sam’s Club.

Audra, however, is a different story.

Audra always knows what is hip and cool, before it is hip and cool.  Yeeks!  I just said hip… and cool…  I am sure that Audra could find a fantastic cake from one of our amazing local bakeries that would turn up in our favorite blogs and magazines in a month or two as the hottest new trend.

The pressure was on!

Ribbon Cake with Bunting

Audra found this adorable cake bunting from Boo Bah Blue to provide inspiration! I wanted to keep the cake pretty simple to showcase the adorable bunting, so I decided to try a two-tiered ribbon cake, with a gum paste plaque. I used a 9 inch round cake for the first tier and a 6 inch round cake for the second tier.

To keep this project manageable and fun, I organized my time and spaced out the work. I created the gum paste name plaque on Wednesday, baked the cakes on Thursday, and I frosted and assembled the cake on Friday.

DECORATE:

1. Apply a thin crumb coat of vanilla buttercream to both cakes and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes, for the icing to set.

2. Once the icing is set, apply an additional smooth, thick, coat of buttercream to the top of each cake.

3. Fill your favorite piping bag with the vanilla buttercream and affix a Wilton 104 piping tip. (I believe tip #104 is typically used for piping petals, but I am a serious piping novice!)

4. Start at the base of your 9 inch cake, with the thin side of the piping tip facing up and the thicker side of the piping tip facing down. Pipe from left to right (or right to left!), about ¾ of an inch, in a figure eight motion. Continue this back and forth motion, moving from the base of the cake to the top. Continue this around the entire cake.

5. Trim 3 wooden dowels to the correct height of the cake, and insert the dowels in the center of the 9 inch cake, for support (I usually space them about 3 inches apart, in a triangular shape).

6. Gently place the 6 inch cake on top of the support dowels.

7. Pipe the 6 inch cake in the same fashion as the first cake.

8. Once both cakes are complete, pipe one final ribbon around the top of each cake to complete the look. Angle the tip with the wide base touching the cake and the thin side facing up. Gently pipe, in about a ½ inch back and forth motion, from the center to the outside of the cake around the circumference of each cake.

9. Before the icing complete sets, affix the gumpaste name plaque to the top tier. If the icing is already somewhat dry, simply wet the back of the gumpaste plaque and firmly hold against the icing until it sticks.

10. Top with an adorable cake bunting!

Confession of a *wannabe* cake decorator…. In my excitement over the ribbon cake, I overlooked the ever-important smash cake! I wanted both cakes to compliment each other, but I didn’t have time to bake, cool, and decorate another cake before the party! I hit up our local grocery store and bought a small cake from the frozen section. I scraped off the frozen icing from store and quickly iced the cake in complementing colors. This worked great… a trick I *may* remember in the future!

Hello Kitty Cake

Hello Kitty. Pink. Sparkly.

Those were the instructions from my beautiful niece Elise for her 3rd birthday cake.  I should probably rearrange those instructions to reflect the true enthusiasm of Elise in her birthday cake request…

Sparkly!  Pink!  Hello Kitty!

In an attempt to be the ultimate aunt, I added one more to the list:

Sparkly. Pink. Hello Kitty. Gum. (one of Elise’s favorites)

Who knew the most challenging mission of this cake would be to locate and acquire gumballs!  Once gumballs were included as part of the mission, however, they could not be removed, as they were now an essential element in the cake completion.   Fortunately, my mother and sister voluntarily enlisted in the overt gumball operation.  Three stores and several phone calls later, a large box of gumballs appeared, concealed in a Dierberg’s bag, between the side door and screen door of our quaint brick bungalow.  With the success of the overt gumball operation, it was time to move on to the next phase of cake completion.

Hello Kitty Cake

Pink pearl dust, applied with a paint brush (clean, and cake-specific, of course), provided the perfect pink sparkle to make this cake Elise approved.  I intended to make this cake over-the-top -sparkly with actual sparklers, but lost too much time with the overt gumball operation.  Next New Year’s Eve, I plan to purchase several packs of sparklers to use throughout the year.

Confession of a *wannabe* foodie… My free hand Hello Kitty failed, so I cheated a bit by creating my own Hello Kitty stencil by printing and cutting an image I liked online.

Racecar Cake

I saw a tutorial for these adorable racecar toppers, on the Cake Journal site, several weeks ago, and was ecstatic when Elliott decided he wanted a racecar cake for his birthday!  The tutorial is excellent!  I did not, however, have all the supplies, so I improvised a little, but I still think they turned out great.

When looking at tutorials, don’t get overwhelmed with materials you may not have, you can usually cope with the materials you do have on hand (okay, I realize not everyone has fondant in the basement). As a novice cake decorator, I adapted the tutorial by using mostly fondant, instead of gumpaste, since I already had the fondant colored appropriately for the racecars.  I used plain water to adhere the separate pieces, instead of tylo glue (shhh… I truly have no idea what that is).  I only have one fondant smoother, so instead of using a pair of fondant smoothers to shape the car, I used my one fondant smoother and a box of graham crackers!

In addition to the racecar toppers, I was pretty excited with the completed first tier tire!  I’m not sure the parents were as excited about all that black fondant, but I think it was totally worth it!  It might be fun to try and make a giant tire cake sometime!

Confession of a Wannabe Foodie… Sometimes life gets a bit hectic and I may have to get creative to finish everything in time.  After all those years of criticizing my mother for putting baked goods in the freezer, I did the unthinkable… I made homemade chocolate cakes the weekend before the event, let them cool, then immediately wrapped them in clingwrap, foil, and a zip lock bag and tossed them in the freezer for a few days.  And now, for the ultimate confession of all… I will totally do this again!!

Racecar Cake