Cakes, cakes, cupcakes, and more cakes!

No kids birthday party would be complete without an awesome birthday cake!  As I said before, I am a theme person, so each year my kids pick out their "theme" and I make them a special cake with that theme.  My absolute favorite cake is a recipe that came from my Aunt Sharon years ago.  My Grandma and Mom always made "Aunt Sharon's" chocolate cake with peanut butter icing!  Mmmm....  It's not too often I get to use peanut butter icing in my designs, but when I can I do.  (by the way, it is also a vegan recipe)

I'm not quite sure how, but somehow I got in the habit of making a batch of cupcakes to go with my cake.  Sometimes I go all out for my cupcakes too and sometimes I take the "easy" way out and laminate pictures to stick on the cupcakes.  It is an easy way to incorporate some of the more intricate special requests.  The kids don't mind in the least that pictures aren't edible.  In fact, I wash them off and they play with them, tape them to the windows, and whatever else it is boys can find to do with them.

My cakes and cupcakes:

Mickey Mouse

Ice Cream Cone cupcakes

Elmo

Elmo cupcake

 Ben 10 Ultimate Alien

 Woody from Toy Story

Oooh... the Aliens from Toy Story

Captain America's Shield

All of Radiator Springs showed up for this party!

A little more lamination than I usually like, but it was 2 weeks after I had a  baby!

The sand was peanut butter icing!!

Diego (chocolate-covered gummy worm eyebrows,

chocolate-covered tortilla chip hair and peanut butter icing!)

Favor bags... for stones??

I have the pleasure of teaching the Pre-K / Kindergarten Sunday School class at church.  Today we learned about David and Goliath.  After reading the story, and playing "Pin the stone on Goliath's forehead", we filled up bags with 5 stones, just as David had done.  I made the bags yesterday with some leftover fabric and some ribbon for a drawstring.  I got to thinking that these look a lot like favor bags.  I can make these in any size, with any fabric.  Here are what mine looked like:

Front:

Back:

With God, little girls can do BIG things too!

With God, little guys can do BIG things too!

Piñatas!

For the last few years, I have been making piñatas for my kids' birthday parties.  They LOVE them!  I recently had to start making two per party, one for everyone to have a turn, and one for just the birthday boy to smash.  I am a theme person... so every party has a theme, and a piñata to match! I always hang mine from our chandelier and it doubles as our centerpiece. 

Here is one I recently made for a friend's party.  His theme was spiderman!

Here are some other piñatas over the years... 

My kids wanted to smash the joker in the face!

they had it out for venom too!

My First Job! - Sewing Boy Scout and Girl Scout Patches

Thanks Molly for my first job!  I think she was in the market anyway for someone new to sew her patches, as the last lady sewed it on upside down. ha!  (and I'm cheaper too)  I charge $2.50 for each patch, any size.