Minecraft Party

Our little Man recently turned 9 so we had a Minecraft Party to celebrate...

We started off with invites made using this minecraft block printable to make envelope/boxes and I downloaded the minecraft font from here to type up the invites that I printed in grass block colours.

Next up was the party favours. I bought green t-shirts from Amazon and using a Creeper template I found online, similar to this one, I fabric painted creeper faces on the front. 

Jacob made some Hama Bead Minecraft squares. I love how when ironed they look pixelated. There is Steve, a pig and an Ender Man. I found the template here.

We kept the decorations quite simple as the lounge was also decorated for Hallowe'en. I used the font I had downloaded to make a Happy Birthday banner and drew creeper and zombie faces on green balloons. For the party bags, I bought green paper bags and found a template online to print the creeper faces directly onto the bags. Most of the guests wore their creeper t-shirts for the party. 

Just before we changed into costumes ready for trick or treating, the candles were blown out and the cake was cut....

Two Minecraft blocks in one cake :)

Rainbow Ice Cream Cake

A combination of a late night blog reading session about ice cream cakes, an early morning request from Ruby to bake cakes and Jacob's friend coming for tea today resulted in this...

Rainbow Ice Cream Cake

The blog I was reading last night (I can't remember which one during my bit of summer night insomnia) showed a 2 ingredient ice cream cake using shop bought ice cream and angel cake.

I've not made angel cake before so a quick search later we were adapting a Martha Stewart recipe by splitting the mix into 4 and adding pastel food colouring. We baked the mix in cupcake cases and once they were cooked they were set aside to cool. 

Ruby went off to the theatre for a friend's birthday treat and left Jacob and I to assemble the cake.
We bought a tub of Cornish Ice Cream and left it out to melt a bit. We then uncased the cupcakes and squished them into a springform tin (thank you Kay for lending us one).

Next the ice cream was smeared on top and the tin was popped in the freezer to set. To finish it off we shared out the Smarties (eating the brown ones as we went) and decorated the top.

Yum!

Sailor Jerry's Rum, Raisin and Ginger Cake with Pineapple Icing

Yesterday was Chris's birthday and I baked him a cake. It was a very yummy Sailor Jerry's Rum, raisin, ginger and pineapple drizzle cake.

I found a Rum and Ginger Cake recipe here and used it as the basis for my recipe.

To recreate the cake you will need:

Cake:

1 cup of butter

2 cups of light muscovado sugar

3 cups of self raising flour

1/2 tsp salt

4 eggs

2/3 cup of milk

1/3 cup of Sailor Jerry's Spiced Rum

1/2 cup of crystallised ginger (chopped into small pieces)

1/2 cup of raisins

Before Icing:

25ml Sailor Jerry's Spiced Rum

25ml pineapple juice

Icing:

150g of icing sugar

Fresh pineapple juice

Slice of fresh pineapple, (i used tinned but think that fresh would have been better)

A deep 20cm tin or 2 shallow 20cm tins

Pre-heat the oven to 175c or 350f and grease and line your tin/s.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 

Sift together the flour and salt and set aside.

Combine the milk and rum together and set aside. 

Lightly beat eggs and add to the creamed butter and sugar with a spoonful of the flour and whisk until combined.

Reduce the speed on the mixer and alternate adding the flour and milk and rum until you have a smooth batter.

Stir in the raisins and the crystallised ginger.

Pour into the prepared tin/s and bake for 75mins until the cake bounces back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

Leave to cool.

Skewer the cake a few times. 

Mix together the pineapple juice and rum and pour over the cake.

For the icing:

Chop a small piece of pineapple into tiny pieces.

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, add a little pineapple juice at a time and mix to a double cream consistency. 

Stir in the pineapple pieces and drizzle over the cake.

To finish the cake off I added some paper pineapples that I bought from Tiger.

And a lot of candles!

You can count the candles to see how old he is. We did remove half of the candles as we were worried that the combination of the paper pineapples and the rum would start a fire.

Flashback Friday - Laser Zone Birthday Cake

I spent most of last autumn with my head in my one piece garment City and Guild course at MIY Workshop which meant that blogging was put on hold.

Whilst sorting through my iPhoto folder I found the photo's from Jacob's 8th birthday cake. He had a Lazer Zone party which was so easy, all I had to do was send out invites, make a cake and turn up on time!

How I made a Laser cake!

To make the lasers I mixed up a three egg vanilla sponge. I then divided it into 4 and coloured each quarter with food colouring. I baked them in loaf liners and once cooked and cooled I cut them into strips.

I then mixed up a six egg vanilla sponge for my 20cm x 20cm tin that had been lined with greaseproof paper. I spread a spatula of mixture on the bottom and then layered the laser pieces across the plain mix. Another spatular of plain mix went on top and then more lasers were added and so on until all of the lasers were in the cake and the final spatula of plain mix was on top.

Once cooked and cooled I cut the cake in half and added a layer of jam.

To decorate the cake I dirty iced the sponge with buttercream and then covered with grey fondant icing. I placed liquorice cables on top with a fondant ball in the middle ready for the glow sticks to go through as I didn't want to place the glow sticks directly in the cake.

I cracked the glow sticks just before the cake was served and 8 plain coloured candles finished it off.

Under the Sea Afternoon Tea

A belated Happy New Year!

Our New Year always has a delayed start, we have birthday after birthday until the middle of the month. My Mum's is on NYE, Ruby was a New Years Day baby and mine is on the 10th. As A result I don't feel like the new year properly starts until the middle of January.

This year was busy than normal as I also had my City and Guild's coursework to give in and it was a last minute rush because I had spent all my time preparing for Ruby's Under the Sea Afternoon Tea!

Ruby is a mermaid with legs, she loves swimming and The Octonauts so an Under the Sea theme party was inevitable. This is her 5th birthday party!

The Birthday Mermaid

Ruby wore her mermaid dress that I made for her 4th birthday present. She's had a lot of wear out of it, especially here!

My friend Lou saved the day by lending me her cardboard fish from her under the sea party and I mixed them up with blue netting that was draped across cotton that had been zigzagged across the ceiling. Blue pearlised balloons weighted down with a button inside hung from the cotton.

I bought some blue sequin fabric from Fabricland and hung it up over the living room door so that the guests could "enter the sea".

We also hung fairy lights from the ceiling, paper garlands across the room and displays of shells on fabric covered surfaces.

When the party guests arrived they made jelly fish, using paper bowls, strips of the tissue paper and tape. We hung them from the ceiling to add to the decorations. 

With some guests dressed as mermaids and divers they played pass the parcel with pretty shells in each layer, find the magic scale on the fish and throw a bean bag at the octopus.

To make the octopus and the fish game (not shown) I saved Ikea packaging and drew the octopus on, cut a hole for the mouth and provided bean bags to throw through the mouth.

I think my favourite game of the party was the one where each child had to lie on the floor with a sweet on their head. We told them jokes and tickled their toes until there was only one child left. I great way for a little bit of peace at a party.

Fish Food!
The kids ate jam and cream cheese dolphin shaped sandwiches, melon from the melon fish, chocolate shells and macaroon oysters (made by Auntie Anna).

The cake was a vanila ombre ruffle cake with waves, a sandy beach and a toy mermaid on top. I can't find a photo of it but the inside was six layers of blue sponge.

I couldn't resist a photo of Jacob posing as the octopus, he was fantastic on the day and "manned" the octopus game, taking a number of bean bags to the stomach, and the fishing game. Maybe next year he can run the party all by himself!

Rachel's Party

I woke up on Saturday morning singing "Get the party started" by Pink because the day of Rachel's birthday party had finally come. Week's worth of planning, crafty shopping trips and making sessions were about to come to fruition. 

In four hours we turned The Ladies Mile Pub Function Room from this....

 ....Into what Chris later described as Martha Stewarts migraine! It looked awesome.

There is so much to show you....

Bunting, ruffled streamers, huge paper lanterns, tissue paper pom pons, fairy and disco lights, spotty garlands, doily bunting, balloons, the lot! (Tutorials and links to follow later this week!)

Guests were invited to bring a record for the DJ to put on. We danced to Blur, Betty Boo and the B52's. 

Tables were covered in pink and yellow honeycomb parc from Fabricland, night lights in jam jars and bowls of crisps and sweets.

There was also a little bit of toilet graffiti!

Oh and a cake!

24 eggs, 10 egg whites, a lot of flour, butter, sugar, food colouring and 6 jars of sugar strands. It was huge and had a very special surprise inside!

Hope you had a Fab time Rachel!